Ben Coes is the New York Times bestselling author of international political and espionage thrillers that include Power Down, Coup d’État, The Last Refuge, Eye for an Eye, and Independence Day. His next book, First Strike, comes out on June 28, 2016.Ben’s books all center on Dewey Andreas, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier who was kicked out of the military after being falsely accused of crimes he did not commit. He leaves the country he loves and works for nearly a decade as a roughneck on a series of offshore oil rigs all over the world. When one of the oil rigs is the target of a broader terror attack on America, Dewey must reconcile with a government that betrayed him in order to stop the terrorists. While fiction, all of Ben’s books are based on current events.Ben began writing after a career in politics and finance. His first job was at the White House under President Ronald Reagan. Ben was a White House appointed speechwriter to the U.S. Secretary of Energy during the Gulf War. Ben worked for Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, California Governor Pete Wilson, and was campaign manager for Mitt Romney’s successful run for Massachusetts Governor. Ben was also a Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Ben has been a partner at two private equity firms, participating in a wide range of investing activity in more than two dozen companies across a variety of industries.Ben graduated from Columbia College, where he won the Bennett Cerf Memorial Prize for Fiction. He lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife and four children.