An original short story from iconic thriller collection Match Up, edited by Lee Child, featuring a never-before-seen pairing between bestsellers Diana Gabaldon and Steve Berry .

What happens when you bring together the 18th-century world of Diana Gabaldon and Steve Berry's modern-day hero Cotton Malone? The result is a rollercoaster ride of a short story set in the wilds of Scotland and spanning several centuries.

For more exciting short story pairings, don't miss all eleven short stories in Match Up!

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER ...

Lee Child's Jack Reacher will team up with Kathy Reichs' Temperance Brennan to unmask a cunning killer. Val McDermid's Tony Hill and Carol Jordan work with Peter James's Roy Grace on a very unusual murder case.

These are just some of the never-before-seen pairings in Match Up - a brand new collaboration between the world's famous crime writers. Edited be international bestseller Lee Child, this exclusive page-turning anthology promises the same thrills and chills brought to you by the previous collection, Face Off. Read on for the full list of author and character pairings:

Diana Gabaldon's Claire Randall Fraser + Steve Berry's Cotton Malone
Lisa Scottoline's Bennie Rosato + Nelson DeMille's John Corey
Sandra Brown's Lee Coburn + C.J. Box's Joe Pickett
Kathy Reichs's Temperance Brennan + Lee Child's Jack Reacher
Val McDermid's Tony Hill + Peter James's Roy Grace
Charlaine Harris's Harper Connelly + Andrew Gross's Ty Hauck
Gayle Lynds's Liz Sansborough + David Morrell's Rambo
Karin Slaughter's Jeffrey Tolliver + Michael Koryta's Lincoln Perry
Lara Adrian's Lucan Thorne + Christopher Rice
J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds + Eric Van Lustbader's Bravo Shaw
Lisa Jackson's Regan Pescoli + John Sandford's Lucas Davenport

The first explosive thriller in the Cotton Malone series from a New York Times megaselling author.

The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and absolute power, until the Inquisition destroyed them and their riches were lost forever.

But some people don't believe in 'forever'.

Ex-agent Cotton Malone used to work for Stephanie Nelle in the US Justice Department. Now Nelle wants his help to crack a series of puzzles that have confounded experts for centuries - and could lead to the legendary lost treasure of the Knights Templar.

But someone else is on the trail - someone prepared to commit the ultimate crime to win the ultimate prize. Malone and Nelle find themselves in a heart-stopping race through the villages, castles and cloisters of Europe in pursuit of a secret that, in the wrong hands, could bring the world to its knees.

In bestselling author Steve Berry's stunning novel, former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone encounters information from a secret World War II dossier that, if proven true, would not only rewrite history - it could change the political landscape of Europe forever.

Two candidates are vying to become Chancellor of Germany. One is a patriot who has served for many years, the other a usurper, stoking the flames of nationalistic hate. Both harbour secrets, but only one knows the truth about the other. Everything turns on the events of one fateful day - April 30, 1945 - and what happened deep beneath Berlin in the Führerbunker. Did Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun die there? Did Martin Bormann, Hitler's close confidant, manage to escape? And possibly even more important, where did billions in Nazi wealth disappear to in the waning days of the war? The answers to these questions will determine who becomes the next Chancellor.

Racing from Chile to South Africa, and finally the secret vaults of Switzerland, former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone must uncover the truth about the fates of Hitler, Braun, and Bormann - revelations that could not only transform Europe, but finally expose a mystery known as the Kaiser's Web.

The electrifying new Cotton Malone thriller by international bestseller Steve Berry.

People say the Cold War is coming back.

For some, it never went away.

Shot down over Siberia in what was to be a simple meet-and-greet mission, ex-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is forced into a fight for survival against Aleksandr Zorin, whose loyalty to the former Soviet Union has festered for decades into an intense hatred of the United States.

Before escaping, Malone learns that Zorin is headed for North America to join another long-term sleeper embedded in the West.

Armed with a Soviet weapon long thought to be just a myth, Zorin is aided by a shocking secret hidden in the archives of America's oldest fraternal organization, the Society of Cincinnati. Past presidents used this group's military offensive - including advice on the invasion of what was to be America's 14th Colony - Canada.

Inauguration Day for a new President of the U.S.A. is only hours away. Zorin's deadly plan is timed to bring about political chaos.

In a race against the clock from Russia to the White House itself, Malone must not only battle Zorin, he must also confront his deepest fear, a crippling weakness that he's long denied but one that now jeopardizes everything. Steve Berry's trademark mix of fact, fiction, history and speculation is all here in this fast-paced and utterly compelling new thriller.

A pacy international suspense thriller with a historical twist, from the New York Times bestselling author.

Ex-agent Cotton Malone wants to know what really happened to his father, officially lost at sea when his submarine went down in the north Atlantic in 1971. But when he uses his government contacts to obtain the submarine's sealed file, he finds he is not the only person looking for answers.

Malone is in the line of fire when he is attacked in an attempt to take the file. He is pitched into a lethal power struggle between Dorothea Lindauer and Christl Falk, twin sisters whose twisted ambition takes sibling rivalry to new levels.

Malone and the twins embark on a dangerous adventure involving Nazi explorations in Antarctica, US government conspiracies, and a series of cryptic historical clues built into the legend of Charlemagne. Forced to choose a side when neither can win, Malone is determined to uncover the truth behind his father's death - but will he be able to escape his own?

A pacy international thriller with a historical twist, from the New York Times bestselling author.

Cotton Malone is back and the stakes were never higher: a deadly virus that could wipe out civilisation as we know it - and a cure that lies buried in the past.

The Venetian League, a secret group of 45 political and economic leaders from around the world, has joined forces with a coalition of former Soviet republics to create a potentially devastating biological weapon, a bird flu-like virus that has been artificially mutated to pass from human to human. Whoever develops the cure would control the future of global warfare. Yet that cure may have been discovered centuries ago, and if so the clue to the location of the formula lies buried with Alexander the Great.

When Cotton Malone's former companion Cassiopeia Vitt hears about it, she and Cotton join the hunt for Alexander's long-lost tomb, and what at first seems to Cotton a wild quest for the answer to a perplexing historical riddle becomes a harrowing fight for truth that has unimaginable repercussions, both geopolitical and terrifyingly personal.

From celebrated New York Times bestselling author, Steve Berry, comes the latest Cotton Malone adventure, in which the discovery of a lost historical document challenges the global might of the United States.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was an enigmatic figure who was deposed in 1886, mysteriously drowning three days later. Eccentric to the point of madness, history tells us that in the years before he died Ludwig engaged in a worldwide search for a new kingdom, one separate, apart, and in lieu of Bavaria. A place he could retreat into and rule as he wished. But a question remains: did he succeed?

Enter Cotton Malone. After many months, Malone's protégé, Luke Daniels, has managed to infiltrate a renegade group intent on winning Bavarian independence from Germany. Daniels has also managed to gain the trust of the prince of Bavaria, a frustrated second son intent on eliminating his brother, the duke, and restoring the Wittelsbach monarchy, only now with him as king. Everything hinges on a 19th century deed which proves that Ludwig's long-rumored search bore fruit - legal title to lands that Germany, China, and the United States all now want, only for vastly different reasons.

In a race across Bavaria for clues hidden in Ludwig's three fairytale castles - Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee - Malone and Daniels battle an ever-growing list of deadly adversaries, all intent on finding the last kingdom.

From the New York Times bestselling author, an ambitious and explosive international thriller with an unexpected historical twist

A hidden treasure. A forgotten truth.

Cotton Malone is in trouble. His son has been kidnapped and his bookshop in Copenhagen attacked, all because he is the only man alive who knows the whereabouts of the Alexandria link - the means of locating the most important cache of ancient knowledge ever assembled: the legendary Library of Alexandria, which vanished without trace fifteen hundred years ago.

Now, Malone is forced to join the search for a forgotten truth hidden within that vast literary treasure - a truth that, if revealed, will have grave consequences, not only for Malone, but for the balance of world power . . .