Book One of the Xander Hale Series arrives in paperback as the nation marks its 250th year
CHARLESTON, SC, UNITED STATES, October 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Market First Publishing (MFP) has released Are You a Patriot?, the first novel in the Xander Hale Series from award-winning entrepreneur Donald Thompson and cultural historian Bob Batchelor. The paperback ($17.99) and eBook ($9.99) are available now and can be ordered through any bookstore.
Xander Hale built a media empire by telling the truth about power. Three weeks after federal troops open fire on a crowd of families in Detroit, he stands in a Washington ballroom and says out loud what the most powerful people in America have spent fortunes keeping quiet. He never makes it home. By morning he belongs to a covert unit that officially does not exist, and he is given a choice that isn’t really a choice: get inside the plot his lifelong friend and business partner has built to assassinate the president, or watch the country burn.
The assassination plot is only the surface. Behind it stands a secret syndicate of military, financial, and intelligence elites provoking instability to consolidate control under the banner of national security. To stop it, the man who spent his life exposing the machine has to become its weapon.
The novel is built around the question Americans are already arguing about in the country’s 250th year: Would you save a country that never loved you?
“Are You a Patriot? is a fast-paced tour de force! Xander Hale is part Orphan X, part Jack Bauer, and all-American,” said Michael Laurence, bestselling author of The Extinction Agenda series. “Thompson and Batchelor have crafted a conspiracy thriller that perfectly captures the current political climate and exposes the true nature of power…and those who’ll do anything to keep it. Bring on the next book!”
“We sign books when we can see the readers, and with Are You a Patriot? we could see them months before publication,” said Josh Schwartz, Founder and CEO of Market First Publishing. “More than 80,000 people joined the conversation about this novel before it went on sale. That’s Platform Publishing working the way we designed it. Don and Bob wrote a thriller that moves at full speed and still has something serious to say about power in this country. Are You a Patriot? sets the standard for the fiction we’ll publish.”
“Xander carries a question I’ve had to answer my whole career: what do you owe a country that keeps underestimating you?” said Thompson, an EY Entrepreneur of the Year honoree; Managing Director of the Center for Organizational Effectiveness at TELUS Health, formerly Workplace Options; and author of Underestimated: A CEO’s Unlikely Path to Success. “I built companies in rooms where people doubted I belonged. Xander builds his empire the same way, and then the country asks him to save it. Readers will pick this book up for the action. I hope they finish it still thinking about what they would do in his place.”
“I write about the stories America tells itself, from Gatsby to Stan Lee,” said Batchelor, a three-time IPA Book Award winner and author of Stan Lee: A Life. “Thrillers have always been where Americans work through their fears about power. We put a Black media mogul at the center of a conspiracy thriller and forced him to choose between the friend he loves and a country that has never fully accepted him. The book arrives while the nation is still arguing about what patriotism means, and we wanted readers inside that argument.”
ABOUT THE BOOK
Title: Are You a Patriot?
Series: Book One of the Xander Hale Series
Authors: Donald Thompson and Bob Batchelor
Publisher: Market First Publishing
On Sale: October 6, 2026
Formats: Paperback $17.99 | eBook $9.99
Website: areyouapatriot.com
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Donald Thompson is an award-winning CEO, multi-exit entrepreneur, and investor. An EY Entrepreneur of the Year honoree and multiple Forbes Next 1000 honoree, he is Managing Director of the Workplace Options Center for Organizational Effectiveness and lead investor and board chair of ExecBrand Authority. He is the author of the award-winning leadership memoir Underestimated: A CEO’s Unlikely Path to Success. Are You a Patriot? is his fiction debut.
Bob Batchelor is a cultural historian and biographer who has written 18 books and edited 19 more, including Stan Lee: A Life, The Bourbon King, Roadhouse Blues, and The Gatsby Code. His next book is Strikeout King: The Life and Legend of Nolan Ryan (2027). A three-time IPA Book Award winner, he has been an on-air commentator for PBS NewsHour, NPR, National Geographic, and the BBC, and his work has appeared in the New York Times and Time. He is an Assistant Professor of Communication, Media & Culture at Coastal Carolina University.
ABOUT MARKET FIRST PUBLISHING
Market First Publishing is an independent book publisher built on a single principle: a book’s audience should be built before publication, not chased after it. MFP invests in the titles it signs and markets them from the first page to the last reader, publishing across fiction and nonfiction including business and leadership, biography and memoir, and history. Based in Charleston, South Carolina. Learn more at www.marketfirstpublishing.com.
Joshua Schwartz
Market First Publishing
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Are You a Patriot? Political Thriller by Donald Thompson and Bob Batchelor
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