For fifteen years he has been silent. Now, the legendary #1 New York Times bestselling author of such classic suspense novels as The Eiger Sanction and Shibumi returns-- unleashing a stunning thriller set against the backdrop of the American West. A godforsaken town. A young, eager-to-please stranger carrying a homemade shotgun and a staggering secret. And a madman escaped from the Territorial Prison at Laramie, cutting a swath of sadistic violence with two killers at his side. Now, for the people of Twenty-Mile-- the God-fearing and the godless, heroes, whores, lovers and a boy teetering on the edge of madness-- a siege is about to begin amidst a harrowing mountain storm. And when the killing, the thunder, and the terror are over, some will live, some will be buried, and the myth of the American frontier will never be the same...
A trio of convicts occupy a small community in Wyoming and terrorize its unarmed inhabitants. An opportunity for Matthew Dubchek, a young drifter with a gun, to live his fantasy of being Ringo Kid. Question is will he have the guts.
Twenty Miles From a Match, originally published in 1978, is the autobiography of an indomitable woman and her family’s twenty years of adventures and misadventures in a desert wilderness. In 1908, a venturesome woman named Sarah Olds packed up her brood and went homesteading in the deserts north of Reno, west of Sutcliffe on Pyramid Lake. Her ailing husband said, welcoming her to their new home, "There, old lady. There’s your home, and it’s damn near in the heart of Egypt." Olds tells of the hardships, frustrations, poverty, and other tribulations her family suffered from shortly after the turn of the century until well into the Great Depression. Through it all, however, runs a thread of humor, cheerfulness, and the ability to laugh at adversity. The foreword is by her daughter, Leslie Olds Zurfluh, the fourth of Sarah and A. J. Olds's six children.
Part love story and part psychological thriller from best-selling author Trevanian, "a tour de force... A story that explores meticulously some of the darker corners of the human soul." -- The Washington Post In the quiet Basque countryside in 1914, Jean-Marc Montjean, a handsome young doctor, moves to the small French village of Salies to assist the village physician. It's there that he meets the seductive, beautiful Katya Treville. Jean-Marc is bewitched, driven to know everything about her. But as he and her family become friendly, he realizes they are haunted by an old, dark secret. When Jean-Marc learns that the Trevilles are planning to leave the village forever, he insists on a final meeting with Katya. That meeting and the events that follow turn what was an idyllic romance into an unending nightmare. And when Katya’s secret is revealed, the chilling climax will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned. "A most exquisite, elegant, ingenious thriller." -- The New York Daily News
Jonathan Hemlock lives in a renovated Gothic church on Long Island. He is an art professor, a mountain climber, and a mercenary, performing assassinations (i.e., sanctions) for money to augment his black-market art collection. Now Hemlock is being tricked into a hazardous assignment that involves an attempt to scale one of the most treacherous mountain peaks in the Swiss Alps, the Eiger. In a breathtakingly suspenseful story that is part thriller and part satire, the author traces Hemlock’s spine-tingling adventures, introducing a cast of intriguing characters—villains, traitors, beautiful women—into the highly charged atmosphere of danger. The accumulating threads of suspicion, accusation, and evidence gradually knit themselves into a bizarre and death-defying climax in this exciting, entertaining novel that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the last absorbing page.
The author of "Incident at Twenty-Mile, The Summer of Katya, " and "The Eiger Sanction" presents 13 short stories that introduce unforgettable characters as they each experience compelling situations through the course of one night in the streets of big cities in America, France, the Holy Land, mythic Britain, modern London, and the primitive North American heartland. Martin's Press.
On March 28, 1979, the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power in the United States occurred at Three Mile Island. For five days, the citizens of central Pennsylvania and the entire world, amid growing alarm, followed the efforts of authorities to prevent the crippled plant from spewing dangerous quantities of radiation into the environment. This book is the first comprehensive, moment-by-moment account of the causes, context, and consequences of the Three Mile Island crisis. Walker captures the high human drama surrounding the accident, sets it in the context of the heated debate over nuclear power in the seventies, and analyzes the social, technical, and political issues it raised. He also looks at the aftermath of the accident on the surrounding area, including studies of its long-term health effects on the population.--From publisher description.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
A First-Rate Thriller from a Legendary Master Jonathan Hemlock, the art professor and mercenary who first excited readers with his daring exploits in The Eiger Sanction, returns in an even more masterful adventure in The Loo Sanction, Trevanian’s second thrilling spy novel. Hemlock has gone to England to rest, but his vacation is interrupted when the head of British Intelligence needs his highly skilled services. Jonathan must take over the mission of an agent whose murder was so bizarre and terrifying that no other agent was willing to replace him. His task: to locate a set of secretly made films that incriminate a number of high-ranking British officials. His target: a top underworld figure who delights in debauchery and torture. Facing this threat, Jonathan is drawn into a labyrinthine network of intrigue and depravity. As all the pieces in the dangerous puzzle begin to come together, Jonathan is trapped, almost fatally drugged, and forced to attempt one of the most daring escapes ever conceived. The Loo Sanction is sure to keep readers frantically turning pages until the thrilling climax. Also available as an eBook Look for these other Trevanian classics from Three Rivers Press: Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction, The Main, and The Summer of Katya.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A family returns to their hometown—and to the dark past that haunts them still—in this masterpiece of literary horror by the New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers “The dread, the scope, the pacing, the turns—I haven’t felt all this so intensely since The Shining.”—Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND LIBRARY JOURNAL Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father—and has never told his family what happened there. Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have—and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures. Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver. And now what happened long ago is happening again . . . and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic. This dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family—and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another.