Princeton. Good Friday, 1999. On the eve of graduation, two students are a hairsbreadth from solving the mysteries of the Poliphili, a Renaissance text that has baffled scholars for centuries. Famous for its hypnotic power over those who study it, the five-hundred-year-old may finally reveal its secrets-to Tom Sullivan, whose father was obsessed with the book, and Paul Harris, whose future depends on it. But as the deadline looms, research has stalled-until an ancient diary surfaces. What Tom and Paul discover inside shocks even them: proof that the location of a hidden crypt has been ciphered within the pages of ...
The Old Weatherman dreams of a plan that could be his swan song, an attack to drive a stake through the heart of the right-wing establishment and bury it for good. Now he's found the money, the ideal weapon, and the professional who knows how to use it. And he has set his sights on the perfect target at the very seat of the United States government, in the heart of downtown Washington. It will be a strike heard round the world.San Diego defense attorney Paul Madriani is still reeling from the trauma of a near nuclear ...
A Short StoryHis sister is dying but he hates her. Does the guilt bother him? When the house blows up, does he learn his lesson? Does it take death to teach him to feel?Or is it all a ruse?A man receives a mysterious text message on his cell phone that turns out to be prophetic. A few days later he receives another, which again comes true. He acts on the prophecies, and what follows changes his life forever.He thinks he knows the truth but that's just part of the ruse.
John le Carr? was born in 1931. He attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. Later he taught at Eton and spent five years in the British Foreign Service. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, his third book, secured him a wide reputation and was followed by THE LOOKING-GLASS WAR, A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY, THE NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL LOVER, and his trilogy TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY and SMILEY'S PEOPLE. His most recent novels are THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL and A PERFECT SPY. Though he divides his time between England and the continent, he is most at home in Cornwall.
For the first time in decades The Eternal City is paralysed by a blizzard. And a gruesome discovery is made in the Pantheon – one of Rome 's most ancient and revered architectural treasures. Covered by softly falling snow is the body of a young woman – her back horribly mutilated…But before Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni of the Questura can begin a formal investigation the US Embassy has brought in its own people, FBI Agents who want the case closed down as quickly and discreetly as possible. But Costa is determined to find out why the enquiry is so sensitive – and as the FBI grudgingly admits that this corpse is not the first, the mutilations of the woman's body point to Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man – and to a conspiracy so sinister and buried so deep, that only two people know its true, crazed meaning.
Castagnetti (informally known as 'Casta') is a private detective who doesn't do things by the book. He's dogged and lonely, impatient with the world of appearances and deceit. So when a pompous notary commissions him to verify that a missing person is 'presumed dead' in order to dispose of a dead woman's estate to the other heirs, Casta smells a rat. Before long he's reopening wounds from years ago and exposing family secrets to those who have tried to suppress them. The relatives of Signora Salati just want their their inheritance, but Casta is going to make sure they ...
Far from the shogun's court at Edo, Most Honourable Investigator Sano Ichiro begins the most challenging case of his career. Upon the insistence of his strong-willed and beautiful wife Reiko, Sano arrives with her at the emperor's palace to unmask the murderer – who possesses the secret of kiai, "the spirit cry," a powerful scream that can kill instantly. A high Kyoto offical is the victim. Treading carefully through a web of spies, political intrigue, forbidden passions and intricate plots, Sano and Reiko must struggle to stay ahead of the palace storms – and outwit a cunning killer. But as they ...
This is a work of fiction. And yet…The romantic land of flamenco and Don Quixote and exotic-looking se?oritas with tortoises hell combs in their hair is also the land of Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition, and one of the bloodiest civil wars in history. More than half a million people lost their lives in the battles for power between the Republicans and the rebel Nationalists in Spain.In 1936, between February and June, 269 political murders were committed, and the Nationalists executed Republicans at the rate of a thousand a month, with no mourning permitted. One hundred ...
When Lucie Montgomery finds the body of prominent wine merchant Paul Noble hanging from a beam in his art studio not far from her Virginia vineyard, she is unwittingly dragged into Noble’s murky past. Once a member of the secretive Mandrake Society, Noble might have aided in a cover-up of the deaths forty years ago of a disabled man and a beautiful young biochemist involved in classified government research. A seemingly innocent favor for an old friend of her French grandfather sends Lucie to California, where she teams up with Quinn Santori, who walked out of Lucie’...
Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the LA Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling readership and revenues, he's got 30 days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low cost reporter just out of J-school who couldn't find the police station if it was right next store to the Times, which it is. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang – a final story that will win the newspaper journalism's highest honor – a ...
It is the week before Christmas. The effects of the credit crunch have prompted Dr Kay Scarpetta to offer her services pro bono to New York City 's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. But in no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of dramatic and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same broadcast, she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatric patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds a suspicious package? possibly a bomb? waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a deadly plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionairess with whom Scarpette'a niece Lucy seems to have shared a secret past…
