FICTION · SUSPENSE
Alex Archer
their mouths over their dentures, whistling the word "snapper," their hands and head shakin', looking like they wasn't glued together very tight. That was the worst part.
— from Day of Atonement
Most acclaimed
Sacred ground
In a land of subzero temperatures and snow-covered vistas, survival is a challenge. But for the Araktak—an isolated and mysterious Inuit people—this harsh tundra is their heritage. Until now. A large mining company has purchased the land, and the sacred Araktak burial site with it. But more than diamond deposits await them under the dark, icy earth....Contracted by the mining company, archaeologist Annja Creed is to oversee the proper relocation of the burial site. Her job is to ensure that each ancient relic and all human remains are carefully removed. But the sacred ground harbors a terrible secret. One that a powerful group of men intend to unleash on an unsuspecting world—unless Annja can find a way to stop them.
Renaissance
DESTINYMyths lead Annja Creed to France, where the terrifying legend of the Beast of Gevaudan hints at the unimaginable. What she discovers is shattering: an artifact that will seal her destiny; monks willing to murder to protect their secret; and a powerful black-market occultist desperate to claim centuries-old blood money.SOLOMON'S JARRumors of Solomon's Jar, in which King Solomon bound demons after using them to build his temple, are followed with interest by Annja. Her search for the truth leads to a cult driven by visions of a new world order and Annja embarks on a relentless chase to stop humanity's most unfathomable secrets from reshaping the world.THE SPIDER STONEIn the remains of an Underground Railroad tunnel, a strange stone reveals a dark secret of Africa's ancient past. Intrigued, Annja opens a door to a legend bound by a terrible force. Her odyssey into the Senegalese jungle becomes a race to stop those eager to unleash the virulence of the Spider God.
Destiny
Christopher Burton, the protagonist of Tim Parks’s masterful new novel, is one of Britain’s foremost foreign correspondents, the acknowledged world expert on Italian affairs. Three months after returning to London with his Italian wife for an extended stay, Burton, while standing at the reception desk of the Rembrandt Hotel in London’s Knightsbridge, receives a phone call informing him that his teenage son has committed suicide. Why, upon receiving this terrible news, does he immediately conclude that his marriage of almost thirty years is over? And why is grief so slow in coming? Burton feels his pious, mercurial wife may have given him his life in Italy--even his prestigious career--but she has also made it impossible. Was their troubled son somehow the victim of their long, explosive love-hate relationship? Looking back, Burton sees in his life a web of contradictions, unanswered questions, and confusions. And yet, it has been destiny.Intensely dramatic, dark, and yet often hilariously funny, Destinyis a seamless, beautifully plotted story and a profound meditation on marriage and identity, at once romantic and callous, brilliant and blind. In Destiny, Parks offers us a searing account of what it means to tread the narrow line between sanity and psychosis.