Robert Wilson

Thirty essays originally published in Preservation magazine where writers describe a place that is significant to them.

A portrait of a scientist-explorer whose mountain-scaling, desert-crossing, river-fording, blizzard-surviving adventures helped create the new West of the nineteenth century. King in his youth was an icon of the new America: a man of both action and intellect, who combined science and adventure with romanticism and charm. He went west in 1863 at age 21 as a geologist-explorer. During the next decade he scaled the Sierra Nevada, published a book now considered an adventure classic, initiated a groundbreaking land survey, and ultimately uncovered one of the greatest frauds of the century--the Great Diamond Hoax--making him an international celebrity at a time when there were few. The book also provides the bigger picture of the West at this time, showing the ways in which the terrain was measured and charted and mastered, and how science, politics, and business began to intersect and influence one another during this era.--From publisher description.

A Portuguese bank is founded on the back of Nazi wartime deals. Over half a century later a young girl is murdered in Lisbon. 1941. Klaus Felsen, SS, arrives in Lisbon and the strangest party in history where Nazis and Allies, refugees and entrepreneurs dance to the strains of opportunism and despair. Felsen's war takes him to the bleak mountains of the north where a brutal battle is being fought for an element vital to Hitler's blitzkrieg. Late 1990s, Lisbon. Inspector Zé Coelho is investigating the murder of a young girl with a disturbing sexual past. As Zé digs deeper he overturns the dark soil of history and unearths old bones.

The final psychological thriller featuring Javier Falcon, the tortured detective from 'The Hidden Assassins' and 'The Blind Man of Seville. 'A sweltering Seville is recovering from the shock of a terrorist attack and Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon is struggling to fulfil his promise to its citizens: that he would find the real perpetrators of the outrage. The death of a gangster in a spectacular car crash offers vital evidence implicating the Russian mafia in his investigation...but pitches Falcon into the heart of a turf war over prostitution and drugs. Now the target of vicious hoods, Falcon finds those closest to him are also coming under intolerable pressure: his best friend, who's spying for the Spanish government, reveals that he is being blackmailed by Islamist extremists, and Falcon's own lover suffers a mother's worst nightmare. In the face of such fanaticism and brutality, their options seem limited and Falcon realizes that only the most ruthless retaliation will work. But there is a terrible price to pay...

The gripping new psychological thriller featuring Javier Falcon, the tortured detective from 'The Silent and the Damned' and 'The Blind Man of Seville.'As Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon investigates a faceless corpse unearthed on a municipal dump, Seville is rocked by a massive explosion. An apartment block is destroyed, and when it's discovered that its basement housed a mosque everybody's terrorist fears are confirmed.Panic sweeps the city, more bodies are dragged from rubble, the climate of fear infects everyone and terror invades the domestic life of flamboyant judge Calderon and the troubled mind of Consuelo, Falcon's one-time lover.With the media and political pressure intensifying, Falcon realizes all is not as it appears. But as he comes close to cracking a conspiracy, he discovers an even more terrifying plot – and the race is on to prevent a catastrophe far beyond Spain's borders.

In the year 1780, Harriet Westerman, the willful mistress of a country manor in Sussex, finds a dead man on her grounds with a ring bearing the crest of Thornleigh Hall in his pocket. Not one to be bound by convention or to shy away from adventure, she recruits a reclusive local anatomist named Gabriel Crowther to help her find the murderer, and historical suspense's newest investigative duo is born. For years, Mrs. Westerman has sensed the menace of neighboring Thornleigh Hall, seat of the Earl of Sussex. It is the home of a once- great family that has been reduced to an ailing invalid, his whorish wife, and his alcoholic second son, a man haunted by his years spent as a redcoat in the Revolutionary War. The same day, Alexander Adams is slain by an unknown killer in his London music shop, leaving his children orphaned. His death will lead back to Sussex, and to an explosive secret that has already destroyed one family and threatens many others. Instruments of Darkness combines the brooding atmosphere of Anne Perry with the complex, compelling detail of Tess Gerritsen, moving from drawing room to dissecting room, from coffee house to country inn. Mrs. Westerman and Mr. Crowther are both razor-sharp minds and their personalities breathe spirit into this gripping historical mystery. Book One of the Crowther and Westerman Series.