Philip Richards is a man who appears to be everything he isn't. Well dressed, well spoken and successful by any measure, his world is changed overnight when his beautiful wife, Laura, dies unexpectedly. Lost and adrift, he finally decides to take charge of his life once again and strikes out on a completely different path, one that leads to murder and mayhem. But the strange things about all this is that Philip isn't slowed or intimated by these events. Instead he seems to thrive on them.Is Philip all he appears to be, or is there a dark side that is worse than the terrible people he faces? Is he the hunted or the hunter? And do you find yourself rooting for this complex man, or secretly fearing for those around him?When does justice cross the line and become something worse than the crime it is supposed to punish? Philip's story might answer that question for you. Then again, maybe you will have more questions than you had before, and very unsettling answers indeed.

After barely surviving his tour as a mountaineer in the Italian Alps of the Second World War, William Bromley settled down and made a quiet life for himself: teaching history at a London boarding school, reading, a few drinks at the pub on Friday nights. That all ends when a soldier from William's mountain regiment reappears, calling in a bargain struck during the war. William must return to that perilous ground, reliving the terror of the war and confronting new dangers in "a narrative so strong in imagery and detail that the reader can almost feel the gusts of an Alpine blizzard" (Library Journal).

'Few contemporary novelists have the ability to grab readers by the throat with such intense storytelling power and not release them until the final page has been turned.' Sunday Times 'We are carried along by the sheer force of the writing.' Times Literary Supplement 'Reminiscent of Hemingway, he explores the clash of the masculine virtues of courage, loyalty and endurance with treachery and fear.' Daily Telegraph 'There is a horror sleeping in Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn which becomes restless as the book progresses until it explodes into spectacular life.' Time Out The coast of New England: beautiful but savage, where storms can whip up out of nowhere, and the wrecks wash up on the beach. James Pfeiffer, a young college dropout, is initiated into the gruelling world of the trawler boats, where he discovers the thrill and terror of life at sea. For his fellow crewmen, the sea is a place to escape their past. Paul Watkins' powerful novel tells the brutal story of life on the...

An exciting new novel, by the author of The Story of My Disappearance and Archangel.At the turn of World War II, David Halifax is a young American painter who receives a scholarship to come to Paris and work under the tutelage of the mysterious and brilliant Russian painter, Alexander Pankratov. Getting more than he bargained for, Halifax is quickly subjected to Pankratov's rigid will, and beguiled by the quiet, nude model who poses before them.But Paris is also a city that is holding its breath. The Nazi forces are slowly penetrating the Maginot Line, and the once-indominitable city is now expecting the worst. Beneath Paris' blanket of fear and eerie calm, David Halifax relizes the true purpose of his visit: Pankratov is to train him in duplicating the masterworks of the Paris museums, and with the aid of a wily art dealer, barter the fakes to Hilter's legion of art dealers. What developes is cat and mouse game through Paris' silent streets, in the...

Present-day Russia is the setting for this stunning new novel from Robert Harris, author of the bestsellers Fatherland and Enigma.        Archangel tells the story of four days in the life of Fluke Kelso, a dissipated, middle-aged former Oxford historian, who is in Moscow to attend a conference on the newly opened Soviet archives.        One night, Kelso is visited in his hotel room by an old NKVD officer, a former bodyguard of the secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria. The old man claims to have been at Stalin's dacha on the night Stalin had his fatal stroke, and to have helped Beria steal the dictator's private papers, among them a notebook.        Kelso decides to use his last morning in Moscow to check out the old man's story. But what starts as an idle inquiry in the Lenin Library soon turns into a murderous chase across nighttime Moscow and up to northern Russia--to the vast forests near the White Sea port of Archangel, where the final secret of Josef Stalin has been hidden for almost half a century.        Archangel combines the imaginative sweep and dark suspense of Fatherland with the meticulous historical detail of Enigma. The result is Robert Harris's most compelling novel yet. From the Hardcover edition.From Library JournalWatkins, a gifted young novelist who stands head and shoulders above his more popular but less capable peers (e.g., Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, Douglas Coupland), most recently raised readers' eyebrows with his fascinating memoir, Stand Before Your God (LJ 11/15/93). In this return to fiction, the thinly veiled title character, Adam Gabriel, returns to his hometown in Maine to battle Jonah Mackenzie, a ruthless logging baron who is destroying the wilderness. Gabriel proves as single-minded as Mackenzie, however, and engages in dangerous "tree-spiking" (i.e., driving long nails into trees in order to discourage chainsaw-bearing loggers). When the dust clears, four men are dead. Unfortunately, the devices that worked so well in Watkins's other novels?idealistic, romantic characters; exotic settings; tight, affecting prose?fall flat here. Female characters in particular, most notably an unstable local woman known as "Mary the Clock," are poorly sketched. Archangel is not up to the author's usual standards, and unless Watkins has a following at your library you can pass on this one.?Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistWatkins chooses demanding themes, such as the portrayal of an SS trooper or, as in his last novel The Promise of Light (1992), the struggle for Irish independence. Here, in this riveting and shatteringly lyrical tale, he enters the realm of environmental issues. Jonah Mackenzie, the mill owner in a tiny logging town in northern Maine, is a ruthless man hell-bent on carrying out a vendetta against the forest that claimed one of his legs. He has purchased logging rights to a designated wilderness area and is determined to cut down as many old-growth trees as possible in the little time allotted. He drives his crews to the breaking point, even after a man dies. Mackenzie effects a cover-up, but forces conspire against him. There's courageous Madeline and her pro-environmental newspaper, the Forest Sentinel; an eco-warrior named Gabriel who is busy sabotaging logging operations; Mackenzie's increasingly guilt-ridden foreman; and even his wife. Watkins adeptly orchestrates a thoroughly believable escalation of tension, madness, and violence, all conveyed with bone-chilling accuracy. As taut and expressive as a violin string, this is an outstandingly intelligent and significant novel. Donna Seaman

A gripping, acclaimed action-packed Viking epic.Set in the 10th century, when Viking raids were at their peak, Paul Watkins spins a tale that covers three continents. After centuries of ranging unchecked across the northern world, the fortunes of the Vikings have begun to turn. In this time of violent change, a young man, struck by lightning, is believed to be marked by the gods as a keeper of the Norse religion's greatest secret. To save the Norse faith and himself, he embarks upon a journey that takes him far beyond the boundaries of the known world, where he must confront not only his own gods but the gods of a people yet more savage.'Few contemporary novelists have the ability to grab readers by the throat with such intense story-telling power and not release them until the final page has been turned.' Sunday Times

It is 1921, and young Ben Sheridan's Irish-American father mysteriously dies in their small Rhode Island town. Determined to learn the truth about his family's cloudy past, he sets sail for Ireland, and quickly becomes involved in a struggle between soldiers of the newly formed Irish Republican Army and the brutal British troops. Amidst the lush and rugged Irish countryside, and the horrible violence unfolding across it, Ben must search for the truth of his identity, and the ties of his family's blood.