DOUGLAS J. PRESTON

A TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE. After a harrowing, otherworldly confrontation on the shores of Exmouth, Massachussetts, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is missing, presumed dead. A SHOCKING RETURN. Sick with grief, Pendergast's ward, Constance, retreats to her chambers beneath the family mansion at 891 Riverside Drive -- only to be taken captive by a shadowy figure from the past. AN INTERNATIONAL MANHUNT. Proctor, Pendergast's longtime bodyguard, springs to action, pursuing Constance's kidnapper through cities, across oceans, and into wastelands unknown. BUT IN THIS WORLD, NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS And by the time Proctor discovers the truth, a terrifying mechanism has stirred -- and it may already be too late...

A top nuclear scientist goes mad and takes an innocent family hostage at gunpoint, killing one and causing a massive standoff.A plume of radiation above New York City leads to a warehouse where, it seems, a powerful nuclear bomb was assembled just hours before.Sifting through the evidence, authorities determine that the unthinkable is about to happen: in ten days, a major American city will be vaporized by a terrorist attack.Ten days. And Gideon Crew, tracking the mysterious terrorist cell from the suburbs of New York to the mountains of New Mexico, learns the end may be something worse--far worse--than mere Armageddon.

Special Agent Pendergast and Constance Greene have been called to Exmouth, a small town on the wild Atlantic coast of Massachusetts, to investigate a seemingly innocuous theft. But what they discover at the crime scene changes the course of their investigation: a sealed burial chamber, complete with rusted leg irons, fragments of bone and claw marks on the inside-face of its bricks.Then a historian is found murdered in the desolate salt marshes that surround the town, his face mutilated, his body carved with arcane symbols.Exmouth has a grim history dating back to the aftermath of the Salem witch trials. And now a dark secret, centuries old, is rising to the surface.

Als Douglas Preston erfuhr, dass einst ein Mord in dem Olivenhain seines florentinischen Anwesens geschah, machte er sich auf die Suche nach einem italienischen Serienkiller und geriet selbst in den