Pre-numbered label used for registration.

hardback
575pp
published, 1999

Thunderhead: a Novel
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Have you read Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child? I did, and it scared the hell out of me. Then came the writing team's follow-up, Reliquary; one of the best sequels I've ever read — and I don't really like horror fiction. So, when a friend told me about Riptide, a rousing adventure story about the search for a lost pirate treasure, I bought it that day and finished it that night. Now, continuing with pure adventure, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child bring us Thunderhead, a romp that's as thrilling as anything I've read this year.

Thunderhead is the story of a scientific expedition in the deserts of the American Southwest. A team of scientists is looking for the ancient city of Quivira, the mythical capital of the Anasazi Indians, one of the most secretive and least understood of all Native American tribes. Legend has it that Quivira was the repository for all of the tribe's treasures — gold that countless Spanish conquistadors lost their lives searching for. What the legends don't mention is why the Anasazi vanished. Unknown to the expedition's leader, Nora Kelly — an archaeologist whose father vanished 15 years earlier looking for Quivira — the evil that befell the tribe is still around.

A couple of coincidences kickstart Thunderhead, but once the tale gets going, once Nora, along with a group of scientists, adventurers, and the daughter of the director of the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute, starts to follow a tenuous map left by her missing father, the early conveniences are quickly forgotten. Duringtheperilous journey, the team is dogged by two horrifying creatures that will do anything to make certain the band doesn't find the city. By ferryboat, by raft, and finally, by horse, the team wanders deeper and deeper into southern Utah's deadly maze of canyons, each step taking them closer to a place where nature's fury and an ancient curse wait to destroy anyone who comes too close.

On the verge of the greatest discovery since King Tut's tomb, Nora finds her group falling apart — derailed by the hardships of their quest and conflicting personal agendas. It's not long before their horses begin to die mysteriously, and then some of the scientists. Cut off from the outside world, with friends and coworkers dropping around her, Nora must race to save her own life. She may have figured out what killed the Anasazi just in time to find it's killing her too.

In the tradition of H. Rider Haggard and with the stylistic power of Wilbur Smith, the cutting-edge science of Michael Crichton, and the tension that has made their previous books bestsellers, Preston and Child's Thunderhead is the perfect summer read.

—Jack Du Brul

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The Devil's Teardrop: A Novel of the Last Night of the Century
Jeffery Deaver
FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
The Digger's in Town

A wild, demonic, and relentless ride describes Jeffery Deaver's new thrill machine, The Devil's Teardrop, to its bone-jarring core. Two men have a horrific and bloody plan. One is a robotlike assassin with no remorse, no compassion, no fear. The other is the avaricious, severely demented ringleader, the only man who can call off the other's bloody assault. But when the one falls victim to a freak fatal accident, the other continues, unabatedly, to do what he does best — kill.

The final day of the millennium may also be America's darkest when a methodical killer begins to wreak havoc inside the nation's Beltway. At 9am, 23 men, women, and children are gunned down at a D.C. Metro station. Shortly after, the mayor receives a letter claiming that this madman, known only as the Digger, will strike every four hours unless $20 million is left at a designated location. But when the brains behind this hellish scheme dies in a freak accident, no one remains who can reveal the assassin's identity, let alone call him off.

Enter Parker Kincaid, ex-FBI agent and single father of two. At the urging of local and federal law officials, Kincaid — widely regarded as the top forensic document examiner in the country — attempts to find the rampant madman before he kills again. The only evidence he has is the original letter. With time running out, with more innocent people sure to die, the end has never felt more near.

FROM THE CRITICS
People Magazine
Deaver is a master of ticking-bomb suspense.

Randy Michael Signor
Deaver’s latest thriller opens with a man named Digger calmly using a concealed Uzi to mow down dozens of people on the steep escalator leading to the subway at DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C., on the morning of New Year’s Eve 1999. Another man leaves a note outside the mayor’s office demanding $20 million by noon or Digger will strike again. That’s the setup for a fast-paced tale that unfolds over the course of barely fifteen hours. The man who left the note is soon killed in a hit-and-run, and it is learned that he was merely a messenger; someone else is pulling the strings. The police have no clues other than the note. They call in retired FBI document specialist Parker Kincaid, who now makes a nice living verifying historical documents and lives with his two young children. There are other heroic Federal agents, including the woman who runs the case; the mayor and his ambitious aide; and a corrupt television newsman. The story is compelling and fast-moving enough that you almost don’t catch on to how cliche-ridden it all is.

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Lake News
Barbara Delinsky
FROM THE PUBLISHER
After an unscrupulous reporter falsely accuses Boston lounge singer Lily Blake of having an affair with a newly appointed Cardinal, she's hounded by the press, fired from her job, and robbed of all public freedom. The humiliation and violation of privacy leaves her no choice but to retreat to her rural hometown of Lake Henry, New Hampshire.

In search of refuge, Lily forms an uneasy alliance with John Kipling, a former Boston reporter with trust issues of his own. Now editing Lake Henry's local newspaper, John cannot ignore Lily's appeal or her plight -- even at the risk of taking on his former colleagues.

Surprising and deeply satisfying, Lake News offers an intimate look at the complex relationship between an enigmatic man and a vulnerable woman, both struggling to find a new sense of community in a strange place they once called home.

SYNOPSIS
In Barbara Delinsky's new love story, Lake News, a woman escapes the filthy rumors that the media have created around her, and in so doing runs into a man who has his own problems with media frenzies -- he's a journalist with a past he needs to heal. Lily, the heroine, is one of Delinsky's most thoroughly realized characters, and her story is profound and moving. We've got an excerpt for you to read, and more about this wonderful love story. Find out about Barbara Delinsky and catch up on Lake News.

FROM THE CRITICS
Kirkus Reviews
Worldwide bestseller Delinsky, with over 60 romances to her credit (Coast Road, 1998, etc., etc.), dreams up a plot with echoes of scandal. Lily Blake's name, pure as driven snow, is soiled seemingly forever by the Boston Post's Terrence Sullivan when he fabricates a tale about Lily and newly ordained Cardinal Rossetti having been lovers—plus maybe some hanky-panky with the governor of New York as well. Actually, Lily at 34 is a cabaret pianist/singer at Boston's posh Essex Club, as well as a part-time music-appreciation teacher at the Winchester School on Beacon Hill. Yes, sh-sh-sh-she (Lily stutters) and the cardinal did play the piano together at the Essex Club, which is owned by the cardinal's nephew, but an affair? The smeared woman, now an embarrassment to the Church and swamped by paparazzi, loses her teaching post, gives up her cabaret job, and goes back to her small hometown, Lake Henry in New Hampshire, where she joins up with John Kipling, editor of the Lake News, in an effort to regain her good name. Kipling himself has fled the big city papers he once worked for and now helps prepare a blade to run through Terry Sullivan. Delinsky's legion of fans, as ever, will be happy.

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A Walk to Remember
Nicholas Sparks
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Every April, when the wind blows in from the sea and mingles with the scent of lilacs, Landon Carter remembers his last year at Beaufort High.

It was 1958, and Landon had already dated a girl or two. He even swore that he had once been in love. Certainly the last person in town he thought he'd fall for was Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town's Baptist minister.

A quiet girl who always carried a Bible with her schoolbooks, Jamie seemed content living in a world apart from the other teens. She took care of her widowed father, rescued hurt animals, and helped out at the local orphanage. No boy had ever asked her out.

Landon would never have dreamed of it. Then a twist of fate made Jamie his partner for the homecoming dance, and Landon Carter's life would never be the same. Being with Jamie would show him the depths of the human heart and lead him to a decision so stunning it would send him irrevocably on the road to manhood…

No other author today touches our emotions more deeply than Nicholas Sparks. In A Walk To Remember, he tells a truly unforgettable story, one that glimmers with all of his magic, holding us spellbound - and reminding us that in life each of us may find one great loved, the kind that changes everything…

FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Sure to wring yet more tears from willing readers' eyes, the latest novel by the bestselling Sparks is a forced coming-of-age story concerning a pair of unlikely young lovers. In a corny flashback device that mimics The Notebook, 57-year-old Landon Carter spirits himself back to his fateful senior year in high school in Beaufort, N.C., when he was an archetypal troublemaking teenager of the 1950s, changed forever by an unexpected first love. Jamie Sullivan, the Bible-toting minister's daughter, with her drab brown sweaters, spinster hairstyle and sincere, beatific advice, is the obvious target of high school ridicule. Despite conspiring in Jamie's derision, class president Landon, desperate for a date for the homecoming dance, finds himself asking Jamie. Afterwards, Jamie asks him to participate with her in the metaphor-laden school Christmas play (Jamie plays the angel). Landon endures the taunting of his friends and forms an uneasy friendship with Jamie, which is carefully supervised by her father. The teens visit needy orphans, give Oscar-worthy performances in the school play and share dreams watching the sunset. Landon realizes he's in love with Jamie, but, of course, she is hiding a devastating secret that could wring her from Landon's arms forever. Now tortured by his knowledge of what will be her terrible fate, he must make the ultimate decision that catapults him into adulthood. Readers may be frustrated with the invariable formula that Sparks seems to regurgitate with regularity. Although the narrator declares, "My story can't be summed up in two or three sentences; it can't be packaged into something neat and simple that people would immediately understand," this is the author's most simple, formulaic, and blatantly melodramatic package to date.

RELEASE NOTES:

Independence Day release!! Happy Birthday, America!