Twenty years ago, Ray Campbell, now a cautious risk- management consultant, was a well-intentioned aid worker dedicated to improving conditions in Lubanda, a newly independent African country. He is forced to reconsider that year of living dangerously when a friend from his time in Lubanda is found murdered in a New York alley. Signs suggest that this most recent tragedy is rooted in the far more distant one of Martine Aubert, the only woman Ray ever truly loved and whose fate he’d sealed in a moment of grievous error.Martine Aubert was a white, native Lubandan farmer whose dream for her homeland starkly conflicted with those charged with its so-called development. But it was Ray’s failure to understand Martine’s commitment to her country that had placed a noose around her neck, one tightened by a circle of vicious men, cruel taunts, and whistling machetes. Ray’s return to the passion he’d once felt for Martine makes A Dancer in the Dust the enthralling and moving story of two loves: Ray’s love for Martine Aubert, and Martine’s for a homeland that did not love her back.

Edgar Award Finalist: A true-crime account of a vicious massacre and the legal battles that followed.
It was not a clever killing. On May 5, 1973, three men escaped from a Maryland prison and disappeared. Joined by a fifteen-year-old brother, they surfaced in Georgia, where they were spotted joyriding in a stolen car. Within a week, the four young men were arrested on suspicion of committing one of the most horrific murders in American history. Jerry Alday and his family were eating Sunday dinner when death burst through the door of their cozy little trailer. Their six bodies are only the beginning of Thomas H. Cook’s retelling of this gruesome story; the horrors continued in the courtroom. Based on court documents, police records, and interviews with the surviving family members, this is a chilling look at the evil that can lurk just around the corner.

When a lovely high school girl is destroyed by a blow to her head, the savage act sends the people of a small southern town reeling. For 30 years, the mystery behind the attack has festered, damaging countless lives. Now the town physician, who once loved the girl, must tell the dark story of what really happened that day. Cook creates a series of emotionally charged revelations that builds to a shocking conclusion.

Shocking true crime from the Edgar Award-winning author. “Powerful . . . A frightening close-up of sociopathic personalities at their most deadly” (Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter).
Evil has a way of finding itself. How else could you explain the bond between Alvin and Judith Ann Neelley, who consecrated their marriage in blood? Before the killings started, they restricted themselves to simple mischief: prank calls, vandalism, firing guns at strangers’ houses. Gradually their ambition grew, until one day at the Riverbend Mall in Rome, Georgia, they spotted Lisa Ann Millican. Three days after Lisa Ann disappeared, the thirteen-year-old girl was found shot and pumped full of liquid drain cleaner. In between her abduction and her death, she was subjected to innumerable horrors. And she was only the first to die. Drawing on police records and extensive interviews, Thomas H. Cook recounts the story of Judith Ann Neelley, who at nineteen became the youngest woman ever sentenced to death row.

Over his acclaimed career, Cook’s novels have haunted, riveted, and spellbound readers across the world, and his short stories are equally acclaimed. They range from the intensely focused world of “Fatherhood,” the Herodotus prize-winning title story, to the Edgar-nominated “Rain,” a dark, kaleidoscopic tale of Manhattan on a single, rain-swept night. “The Fix,” the story of a famous boxing fix that was, well, not a fix at all, was selected for inclusion in Best Mystery Stories of the Year. “What She Offered,” the gripping tale of a one-night stand, was included in The Best Noir Stories of the Century.

Like Cook’s novels, the range of this collection is, itself, astonishing. From a backwoods Appalachian shack during the Depression (“Poor People”) to a Midwestern college campus in the throes of Sixties revolt (“The Sun-Gazer”) to a midtown Manhattan bookstore on Christmas Eve, “The Lessons of the Season,” this collection demonstrates precisely that, in the words of Michael Connelly, “no one tells a story better than Thomas H. Cook.”

Thomas H. Cook’s mesmerizing novels have attracted many Edgar Award nominations, and his Chatham School Affair won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Filled with the haunting characters that have become Cook’s trademark, Instruments of Night creates a fusion between past and present that is unique and chilling. Author Paul Graves has achieved modest popularity for a crime series that pits a perceptive detective against his nemesis, a mastermind of evil. What readers don’t know, however, is that writing provides Paul’s only release from the horrors of his memory. Now, as he is hired to pen the ending to an unsolved murder case, Paul begins to find the border between the mystery and his own past growing precipitously narrow. The strands of this finely-crafted novel move seamlessly between scenes from Paul’s latest crime novel and his investigation of the murder. In voicing the rich tapestry of character, emotion, and suspense, veteran narrator George Guidall creates a superbly rewarding audio experience. You’ll also enjoy an interview with the author at the conclusion of the audiobook.

Thomas H, Cook is an Edgar Award winner and the author of several New York Times best-selling thrillers. Into the Web stars Roy Slater, a young man who 25 years ago ran away from his hometown to escape the consequences of an unspeakable crime. Now with his father dying, Roy returns, only to get caught up in another scandal. Murder rocks the small town, and for Roy it draws him into the same web of deceit and treachery he tried so hard to leave behind. Tom Stechschulte’s intense narration will have listeners on the edges of their seats.

Multiple Edgar Award nominee Thomas H. Cook is the author of dark, terrifying thrillers like Places in the Dark and Red Leaves. In Master of the Delta, it’s 1954 down in Mississippi and Jack Branch has finally come home, taking a job as a high school teacher. He soon learns that one of his students is the son of a notorious local murderer, the Coed Killer. And as they say, like father, like son.

Thomas H. Cook’s novels, including Instruments of Night and Breakheart Hill, pull readers deep into their webs of obsession, passion, and fear. A best-selling author, Cook won the Edgar Award for The Chatham School Affair. In 1937, a slender young woman arrived in a small Maine town. Dora March was lovely, quiet, and mysterious. Soon the tragedies began: a house fire, a murder, a suicide. Within a year, Dora vanished, leaving behind dark, unanswered questions. But before she disappeared, the town’s newspaperman was stabbed to death. Now Cal, the slain man’s brother, must tear off the emotional veil clouding his judgement and find Dora March. The scenes in Places in the Dark are not graphic, but they are the stuff of nightmares. As the suspense in this haunting work increases with each chapter, it urges the listener toward a final, shocking revelation. Audie Award-winning narrator George Guidall provides the perfect vehicle for Cook’s unique style.

In Red Leaves, Edgar Award-winning author Thomas H. Cook pens a compelling tale of suspicion and its corrosive effects on a family. When a little girl is missing on the morning after his teenaged son baby-sits for her, Eric Moore watches his world crumble as suspicion falls on his son. Although Eric hires a lawyer to prepare his son’s defense, a haunting thought slithers into his mind. What if he has been nurturing a monstrous fiend?

Samuel Madison always wondered what Sandrine saw in him, he a meek, stuffy doctorate student and she a brilliant, beautiful bohemian with limitless talent and imagination. Yet on the surface their marriage seemed perfectly tranquil: jobs at a small liberal arts college, a precocious young daughter, a home filled with art and literature, and trips to some of the world’s most beautiful places. Then one night Sandrine is found dead in their bed from a deadly overdose of pain medication and alcohol, and Samuel is accused of poisoning her.As the truth of their turbulent marriage comes to light, Samuel must face a town convinced of his guilt, a daughter whose faith in her father has been shaken to it#8217;s core, and the truth about his brilliant wife whose shattering secrets could set him free-or condemn him to death.

It is May 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama. As Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil rights demonstrations begin to fill the streets, prejudices awaken and tempers flare. Amid the violence and confusion, a deaf black girl is found raped and murdered. Veteran homicide detective Ben Wellman pursues the murderer through the throngs of protesters, the pool halls of the black district of Bearmatch, the white mansions of Mountain Brook, and finally, even in his own department. As he did in Sacrificial Ground, Cook has created a novel of uncommon force and resonance.

At the height of the Civil Rights movement, a young girl’s murder stirs racial tensions in Birmingham, Alabama.
The grave on the football field is shallow, and easy to spot from a distance. It would have been found sooner, had most of the residents in the black half of Birmingham not been downtown, marching, singing, and being arrested alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. Police detective Ben Wellman is among them when he gets the call about the fresh grave.
Under the loosely packed dirt, he finds a young black girl, her innocence taken and her life along with it. His sergeant orders Wellman to investigate, but instructs him not to try too hard. In the summer of 1963, Birmingham is tense enough without a manhunt for the killers of a black child. Wellman digs for the truth in spite of skepticism from the black community and scorn from his fellow officers. What he finds is a secret that men from both sides of town would prefer stayed buried.

Nominated three times for the Edgar Award, Thomas H. Cook continues to mesmerize readers with novels that combine tales of passion and intrigue with the best in page-turning suspense. Listeners find his pensive, lyrical style irresistible. As lawyer Henry Griswald draws up an aging client’s will, he reflects on a series of events in 1926-1927 that shattered the peace of his boyhood community. Griswald, then a student at the school where his father was headmaster, witnessed a passion that would change him forever. At the heart of Griswald’s reverie lies a mystery only he can solve. What really happened at Black Pond-a tragedy that eventually destroyed five lives? Seeing his boyhood memories through the eyes of experience and age, Griswald relives the emotion-charged chain of events. As he pieces the tantalizing puzzle together, he also pulls the listener into a growing awareness of the terrible consequences of his childish vision.

David Sears grew up in the shadow of his brilliant younger sister, Diana, convinced by their father that she would accomplish great things. Instead, she married and had a son, Jason, who-like David and Diana’s father-is schizophrenic. Her husband, Mark, a geneticist, never made peace with Jason’s condition.
Perhaps this is why, when Jason drowns, Diana will not accept the authorities’ conclusion that his death was accidental. Or perhaps Diana is going mad. She begins to send David faxes and e-mails about ancient murders, driven by her growing belief that the earth is Gaia, a living witness to her son’s murder who could give evidence in the case she is building against her husband. David soon fears for his own family’s safety as the seductive qualities of Diana’s manic energy become impossible to ignore.

In The Cloud of Unknowing, Cook explores the power of blood and family mythology.

When the body of famed true-crime writer Julian Wells is found in a boat drifting on a Montauk pond, the question isn#8217;t how he died, but why. The death looks like an obvious suicide, but why would Wells take his own life? And was this his only crime? Wells#8217; best friend, Philip Anders, wants to know more. His first clue is an Argentinean crime, which may have been Wells#8217; last book idea. As Anders gathers the missing parts of Wells#8217; life, the man he knew-or thought he knew-becomes increasingly obscured, and the ever-deepening puzzle threatens to consume him entirely. #160;#160;A mystery of identity, or assumed identity, The Crime of Julian Wells spans four decades and traverses three continents. Richly plotted, brilliantly told, it#8217;s a voyage into the depth and darkness of a man#8217;s heart.

Edgar Award-winning author Thomas H. Cook spins a riveting tale about one man’s struggle to cope with staggering loss. Until his son was kidnapped and murdered, George Gates was a globe-trotting travel writer. Now he writes boring articles by day and broods at night. But when a retiring cold-case detective piques his interest with details of a missing writer, he feels compelled to discover her fate.

Thomas H. Cook has twice won Edgar Awards for his finely crafted psychological thrillers, and Breakheart Hill was named the single best mystery novel of the 1990s by the founder of The Mysterious Press. The Interrogation is a desperate race against time and a gripping journey into the darkest corners of the human soul. One day in 1952, the strangled body of 10-year-old Cathy Lake is discovered in a public park. A homeless suspect, Albert Jay Smalls, is arrested and held for interrogation. Now, Officers Norman Cohen and Jack Pierce have only 24 hours to make the sullen young man talk before he’s released. How far are they willing to push him to get a confession? As the two policemen gather the many contradictory pieces of evidence, the boundaries between hunter and prey, guilty and innocent, begin to blur. Thomas H. Cook is a master of the surprise ending, and The Interrogation is sure to leave every listener stunned. Audie Awarda-winning narrator George Guidall’s performance captures the dramatic urgency of this deeply disturbing tale.

New York Times best-selling author and Edgar Award winner Thomas H. Cook’s atmospheric thrillers cut to the core of humanity’s deepest fears. Here, a floundering middle-aged historian reluctantly sits down with the woman he suspects was responsible for his father’s murder decades before. As they drink, they open up about this seminal event and he discovers much of what he thought to be true is anything but.

Thomas H. Cook’s intricate plots and spellbinding prose won him the coveted Edgar Award. The Quest for Anna Klein begins after the 9/11 attacks, when researcher Paul Crane sits down to interview elderly New York City resident Thomas Danforth. But Thomas’ thoughts drift to a different era, when a conspiracy to kill Hitler led him to the beautiful and mysterious linguist Anna Klein.