Pale As The Dead

Struggling to find the roots of her own heritage, genealogist Natasha Blake discovers a strange connection between a missing model and a pre-Raphaelite artist in this acclaimed debut mystery. Martin's Press.

A string of mysterious, gruesome deaths in the Shiprock area has attracted the attention of FBI agent Diane Lopez, who is stunned to learn that one of the victims was a childhood friend. To Diane, the killer is unmistakably a vampire—but the only vampire she knows of is Lee Nez, a State Police officer who prefers his blood chilled in the refrigerator, not hot from someone's neck. Supernatural explanations for the deaths abound—some believe they are the work of the "goatsucker" spirit, others that the killer is an extraterrestrial. Lee Nez, assigned to the case at Diane's request, privately agrees with her that there's a vampire on the loose, but announces that they are looking for a serial killer. Lee and Diane discover that the victims all worked for a secret government lab that was studying a captured vampire, Stewart Tanner. Half-insane from being experimented on, Tanner broke free and took revenge on the doctors and technicians who had been torturing him. Desperate to remain free, Tanner threatens to continue killing federal employees unless the US government agrees to leave him alone. In a violent confrontation, Tanner discovers that Lee is a vampire. Believing Lee is colluding with the government, Tanner vows to kill him. Complicating matters, forensic specialist Dr. Victor Wayne, who began the case as a skeptic—believing Tanner had a rare blood disorder—has begun to believe in vampires. And has turned his attention on Lee . . . . Trying to turn Dr. Wayne back into a skeptic while protecting federal workers, tracking down Tanner, and staying alive—or at least undead—taxes all of Lee Nez's abilities, natural and supernatural. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Perhaps only someone who has worked for almost a decade as a medic in New York City's Hell's Kitchen--as Joe Connelly has--could write a novel as riveting and fiercely authentic as Bringing Out the Dead. Like a front-line reporter, Connelly writes from deep within the experience, and the result is a debut novel of extraordinary power and intensity. In Frank Pierce, a brash EMS medic working the streets of Hell's Kitchen, Connelly gives us a man who is being destroyed by the act of saving people. Addicted to the thrill ("the best drug in the world") and the mission of the job, Frank is nevertheless drowning in five years' worth of grief and guilt--his own and others': "my primary role was less about saving lives than about bearing witness." His wife has left him, he's drinking on the job, and just a month ago he "helped to kill" an eighteen-year-old asthmatic girl. Now she's become the waking nightmare of all his failures: hallucination and projection ("the ghosts that once visited my dreams had followed me out to the street and were now talking back"), and as real to him as his own skin. And in reaction to her death, Frank has desperately resurrected a patient back into a life now little better than death. In a narrative that moves with the furious energy of an ambulance run, we follow Frank through two days and nights: into the excitement and dread of the calls; the mad humor that keeps the medics afloat; the memories, distant and recent, through which Frank reminds himself why he became a medic and tries, in vain, to convince himself to give it up. And we are with him as he faces his newest ghost: the resurrected patient, whose demands to be released into death might be the most sensible thing Frank has heard in months, if only he would listen. Bringing Out the Dead is a stunning novel.

Debut author Jessica Rubinkowski delivers the thrilling first book in an epic Russian folklore–inspired fantasy duology filled with page-turning romance, tragedy, magic, and monsters. Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Sara Raasch! Seventeen-year-old Valeria is one of the only survivors of the freeze, a dark magical hold Knnot Mountain unleashed on her village. Everyone, including her family, is trapped in an unbreakable sheet of ice. Ever since, she’s been on the run from the czar, who has set out to imprison anyone who managed to escape. Valeria finds refuge with the Thieves Guild, doing odd jobs with her best friend, Alik, the only piece of home she has left. That is, until he is brutally murdered. A year later, she discovers Alik is alive and being held captive. To buy his freedom, she must lead a group of cutthroats and thieves on a perilous expedition to the very mountain that claimed her family. Only something sinister slumbers in the heart of Knnot. And it has waited years for release.

The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has. The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions -- questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society -- through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time. "The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon

USA Todaybestselling author Anne frasier has kept her readers on the edge of their seats... Now she delivers a tale that will have them looking over their shoulders. In her new novel, Anne Frasier flirts with the paranormal when a town's horrific legacy gives rise to shadows of fear and suspicion.

The American poet John Shade is dead. His last poem, 'Pale Fire', is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty, inquisitive, intolerant, but is he also mad, bad - and even dangerous? As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should be. Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.