The Light in the Ruins

Author: Chris Bohjalian
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307743926
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant comes a spellbinding novel of love, despair, and revenge—set in war-ravaged Tuscany. 1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills of Tuscany, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. But when two soldiers—a German and an Italian—arrive at their doorstep asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis’ bucolic tranquility is shattered. 1955: Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence Police Department, has successfully hidden her tragic scars from WWII, at least until she’s assigned to a gruesome new case—a serial killer who is targeting the remaining members of the Rosati family one by one. Soon, she will find herself digging into past secrets that will reveal a breathtaking story of moral paradox, human frailty, and the mysterious ways of the heart.

The Murderer in Ruins

Author: Cay Rademacher
Publisher: Arcadia Books
ISBN: 191005075X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER AWARD 2016 'Undoubtedly the most powerful work of crime fiction I have read this year' Independent 'Vivid and harrowing' Sunday Times 'Police procedural, romance, thriller The Murderer in Ruins has a bit of everything and it's one hell of a read.' Bücher Hamburg, 1947 A ruined city occupied by the British, who bombed it, experiencing the coldest winter in living memory. Food and supplies are rationed; refugees and the homeless are crammed into concrete bunkers and ramshackle huts; trade on the black market is rife. A killer is on the loose, and all attempts to find him or her have failed. Plagued with worry about his missing son, Frank Stave is a career policeman with a tragedy in his past that is driving his determination to find the killer. With frustration and anger mounting in an already tense city, Stave is under increasing pressure to find out why - in the wake of a wave of atrocity, the grim Nazi past and the bleak attempts by his German countrymen to recreate a country from the apocalypse - someone still has the stomach for murder. The first of a trilogy, The Murderer in Ruins vividly describes a poignant moment in British-German history, with a riveting plot that culminates in a shocking denouement. Translated from ther German by Peter Millar

Picnic In the Ruins

Author: Todd Robert Petersen
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1640093230
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
Named Best Mystery Thriller in the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards "Part mystery; part quirky, darkly funny, mayhem-filled thriller; and part meditation on what it means to 'own' land, artifacts, and the narrative of history in the West . . . A fast-paced, highly entertaining hybrid of Tony Hillerman and Edward Abbey." --Kirkus Reviews Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a "collector" of Native American artifacts, but their ineptitude has alerted the local sheriff to their presence. Their employer, a former lobbyist seeking lucrative monument land that may soon be open to energy exploration, sends a fixer to clean up their mess. Suddenly, Sophia must put her theories to the test in the real world, and the stakes are higher than she could have ever imagined. What begins as a madcap caper across the RV-strewn vacation lands of southern Utah becomes a meditation on mythology, authenticity, the ethics of preservation, and one nagging question: Who owns the past?

The Ruins

Author: Mat Osman
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1912248727
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
An extraordinary novel about the ubiquitous mysteries of family, memory and music. London, 2010: Icelandic volcanoes have the city in gridlock, banks topple like dominoes and Brandon Kussgarten has been shot dead by gunmen in Donald Duck masks. His death draws his twin brother -- shy, bookish Adam -- into Brandon's underworld of deceit and desire. A miniature kingdom sprouts in a Notting Hill tower-block, LA mansions burn in week-long parties, and in a Baroque hotel suite a record is being made that could redeem its maker even as it destroys him. As Adam begins to fall for his brother's shattered family he finds that to win them for himself he'll have to lose everything that he holds dear. This intelligent, intriguing and emotionally-searing tale of fractured identities, narcissism and ambition questions how being loved for what others think we are differs from who we are to ourselves. With echoes of Performance, The Talented Mr Ripley and Mulholland Drive, The Ruins delves into the dark heart of fame: magic, music and murder.

Ruins of War

Author: John A. Connell
Publisher: Berkley
ISBN: 0425283283
Category : Crime stories
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
Working as a U.S. Army criminal investigator in the American Zone of occupied Germany seven months after the defeat of the Nazis, former homicide detective Mason Collins risks his life to track down a ritualistic killer in the ruins of Munich.--

The Shape of the Ruins

Author: Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735211167
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE A sweeping tale of conspiracy theories, assassinations, and twisted obsessions -- the much anticipated masterpiece from Juan Gabriel Vásquez. The Shape of the Ruins is a masterly story of conspiracy, political obsession, and literary investigation. When a man is arrested at a museum for attempting to steal the bullet-ridden suit of a murdered Colombian politician, few notice. But soon this thwarted theft takes on greater meaning as it becomes a thread in a widening web of popular fixations with conspiracy theories, assassinations, and historical secrets; and it haunts those who feel that only they know the real truth behind these killings. This novel explores the darkest moments of a country's past and brings to life the ways in which past violence shapes our present lives. A compulsive read, beautiful and profound, eerily relevant to our times and deeply personal, The Shape of the Ruins is a tour-de-force story by a master at uncovering the incisive wounds of our memories.

The Wilderness of Ruin

Author: Roseanne Montillo
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062273493
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
In late nineteenth-century Boston, home to Herman Melville and Oliver Wendell Holmes, a serial killer preying on children is running loose in the city—a wilderness of ruin caused by the Great Fire of 1872—in this literary historical crime thriller reminiscent of The Devil in the White City. In the early 1870s, local children begin disappearing from the working-class neighborhoods of Boston. Several return home bloody and bruised after being tortured, while others never come back. With the city on edge, authorities believe the abductions are the handiwork of a psychopath, until they discover that their killer—fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy—is barely older than his victims. The criminal investigation that follows sparks a debate among the world’s most revered medical minds, and will have a decades-long impact on the judicial system and medical consciousness. The Wilderness of Ruin is a riveting tale of gruesome murder and depravity. At its heart is a great American city divided by class—a chasm that widens in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1872. Roseanne Montillo brings Gilded Age Boston to glorious life—from the genteel cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill to the squalid, overcrowded tenements of Southie. Here, too, is the writer Herman Melville. Enthralled by the child killer’s case, he enlists physician Oliver Wendell Holmes to help him understand how it might relate to his own mental instability. With verve and historical detail, Roseanne Montillo explores this case that reverberated through all of Boston society in order to help us understand our modern hunger for the prurient and sensational. The Wilderness of Ruin features more than a dozen black-and-white photographs.

Before the Ruins

Author: Victoria Gosling
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250759145
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Named a Best New Book of 2021 (so far) by Real Simple Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Lit Hub and Bustle A gripping, multilayered debut in the tradition of Tana French and Donna Tartt about four friends, an empty manor, and a night that will follow them for the rest of their lives It's the summer of 1996 and school's out forever for Andy, her boyfriend Marcus, her best friend Peter, and Em. When Andy's alcoholic mother predicts the apocalypse, the four teenagers decide to see out the end of the world at a deserted manor house, the site of a historic unsolved mystery. There they meet David—charming and unreliable, he seems to have appeared out of nowhere. David presents an irresistible lure for both Andy and Peter and complicates the dynamics of their lifelong friendship. When the group learns that a diamond necklace, stolen fifty years ago, might still be somewhere on the manor grounds, the Game—half treasure hunt, half friendly deception—begins. But the Game becomes much bigger than the necklace, growing to encompass years of secrets, lies, and, ultimately, one terrible betrayal. Meticulously plotted and gorgeously written, Before the Ruins is a page-turner of the highest order about the sealed-off places in our pasts and the parts of ourselves waiting to be retrieved from them.

The Ruins

Author: Scott Smith
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307266044
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine in "the best horror novel of the new century" (Stephen King). Also a major motion picture! Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation—sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site ... and the terrifying presence that lurks there. "The Ruins does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches.” —Entertainment Weekly “Smith’s nail-biting tension is a pleasure all its own.... This stuff isn’t for the faint of heart.” —New York Post “A story so scary you may never want to go on vacation, or dig around in your garden, again.” —USA Today

Murderous Mistral

Author: Cay Rademacher
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 125011070X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Vilified for his successful corruption investigations into his colleagues, Capitaine Roger Blanc is relocated to the south of France and tackles a murder case involving a reviled outsider whose demise is linked to the dark undercurrents of Provence.