What's In A Name (6 page)

His only inheritance is a heavy, leather-bound book. He has never seen it before, and has trouble believing that his brutal, ignorant father ever touched something so beautiful. But the volume is well-thumbed, full of aphorisms and advice written in the dead man’s hand. Soon after he reads it, the son finds his life spiralling out of control. If he doesn’t want to follow Daddy to the grave, he had best heed the lessons of the book.

The Book of Virtue
is available
here
.

The Book of Ghosts
The lie that bought Jacob Weisen a new life cannot help him escape the past

Birkenau could not kill Jacob Weisen. He survived the death camp and made his way to America, where he became famous telling the story of Isaac Becker, an author who was tortured to death when the guards caught him writing down his story. Becker’s manuscript was lost, but by telling the tale, Weisen keeps his memory alive. No other witnesses survived—and Weisen is the only person who knows his famous story is a lie.

In fact, Weisen was a collaborator, who led his countrymen to the ovens and gave Becker up to the SS. Decades after the war, as his lies begin to unravel, he must choose between admitting the truth and dying in a hell of his own creation.

The Book of Ghosts
is available
here
.

Book Club
When a bibliophile is murdered, it takes a bookseller to solve the crime

Good Advice, New Mexico, is a sunny town with a gloomy bookshop. The store’s eerie corridors are the province of Avery Sharecross, an ex-cop who has made the transition from chasing killers to tracking rare books. One afternoon, the local sheriff interrupts his book club meeting, and Sharecross’s old career collides with his new one.

The area’s premier book collector has been found bludgeoned to death on the floor of his family library. A fifth-generation resident of Good Advice, Lloyd Fister devoted his life to books, accumulating a collection of local history that date backs to the sixteenth century. In his library, a single volume is missing: a Spanish book with a sinister past. Is the missing volume a clue, a motive, or a murder weapon? It will take a collector’s eye to decide.

Book Club
is available
here
.

Rides a Stranger
After the death of his father, a literature professor is drawn into the murder investigation of a bookstore owner…

Though Don and his father both love books, their tastes couldn’t be more different. Don is a scholar, and his father reads nothing but schlock. His house is full of dime paperbacks, battered thrillers, and case after case of western novels, none of which his son could ever bear to read.

At his father’s funeral, Don is approached by a strange man, a rare book dealer named Lou Caledonia. Don assumes the man wants to buy his dad’s old westerns, but Lou explains that something far more important is on the line.

Don finds the cramped confines of Lou’s used bookstore immensely comforting, but a surprise waits for him downstairs. Caledonia has been shot dead, and Don is in danger, too. The boy who was too smart to read pulp fiction is about to find himself trapped in a thriller of his own.

Rides a Stranger
is available
here
.

What
’
s in a Name
A rare book collector finds a manuscript that might have changed the course of WWI.

On the evening of November 11th, 1968, antiquarian book collector Francis Altman is giving a talk in honour of the anniversary of the Armistice Treaty. But his lecture takes a dark turn upon the haunting arrival of a classmate from his past. As the two men discuss their lives they realise that they are two sides of the same coin: both born and raised in Germany, but whereas Altman’s role in the war elevated his position, his comrade’s life was destroyed on the faceless, mechanized battlefields.

This strange encounter leaves Altman in possession of the man’s personal manuscript, his mysterious “life’s work,” whose contents could have changed the course of history...

Thomas H. Cook’s re-imagined history of the “dangerously spinning maelstrom” of post WWI is a contemplation on man’s ability to affect the world around him and brings to light the delicate relationship between circumstance, individual action, and destiny.

What
’
s in a Name
is available
here
.

Death Leaves a Bookmark
Attempting the perfect murder, a killer encounters the perfect cop

After years of get-rich-quick schemes, Troy Pellingham’s bank account is empty and his options are down to one: take a job in his uncle’s rare book shop, and spend his days working for an unpleasant man whose only redeeming quality is a mammoth bank account. Though well into his eighties, Uncle Rodney is the picture of good health, and the day when Troy will inherit the old man’s money seems very far away. But then Troy gets a brilliant idea—why shelve books for a living, when he can kill for a fortune?

After the deed is done, a peculiarly shabby police detective comes to call. Lieutenant Columbo seems dimwitted, and Troy expects he will have no trouble putting him off the scent. But as the noose tightens around his neck, Troy realizes that no murder is too perfect for Columbo.

Death leaves a Bookmark
is available
here
.

It
’
s in the Book
A new Mike Hammer story from the archives of Mickey Spillane.

On the death of crime boss Don Giraldi, a rumour begins to spread about the existence of a very dangerous book. A ledger that lists every deal made during his career.

The rumoured is that the book is in the possession of person he trusted most. But who can a crime boss trust? Hired by the local police to find the ledger, Mike Hammer soon finds himself in the firing line of everyone from the cops, the local politicians, and the crime syndicates themselves…

It
’
s in the Book
is available
here
.

About the Author

T
HOMAS
H. C
OOK
won an Edgar award for his novel
The Chatham School Affair
and has been shortlisted for the award six times, most recently with
Red Leaves
, which was also shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie Gold Dagger award. Cook lives with his family in Cape Cod and New York City.

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