John Connolly

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BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR


Title: The White Road: Description:
John Connolly's harrowing Charlie Parker adventures continue in The White Road, a bleak modern gothic tale detailing the tortured detective's metaphorical journey into the unthought of depths of the underworld as he follows a trail of horrors in America's deep South. Doggedly loyal to old friends and stubbornly supportive of lost causes, Parker encounters his own ghosts in a place where atmosphere alone would murder hope. The chilling preacher Faulkner is again a dark presence in the background while Parker's friends, Angel and Louis, damaged and deadly, follow their own avenging trail. There can be no greater compliment to Connolly's powers of description than to say that no US writer could improve on the Irish journalist's masterly summoning of the roots of American regional evil and sense of place. Superb storytelling that binds diverse and hypnotic strands of plot with Biblical overtones and fury. The villains are larger than life and diabolically unforgettable: from the strange and menacing Mr Kittim to deformed killer Cyrus Nairn, both of whom lead Parker down one shadowy road after another. Compelling adventures from start to finish, if the very stuff of waking nightmares. The dark side has never proven so damn seductive. --Maxim Jakubowski

Title: Every Dead Thing: Description:
Homicide cop Charlie "Bird" Parker was drunk when the killer known as the Travelling Man dissected his wife and his daughter. Parker's guilt and obsession with revenge have taken him well beyond the law, causing him to beat a pimp to death and accept the friendship of a notable hitman. Yet his old colleagues know that any one of them might have gone down the same path, in the same circumstances, and they and FBI man Woolrich still find him and his obsessions useful. Leaving mayhem and destruction in his wake, Parker finds every private investigation he takes leading him back to his family's killer--is this an obsession, or is he treading a maze of murder built just for him? And can the obsessed Parker accept the love of a bright woman pathologist without wrecking her life as well? Small Virginia towns with guilty secrets, the drugs deals that unite smart New York society with the madness of a decadent Mafia dynasty, the very different gang wars of New Orleans and the mysteries of the Louisiana swampland--this is an intelligent book packed with puzzles, characters and brilliantly visualised locations that most thriller-writers would have spun out for a series. --Roz Kaveney

Title: Bad Men: Description:
John Connolly writes dark, streetwise thrillers that pull no punches when showing human cruelty. Bad Men blends noir crime with supernatural horror as murderous gangsters invade an island whose ghosts have a special way with bad men. Dutch Island, once known as Sanctuary, lies off the coast of Connolly's regular stamping-ground, the US state of Maine. A gory prologue relates dreadful doings there in 1693. Now it's a sleepy, only slightly spooky haven, easily policed by a single cop--the literally giant-sized "Melancholy Joe" Dupree--plus a mainland deputy. Joe knows something of Sanctuary's history and the forces that seem to cleanse it of toxic human elements. Following two deaths in a tragic car crash, the old ghosts seem restless, as though waiting for something. They're waiting for a man called Moloch. Moloch, amoral and appalling, is doing time as a major criminal organiser. His beautiful, cruelly treated wife Marian took her chance to cut loose before Moloch killed her, betraying him to the police and escaping to Dutch Island with their son, a brand-new identity and a small fortune in cash. When Moloch's team of picked killers seizes a long-awaited opportunity to free him, reunion with his wife is the next priority. Working their way through her friends, relatives and contacts, they leave a chilling trail of death and mutilation. The emotionless assassin Shepherd is bad enough, but irascible Tell has a hair-trigger temper and kills unnecessarily (eg: a bystander talking too loudly on his mobile phone), while the eerily beautiful young man Willard does it lingeringly and for fun. Even Moloch, who coldly and effortlessly dominates this awful crew, is unnerved by Willard. When all these (and more) reach Sanctuary, a freak snowstorm rages, power and communications fail, and unknowing locals standing between the hitmen and Marian are easy meat. Two quick bullets should deal with Joe Dupree and his current deputy, a female rookie cop from Portland. But something else, as we know from many portents and Moloch's own dreams, is waiting. Bad Men is a standalone novel despite the brief, superfluous appearance of Connolly's regular PI character Charles Parker. It's a suspenseful, compelling read, hypnotic in its orchestration of brutality and mayhem; readers are likely to wince frequently and even involuntarily shut their eyes. --David Langford

Title: The Black Angel: Description:
The Black Angel is not an object. The Black Angel is not a myth. The Black Angel lives. A young woman goes missing from the streets of New York. Those who have taken her believe that nobody cares about her, and that no one will come looking for her. They are wrong. She is 'blood' to the killer Louis, the man who stands at the right hand of private detective Charlie Parker, and Louis will tear apart anyone who stands in the way of his attempts to find her. But as Louis' violent search progresses, Parker comes to realize that the disappearance is part of an older mystery, one that is linked to an ornate church of bones in Eastern Europe, to the slaughter at a French monastery in 1944, and to the quest for a mythical prize that has been sought for centuries by evil men: the Black Angel. Yet the Black Angel is more than a myth. It is conscious. It dreams. It is alive. And men are not the only creatures that seek it ... About the Author John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968. His debut -EVERY DEAD THING - swiftly launched him right into the front rank of thriller writers, and all his subsequent novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers. He is the first non-American writer to win the US Shamus award. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Title: Nocturnes: Description:
Take his hand and follow him into the darkness ...John Connolly, bestselling author of five brilliantly scary mystery novels, now turns his pen to the short story to give us a dozen chilling tales of the supernatural. In this macabre collection, echoing masters of the genre from M R James to Stephen King, Connolly delves into our darkest fears - lost lovers, missing children, subterranean creatures and predatory demons. Framing the collection are two substantial novellas - "The Cancer Cowboy Rides" charts the fatal progress of a modern-day grim reaper, while "The Reflecting Eye" is a haunted house tale with a twist and marks the return of private detective Charlie Parker, the troubled hero of Connolly's crime novels. "Nocturnes" is a masterly volume to be read with the lights on - menace has never been so seductive ... About the Author John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968. His debut -EVERY DEAD THING - swiftly launched him right into the front rank of thriller writers, and all his subsequent novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers. He is the first non-American writer to win the US Shamus award. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Title: The Book Of Lost Things: Description:
'Once upon a time, there was a boy who lost his mother !'As twelve-year-old David takes refuge from his grief in the myths and fairytales so beloved of his dead mother, he finds the real world and the fantasy world begin to blend. That is when bad things start to happen. That is when the Crooked Man comes. And David is violently propelled into a land populated by heroes, wolves and monsters, his quest to find the legendary Book of Lost Things.

Title: Bad Men: Description:
Three hundred years ago, the settlers on the small Maine island of Sanctuary were betrayed by one of their own, and slaughtered. Now a band of killers has returned to Sanctuary to seek revenge on a young woman and her son, and the only people who stand in their way are a young rookie officer and the island's resident policeman, the troubled giant known as Melancholy Joe Dupree. But Joe Dupree is no ordinary policeman. He is the guardian of the island's secrets, the repository of its memories. He knows that Sanctuary has been steeped in violence, and that its ghosts will tolerate the shedding of innocent blood no longer. On Sanctuary, the hunters are about to become the hunted. About the Author John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968. His debut - EVERY DEAD THING - swiftly launched him right into the front rank of thriller writers, and all his subsequent novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers. He is the first British writer to win the US Shamus award.

Title: The Unquiet: Description:
Daniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has been missing for years following revelations about harm done to the children in his care. Believing him dead, his daughter Rebecca has tried to come to terms with her father's legacy, but her fragile peace is about to be shattered. Someone is asking questions about Daniel Clay, someone who does not believe that he is dead: the revenger Merrick, a father and a killer obsessed with discovering the truth about his own daughter's disappearance. Private detective Charlie Parker is hired to make Merrick go away, but Merrick will not be stopped. Soon Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Daniel Clay to be revealed, and those who want it to remain hidden at all costs. But there are other forces at work here. Someone is funding Merrick's hunt, a ghost from Parker's past. And Merrick's actions have drawn others from the shadows, half-glimpsed figures intent upon their own form of revenge, pale wraiths drifting through the ranks of the unquiet dead. The Hollow Men have come ...

Title: The Killing Kind: Description:
There are people whose eyes you must avoid, whose attention you must not draw to yourself. They are strange, parasitic creatures, lost souls seeking to stretch across the abyss and make fatal contact with the warm, constant flow of humanity...

Title: Dark Hollow (coronet Books): Description:
Still raw from the brutal slayings of his wife and daughter, and the events surrounding the capture of their killer, the travelling man, Charlie Parker retreats to the wintry Maine landscape of his childhood. By following in the steps of his beloved grandfather, Parker hopes to heal his spirit and get through the bitter anniversary of Jennifer and Susan's murder. But the echoes of the past that await him are not all benign. In a gruesome re-enactment of Bird's own nightmares, another young woman is killed with her child and his brief involvement in their lives impels Parker to hunt their vicious murderer. As the death toll mounts, Parker comes to realise that the true answer to the puzzle lies thirty years in the past, in a tree with strange fruit, in his own grandfather's history, and in the perverted desires of a monster incarnate - Caleb Kyle. About the Author John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968. His debut -EVERY DEAD THING - swiftly launched him right into the front rank of thriller writers, and all his subsequent novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers. He is the first non-American writer to win the US Shamus award. Excerpted from Dark Hollow by John Connolly. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Billy Purdue's knife bit deeper into my cheek, sending a trickle of blood down my face. His body was pressed hard against mine, his elbows pinning my arms to the wall, his legs tensed against my legs so that I couldn't go for his groin. His fingers tightened on my neck and I thought: Billy Purdue. I should have known better… Billy Purdue was poor, poor and dangerous with some bitterness and frustration added to spice up the pot. The threat of violence was always imminent with him. It hung around him like a cloud, obscuring his judgement and influencing the actions of others, so that when he stepped into a bar and took a drink, or picked up a pool cue for a game, then sooner or later, trouble would start.Billy Purdue didn't have to pick fights. Fights picked him.It acted like a contagion, so that even if Billy himself managed to avoid conflict – he generally didn't seek it, but when he found it he rarely walked away – five would get you ten that he would have raised the testosterone level in the bar sufficiently to cause someone else to consider starting something. Billy Purdue could have provoked a fight at a conclave of cardinals just by looking into the room. Whichever way you considered it, he was bad news.So far, he hadn't killed anybody and nobody had managed to kill him. The longer a situation like that goes on, the more the odds are stacked in favour of a bad end, and Billy Purdue was a bad beginning looking for a worse end. I'd heard people describe him as an accident waiting to happen, but he was more than that. He was a constantly evolving disaster, like the long, slow death of a star. His was an ongoing descent into the maelstrom.I didn't know a whole lot about Billy Purdue's past, not then. I knew that he'd always been in trouble with the law. He had a rap sheet that read like a catalogue entry for minor crimes, from disrupting school and petty larceny to DWD, receiving stolen goods, assault, trespassing, disorderly conduct, non-payment of child support…The list went on and on. He was an adopted child and had been through a succession of foster homes in his youth, each one keeping him for only as long as it took the foster parents to realise that Billy was more trouble than the money from social services was worth. That's the way some foster parents are: they treat the kids like a cash crop, like livestock or chickens, until they realise that if a chicken acts up you can cut its head off and eat it forSunday dinner, but the options are more limited in the case of a delinquent child. There was evidence of neglect by many of Billy Purdue's foster parents, and suspicion of serious physical abuse in at least two cases.Billy had found some kind of home with an old guy and his wife up in the north of the state, a couple who specialised in tough love. The guy had been through about twenty foster kids by the time Billy arrived and, when he got to know Billy a little, maybe he figured that this was one too many. But he'd tried to straighten Billy out and, for a time, Billy was happy, or as happy as he could ever be. Then he started to drift a little. He moved to Boston and fell in with Tony Celli's crew, until he stepped on the wrong toes and got parcelled back to Maine, where he met Rita Ferris, seven years his junior , and they married. They had a son together, but Billy was always the real child in the relationship.He was now thirty-two and built like a bull, the muscles on his arms like huge hams, his hands thick and broad, the fingers almost swollen in their muscularity. He had small pig eyes and uneven teeth, and his breath smelt of malt liquor and sourdough bread. There was dirt under his nails and a raised rash on his neck, the heads white, where he had shaved himself with an old, worn blade.I was given the opportunity to observe Billy Purdue from close quarters after I failed to put an arm-lock on him and he pushed me hard against the wall of his silver Airstream trailer, a run-down thirty-footer out by Scarborough Downs that stank of unwashed clothes, rotting food and stale seed. One of his hands was clasped hard around my neck as he forced me upwards, my toes barely touching the floor. The other held the short-bladed knife that had pierced my skin an inch beneath my left eye. I could feel the blood dripping from my chin.

Title: Bad Men: Description:
In 1693, the settlers on the small Maine island of Sanctuary were betrayed to their enemies and slaughtered. Since then, the island has known three hundred years of peace. On Sanctuary, evil is about to meet its match....

Title: The Black Angel: Description:
A young woman goes missing from the streets of New York. Those who have taken her believe that nobody cares about her, and that no one will come looking for her. They are wrong.

Title: The Unquiet: Description:
Daniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has been missing for years following revelations about harm done to the children in his care. Believing him dead, his daughter Rebecca has tried to come to terms with her father's legacy, but her fragile peace is about to be shattered. Someone is asking questions about Daniel Clay, someone who does not believe that he is dead: the revenger Merrick, a father and a killer obsessed with discovering the truth about his own daughter's disappearance. Private detective Charlie Parker is hired to make Merrick go away, but Merrick will not be stopped. Soon Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Daniel Clay to be revealed, and those who want it to remain hidden at all costs. But there are other forces at work here. Someone is funding Merrick's hunt, a ghost from Parker's past. And Merrick's actions have drawn others from the shadows, half-glimpsed figures intent upon their own form of revenge, pale wraiths drifting through the ranks of the unquiet dead. The Hollow Men have come ...

Title: The Killing Kind: Description:
Did Grace Peltier commit suicide? When a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the final resting place of a religious community that disappeared almost forty years earlier, private detective Charlie Parker, hired to investigate the circumstances of her death, realises that their deaths and the violent passing of Grace Peltier are part of the same mystery, one that has its roots in her family history and in the origins of the shadowy organisation known as the Fellowship. Aided by the genial killers Angel and Louis, Parker must descend into the depths of a honeycomb world populated by dark angels and lost souls, a world where the ghosts of the dead wait for justice and the unwary are prey for the worst kind of creatures.The killing kind. . .

Title: The White Road: Description:
In South Carolina, a young black man faces the death penalty for the rape and murder of Marianne Larousse, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the state. It's a case that nobody wants to touch, a case with its roots in old evil, and old evil is private detective Charlie Parker's speciality.

Title: Dark Hollow: Description:
A young woman and her little son die at the hands of an unknown killer, and the past and present collide for Charlie Parker. Still raw from the slayings of his wife and daughter, and the hunt for their killer, "Bird" has retreated to wintry Maine. But his return reawakens the ghosts of the past.

Title: The Killing Kind: Description:
Did Grace Peltier commit cuicide? When a mass grave in Northern Maine reveals the final resting place of a religious communicty that disappeared almost 40 eyars earlier, detective Charlie Park realiszes that their deaths and the violent passing of Grace are part of the same mystery.

Title: The Book Of Lost Things: Description:
'Once upon a time, there was a boy who lost his mother !' As twelve-year-old David takes refuge from his grief in the myths and fairytales so beloved of his dead mother, he finds the real world and the fantasy world begin to blend. That is when bad things start to happen. That is when the Crooked Man comes. And David is violently propelled into a land populated by heroes, wolves and monsters in his quest to find the legendary Book of Lost Things.

Title: The Black Angel: Description:
The Black Angel is not an object. The Black Angel is not a myth. The Black Angel lives. A young woman goes missing from the streets of New York. Those who have taken her believe that nobody cares about her, and that no one will come looking for her. They are wrong. She is 'blood' to the killer Louis, the man who stands at the right hand of private detective Charlie Parker, and Louis will tear apart anyone who stands in the way of his attempts to find her. But as Louis' violent search progresses, Parker comes to realize that the disappearance is part of an older mystery, one that is linked to an ornate church of bones in Eastern Europe, to the slaughter at a French monastery in 1944, and to the quest for a mythical prize that has been sought for centuries by evil men: the Black Angel. Yet, the Black Angel is more than a myth. It is conscious. It dreams. It is alive. And men are not the only creatures that seek it ...

Title: The Unquiet: Description:
Daniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatist, has been missing for years following revelations about harm done to the children in his care. Believing him dead, his daughter Rebecca has tried to come to terms with her father's legacy, but her fragile peace is about to be shattered. Someone is asking questions about Daniel Clay, someone who does not believe that he is dead: the revenger Merrick, a father and a killer obsessed with discovering the truth about his own daughter's disappearance. Private detective Charlie Parker is hired to make Merrick go away, but Merrick will not be stopped. Soon Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Daniel Clay to be revealed, and those who want it to remain hidden at all costs. But there are other forces at work here. Someone is funding Merrick's hunt, a ghost from Parker's past. And Merrick's actions have drawn others from the shadows, half-glimpsed figures intent upon their own form of revenge, pale wraiths drifting through the ranks of the unquiet dead. The Hollow Men have come . . .

Title: The Reapers: Description:
They are the Reapers, the elite among killers. Men so terrifying that their names are mentioned only in whispers. The assassin Louis is one of them. But now Louis, and his partner, Angel, are themselves targets. And there is no shortage of suspects. A wealthy recluse sends them north to a town that no longer exists on a map. A town ruled by a man with very personal reasons for wanting Louis’s blood spilt. There they find themselves trapped, isolated, and at the mercy of a killer feared above all others: the assassin of assassins, Bliss. Thanks to former detective Charlie Parker, help is on its way. But can Angel and Louis stay alive long enough for it to reach them?

Title: The Lovers: Description:
When Charlie Parker was still a boy, his father, a NYPD cop, killed a young couple, a boy and a girl barely older than his son, then took his own life. There was no explanation for his actions. Now Parker is working on his most personal case yet: an investigation into his own origins and the circumstances surrounding the death of his father. The investigation will reveal a life haunted by lies, by secrets kept and loyalties compromised. And by two figures in the shadows, a man and a woman, with only one purpose: to bring an end to Charlie Parker’s existence . . . (20090607)