Among the most celebrated thrillers in recent memory—and now a major motion picture directed by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Oliver Stone—Savages was picked as a best book of the year by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly, Janet Maslin in The New York Times, and Sarah Weinman in the Los Angeles Times. Now, in this high-octane prequel, Winslow reaches back in time to tell the story of how Ben, Chon, and O became the people they are. Spanning from 1960s Southern California to the recent past, The Kings of Cool is a breathtakingly original saga of family in all its forms—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers. As the trio at the center of the book does battle with a cabal of drug dealers and crooked cops, they come to learn that their future is inextricably linked with their parents’ history. A series of breakneck twists and turns puts the two generations on a collision course, culminating in a stunning showdown that will force Ben, Chon, and O to choose between their real families and their loyalty to one another. Fast-paced, provocative, and wickedly funny, The Kings of Cool is a spellbinding love story for our times from a master novelist at the height of his powers. It is filled with Winslow’s trademark talents—complex characters, sharp dialogue, blistering social commentary—that have earned him an obsessive following. The result is a book that will echo in your mind and heart long after you’ve turned the last page.

    Now he returns with his second novel, Every Man a Menace, the inside story of a ruthless ecstasy-smuggling ring.San Francisco is about to receive the biggest delivery of MDMA to hit the West Coast in years. Raymond Gaspar, just out of prison, is sent to the city to check in on the increasingly erratic dealer expected to take care of distribution. In Miami, the man responsible for getting the drugs across the Pacific has just met the girl of his dreams—a woman who can't seem to keep her story straight. And thousands of miles away in Bangkok, someone farther up the supply chain is about to make a phone call that will put all their lives at risk. Stretching from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia to the Golden Gate of San Francisco, Every Man a Menace offers an unflinching account of the making, moving, and selling of the drug known as Molly—pure happiness sold by the brick, brought to market by bloodshed and betrayal.

    If you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't. But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid. From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what 'isotope' means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it. LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT

    Once an aspiring art photographer, she now makes ends meet taking portraits of school children and working for a caterer. Recovering from her addiction, she spends lonely evenings checking out profiles on an online dating site. Weekend visits with her son are awkward. He’s drifting away from her, fast.When she meets Ava and Swift Havilland, the vulnerable Helen is instantly enchanted. Wealthy, connected philanthropists, they have their own charity devoted to rescuing dogs. Their home is filled with fabulous friends, edgy art, and dazzling parties.Then Helen meets Elliott, a kind, quiet accountant who offers loyalty and love with none of her newfound friends’ fireworks. To Swift and Ava, he’s boring. But even worse than that, he’s unimpressed by them.As Helen increasingly falls under the Havillands’ influence—running errands, doing random chores, questioning her relationship with Elliott—Ava and Swift hold out the most seductive gift: their influence and help to regain custody of her son. But the debt Helen owes them is about to come due.Ollie witnesses an accident involving Swift, his grown son, and the daughter of the Havillands’ housekeeper. With her young son’s future in the balance, Helen must choose between the truth and the friends who have given her everything.

    Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of 17, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in Southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian - a text-based, roleplaying game played through the mail - Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle’s audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.

    It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.Nineteen-year-old Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a paper marked "King City" by a mysterious man in a tan jacket holding a deer skin suitcase. Everything about him and his paper unsettles her, especially the fact that she can't seem to get the paper to leave her hand, and that no one who meets this man can remember anything about him. Jackie is determined to uncover the mystery of King City and the man in the tan jacket before she herself unravels.Night Vale PTA treasurer Diane Crayton's son, Josh, is moody and also a shape shifter. And lately Diane's started to see her son's father everywhere she goes, looking the same as the day he left years earlier, when they were both teenagers. Josh, looking different every time Diane sees him, shows a stronger and stronger interest in his estranged father, leading to a disaster Diane can see coming, even as she is helpless to prevent it.Diane's search to reconnect with her son and Jackie's search for her former routine life collide as they find themselves coming back to two words: "King City". It is King City that holds the key to both of their mysteries, and their futures...if they can ever find it.

    He’s the toughest private eye in Los Angeles, and he’ll handle anything – if you’re human. If you’re a Toon, that’s another story.Eddie doesn’t like Toons – those cartoon characters who live side-by-side with humans. Not the way they look, and especially not the way they talk: word-filled balloons come out of their mouths and then disintegrate, leaving dust all over his rug.Eddie will work for a Toon if his cash supply is low enough. So he reluctantly agrees when Roger Rabbit, a Toon who plays straight man (or should that be straight rabbit) in the Baby Herman cartoon series, asks him to find out who’s been trying – unsuccessfully – to buy his contract from the DeGreasy Brothers syndicate.Then Rocco DeGreasy is murdered – and Roger is the prime suspect! The rabbit is also, as Eddie soon discovers, very, very dead.Who censored Roger Rabbit? And who shot Rocco DeGreasy? Was it Roger, or was it Rocco’s hot-cha-cha girlfriend, Jessica Rabbit? Why had Jessica – a pretty steamy number for a Toon – ever married a dopey bunny in the first place? And why does everybody want Roger’s battered old teakettle?As Eddie combs L.A. from the executive suites of the DeGreasy Brothers to Sid Sleaze’s porno comic studio, he uncovers art thefts, blackmail plots... and the cagiest killer he’s ever faced.In Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, author Gary K. Wolf has created a wonderfully skewed – and totally believable – world compounded of equal parts Raymond Chandler, Lewis Carroll, and Warner Brothers. This riotously surreal spoof of the hard-boiled detective novel is packed with action and laughs. From first page to last, Who Censored Roger Rabbit? is shear delight.Celebrated author Gary K. Wolf’s cult classic and highly praised novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? is the basis for the blockbuster Walt Disney/Steven Spielberg Academy Award winning film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

    Will a phone call from Rome save his fate or seal it?CLIFF BOOTH – Rick’s stunt double, and the most infamous man on any movie set because he’s the only one there who might have gotten away with murder. . . .SHARON TATE – She left Texas to chase a movie-star dream, and found it. Sharon’s salad days are now spent on Cielo Drive, high in the Hollywood Hills.CHARLES MANSON – The ex-con’s got a bunch of zonked-out hippies thinking he’s their spiritual leader, but he’d trade it all to be a rock ‘n’ roll star.HOLLYWOOD 1969 – YOU SHOULDA BEEN THERE

    At 16, she was kidnapped and murdered by a madman named Bonesaw. But that’s not the problem.The problem is she landed in purgatory. And while it’s not a fiery inferno, it’s certainly no heaven. It’s gray, ashen, and crumbling more and more by the day, and everyone has a job to do. Which doesn’t leave Velveteen much time to do anything about what’s really on her mind.Bonesaw.Velveteen aches to deliver the bloody punishment her killer deserves. And she’s figured out just how to do it. She’ll haunt him for the rest of his days. It’ll be brutal... and awesome.But crossing the divide between the living and the dead has devastating consequences. Velveteen’s obsessive haunting cracks the foundations of purgatory and jeopardizes her very soul. A risk she’s willing to take—except fate has just given her reason to stick around: an unreasonably hot and completely off-limits coworker.Velveteen can’t help herself when it comes to breaking rules... or getting revenge. And she just might be angry enough to take everyone down with her.

    Los Angeles has legends. Midcentury Los Angeles. A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America," a land of sunshine and orange groves, wholesome Midwestern values and Hollywood stars, protected by the world’s most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of "pleasure girls" and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men–one L.A.’s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief–each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city. Former street thug turned featherweight boxer Mickey Cohen left the ring for the rackets, first as mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel’s enforcer, then as his protégé. A fastidious dresser and unrepentant killer, the diminutive Cohen was Hollywood’s favorite gangster–and L.A.’s preeminent underworld boss. Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, and Sammy Davis Jr. palled around with him; TV journalist Mike Wallace wanted his stories; evangelist Billy Graham sought his soul. William H. Parker was the proud son of a pioneering law-enforcement family from the fabled frontier town of Deadwood. As a rookie patrolman in the Roaring Twenties, he discovered that L.A. was ruled by a shadowy "Combination"–a triumvirate of tycoons, politicians, and underworld figures where alliances were shifting, loyalties uncertain, and politics were practiced with shotguns and dynamite. Parker’s life mission became to topple it–and to create a police force that would never answer to elected officials again. These two men, one morally unflinching, the other unflinchingly immoral, would soon come head-to-head in a struggle to control the city–a struggle that echoes unforgettably through the fiction of Raymond Chandler and movies such as The Big Sleep, Chinatown, and L.A. Confidential. For more than three decades, from Prohibition through the Watts Riots, the battle between the underworld and the police played out amid the nightclubs of the Sunset Strip and the mansions of Beverly Hills, from the gritty streets of Boyle Heights to the manicured lawns of Brentwood, intersecting in the process with the agendas and ambitions of J. Edgar Hoover, Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X. The outcome of this decades-long entanglement shaped modern American policing–for better and for worse–and helped create the Los Angeles we know today. A fascinating examination of Los Angeles’s underbelly, the Mob, and America’s most admired–and reviled–police department, L.A. Noir is an enlightening, entertaining, and richly detailed narrative about the city originally known as El Pueblo de Nuestra Se–ora la Reina de los Angeles, "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels."Frank Darabont has adapted this book for a TV series, Mob City.

    This is where Jude McManus works as an executive protection specialist, currently assigned to an American engineer working for a U.S. consortium.Ten years before, at age seventeen, he saw his father and two Chicago cop colleagues arrested for robbing street dealers. The family fell apart in the scandal’s wake, his disgraced dad died under suspicious circumstances, and Jude fled Chicago to join the army and forge a new life.Now the past returns when one of his father’s old pals appears. The man is changed–he’s scarred, regretful, self-aware–and he helps Jude revisit the past with a forgiving eye. Then he asks a favor–not for himself, but for the third member of his dad’s old crew. Even though it’s ill-considered, Jude agrees, thinking he can oblige the request and walk away, unlike his father. But he underestimates the players and the stakes and he stumbles into a web of Third World corruption and personal betrayal where everything he values–and everyone he loves–is threatened. And only the greatest of sacrifices will save them.“This big, brawny novel runs on full throttle from first to last page. Brutal and heartrendering, eloquent and important, this is a fully engrossing read.”–Michael Connelly“A Quiet American for the new century. Angry and impassioned, Blood of Paradise is that rare beast: a work of popular fiction that is both serious and thrilling.”–John Connolly, New York Times bestselling author of Every Dead Thing“David Corbett is a supremely gifted writer and Blood of Paradise reminds me of a Robert Stone novel. Its lyrical prose and exotic setting filled with damaged souls grasping for redemption any way they can combine in a tour de force that will haunt you long after you reach the end.”–Denise Hamilton, nationally bestselling author of Prisoner of Memory“If you’re looking for the best in contemporary crime fiction, this is it.”–The Washington Post, on Done for a Dime_________________________________________________________________ THE MORTALIS DOSSIER- BONUS FEATURE FROM DAVID CORBETT FROM TROY TO BAGHDAD (VIA EL SALVADOR)The Story's GenesisI conceived Blood of Paradise after reading Philoctetes, a spare andrelatively obscure drama by Sophocles. In the original, an oracle advisesthe Greeks that victory over the Trojans is impossible withoutthe bow of Herakles. Unfortunately, it’s in the hands of Philoctetes,whom the Greeks abandoned on a barren island ten years earlier,when he was bitten by a venomous snake while the Achaean fleetharbored briefly on its way to Troy.Odysseus, architect of the desertion scheme, must now return,reclaim the bow, and bring both the weapon and its owner to Troy.For a companion, he chooses Neoptolemus, the son of his slainarchrival, Achilles.Neoptolemus, being young, still holds fast to the heroic virtuesembodied by his dead father, and believes they can appeal toPhiloctetes as a warrior. But Odysseus–knowing Philoctetes willwant revenge against all the Greeks, himself in particular–convinces Neoptolemus that trickery and deceit will serve theirpurposes far better. In essence, he corrupts Neoptolemus, who subsequentlydeceives Philoctetes into relinquishing his bitterness toreenlist in the cause against Troy.The tale has an intriguing postscript: It turns out to be the corruptedNeoptolemus who, by killing King Priam at his altar duringthe sack of Troy, brings down a curse upon the Greeks even as theyare perfecting their victory.This story suggested several themes, which I then molded to myown purposes: the role of corruption in our concept of expedience,the need of young men to prove themselves worthy in the eyes ofeven morally suspect elders (or especially them), and the curse of ahard-won ambition.Why El Salvador?I saw in the Greek situation a presentiment of America’s dilemma atthe close of the Cold War: finally achieving unrivaled leadership ofthe globe, but at the same time being cursed with the hatred of millions.Though we have showered the world with aid, too often wehave done so through conspicuously corrupt, repressive, even murderousregimes, where the elites in charge predictably siphoned offmuch of that aid into their own pockets. Why did we look the otherway during the violence and thievery? The regimes in question werereliably anticommunist, crucial to our need for cheap oil, or otherwiseamenable to American strategic or commercial interests.We live in a dangerous world, we are told. Hard, often unpleasantchoices have to be made.It’s a difficult argument for those who have suffered under suchregimes to swallow. They would consider it madness to suggest that itis envy of our preeminence, or contempt for our freedom, that causesthem to view America so resentfully. Rather, they would try to get usto remember that while their hopes for self-determination, freedom,and prosperity were being crushed, America looked on with astrangely principled indifference, often accompanied by a fiercely patrioticself-congratulation, not to mention blatant hypocrisy.Not only have we failed to admit this to ourselves, but the NewRight has embraced a resurgent American exceptionalism as the antidoteto such moral visitations, which such conservatives considerweak and defeatist. Instead, they see a revanchist America marchingboldly into the new century with unapologetic military power, uninhibitedfree-market capitalism, and evangelical fervor–most immediatelyto bring freedom to the Middle East.The New Right’s historical template for this proposed transformationis Central America–specifically El Salvador, trumpeted as“the final battleground of the Cold War,” and championed as one ofour greatest foreign policy successes: the crucible in which Americangreatness was re-forged, banishing the ghosts of Vietnam forever.There’s a serious problem with the New Right’s formulation,however: It requires an almost hallucinatory misreading of history.Misremembering the PastIn their ongoing public campaign to justify the Iraq war, manysupporters and members of the Bush Administration–includingboth Vice President Dick Cheney and former defense secretary DonaldRumsfeld–have singled out El Salvador as a shining example ofwhere the “forward-leaning” policy they champion has succeeded.Mr. Cheney did so during the vice presidential debates, contendingthat Iraq could expect the same bright future enjoyed by El Salvador,which, he claimed, is “a whale of a lot better because we heldfree elections.”What Mr. Cheney neglected to mention:• At the time the elections were held (1982), death squadslinked to the Salvadoran security forces were murderingon average three to five hundred civilians a month.• The death squads targeted not just guerrilla supportersbut priests, social workers, teachers, journalists, evenmembers of the centrist Christian Democrats–the partythat Congress forced the Reagan Administration to back,since it was the only party capable of solidifying theSalvadoran middle.• The CIA funneled money to the Christian Democrats toensure they gained control of the constituent assembly.• Roberto D’Aubuisson, a known death squad leader,opposed the Christian Democrats as “Communists,” andlaunched his own bid to lead the constituent assembly,forming ARENA as the political wing of his death squadnetwork. His bid was funded and supported by exiledoligarchs and reactionary military leaders, and managedby a prominent American public relations firm.• “Anti-fraud measures” proved intimidating. For example:ballots were cast in glass jars. Many voters, who had toprovide identification, and who suspected the governmentwas monitoring their choices, feared violent reprisal ifthey were observed voting “improperly.”• ARENA won thirty-six of sixty seats in the assembly, andD’Aubuisson was elected its leader.• This was perceived by all concerned as a disastrousfailure for American policy. When D’Aubuisson triedto appoint one of his colleagues as assembly president,U.S. officials went to the military and threatened to cutoff aid. D’Aubuisson relented, but it was the onlyconcession he made to American demands.In short, there was American influence, money, and manipulationthroughout the process, putting the lie to the whole notion theelections were “free”–though Mr. Cheney was arguably correctwhen he stated that “we” held them. Unfortunately, all that effortcame to naught, as what America wanted from the elections lay inshambles. Even when, in the following year’s election, a great dealmore money and arm-twisting resulted in Washington’s candidatebeing elected president, he remained powerless to reform the military,curtail the death squads, or revive the economy, measuresWashington knew to be crucial to its counter-insurgency strategy.By 1987, the Reaganites decided to abandon the decimated ChristianDemocrats for ARENA–the party it had spent five years andmillions of dollars trying to keep from power.As for Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarks, he made them in the course of abrief stopover in El Salvador to thank the government for its supportin the Iraq war. The defense secretary trumpeted the just nature ofthe cause in Iraq, noting that the Middle Eastern country had oncebeen ruled by “a dictatorship that killed tens of thousands of humanbeings . . . A regime that cut off the heads and hands of people. Aregime that threw people off the tops of six-story buildings withtheir hands and legs tied.”The irony of these remarks, which bordered on the macabre, wasnot lost on the locals: The Salvadoran military–which we funded,trained, and expanded tenfold–achieved a similar body count, employingsimilar if not identical methods in its bloody suppression ofthe internal opposition. The Salvadoran air force, for example, typicallythrew its bound captives not off rooftops but out of helicoptersand airplanes (the so-called “night free-fall training”), and the practiceof cutting off the head and hands of death squad victims was socommon it earned the sobriquet “a haircut and a manicure.”These mischaracterizations, however, are merely part of a muchlarger deceit. In truth, America’s claim to victory in El Salvadoris delusional. As late as 1988, military and policy analysts of everypolitical stripe were admitting that despite huge infusions of Americancash, the government was in a stalemate with the Marxist guerrillas.Although six strike brigades were arguably up to the task ofactually engaging the guerrillas, Salvadoran field tactics were oftenderided by Green Beret advisors as “search and avoid,” and the government’spropensity to slaughter its critics desisted only when it feltunthreatened.Then, in 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Salvadoranoligarchy’s main bargaining chip with Washington, its staunch oppositionto a Communist takeover, became moot–but not beforethe guerrillas staged one final offensive, in response to which themilitary reverted to form, strafing and bombing whole neighborhoods,reviving the death squads, and murdering six Jesuit priests,their housekeeper, and her fifteen-year-old daughter.International outrage over the murdered Jesuits finally broughtmatters to a head. The time had come to consider a truce, which theUN, not the Americans, stepped in to broker. In 1992, the final PeaceAccords were signed.Thus, after over a billion dollars in military aid and three billionin non-lethal aid (most of it spent rebuilding infrastructure destroyedby the fighting) plus more than seventy thousand Salvadoranskilled, over forty thousand of them civilians (and more than90 percent of them murdered by their own government), the U.S.obtained a result it could have achieved over ten years earlier, in1981, when the guerrillas first proposed a negotiated settlement–aprospect that the Reagan hard-liners, many of whom now serve inthe Bush Administration, flatly and repeatedly rejected. Only victorywould do for them, a victory that proved utterly elusive untilthe distortions of political memory took over.Mischaracterizing the PresentBut even if the Reaganites didn’t “win” El Salvador, isn’t it true thesituation there has improved dramatically? With peace and stability,internationally monitored free elections, and a demilitarized judicialapparatus, cannot El Salvador be credibly described as “a whaleof a lot better” now?Consider the following:• Impunity from the country’s civil and criminal lawscontinues, particularly for the politically, economically,or institutionally well-connected.• The concentration of economic power remains in thehands of a few. In fact, in the 1990s wealth became evenmore concentrated as a result of neoliberal reformsintroduced by ARENA.• Land transfer provisions dictated by the Peace Accordshave suffered endless delays.• Child labor remains endemic.• El Salvador is a source, transit, and destination country forwomen and children trafficked for sexual exploitation.• Civil society is under siege due to the availability ofweapons left behind by the war, the formation of shadowycrime syndicates by ex-military officers now turnedbusinessmen, and the presence of transnational youthgangs founded by Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S.• Death squads have returned, to conduct “socialcleansing.”• The highest levels of the the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC)are controlled by former military men with dubious pasts.Corruption is widespread, and there are many tiesbetween the police and organized crime. An attorneywith the Human Rights Ombudsman stated: “When wego to the [police] Directorate for Investigating OrganizedCrime, we never go alone. There always has to be at leasttwo of us, because they might do something to harm us.”The old political system was based on corruption, privilege,and brutality, and such things do not just evaporate, even in thewelcome light of peace and free elections. As we know fromworldwide example–Serbia, Ulster, Palestine, Thailand, Somalia,Afghanistan, and, yes, El Salvador and Iraq–today’s paramilitaryforce is tomorrow’s Mafia. And so-called free elections can oftenmask extreme imbalances of power, which voters feel helpless tochange.Meanwhile, almost a third of the population of El Salvador hasemigrated to other countries, primarily the United States. The migrationwave continues today, estimated by some observers at sevenhundred persons per day. These expatriates now send back to theirless fortunate family members remittances (remesas) of nearly threebillion dollars per year. If the country were reliably secure and prosperous,with wealth distributed reasonably among its people, itwould no longer need this foreign cash machine. But the most significantform of voting in El Salvador is done with one’s feet: If onecan leave, one does.Those who have stayed behind have become increasingly frustrated.The unwavering grip that ARENA has on power–withconspicuous assistance from Washington–reminds many of theoligarchy’s brutal control prior to the civil war. Organized protestshave turned increasingly violent, and many fear the country is onceagain coming apart at the seams.On July 5, 2006, student protests against bus fare increases resultedin gunfire, with two police officers killed and ten wounded.President Tony Saca blamed the FMLN before any credible evidencewas available (and subsequently retreated from this position).The FMLN responded by condemning the violence. As it turnedout, a gunman caught on tape was identified as an expelled partymember, now belonging to a splinter group calling itself the LimonBrigade.Beatrice Alamanni de Carillo, the Human Rights Ombudsman,remarked, “We have to admit that a new revolutionary fringe isforming. It’s an open secret.”Gregorio Rosa Chávez, the auxiliary bishop of San Salvador,stated, “We signed the treaty but we never lived the peace. Reconciliationis not just based on healing wounds, but healing themwell. . . . People are losing faith in the institutions.”The “Salvador Option”If we described honestly the real state of affairs in El Salvador,would ordinary Iraqis truly wish that for their future? WouldAmericans consider the cost in human life, not to mention billionsof dollars per day, worthwhile? Forget all the blunders along theway (or the more jaundiced view that democracy was never theissue)–is this truly a sane model for a stable state?It’s too late to pose the question, of course. The New Right’s distortedunderstanding of the past and present in El Salvador has createdan almost eerie simulacrum in Iraq, with even ghastlier results.Taking one particularly ominous example: In the summer of 2004,as American efforts to stem the Iraqi insurgency foundered, U.S.officials decided to employ what came to be known as “the SalvadorOption.” American advisers oversaw the establishment of commandounits composed of former Baathists. The commandos beganto exert themselves in the field, enjoying successes the Americansenvied, but also employing methods American troops shunned, especiallyin the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal. The Americanadvisers overseeing the commandos–who had extensive backgroundsin Latin America and specifically El Salvador–adamantlystated they in no way gave a green light to death squads, torture, orother human rights violations; they may well have been sincere. Butmatters spiraled murderously out of control when Shiites dominatedthe elections of January 2005 and took over for the InterimGovernment: Shiite death squads, linked to the Badr militia but actingunder the aegis of the Ministry of Interior, soon began systematicallyhunting and killing Sunni men, creating a sectarian bloodbaththat continues to tear the country apart. American calls for transparentinvestigations of the murders have netted little in the way ofresults.Regardless of what the future holds for Iraq, these commandos,along with the paramilitary units and the other sectarian militias operatingin Iraq, will not melt away into nothingness. Many of theirmembers are tomorrow’s gangsters (whose rackets will predictablyfund terrorist organizations).Meanwhile, the escalating bloodshed has caused, among countlessother troubles, the dislocation of millions of refugees, and theflight from the country of large portions of Iraq’s professional class,who like ordinary Salvadorans realize the future lies elsewhere.Given all this, it’s difficult not to revisit the notion of a curse. Inachieving sole superpower status, we have relied on false notions ofourselves and others, excused atrocity under the guise of expedience,sought our own national interest over all other considerations (withat times a cavalier appreciation of whether short-term successesmight in fact poison long-term ones)–all the while proclaiming,not without some merit, all the best intentions in the world. Tothink this wouldn’t come back to haunt us is to believe in notions ofpower and innocence too fatuous for an adult mind to entertain.One last example should make the case conclusive. Consider oursupport for the Contras, a makeshift band of mercenaries assembledfor the sole purpose of causing as much havoc as possible for theSandinista government in Nicaragua, whom we accused of supportingthe Salvadoran guerrillas. While President Reagan steadfastlyproclaimed the Contras to be the “moral equivalent of our FoundingFathers,” an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff called them “justa bunch of killers.” By 1985, the Contras had murdered at least fourthousand civilians, wounded an equal number, and kidnapped perhapsfive thousand more. Even the CIA admitted the Contras steadfastlyrefused to engage the Sandinista military and instead preferredto execute civic officials, heads of cooperatives, nurses, judges, anddoctors, while showing a stubborn propensity for abducting andraping teenage girls. The strategy: not to seize power or even prevailmilitarily, but simply to terrorize average Nicaraguans, and demonstratethat their government could not protect them or provide evenbasic services.And who has steadfastly imitated this strategy?The jihadists and insurgents in Iraq.Like the victims of, yes, a curse, we find ourselves trapped in theexact same position in which we put our previous enemies. Not evenSophocles could have devised it more neatly.The Murder of Gilberto SotoThe historically suspect pronouncements of Messrs. Cheney andRumsfeld and their camp followers were not the only topical incidentsof relevance to occur during the writing of this book. Another,far more chilling event also took place, an event that not onlyunderscored the deterioration of civil society in El Salvador, but eerilyechoed elements of the novel’s plot: the murder of an American–aTeamster named Gilberto Soto.He was visiting family in El Salvador–and also hoped to meetwith port drivers to discuss possible plans to unionize–when gunmenshot him dead outside his mother’s house in Usulután. Many ofthe trucking companies that would have been affected byunionization are run by ex-military officers, but the police investigationnever pursued this. Instead, two gang members were pressedand possibly tortured into confessing that the victim’s mother-inlaw,who had less than a hundred dollars to her name, hired them tokill Soto out of some vague, illogical family rancor.Two of the three defendants, Soto’s mother-in-law and the allegedtriggerman, were acquitted in February 2006. The man allegedto have supplied the murder weapon was convicted, despitethe fact the Human Rights Ombudsman, in her scathing critique ofthe investigation–an investigation which was not conducted by thelocal prosecutor, but the PNC’s notoriously corrupt Directorate forInvestigating Organized Crime–specifically noted that no chainof evidence existed concerning the gun and bullets.This murder took place during the American debate over ratificationof the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA),and only by considerable arm-twisting was the Bush administrationable to secure the necessary votes for passage. (CAFTA passed theHouse by a mere two votes.) How can there be free trade, opponentsargued, if men and women seeking a just wage can be murderedwith impunity? But such arguments did not prevail.A Final Note on Blood of ParadiseAll of which leads to a brief summarizing glance at two of my characters,Jude and Clara.Like Neoptolemus, Jude allows himself to be seduced by amorally questionable elder into a reckless scheme. In a sense, hestands for all of us: an everyman who wants to do good in a worldhe knows needs plenty of it, but who also suspects that to accomplishthat end a few nefarious deeds must be indulged. He wants to believeas well that one can withstand such evil, rise above it, even as one doesits bidding: Good intentions, sound character, and professional skillwill prevail over necessary compromises with immorality. Whoknows, it might even be fun–kick ass, take names, shake handswith the devil but don’t let him hold your wallet. We’re Americansafter all, blessed by God and history. How can we not prevail?Clara–Salvadoran war orphan, rape victim–sees the matterdifferently. She ultimately understands that only through real sacrificecan the future possibly redeem the past. Being deeply religious,like many Salvadorans, she sees this call for renunciation as the challengeof the crucifixion. And so, in the end, she finds the heart to actupon her conviction–not in an empowering act of violence, but ina selfless, agonizing act of love.

    Permanently disfigured by a tragic military accident, he's struggling to find satisfaction from life as a rewrite man for Pacific City's Courier. Shame has led him to isolate himself from closest friends and even his estranged, still faithfully devoted wife, Ellen. Only the bottle keeps him company.But now Ellen has returned to Pacific City, and she's ready to do whatever it takes to get Brown back. Even if it means exposing his deepest secret ... a painful truth Brown would do anything to stop from coming to light. He'd kill a whole lot of people just to keep this one thing quiet--and soon enough, the bodies just happen to start piling up around him...THE NOTHING MAN is Thompson at his most psychologically astute, in a deeply suspenseful and tragic portrait of one man's journey through the dark side of the Postwar Boom.

    The Dream Archipelago is a vast network of islands. The names of the islands are different depending on who you talk to, their very locations seem to twist and shift. Some islands have been sculpted into vast musical instruments, others are home to lethal creatures, others the playground for high society. Hot winds blow across the archipelago and a war fought between two distant continents is played out across its waters. The Islanders serves both as an untrustworthy but enticing guide to the islands; an intriguing, multi-layered tale of a murder; and the suspect legacy of its appealing but definitely untrustworthy narrator. It shows Christopher Priest at the height of his powers and illustrates his undiminished power to dazzle.

    But when she wakes up under an alley dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching neck, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her.Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that's where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen-turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door ... and proceeds to rock Tommy's life -- and afterlife -- in ways he never imagined possible.

    Stephen King's "dark half" may have saved the best for last.A fellow named Richard Bachman wrote Blaze in 1973 on an Olivetti typewriter, then turned the machine over to Stephen King, who used it to write Carrie. Bachman died in 1985 ("cancer of the pseudonym"), but in late 2006 King found the original typescript of Blaze among his papers at the University of Maine's Fogler Library ("How did this get here?!"), and decided that with a little revision it ought to be published.Blaze is the story of Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. --of the crimes committed against him and the crimes he commits, including his last, the kidnapping of a baby heir worth millions. Blaze has been a slow thinker since childhood, when his father threw him down the stairs--and then threw him down again. After escaping an abusive institution for boys when he was a teenager, Blaze hooks up with George, a seasoned criminal who thinks he has all the answers. But then George is killed, and Blaze, though haunted by his partner, is on his own.He becomes one of the most sympathetic criminals of all of literature. This is a crime story of surprising strength and sadness, with a suspenseful current sustained by the classic workings of fate and character--as taut and riveting as Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.