Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Terror by Dan Simmons, read by Tom Sellwood.
Stephen King hailed Dan Simmons' bestselling novel as 'a brilliant, massive combination of history and supernatural horror' and it's now a chilling 10-part AMC Original TV series from Ridley Scott.
The most advanced scientific enterprise ever mounted, Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition in search of the fabled North-West Passage had every expectation of triumph.
But for almost two years his ships HMS Terror and Erebus have been trapped in the Arctic ice. Supplies of fuel and food are running low. Scurvy, starvation and even madness beging to take their toll. And yet the real threat isn't from the constantly shifting, alien landscape, the flesh-numbing temperatures or being crushed by the unyielding, frozen ocean. No, the real threat is far more terrifying.
There is something out there in the frigid darkness. It stalks the ships and snatches men. It is a nameless thing. At once nowhere and everywhere, this terror has become the expedition's nemesis . . .
'Simmons has created a chilling supernatural novel . . . the horrific trials of their impending icy deaths are vividly brought to life.' Daily Express
Ungerührt wirft Privatdetektiv Joe Kurtz den Mann, der seine Partnerin bestialisch ermordet hat, aus dem Fenster eines Hochhauses, direkt auf das Dach eines Polizeiautos. Diese Rache ist ihm eine Ewigkeit im Knast wert. Zwölf Jahre später wird Joe entlassen. Im Keller eines Porno-Shops eröffnet er sein Detektivbüro. Den ersten Auftrag erhält er von einem Mafiaboss: Er soll den Mord an dem Buchhalter der 'Familie' aufklären. Aber Joe findet viel zu viel heraus. Bald ist er auf der Flucht vor einer Meute aus sadistischen Drogenhändlern, wahnsinnigen Auftragskillern und korrupten Bullen - und in kürzester Zeit stapeln sich in Buffalos Hinterhöfen die Leichen.
Privatdetektiv Joe Kurtz bläst ein eisiger Wind entgegen. Und das liegt nicht nur am bitterkalten Winter in Buffalo. Little Skag Farino, der Juniorboss eines örtlichen Mafia-Clans, will Joe aus dem Verkehr ziehen und setzt eine Horde von mehr oder minder begabten Killern auf ihn an. Farinos attraktive Schwester Angelina verfolgt unterdessen ganz eigene Pläne mit dem Schnüffler - nicht alle sind so romantisch wie die gemeinsame Liebesnacht...
Privatschnüffler Joe Kurtz gerät immer tiefer zwischen die Fronten der verfeindeten Mafia-Clans in Buffalo. Als ein Unbekannter auf ihn und seine Bewährungshelferin schießt, wird die Sache persönlich. Ironischerweise schwören sowohl Toma Gonzaga als auch die schlüpfrige Angelina Farino, nichts mit dem Attentat zu tun zu haben. Joe kommt der Wahrheit bei einer waghalsigen Klettertour in den Ruinen eines alten Vergnügungsparks auf die Spur. Und auf wen hat es eigentlich der Däne, ein gefährlicher Kopfgeldjäger aus Kurtz' Vergangenheit, abgesehen?
A once-respected college professor and novelist, Dale Stewart has sabotaged his career and his marriage—and now darkness is closing in on him. In the last hours of Halloween he has returned to the dying town of Elm Haven, his boyhood home, where he hopes to find peace in isolation. But moving into a long-deserted farmhouse on the far outskirts of town—the one-time residence of a strange and brilliant friend who lost his young life in a grisly “accident” back in the terrible summer of 1960—is only the latest in his long succession of recent mistakes. Because Dale is not alone here. He has been followed to this house of shadows by private demons who are now twisting his reality into horrifying new forms. And a thick, blanketing early snow is starting to fall.
“I am in awe of Dan Simmons.”—Stephen King
If you're going to shoot Joe Kurtz, you'd better shoot to kill.
Ex-PI Joe Kurtz's survival is on the line when an ambush leaves him badly wounded and his parole officer, Peg O'Toole, clinging to life. Their respective professions have ensured that neither suffers from a shortage of enemies, so narrowing down the suspects isn't easy. But Kurtz knows who's at the head of his list: Angelina Farino Ferrara, the lethal beauty who leads the Farino crime family, and her mob rival, Toma Gonzaga.
The odd thing is, each would rather hire Joe Kurtz than fire at him. Someone's causing trouble beneath the gray skies of western New York, and it's drawn the notice of the mobs and the cops. Kurtz is caught in the middle along with the rest of them, and no one knows who's tightening the vise.
Revenge has never been served so cold.
Joe Kurtz, former investigator and convicted felon, is on parole. But the years he spent in Attica didn't make his old haunts any safer. Back on the streets of Buffalo, he's already marked by a local Mafia don.
As if watching his back weren't enough work, Kurtz has also been hired by a gravely ill John Frears, whose daughter met a grisly fate at the hands of a murderer. Frears wants one thing before he dies: for Kurtz to find the fiend that the authorities couldn't. But the calculating killer--a master at changing identities--has a little unfinished business of his own. Dodging a contract on his head and tracking a serial killer on the loose, Kurtz plunges headfirst into the icy waters of revenge as both victim and avenger.
In 1893, Sherlock Holmes and Henry James come to America together to solve the mystery of the 1885 death of Clover Adams, wife of the esteemed historian Henry Adams--member of the Adams family that has given the United States two Presidents. Clover's suicide appears to be more than it at first seemed; the suspected foul play may involve matters of national importance.
Holmes is currently on his Great Hiatus--his three-year absence after Reichenbach Falls during which time the people of London believe him to be deceased. Holmes has faked his own death because, through his powers of ratiocination, the great detective has come to the conclusion that he is a fictional character.
This leads to serious complications for James--for if his esteemed fellow investigator is merely a work of fiction, what does that make him? And what can the master storyteller do to fight against the sinister power -- possibly named Moriarty -- that may or may not be controlling them from the shadows?
Once Joe Kurtz needed revenge--and revenge cost him eleven years in Attica prison. Now Kurtz needs a job, and the price is going to be higher. Out of prison, out of touch, Kurtz signs on with the Byron Farino, Don of a Mob family whose son Kurtz had been protecting on the inside. Farino enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountant--a man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose.
But someone doesn't want the accountant found--and with enemies inside the Family vying for his throne, and turf warfare just around the corner, Farino needs an outsider like Kurtz to flush out who's really behind this latest affront. As the story twists and turns and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows who he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named The Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hell-bent on revenge. Kurtz has always been an ace investigator. Now he's about to discover that to get at the truth, sometimes you have to go after it--hard.
ALA Reading List Award for History, Short List
A thrilling tale of high-altitude death and survival set on the snowy summits of Mount Everest, from the bestselling author of The Terror
It's 1924 and the race to summit the world's highest mountain has been brought to a terrified pause by the shocking disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine high on the shoulder of Mt. Everest. By the following year, three climbers -- a British poet and veteran of the Great War, a young French Chamonix guide, and an idealistic young American -- find a way to take their shot at the top. They arrange funding from the grieving Lady Bromley, whose son also disappeared on Mt. Everest in 1924. Young Bromley must be dead, but his mother refuses to believe it and pays the trio to bring him home.
Deep in Tibet and high on Everest, the three climbers -- joined by the missing boy's female cousin -- find themselves being pursued through the night by someone . . . or something. This nightmare becomes a matter of life and death at 28,000 feet - but what is pursuing them? And what is the truth behind the 1924 disappearances on Everest? As they fight their way to the top of the world, the friends uncover a secret far more abominable than any mythical creature could ever be. A pulse-pounding story of adventure and suspense, The Abominable is Dan Simmons at his spine-chilling best.
"A literary thriller like no other...A hard-charging, edge-of-the-seat tale." -Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Darwin Minor travels a dangerous road. A Vietnam veteran turned reluctant expert on interpreting the wreckage of fatal accidents, Darwin uses science and instinct to unravel the real causes of unnatural disasters. He is very, very good at his job. His latest case promises to be his most challenging yet. A spate of seemingly random high-speed car accidents has struck the highways of southern California. Each seems to have been staged-yet the participants have all died. Why would anyone commit fraud at the cost of his own life? The deeper Darwin digs, the closer he comes to unmasking an international network specializing in intimidation and murder, whose members will do anything to make sure Darwin soon suffers a deadly accident of his own.
The Past...Caught behind the lines of Hitler's Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face-to-face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazis themselves.... The Present...Compelled by the encounter to survive at all costs, so begins a journey that for Saul will span decades and cross continents, plunging into the darkest corners of twentieth-century history to reveal a secret society of beings who throughout the ages may exist behind the world's most horrible and violent events. Killing from a distance, they are people with the psychic ability to "use" humans: read their minds, subjugate them to their wills, experience through their senses, and force them to acts of unspeakable aggression. Each year, three of the most powerful of this hidden order meet to discuss their triumphs of bloodshed and destruction. But at this reunion, something will go terribly wrong. Saul's quest is about to reach its elusive object, drawing hunter and hunted alike into a struggle that will plumb the depths of mankind's attraction to violence, and determine the future of the world itself. "[Carrion Comfort is] one of the few major reinventions of the vampire concept, on a par with Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and Stephen King's Salem's Lot." -DAVID MORRELL
