Synopses & Reviews
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
"An eerie, unsettling, beautifully composed and suspenseful novel quite unlike anything Tom Cook has written before. So spare and precise, it feels as if it has been chiseled in stone with something like a surgical instrument."—Joyce Carol Oates
PRAISE FOR RED LEAVES
"Red Leaves is both heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching. A family can be ‘briefly held,’ and yet so enduring."—New York Daily News
"One of the most suspenseful of crime-fiction writers, [Cook] is also one of the most lyrical . . . readers will glimpse blurred snapshots from their own lives—and be afraid."—Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Red Leaves is one of the best novels you’ll read this year—gripping, beautifully written, haunting, surprising and devastating. Thomas H. Cook has long been one of my favorite writers. Red Leaves will show you why."—Harlan Coben
"This disturbing exploration of humans’ true motives . . . is haunting, and builds to a rapid and unexpected climax."—Newsweek
"Thomas Cook writes like a wounded angel, and Red Leaves is one of his masterworks. Sorrow, suspicion, fear, and forgiveness hang suspended over an almost unbearably increasing tension. In Cook’s hands, the crime novel, if that's what this is, moves firmly into literature."—Peter Straub
Review
PRAISE FOR
THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING"[Dianas] inexorable descent into mania, narrated by her brother Dave, is as gripping as the mystery itself. A-."Entertainment Weekly "What's at stake isn't so much the resolution of a mystery as the integrity of a family."Time Out New York
Synopsis
David Sears grew up in the shadow of his brilliant sister, Diana, convinced by their father that she would accomplish great things. Instead, she married and had a son, Jason, wholike David and Dianas fatheris schizophrenic. Her husband, Mark, a geneticist, never made peace with Jasons condition. Perhaps this is why Diana will not accept the authorities conclusion that Jasons drowning death was accidental. Or perhaps Diana is going mad. As she builds a case against her husband and the seductive qualities of her manic energy become impossible to ignore, David finds himself afraid for his own familys safety. In The Cloud of Unknowing, Cook explores the power of blood and family mythology.
Synopsis
"[Dianas] inexorable descent into mania, narrated by her brother Dave, is as gripping as the mystery itself.
A-"
Entertainment WeeklyDavid Sears grew up in the shadow of his brilliant sister, Diana, told by their schizophrenic father that she would accomplish great things. But when she becomes convinced that her husband murdered their drowned son, David doesnt know what to believe. Has their family history of mental illness finally caught up with her? Or could Diana be on to the truth? In The Cloud of Unknowing, Cook explores the power of blood and family mythology.
"Whats at stake isnt so much the resolution of a mystery as the integrity of a family."Time Out New York
"So spare and precise, it feels as if it has been chiseled in stone with something like a surgical instrument."Joyce Carol Oates
Thomas H. Cook is the author of nineteen novels and two works of nonfiction. He has been nominated for the Edgar Award seven times in five different categories, including Best Novel for Red Leaves, which was also nominated for a Barry and a Duncan Lawrie Dagger. His novel The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best Novel. He lives in New York City and Cape Cod.An Otto Penzler Book
Synopsis
David Sears grew up in the shadow of his brilliant younger sister, Diana, convinced by their father that she would accomplish great things. Instead, she married and had a son, Jason, who—like David and Diana’s father—is schizophrenic. Her husband, Mark, a geneticist, never made peace with Jason’s condition.
Perhaps this is why, when Jason drowns, Diana will not accept the authorities’ conclusion that his death was accidental. Or perhaps Diana is going mad. She begins to send David faxes and e-mails about ancient murders, driven by her growing belief that the earth is Gaia, a living witness to her son’s murder who could give evidence in the case she is building against her husband. David soon fears for his own family’s safety as the seductive qualities of Diana’s manic energy become impossible to ignore.
In The Cloud of Unknowing, Thomas H. Cook explores the devastating power of blood and family mythology.
Synopsis
Middling historian Lucas Page visits St. Louis to give a sparsely attended readingnothing out of the ordinary. Except among the yawning attendees is someone he did not expect: Lola Faye Gilroy, the “other woman” he has long blamed for his fathers murder decades earlier. Reluctantly, Luke joins Lola Faye for a drink. As one drink turns into several, these two battered souls relive, from their different perspectives, the most searing experience of their lives. Slowly but surely, the hotel bar dissolves around them and they are transported back to the tiny southern town where this defining momenta violent crime of passionis turned in the light once more to reveal flaws in the old answers. As it turns out, there is much Luke doesnt know. And what he doesnt know can hurt him. Trapped in an increasingly intense emotional exchange, and with no place to go save back into his own dark past, Luke struggles to gain control of an ever more threatening conversation, to discover why Lola Faye has come and what she is afterbefore it is too late. A taut literary thriller in the gothic tradition of Master of the Delta.
About the Author
Thomas H. Cook is the author of nineteen novels and two works of nonfiction. He has been nominated for the Edgar Award seven times in five different categories, including Best Novel for
Red Leaves, which was also nominated for a Barry and a Duncan Lawrie Dagger. His novel
The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best Novel. He lives in New York City and Cape Cod.