John Katzenbach Libros

«Feliz 53 cumpleaños, doctor. Bienvenido al primer día de su muerte.» Así comienza el anónimo que recibe Frederick Starks, psicoanalista con una larga experiencia y una vida tranquila. Starks tendrá que hurgar en su memoria y emplear toda su astucia para, en quince días, averiguar quién es el autor de la amenazadora misiva. De no conseguir su objetivo, deberá elegir entre suicidarse o ser testigo de cómo, uno tras otro, sus familiares y conocidos mueren por obra de un psicópata asesino, decidido a llevar hasta el fin su sed de venganza. «Las ilustraciones de Alejandro Colucci transmiten tanto misterio como belleza. De manera profunda y original, no solo captan el concepto de la historia, sino también el corazón mismo de esta.» John Katzenbach

It’s been twenty years since Western State Hospital was closed down and the last of its inmates reintegrated into society. Francis Petrel was barely out of his teens when his family committed him to the asylum, after his erratic behavior culminated in a terrifying outburst. Now middle-aged, he leads an aimless, solitary life housed in a cheap apartment, periodically tended to by his sisters, and perpetually medicated to quiet the chorus of voices in his head. But a reunion on the grounds of the shuttered institution stirs something deep in Francis’s troubled mind: dark memories he thought he had laid to rest, about the grisly events that led to Western State Hospital’s demise. It begins in 1979, when twenty-one-year-old Petrel descends into the state-run purgatory of an overcrowded, understaffed Massachusetts mental hospital. Surrounded by inmates roaming the halls like drugged zombies and raving behind locked doors, well-meaning orderlies, jaded nurses, and patronizing doctors, Francis finds friendship with a motley assortment of fellow patients: a would-be Napoleon, a wise ex-firefighter, and a man obsessed with battling imagined devils. But there’s nothing imaginary about the young nurse found sexually assaulted and brutally murdered late one night after lights-out. The police suspect an inmate, while patients whisper about visions of a white-shrouded “angel.” But the striking and mysterious prosecuting attorney who arrives to investigate has her own chilling theory—about the grim, telltale “signature” left on the victim’s body, a string of unsolved sex killings, and a very real devil who, by chance or design, has come to turn a madhouse into a slaughterhouse. Now, with the past creeping back to haunt his thoughts, and nothing but a pencil and the bare walls of his bleak apartment, Francis surrenders to the overwhelming need to tell the story of those nightmarish days. But because the crime was never solved, it’s a story doomed to remain unfinished. Until, like Francis’s long-buried recollections, the killer resurfaces . . . with a vengeance. A tour de force narrative journey through the eerily unpredictable mind of an utterly unusual hero, The Madman’s Tale will keep even the most astute thriller reader uncertain, unnerved, and unable to resist the tantalizing twists and turns of this fiendishly suspenseful shadow show. From the Hardcover edition.

Llega la esperada continuación de el psicoanalista la obra más vendida y emblemática de John Katzenbach. Han pasado 5 años desde que el doctor Starks acabó con la pesadilla que casi le cuesta la vida y que le destrozó la que tenía logrando vencer a aquel que se hace llamar Rumplestiltskin y a sus hermanos Virgil y Merlin. Ahora Ricky Starks continúa con su labor como psicoanalista instalado en Miami. Sin embargo, Rumplestilskin ha regresado y esta vez, para solicitar la ayuda de Ricky ya que alguien ha amenazado a sus hermanos de una manera muy perversa. Y es evidente que no va a aceptar un no por respuesta

Miami detective Mercedes Barren isn't phased by much-that is, until a late-night phone call awakens her from one nightmare and catapults her into another: her niece has been murdered. She soon has a suspect in Douglas Jeffers, a disgruntled photojournalist who has committed a series of copycat murders while forcing a young English major to document his killing spree.

Cuando Maeve desaparece sin dejar rastro, su hija Sloane no se sorprende: si su madre tenía que desaparecer, solo podía ser en extrañas circunstancias . Sin embargo, esta vez es distinto: al cabo de unos días de la desaparición de su progenitora, Sloane recibe un paquete que esta misma le ha mandado, con varios miles de dólares, la escritura de su casa y un arma. También hay una nota con las siguientes palabras: Vén delo todo. Quédate la pistola. Practica. Huye. Ahora. A solo dos semanas de graduarse como arquitecta y en medio de esta encrucijada personal, Sloane recibe la oferta de trabajo de un misterioso millonario que quiere construir seis memoriales para seis personas que murieron, de nuevo, en extrañas circunstancias. A medida que Sloane investiga esas muertes, el consejo de su madre se hace cada vez más presente. ¿En quién puede confiar ahora Sloane? ¿Tendrá tiempo de seguir las indicaciones de su madre cuando llegue al final del laberinto que ha ido creando su siniestro empleador?

Second Lieutenant Tommy Hart, a navigator whose B-25 was shot out of the sky in 1942, is burdened with guilt as the only surviving member of his crew. Now he is just another POW at the fiercely guarded Stalag Luft 13 in Bavaria.Then routine comes to a halt with the arrival of a new prisoner: First Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, an African American Tuskegee airman who instantly becomes the target of contempt from his fellow soldiers. When a prisoner is brutally murdered, and all the blood-soaked evidence points to Scott, Hart is tapped to defend the soldier. In a trial rife with racial tension and raw conflict, where the lines between ally and enemy blur, there are those with their own secret motives, and a burning passion for a rush to judgment, no matter what the cost.

IN THE HEAT OF THE SUMMERThey call July the 'mean season' in Miami, and this hot summer a clever, elusive killer is terrorising the entire city. The death of the first victim was just a good story for reporter Malcolm Anderson, but the killer liked his style and begins to feed him a stream of front-page exclusives. His journalism makes Anderson a national celebrity - and they could make him the next victim ...'Desperately scary and suspenseful' CosmopolitanTHE SHADOW MANIn the horror of Nazi Germany not all Jews were hunted. There were hunters, too - traitors to their race, paid by the Gestapo with the promise of survival. And among the hunters none was more feared than the Shadow Man. Now, half a century later in Florida, he has returned and for those who escaped the Shadow Man's fingers, the past is catching up with them. And for Holocaust survivors, the past means death - unless they can find the Shadow Man first ...

Scott Freeman a college professor grounded in the rational and practical, he becomes uneasy after finding an anonymous love letter hidden in his daughter's room. But the reality of Ashley's plight far exceeds Scott's worst suspicions. One drink too many had led Ashley, a beautiful, bright art student, into what she thought was just a fling with a blue-collar bad boy. But now, no amount of pleading or reasoning can discourage his phone calls, ardent e-mails, and constant, watchful gaze. The harder Ashley tries to break free, the deeper Michael burrows into every aspect of her life, in desperation she turns to her divorced parents and her mother's new partner. Despite lingering resentment their devotion to Ashley is the common bond that will draw them together to face down a predator.