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Thunderhead (Preston And Child Novel)
''Thunderhead'' is a thriller novel by American writers Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The book was published on July 1, 1999 by Grand Central Publishing. Plot synopsis Anthropologist Nora Kelly finds a letter that was written sixteen years ago, but mysteriously sent to her only recently. The letter is written by her father, long believed dead. The letter states that he had found the lost city of gold, Quivira. Kelly organizes an expedition into a harsh, remote corner of Utah's canyon country. A portion of the team learns that the city of Quivira held not gold, but micaceous, golden colored pottery, and that it also was a center for an Aztec death cult, which had enslaved the native Anasazi people. The Aztec rulers used black magic, aided by a powder of the fungus ''Coccidioides immitis'' which could kill by causing coccidioidomycosis. Kelly's teammate, Sloane, attempts to kill Kelly to be the sole person who can claim the find, not suspecting what Kelly has learned about the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Preston
Douglas Jerome Preston (born May 31, 1956) is an American journalist and author. Although he is best known for his thrillers in collaboration with Lincoln Child (including the ''Agent Pendergast'' series and ''Gideon Crew'' series), he has also written six solo novels, including the '' Wyman Ford'' series and a novel entitled ''Jennie'', which was made into a movie by Disney. He has authored a half-dozen nonfiction books on science and exploration and writes occasionally for ''The New Yorker'', '' Smithsonian'', and other magazines. Life and early career Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts. A graduate of the Cambridge School of Weston in Weston, Massachusetts, and Pomona College in Claremont, California, Preston began his writing career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. From 1978 to 1985, Preston worked for the American Museum of Natural History as a writer, editor, and manager of publications. He served as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mescaline
Mescaline or mescalin (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) is a naturally occurring psychedelic protoalkaloid of the substituted phenethylamine class, known for its hallucinogenic effects comparable to those of LSD and psilocybin. Biological sources It occurs naturally in several species of cacti. It is also found in small amounts in certain members of the bean family, Fabaceae, including ''Acacia berlandieri''. However those claims concerning ''Acacia'' species have been challenged and have been unsupported in any additional analysis. History and use Peyote has been used for at least 5,700 years by Indigenous peoples of the Americas in Mexico. Europeans noted use of peyote in Native American religious ceremonies upon early contact, notably by the Huichols in Mexico. Other mescaline-containing cacti such as the San Pedro have a long history of use in South America, from Peru to Ecuador. While religious and ceremonial peyote use was widespread in the Aztec empire and northern M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Lincoln Child
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Douglas Preston
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term Romance (literary fiction), "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek novel, Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1998 American Novels
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles. * January 11 – Over 100 people are killed in the Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria. * January 12 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning. * January 17 – The ''Drudge Report'' breaks the story about U.S. President Bill Clinton's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, which will lead to the House of Representatives' impeachment of him. February * February 3 – Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler severs the cable of a cable-car. * February 4 – The 5.9 Afghanistan earthquake shakes the Takhar Province with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (''Very strong''). With up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cemetery Dance (novel)
''Cemetery Dance'' is a thriller novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child released on May 12, 2009 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the ninth installment in the Special Agent Pendergast series. During production, it was known by the pre-release title ''Revenant''. The preceding novel is '' The Wheel of Darkness''. Plot After celebrating their first anniversary, William Smithback, a reporter for ''The New York Times'', and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archeologist, return home from a romantic dinner. Kelly slips out to pick up a pastry from the local shop, but upon her return to their apartment in the Upper West side of Manhattan, she finds the door ajar, Smithback dead, and is attacked as she approaches. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, the attacker seen leaving the building was an individual who lived in the apartment building along with Smithback and Kelly. The twist: the man that witnesses believe is Smithback's murderer was pu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Cabinet Of Curiosities
''The Cabinet of Curiosities'' is a thriller novel by American writers Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, released on June 3, 2002 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the third installment in the Special Agent Pendergast series. Plot summary Workers at a construction site in Manhattan discover a long-buried tunnel containing the bodies of 36 young people from over a century ago, each with part of their spines removed. Secretive Special Agent Aloysius X. L. Pendergast takes an interest in the case and recruits Dr. Nora Kelly, an archaeologist at New York City's American Museum of Natural History, to quickly investigate the crime scene and collect evidence prior to the intervention of Anthony Fairhaven, the wealthy real estate developer who is directing the construction of a new apartment tower on the property. Fairhaven has the bodies quickly removed and the discovery hushed up, but Dr. Kelly is able to recover a note with the name and address of one of the victims, a poor youn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reliquary (novel)
''Reliquary'' is the 1997 ''New York Times'' best-selling sequel to '' Relic'', by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The legacy of the blood-maddened Mbwun lives on in ''Reliquary'', but the focus is shifted from the original museum setting to the tunnels beneath the streets of New York City. The book is the second in the Special Agent Pendergast series. Plot summary The story picks up where the epilogue of ''Relic'' left off. Two headless skeletons are found in the Humboldt Kill. When further decapitated bodies follow, there is suspicion of a second Mbwun monster. Major characters from the original book team up with new ones to solve the puzzle. The mystery soon leads underground to the Mole people, and even deeper towards enigmatic beings called the Wrinklers. In the end, it is revealed that the Wrinklers are led by Frock, who has refined a modified version of the Mbwun plant, created by Kawakita to regain the use of his legs. Kawakita also gave the drug to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relic (novel)
''Relic'' is a 1995 novel by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and the first in the Special Agent Pendergast series. As a horror novel and techno-thriller, it comments on the possibilities inherent in Genetic engineering, genetic manipulation, and is critical of museums and their role both in society and in the scientific community. It is the basis of the film ''The Relic (film), The Relic'' (1997). Plot In September 1987, Dr. Julian Whittlesey is leading an expedition through the Amazon Basin, in the Brazilian rainforest, in search of the lost Kothoga tribe. He hopes to prove that they still do exist and in the process learn more about their culture, including their lizard god Mbwun ("He Who Walks On All Fours"), supposedly the son of Satan. However, Whittlesey disappears after finding the mutilated body of his partner, Crocker, and realizes that a creature in the bush is stalking him. A year later, in Belém, a dock worker named Ven is suddenly and brutall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aloysius Pendergast
Aloysius Xingu Leng Pendergast is a fictional character appearing in novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. He first appeared as a supporting character in their first novel, ''Relic'' (1995), and in its 1997 sequel ''Reliquary'', before assuming the protagonist role in the 2002 novel ''The Cabinet of Curiosities''. Pendergast is a special agent with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He once worked out of the New Orleans Field Office of the FBI, but resides in New York City and works out of the New York Field Office; he frequently travels out of state to investigate cases which interest him, often those appearing to be the work of serial killers. Background Aloysius Xingu Leng Pendergast was born in early December 1960 and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Pendergast retains his Southern manners and mellifluous Deep Southern accent. He studied anthropology at Harvard University (graduating summa cum laude) and received two D. Phil. degrees, on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nora Benjamin Kubie
Nora Benjamin Kubie (January 4, 1899 - September 8, 1988) was an American writer, artist and amateur archaeologist. Biography Born Eleanor Gottheil, she was the daughter of Muriel H. and Paul Gotteil, an executive with the Cunard Line in New York. She graduated from the Calhoun School in New York, delivering the valedictory speech in 1916. Gottheil appears on the Vassar College alumnae list. and was reported by the New York Times as having graduating in 1920 from Barnard College.''New York Times'Obituary/ref> Gottheil was married to John J. Benjamin from 1922 until his death in 1936 and she had one son by him. From 1938 to 1949 she was married to the psychoanalyst Lawrence Kubie. She began her literary career writing nautical stories and juvenile novels, later focusing on Jewish historical fiction and archaeology. She wrote, she said, about things, places, events, and phenomena she knew about personally. Her books about Israel for example, were written after she moved there in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Datura
''Datura'' is a genus of nine species of highly poisonous, vespertine-flowering plants belonging to the nightshade family Solanaceae. They are commonly known as thornapples or jimsonweeds, but are also known as devil's trumpets (not to be confused with angel's trumpets, which are placed in the closely related genus ''Brugmansia''). Other English common names include moonflower, devil's weed, and hell's bells. All species of ''Datura'' are extremely poisonous and potentially psychoactive, especially their seeds and flowers, which can cause respiratory depression, arrhythmias, fever, delirium, hallucinations, anticholinergic syndrome, psychosis, and even death if taken internally. Due to their effects and symptoms, they have occasionally been used not only as poisons, but also as hallucinogens by various groups throughout history. Traditionally, psychoactive administration of ''Datura'' species has often been associated with witchcraft and sorcery or similar practices in man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
