Few film actors had the lasting popularity of John Wayne, especially when he appeared in westerns. During his lifetime, he was a top-ten box office star for twenty-four years. Three decades after his death, a 2012 Harris poll continued to place him among the top 5 most popular film actors. In this comprehensive essay, Rambo-creator David Morrell analyzes Waynes career in westerns and explores his fascinating, complex personality, including his Latin studies in high school and his skills as...

From the master of high action, David Morrell, comes a classic espionage thriller that changed the way spy novels were written.Two orphans are befriended by a man, who unknown to them works for the CIA. He makes the boys love him as a father, then recruits them as his off-the-books operatives, training them to be assassins. Now, to protect himself, he tries desperately to have them killed.Spanning the globe and nine hundred years of history, THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ...

From acclaimed Thriller Master, David Morrell, comes a classic espionage tale that changed the genre, paving the way for the religious/historical thrillers of Dan Brown, Steve Berry, and James Rollins.In a remote monastery in Vermont, a mysterious man named Drew MacLane has spent six years alone in a cell doing penance for sins that he committed for his government. His only human contact is the hand that delivers his spartan meals through a slot in his door. Desperate to retreat fr...

From the bestselling author of the classic espionage saga, The Brotherhood of the Rose, comes a high-action spy novel about deception and the meaning of loyalty. . . .When a bureaucratic mistake allows a terrorist attack to occur, CIA operative Steve Decker leaves the spy world in disgust. Seeking a new life, he moves to picturesque Santa Fe, New Mexico, and for the first time allows himself to think about something other than global intrigue and violence. He even lowers his guard ...

Award-winning author David Morrell created the character of Rambo in his 1972 novel, First Blood, which has been called the father of the modern action novel. Rambo went on to become one of the five most recognized thriller icons, along with Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, James Bond, and Harry Potter. In this in-depth essay, for the first time Morrell tells the full story about how the novel and Rambo were created. Among his new revelations, Morrell discusses how Audie Murphy, Americas most-deco...

In 1244, at the infamous fortress of Montségur, Christian Inquisitors massacred the last vestige of a heresy known as Mithraism. In todays New York City, reporter Tess Drake discovers a mysterious altar in the apartment of a friend whose charred body was discovered in a nearby park. The altar depicts a man astride a bull, plunging a knife into its neck while a dog, a scorpion, and a snake drink the blood. The meaning of that altar propels Tess on a furious hunt for the truth about what hap...

Five people gather in a run-down motel and begin preparations to break in to the Paragon Hotel. The five people are "creepers," the slang term for urban explorers: city archeologists with a passion for investigating abandoned buildings. On this evening, they are joined by a reporter who wants to profile them for a New York Times article. After the group enters the hotel, it becomes clear that he will get much more than he bargained for. Danger, terror, and death await the creepers in a pla...

Once they were boyhood best friends, playing in the woods near their homes, pretending to be soldiers surviving behind enemy lines. Grownup, they belonged to Delta Force and later worked as protectors for the world's best security company. Now their lives have taken drastically different paths, pitting them against one another, forcing them to play their boyhood game again, this time to learn who dies. The survival of a great city hangs in the balance as two friends-turned-enemies hunt one...

"Something is on the prowl in the forests and foothills outside the small Wyoming town of Potter's Field, something that mutilates but does not feed, that kills indiscriminately and without reason, at night, by moonlight. As the body count mounts, police chief Nathan Slaughter and the town's medical examiner try to find out who or what is doing the killing....Morrell embeds compelling human drama in a taut, hell-for-leather plot consisting of equal parts police procedural, medical detectiv...

The highly acclaimed thriller that launched the cultural phenomenon, Rambo.'Nobody does this kind of thing better than David Morrell' Lee ChildOne war waged against one man: RAMBO. First came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of FIRST BLOOD to take his place on the world's cultural landscape.This remarkable novel pits a young, disillusioned and ragged...

In 1916, Mexican bandit Pancho Villa raided the southwestern border town of Columbus. 300 American soldiers fought 400 attackers in a battle that ended with one of the last cavalry charges in U.S. history. Influenced by Sam Peckinpah, David Morrell dramatizes this epic era in American history through the eyes of a civilian scout old enough to have been in the Civil War, the Indian wars, Cuba, and the Philippines. Knowing that his ways are finished, he teaches a young recruit about the past...

Spy Paul Kagan frantically seeks a haven for himself and a precious bundle he conceals under his coat. The bundle is a baby with the power to change the world. The pursuers are three enemies who will stop at nothing to get their hands on the child. When Kagan takes shelter in what seems to be a deserted home, he discovers an abandoned woman and her young son. As death lurks outside the house, these three unlikely allies prepare for a siege that will change their lives forever and perhaps t...