A gripping, acclaimed action-packed Viking epic.Set in the 10th century, when Viking raids were at their peak, Paul Watkins spins a tale that covers three continents. After centuries of ranging unchecked across the northern world, the fortunes of the Vikings have begun to turn. In this time of violent change, a young man, struck by lightning, is believed to be marked by the gods as a keeper of the Norse religion's greatest secret. To save the Norse faith and himsel...

Paris, 1939. Europe is on the brink of a second World War. David Halifax, a young American art student, is arrested for forgery. Unbeknownst to Halifax, an unscrupulous art dealer has put some of his paintings on the market, attempting to pass them off as Old Masters. When the ruse is uncovered, it is Halifax who is arrested, and charged with forgery. Then, as the Nazis converge upon Paris, Halifax is press-ganged into service by the Resistance: he must forge a number of great paintings, s...

While the eyes of the world are focused upon attempts to scale Mount Everest, two young men - once members of the world's climbing elite, subsequently forced into premature retirement after the failure of a secret military operation in the Alps during World War II - have become outcasts of mountaineering society. Until, that is, a peculiar and dangerous request is made of them, drawing them back to the mountains on an exploit that will prove treacherous in more ways than one, as they confr...

In this enthralling and sometimes harrowing memoir, the acclaimed author of The Promise of Light gives us a masterly companion to such classics as Brideshead Revisited and A Separate Peace.At the age of seven, Paul Watkins was roughly transplanted from his home in Rhode Island to England's Dragon School. He was greeted by a delegation of bullies who, in time, would become his friends and whose rules would become his own. For at Dragon, and later at Eton, ...

Paul Watkins spent six years as a crewman on a deep-sea fishing boat. This novel tells his story.The coast of New England: beautiful but savage, where storms can whip up out of nowhere, and the wrecks wash up on the beach. James Pfeiffer, a young college dropout, is initiated into the gruelling world of the trawler boats, where he discovers the thrill and terror of life at sea.Paul Watkins's gripping novel tells the brutal story of life on the trawlers, the danger, the comrad...

"A high-adrenaline tale of World War II Paris and the secret battle to save the city's masterpieces from the Nazis. . . . [from] a terrific storyteller." — BooklistAt the turn of World War II, David Halifax is a young American painter who receives a scholarship to come to Paris and work under the tutelage of the mysterious and brilliant Russian painter, Alexander Pankratov. Getting more than he bargained for, Halifax is quickly subjected t...

One man's quiet life is shattered when he's forced to confront terrifying secrets he'd thought buried high in the Italian AlpsThe New York Times has called his work "daring and remarkably assured," The Washington Post has dubbed it "shamelessly entertaining," and the Los Angeles Times claims it renders "the raw elegence of the human experience itself." Now Paul Watkins returns with his most engaging and atmospheric novel yet. The ice soldier of the...

In The Promise of Light by Paul Watkins, it is 1921, and young Ben Sheridan's Irish-American father mysteriously dies in their small Rhode Island town. Determined to learn the truth about his family's cloudy past, he sets sail for Ireland, and quickly becomes involved in a struggle between soldiers of the newly formed Irish Republican Army and the brutal British troops. Amidst the lush and rugged Irish countryside, and the horrible violence unfolding across it, Ben must search for...

“An outstandingly intelligent and significant novel” about greed and environmental devastation from the author of the Booker Prize-nominated Night Over Day Over Night*BooklistLogger Noah Mackenzie has a bitter history with the Algonquin wilderness, and now he’s determined to clear-cut the part he considers his own. The only person in the remote Maine town of Abenaki Junction putting up any fight for the forest is Madeleine...

Paul Watkins spent six years as a crewman on a deep-sea fishing boat. This novel tells his story.The coast of New England: beautiful but savage, where storms can whip up out of nowhere, and the wrecks wash up on the beach. James Pfeiffer, a young college dropout, is initiated into the gruelling world of the trawler boats, where he discovers the thrill and terror of life at sea.Paul Watkins’s gripping novel tells the brutal story of life on the trawlers, the danger, the comr...

Halifax had been in French Africa for five years, doing whatever foolhardy, dangerous thing Serailler ordered him to do. It was some time before he finally snapped, but when he did, he opened the throttle, eased back the stick, and lifted straight and high into a dream.

Known for his vivid imagery, provocative subjects, and charged prose, Paul Watkins has emerged as one of the most gifted writers of his generation. This powerful novel shimmers with lyrical descriptions of the seascape as it sounds the depths of memory and conscience. Seeing a man brutally murdered in his local hangout on the docks of Newport sends Paul Wedekind into a torturous reverie of his past. Even more disturbingly, Paul is convinced that he recognizes the killer as Ingo Budde, a bl...