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...

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...

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 ...

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 in the American cultural landscape.

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...

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 ...

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...

In a remote valley in the dead of winter, a pioneer family encounters a pack of mysterious animals with uncommon ferocity and intelligence. As a blizzard worsens, the trap tightens until only a twelve-year-old girl holds the secret of survival.This chilling e-story proves why David Morrell received a lifetime-achievement ThrillerMaster Award from the International Thriller Writers organization as well as three Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association. Morrell, who has been ca...

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...

"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...

One of the great literary mysteries of the twentieth century concerns J. D. Salinger. In the mid-1960s, the revered creator of The Catcher in the Rye suddenly stopped publishing and withdrew from public life. In David Morrells haunting “The Architecture of Snow,” an author similar to Salinger submits a manuscript after a four-decade absence. Why has he abruptly resurfaced? What caused his long-ago disappearance? When editor Tom Neal embarks on a search to a remote New England town, he unco...