Thomas H. Cook

What drove a woman to murder in 1920s New England? It was referred to as the Chatham School affair—a tragic event that destroyed five lives, shook a coastal Massachusetts community to its core, and traumatized a boy named Henry Griswald. Now Henry is an aged, unmarried lawyer, and as he writes his will, he recalls that long-ago day in 1926 when something drove his teacher to murder—and contemplates the role he played in it all . . .

Thomas Cook has always been drawn to dark places, for the powerful emotions they evoke and for what we can learn from them. These lessons are often unexpected and sometimes profoundly intimate, but they are never straightforward.With his wife and daughter, Cook travels across the globe in search of darkness--from Lourdes to Ghana, from San Francisco to Verdun, from the monumental, mechanized horror of Auschwitz to the intimate personal grief of a shrine to dead infants in Kamukura, Japan. Along the way he reflects on what these sites may teach us, not only about human history, but about our own personal histories.During the course of a lifetime of traveling to some of earth's most tragic locales, from the leper colony on Molokai to ground zero at Hiroshima, he finds not only darkness, but a light that can illuminate the darkness within each of us. Written in vivid prose, this is at once a personal memoir of exploration (both external and internal) and a strangely heartening look at the radiance and optimism that may be found at the very heart of darkness.

Shortlisted for the 2014 Edgar Award and Barry Award for Best NovelThomas H. Cook is peerless in finding the humanity behind crime. In one of his greatest novels yet, a man explores unspools the history of his fractured relationship with his wife, as he stands trial for her murder. Samuel Madison always wondered why Sandrine chose him. He was a meek, stuffy doctorate student; she a brilliant bohemian with limitless imagination. On the surface, their relationship seemed tranquil: jobs at the same liberal arts college, a precocious young daughter, and a home filled with art and literature. And then one night Sandrine is found dead in their bedroom from an overdose of pain medication and alcohol, and Samuel is accused of poisoning her. As secrets about their often tumultuous marriage come to light in the courtroom, Samuel must face a town convinced of his guilt, a daughter whose faith in her father has been shaken to its core, and the truth about his wife, who never ceased being a mystery to him. Sandrine's Case is a powerful novel about the evil that can lurk within the heart of a seemingly ordinary man, and whether love can be reawakened even after death.

How did Sandrine die? There was no forced entry. She had been gradually stockpiling prescription drugs. A lethal quantity of Demerol was found in her blood. But did the beautiful, luminous Sandrine Madison really take her own life? The District Attorny doesn't think so. Neither does the local newspaper. And so Sandrine's husband must now face a town convinced of his guilt and a daughter whose faith in her father has been shaken to its core. But, as he stands in the dock, Samuel Madison must confront yet more searing questions: Who was Sandrine? Why did she die? And why - how? - is she making him fall in love with her all over again? A psychological thriller from a true master, SANDRINE will hold you in its spell until its unexpected end.

Haunted by the suicide of his friend, the true crime writer Julian Wells, Philip Anders starts to reread his books. And in their pages, he starts to glimpse a darkness that might drive a man to suicide. In an effort to understand Julian's death, Anders travels to Paris, revisiting the places that Julian used as the research and settings for his books. But even as he embarks on this personal quest, Anders is plagued by the memory of a woman the two men once knew. And he comes to wonder if her disappearance, long ago, may be the crime that drove his friend to take his own life...

In Thomas H. Cook’s Edgar Award–nominated first novel, a weary detective tracks a blood-crazed psychopath Blood seeps into the gutters at the children’s zoo in Central Park. Two deer have been slaughtered, one stabbed fifty-seven times and the other slashed across the neck. Normally it would be a case for the Parks Department, but these are no ordinary deer. The pride of the small menagerie, they were given to the zoo by a prominent socialite who cannot afford bloody headlines. The NYPD hands the case to Detective Reardon, star of the homicide squad. A recent widower at fifty-six, Reardon has seen too many human victims to care much about the two butchered animals. He resents being taken off other pressing cases for the sake of politics, but soon another killing snaps him to attention. Two women are found dead in their apartment, one stabbed fifty-seven times and the other with her throat cut. Surely this vicious parallel isn’t a coincidence.…

"Nobody tells a story better than Thomas H. Cook." --Michael Connelly ON THE EVE OF WORLD WAR II, A HIGH STAKES INTERNATIONAL PLOT LEADS TO A DEADLY OBSESSION Thomas Danforth has lived a fortunate life. The son of a wealthy importer, he wandered the globe in his youth, and now, in his twenties, he lives in New York City and runs the family business. It is 1939 and the world is on the brink of war, but his life is untroubled, his future assured. Then, on a snowy evening walk along Gramercy Park, a friend makes a fateful request--and involves Thomas in a dangerous idea that could change the fates of millions. Danforth is to provide access to his secluded Connecticut mansion, where a mysterious woman will receive training in firearms and explosives. Thus begins an international plot carried out by the strange and alluring Anna Klein--a plot that will ensnare Thomas in more ways than one. When it all goes wrong and Anna disappears, his quest across a war torn world begins...

One freezing night in 1939, Thomas Danforth accepts a mission that will change his life forever: travel to Nazi Germany as cover for an enigmatic female assassin, Anna Klein. Danforth is captivated by this beautiful, mysterious woman. But just as he starts to discover more about her, she disappears... Desperately searching for her through a Europe ravaged by war, Danforth becomes ensnared in a maelstrom of love and vengeance, of shifting loyalties and betrayals. His quest will span decades, implicate him in a world-wide conspiracy, and take him to the brink of madness. But he cannot shake the obsession that drives his every waking moment: Who is Anna Klein?

'What did my father do? He killed my mother, my sister, and my brother, then waited to kill me...' Steve Farris is an architect who lives with his wife and son in the suburbs. His world changes drastically when he is contacted by Rebecca Soltero, who wants to interview him for a book she's writing about men who murdered their families. For in 1959 Steve's father shot his wife and their teenage daughter and son, then vanished. Nine-year-old Stevie, desperately missing his gifted older sister, managed to block out all thoughts about the deaths. Now Rebecca lures him into talking, and he is forced to acknowledge the questions that have haunted his subconscious mind: did his father mean to kill him, too? What secret did his father and his sister share? The novel shifts back and forth in time, from the present to the years before Steve's birth to the immediate aftermath of the deaths, but always comes back to the horrible deed - the excruciating how and the unanswerable why.

Middling historian Lucas Paige visits St. Louis to give a sparsely attended reading--nothing out of the ordinary. Except among the yawning attendees is someone he did not expect: Lola Faye Gilroy, the "other woman" he has long blamed for his father's murder decades earlier. Reluctantly, Luke joins Lola Faye for a drink. As one drink turns into several, these two battered souls relive, from their different perspectives, the most searing experience of their lives. Slowly but surely, the hotel bar dissolves around them and they are transported back to the tiny southern town where this defining moment--a violent crime of passion--is turned in the light once more to reveal flaws in the old answers. As it turns out, there is much Luke doesn't know. And what he doesn't know can hurt him. Trapped in an increasingly intense emotional exchange, and with no place to go save back into his own dark past, Luke struggles to gain control of an ever more threatening conversation, to discover why Lola Faye has come and what she is after--before it is too late. A taut literary thriller in the gothic tradition of Master of the Delta.

Luke Paige, historian and writer, is signing his latest work in a bookstore in Alabama when in the queue he spots a woman he hoped never to see again. Lola Faye was once his father's secret lover - and he holds her to blame for everything. Her husband shot Luke's father dead, and his mother died soon after. Lola Faye wants to talk - and talk - over a drink, that becomes dinner, and then another drink. Slowly, painfully, Luke and Lola revisit the terrible events that have shaped their lives. The story they reveal is one of the timeless struggle between fathers and sons; of longed-for passion; of hopes and dreams thwarted by fate and circumstances.

George Gates is a former travel writer. He used to specialize in writing about places where people disappeared, sometimes individuals, sometimes whole societies. Now, since the murder of his eight-year-old son, Gates has written gentler stories for the town paper about flower festivals and local celebrities. Enter Arlo MacBride, a retired missing-persons detective who, knowing Gates' past, mentions the case of Katherine Carr, a woman who vanished twenty years before, leaving nothing behind but a few poems and a strange little story. It is this story that spurs Gates to inquire into its missing author's brief life and dire fate, an exploration that leads him to discoveries about life and death, mystery and resolution.

Edited by Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst and New York Times bestselling author of The Nine, The Best American Crime Reporting 2009 is a must-have for the true crime reader, complete with the most gripping, suspenseful, and brilliant stories of the year by the masters of crime reporting. Featuring stories of fraud, murder, theft, and madness, the Best American Crime Reporting series has been hailed as "arresting reading" (People) and the best mix of "the political, the macabre, and the downright brilliant" (Entertainment Weekly).

Eric Moore has a prosperous business, a comfortable home, a stable family life in a quiet town. Then, on an ordinary night, his teenage son Keith babysits Amy Giordano, the eight-year-old daughter of a neighboring family. The next morning Amy is missing, and Eric isn't sure his son is innocent. In his desperate attempt to hold his family together by proving his-and the community's-suspicions wrong, Eric finds himself in a vortex of doubt and broken trust. What should he make of Keith's strange behavior? Of his wife's furtive phone calls to a colleague? Of his brother's hints that he knows things he's afraid to say? In a "heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching" (New York Daily News) race against time and mistrust, Eric must discover what has happened to Amy Giordano and face the long-buried family secrets he has so carefully ignored.

Attorney Henry Griswald has a secret: the truth behind the tragic events the world knew as the Chatham School Affair, the controversial tragedy that destroyed five lives, shattered a quiet community, and forever scarred the young boy. Layer by layer, in The Chatham School Affair, Cook paints a stunning portrait of a woman, a school, and a town in which passionate violence seems impossible...and inevitable. "Thomas Cook's night visions, seen through a lens darkly, are haunting," raved the New York Times Book Review, and The Chatham School Affair will cement this superb writer's position as one of crime fiction's most prodigious talents, a master of the unexpected ending.