Books published by publisher Pocket Book

In a riveting and unputdownable thriller from the Queen of Suspense, a young woman is ensnared into returning to a place she had wanted to leave behind forever—her childhood home.At the age of ten, Liza Barton shot her mother, trying desperately to protect her from her estranged stepfather, Ted Cartwright. Despite his claim that the shooting was a deliberate act, the Juvenile Court ruled the death an accident. Many people, however, agreed with Cartwright, and the tabloids compared the child to the infamous murderess Lizzie Borden, pointing even to the similarity of their names. To erase her past, her adoptive parents change her name to Celia. At age twenty-eight, a successful interior designer in Manhattan, she marries a childless sixty-year-old widower, Laurence Foster, and they have a son. Before their marriage, she reveals to him her true identity. Two years later, on his deathbed, he makes her swear never to tell anyone so that their son, Jack, will not carry the stigma of her past. Two years later, Celia is happily remarried. Her peace of mind is shattered when her new husband surprises her with a gift—the house where she killed her mother. And it soon becomes clear that there is someone in the community knows Celia. More and more, there are signs that someone in the community knows Celia’s true identity. When the real estate agent who sold them the house is brutally murdered and Celia is the first on the crime scene, she becomes a suspect. As she fights to prove her innocence, she has no idea that she and her son, Jack, are now the targets of a killer.

A “good old-fashioned novel of psychological suspense, the kind that keeps you reading deep into the night” (The Globe and Mail) about a young bride, a lonely single mother, and a man who has lost his memory cross paths on a desolate and windswept English beach from the New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone. In the seaside town of Ridinghouse Bay, single mom Alice Lake discovers a man sitting on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside. Meanwhile, in a London suburb, newlywed Lily Monrose grows anxious when her husband fails to return home from work one night. Soon, she receives even worse and more confounding news: according to the police, the man she married never even existed. Twenty-three years earlier, Gray and Kirsty Ross are teenagers on a summer holiday with their parents. The annual trip to Ridinghouse Bay is uneventful, until an enigmatic young man starts paying extra attention to Kirsty. Something about him makes Gray uncomfortable—and it’s not just because he’s a protective older brother. What is the relationship between these three events? Who is the man on the beach? Where is Lily’s missing husband? And what ever happened to the man who made such a lasting and disturbing impression on Gray? A delicious collision course of a novel, filled with the believable characters, stunning writing, and shocking twists and turns, I Found You is “infused with just enough intrigue to keep the pages turning. Readers of Liane Moriarty, Paula Hawkins, and Ruth Ware will love” (Library Journal, starred review).

Bless the Beasts & Children became the late Glendon Swarthout's biggest bestseller, selling over 3 million copies in North America, with many overseas foreign language editions and never being out of print since first published in 1970. Bless the Beasts was a selection of the Literary Guild, the Doubleday Book Club, as well as a Reader's Digest condensed book. This novel was nominated by hard cover publisher Doubleday as its Pulitzer Prize candidate in Fiction for 1970. The film of Bless the Beasts by director Stanley Kramer in 1972 was not as successful, but it did contain a famous, Oscar-nominated theme song by the Carpenters and its music score has been released as "Nadia's Theme," from the 1972 Olympics and is still heard today as the theme music from CBS Television's long-running soap opera, "The Young and the Restless."This 25th anniversary edition of this juvenile classic, which includes an Afterword by the author's son, Miles Swarthout, answering some of the questions teenagers have written in about this story from their high school and college literature classes across America, giving them a better understanding of this famous novel, one of the first books to ever deal with the environmental subject of animal rights. Based upon my adventures as a summer camper and counselor at a private boys' ranch camp in Prescott, Arizona, Bless the Beasts & Children tells a tragicomic tale of a group of disturbed teenaged boys from over-privileged families who are "warehoused" by their inattentive parents at a summer session at an Arizona boys camp in hopes that their lazy, urban kids will be toughened-up in this camp's rigorous cowboy program. While on a field trip with their militaristic counselor, Wheaties, the boys see an annual buffalo "hunt" sponsored by the Arizona Fish and Game department, in which their counselor has drawn a permit. Sickened by the slaughter of these great beasts while trapped in big pens by these "sportsmen," the youths resolve to save the next day's allotment of 30 buffalo. Riding from their forest camp later that day on horses, the boys steal a pickup in Prescott and head up to Flagstaff on their mission-of-mercy. Complications arise, but these problem boys band together and manage to free these national symbols, but only after strenous effort and at great price. Glendon Swarthout's more positive response to William Golding's classic Lord of the Flies, and Golding's thesis that all men are basically beasts, stands as one of the first contemporary bestsellers to take up the cause of animal rights. Bless the Beasts remains one of the few controversial novels which ever resulted in some political change and social good -- the Arizona legislature mandated changing the regulations of their annual buffalo hunt to more humane practices due to student protests resulting from this book and film. Glendon's theme that even a group of misfit youths, if banded together in common cause, were capable of a great, heroic deed, still resonates strongly with American teenagers and their teachers, and this classic novel is still mandatory reading in many English classrooms across America.Reviews --"This is Mr. Swarthout's best novel since They Came To Cordura, an exciting mission-pursuit story with an engrossing cast of young characters." Publisher's Weekly"This is one of the rare books whose impact will far exceed its size. A brief synopsis of the plot cannot prepare the reader for the emotional involvement he will encounter...Truly an excellent novel." Nancy Chalfant, Sunday News & Leader, Springfield, Missouri"Well-written, almost poetically sparse, author Swarthout's ninth book adds to his prestige the acclaim that he handles the characters of runaway kids every bit as easily as he maneuvered rebellious soldiers in They Came To Cordura." the Los Angeles Times"It's a novel that no reader, once hooked, can put down....You shouldn't miss this one." Nard Jones, Seattle Post-Intel

The truth behind the twisted crimes that inspired the films Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs...From “America’s principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers” (The Boston Book Review) comes the definitive account of Ed Gein, a mild-mannered Wisconsin farmhand who stunned an unsuspecting nation—and redefined the meaning of the word “psycho.” The year was 1957. The place was an ordinary farmhouse in America’s heartland, filled with extraordinary evidence of unthinkable depravity. The man behind the massacre was a slight, unassuming Midwesterner with a strange smile—and even stranger attachment to his domineering mother. After her death and a failed attempt to dig up his mother’s body from the local cemetery, Gein turned to other grave robberies and, ultimately, multiple murders. Driven to commit gruesome and bizarre acts beyond all imagining, Ed Gein remains one of the most deranged minds in the annals of American homicide. This is his story—recounted in fascinating and chilling detail by Harold Schechter, one of the most acclaimed true-crime storytellers of our time.

The shocking true story of the United States government’s quest to hide the reality of extraterrestrial contact, even at the cost of its citizens.In 1978, Paul Bennewitz, an electrical physicist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, became convinced that the strange lights he saw hovering in the night sky were extraterrestrial. He reached out to newspapers, senators, and even the president before anyone responded. Air Force investigators listened to his story, as did Bill Moore, the author of the first book on the infamous Roswell UFO incident. Unbeknownst to Bennewitz, Moore was hired by a group of intelligence agents to keep tabs on Bennewitz while the Air Force ran a psychological profile and disinformation campaign on the unsuspecting physicist. In return, Air Force Intelligence would let Moore in on classified UFO material. What follows is a scandalous true tale of disinformation, corruption, and exploitation, all at the hands of the United States intelligence community.

Set against the tragic war sparked by Hernando de Soto’s brutal invasion of the American South, A Searing Wind brings to an electrifying climax the intense historical action in the series hailed as “exciting, skillfully crafted, and fast-paced” (Publishers Weekly).Once exiled by the Chicaza for cowardice in battle, Black Shell nevertheless dedicates his soul to stemming the onslaught of the Kristiano invaders and protecting his people. He and his beautiful wife, Pearl Hand, have fought the enemy from the Florida peninsula through the very heart of native America. They have seen the shackled slaves, heard the broken promises—and they have learned of de Soto’s plans to target the Chicaza. Obsessed with setting the perfect trap, Black Shell gambles everything to preserve his people’s fragile existence— their pride, traditions, even their winter stockpiles of food and supplies. But the stakes are raised to their greatest heights when he and Pearl Hand must walk boldly into de Soto’s camp and engage the cunning monster in a desperate game of wits in order to decide the fate of a continent.

AT A HAUNTED HISTORIC VILLAGE, NANCY SEES THE GHOSTLY SIGNS OF FOUL PLAY Nancy loves a good mystery. That's why she, Bess, and George are volunteering at Persimmon Woods Pioneer Village, a living history museum of the 1830s. Nancy's heard that a lot of weird things have been happening there, like the eerie sightings of the Lantern Lady -- the ghost of an original settler. But as soon as Nancy starts investigating, she learns that even though the workers at Persimmon Woods are in costume, the danger isn't an act. Someone has concocted a cunning scheme to destroy the village, and if Nancy doesn't find the culprit, she could become history, too.

A killer turns a young family's dream holiday into an unfathomable nightmare....Menley Nichols and her husband, Adam, a criminal attorney, rent a house on Cape Cod, in the hope of restoring their faltering marriage. The birth of their daughter, Hannah, has revitalized their relationship, but Menley has never stopped blaming herself for the accidental death of her two-year-old son. The serenity of the Cape promises a new start. In Remember House, an eighteenth-century landmark with a sinister past, strange incidents force Menley to relive the accident that killed her son, and she begins to fear for Hannah's safety. Then Adam takes on a client suspected of murder when his wealthy young bride of only three months drowns in a storm -- and the family is drawn into a rising tide of terror. A confrontation on a dark, rain-swept beach leads to a harrowing climax that only Mary Higgins Clark could have created.

Olivia dreamed of a sun-filled love, a happy life. Then she entered Foxworth Hall... V.C. Andrews' thrilling new novel spins a tale of dreadful secrets and dark, forbidden passions -- of the time before Flowers in the Attic began. Long before terror flowered in the attic, thin, spinsterish Olivia came to Virginia as Malcolm Foxworth's bride. At last, with her tall handsome husband, she would find the joy she had waited for, longed for. But in the gloomy mansion filled with hidden rooms and festering desires, a stain of jealous obsession begins to spread...an evil that will threaten her children, two lovely boys and one very special, beautiful girl. For within one innocent child, a shocking secret lives...a secret that will taint the proud Foxworth name, and haunt all their lives forever!