And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder
July 1, 2023
The Lost Tomb, celebrated thriller writer Preston's first historical nonfiction collection, travels from Italy and Honduras to Egypt's Valley of the Kings and the mass grave of animals killed by the asteroid impact that doomed the Cretaceous period to plumb some of history's deepest mysteries (100,000-copy first printing). Prepub Alert.
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October 1, 2023
More adventure journalism from the noted thriller author. As Preston, author of The Lost City of the Monkey God, writes in an engaging introduction, "I could never have become a novelist without first being a nonfiction journalist"--or a childhood reader of adventure tales, including one about the presumed pirate booty buried on Nova Scotia's Oak Island. The author remembered that particular yarn as a grownup, traveled there, and wrote a story for Smithsonian that was "the most popular [article] the magazine had ever published." His story, like many included here, turns up more questions than answers, but it's worth noting that it also spawned a long-running reality-TV series that, if nothing else, speaks to our fascination with all things buried. One piece centers on the so-called Monster of Florence, whose brutal crimes Preston tracks long after the fact, confident that he could reveal the true story behind them, only to conclude, "Any crime novel, to be successful, must contain certain basic elements: there must be a motive; evidence; a trail of clues; and a process of discovery that leads, one way or another, to a conclusion," adding, "life...is not so tidy." Among the assorted untidy puzzles is the twisted tale of Kennewick Man, a skeleton that turned up in an eroding Washington riverbank and that touched off a huge controversy when its DNA suggested ancient European origins. It's one of several archaeology-based pieces that deal with similar controversies: whether the possibility that cannibalism may have taken place in the ancient Southwest (with the ghoulish problem one archaeologist faced: "he needed a way to identify human tissue that had passed through the digestive system of another human being"), or why hundreds of skeletons were found at a lake high in the Himalayas. Buffs of buried-treasure and long-ago true-crime tales will enjoy Preston's expertly woven tales.
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October 15, 2023
When you have built a career writing fiction that is based on true stories of adventure, cunning, and unbelievable occurrences, people are bound to ask: what about those true stories? This book is Preston's answer to that question. Famous for novels like Relic (1996) and Tyrannosaur Canyon (2006) as well as his collaborations with former St. Martin's editor Lincoln Child, Preston got his start as a magazine journalist. His 1988 Smithsonian article about the fabled Oak Island mystery--now the subject of a 10-season-and-counting show on the History Channel--was one of his first assignments. That article is in this book, as are writings on Amanda Knox, the Dyatlov Pass hikers (subjects of about a million YouTube conspiracy videos), stolen Native American skeletons (in the news recently), and the so-called Monster of Florence murder case, which Preston and Italian journalist Mario Spezi turned into a book (they were also, for a time, suspects). Though these are all republished from earlier work, the pieces are so good and the reporting so thorough that The Lost Tomb is a worthy addition to library collections.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from October 23, 2023
Bestseller Preston (The Lost City of the Monkey God), who coauthors the Aloysius Pendergast series with Lincoln Child, shares the inspirations for many of those procedurals in this gripping compendium of his journalistic work, much of which was previously published in the New Yorker. Selections include the masterful “Monster of Florence,” in which Preston and an Italian crime journalist attempt to identify a serial killer who claimed 14 victims in the 1970s and ’80s, and Preston himself gets accused of complicity in the murders. “The Skiers at Dead Mountain” is another highlight, and has a more satisfying ending: Preston provides a persuasive explanation for the “apparently inexplicable” mass deaths of skiers in Russia’s Ural Mountains in 1959, which some attributed to a murderous yeti. There are also intriguing natural puzzles, such as “The Mystery of Hell Creek,” about a graveyard in North Dakota containing animals killed by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Their remains were discovered by a paleontologist who read one of Preston’s novels that featured a similar find. Throughout, Preston tackles his subjects with the obsessive enthusiasm of an amateur detective and the skills of a seasoned novelist; even those who read the articles when they first were published will take pleasure in new afterwords that provide updates about Preston’s theories. This is unbeatable reading for armchair sleuths. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME.