Water Touching Stone

A breathtaking thriller set in Tibet and the forgotten lands of Western China by the author of The Skull Mantra.

Eliot Pattison's numerous books and articles on international policy issues have been published on three continents.  He is a world traveller and a frequent visitor to China. THE SKULL MANTRA, his first work of fiction, won him the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America.

The news that a venerated teacher has been murdered sends an unlikely band of outcasts into the remote northern reaches of the Tibetan plateau. Two old Tibetans travel to restore the spiritual balance disturbed by violent death. A sullen resistance fighter races to battle a new foe. But Shan Tao Yun, former Beijing investigator and newly released from four years of prison camp, sets out to find justice. In the dangerous borderlands of western China, however, justice is elusive. Vengeful officials, soldiers, smugglers, secret Buddhists and the remnants of the proud Muslim clans all stand in the way of Shan's pursuit of a serial killer whose terrible motives lie buried in the Tibetan struggle.

Beautiful Ghosts

The most compelling novel yet from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Skull Mantra

Eliot Pattison's numerous books and articles on international policy issues have been published on three continents. He is a world traveller and frequent visitor to China. The Skull Mantra, his first work of fiction, won the Edgar Award for best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. Beautiful Ghosts is Pattison's fourth novel featuring former Beijing Investigator, Shan Tao Yun.

Disgraced former Beijing Inspector Shan Tao Yun has been living in the remote mountains of Tibet since his unofficial release from a work camp. Without status, official identity, or the freedom to return to his former home in Beijing, he's lived with the forbidden lamas for the past year. But now there's apparently been a murder in a ruined monastery and the very officials who exiled Shan are after his help. In a baffling case involving the FBI, Chinese Ministers, and British relief workers, Shan travels from Tibet to Beijing to the U. S. to find the links between murder, missing art, his former gulag, and his own long-unseen son.

Bone Mountain

The bestselling author of The Skull Mantra and Water Touching Stone.

Eliot Pattison's numerous books and articles on international policy issues have been published on three continents.  He is a world traveller and frequent visitor to China.  The Skull Mantra, his first work of fiction, won him the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America.  Bone Mountain is Pattison's third novel featuring former Beijing Investigator, Shan Tao Yun.

When disgraced former inspector, Shan Tao Yun joins a group of reverent Tibetans returning a sacred artefact to its home, it seems he has at last found the peace he has struggled for since leaving prison.  What starts as a spiritual pilgrimage, however, quickly turns into a desperate flight through the Tibetan wilderness as the outlawed monk who guides them is murdered and Sham discovers that the artefact has recently been stolen from the Chinese army.  But why is the army so desperate to find the artefact entrusted to Shan?  Why is an aged medicine lama being stalked by government agents?  Why has an American woman, a geologist for an oil company, abandoned the project and fled into the mountains?  Shan discovers not answers, but only new mysteries as he is drawn to such unexpected places as the raucous headquarters base of the Western oil venture and a monastery that seems more attuned to the teachings of the party than those of Buddha.  And the further he travels into the mountains, the more Shan realises that what is at stake is not only justice but the spiritual survival of those who have joined his strange quest. At the heart of Pattison's powerful tale is a story of a brave, oppressed people who have learned to endure by drawing strength from their land and their rich spiritual traditions.

Eliot Pattison

A cocktail of action adventure...a great read

Complex, crammed with Tibetan and Buddhist lore and legend, and utterly fascinating

'Summoning is a dangerous thing. To the old Buddhists, words were the most dangerous weapon of all.' 
 
Shan Tao Yun is a former investigator for the chinese government who once got a little too close to the truth. Now he breaks rocks in a Tibetan prison camp high in the Himalayas. Only the remarkable courage of the Buddhist monks who are his fellow prisoners give him the will to survive. 
 
But when a smartly dressed headless corpse is discovered on the bleak moutainside, Shan is forced to become a detective once more. And as he uncovers a web of intrigue involving a beautiful American mining engineer, Tibetan sorcerers, corrupt Chinese officials and the Buddhist Resistance, he begins to realise that far more than his own survival is at stake.

Eliot Pattison

Praise for The Skull Mantra

Vivid, absorbing, intriguing

A cocktail of action adventure...a great read

Complex, crammed with Tibetan and Buddhist lore and legend, and utterly fascinating

Vivid, absorbing, intriguing

A cocktail of action adventure...a great read

Complex, crammed with Tibetan and Buddhist lore and legend, and utterly fascinating

Vivid, absorbing, intriguing

A cocktail of action adventure...a great read

Complex, crammed with Tibetan and Buddhist lore and legend, and utterly fascinating

Books by Eliot Pattison

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