The Given Day

Once every couple of years, a Big Literary American novel comes along and blows everyone away. This is it.

This is a sprawling, enthralling novel... every sentence is a treat, every image vivid... an extraordinary freshness and vitality

This is a book with Big Ambition written all over it: a thick, doorstopping, compulsively readable epic

Wrenchingly suspenseful... A majestic, fiery epic [with] a rich, intricate story

The acclaimed author of Mystic River has produced a contender for the Big American Novel... not only a powerful, beautifully written novel, but the best kind of history lesson

The Given Day stands in the great tradition of the American novel, setting an enthralling personal story against a great sweep of history. The result is epic, romantic and intelligent. I loved it

A grand historical epic that rather conspicuously sets its cap at the status of Great American Novel

[A] brilliant historical epic. Lehane earned his reputation for writing crime thrillers...And the same hard-boiled skills - and sheer love of storytelling remain in place now he's turned to something more ambitious.

A brawling, brawny, muscular epic - exactly what great mainstream novels used to be

Although Lehane is keen to offer a complete historical portrait of Boston after the First World War, he does not stint on characters and plot either.  It is an accomplished balancing act

Dennis Lehane takes on the volatile beginnings of the American century and, like the master storyteller he is, effortlessly makes that vast canvas come alive.  A rich and satisfying epic

STEWART O'NAN, author of THE NIGHT COUNTRY

Beautifully written... ambitious and hugely impressive

This is history brought thrillingly to life and it makes for a captivating read from start to finish

[An] engrossing epic [that] carries serious moral gravity

Dennis Lehane grew up in the Dorchester section of Boston's inner-city. 
Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a counsellor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. His one regret is that no one ever gave him a chance to tend bar. 
 
He has an MFA from Florida International University, and is the writer-in-residence at Eckerd College in St Petersburg, Florida, where he runs the Writers in Paradise Writers' Conference. 
He and his wife divide their time between St. Petersburg and Boston. 
 
For more information on Dennis Lehane and his novels, visit his website: www.dennislehanebooks.com

1918. Boston. A city in turmoil as soldiers return home from World War One, bringing with them an epidemic of Spanish influenza. 
 
Danny Coughlin is the son of one of Boston's most powerful police captains. An undercover cop, he is hunting for revolutionaries and anarchists who, in the aftermath of war, are pledged to overthrow the city's ruling classes. But Danny soon finds his ideals compromised as, drawn into the conflict, his family starts to question where his loyalties really lie. 
 
Luther Lawrence is on the run. Having survived a murderous confrontation with a crime boss, he lands a job in the Coughlin household. But it isn't long before his dangerous past and his tenuous present are on a life-threatening collision course. 
 
As the city goes into meltdown, Danny and Luther must confront the storm of violence that threatens to engulf them if each is to survive...

Shutter Island

The international bestseller, now re-released to tie in to the new Martin Scorsese film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley.

Chilling, thrilling and so clever you'll be chewing it over long after the final page

A psychological tour de force.  Absolutely nothing is as it seems in this effortlessly complex thriller

Lehane's new novel carries an ending so shocking... that it will go down as one of the most aesthetically right resolutions ever written... A tour de force

Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He is the award-winning author of eight novels: A Drink Before the War; Darkness,Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; Mystic River; Shutter Island, The Given Day and a short story collection, Coronado. He lives in the Boston area.

Tie-in to the major motion picture, released on 12th March 2010. 
 
US Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to find an escaped murderer named Rachel Solando. 
 
As a killer hurricane bears down on the island, the investigation deepens and the questions mount. How has a barefoot woman escaped from a locked room? Who is leaving them clues in the form of cryptic codes? And what really goes on in Ward C? 
 
The closer Teddy gets to the truth, the more elusive it becomes. And the more he begins to believe that he may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive him insane...

Coronado

The internationally bestselling author of MYSTIC RIVER returns with a riveting new work

From the author of Mystic River comes a tough, taut collection of short stories, each exploring big crimes in small towns...No one writes such edgy material with so much style.

Coronado is a collection of short stories, exquisite fragments with jagged edges and raw emotions.

Vintage Lehane, complete with the gallows humour.

A brilliant, insightful and intriguing literary voyage.

His ability to create crystal clear portraits of humanity and then place them in the darker side of life is a writer's true gift'

...a writer of commanding gifts, who seems poised on the threshold of even greater accomplishment

Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He has written seven novels: A Drink Before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; Mystic River; Shutter Island and a short story collection, Coronado. Mystic River was turned into an Oscar-nominated film, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins. 
 
Before becoming a full-time writer, Dennis Lehane worked as a counsellor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. His one regret is that no one ever gave him a chance to tend bar. He lives in the Boston area.

Though best known for his hugely successful novels, Dennis Lehane is also a master of the short story. This collection, his first to be published in the UK, includes the story 'Running out of Dog' which was featured in THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2005 and THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES OF THE CENTURY. It also includes the full text of the acclaimed play CORONADO. 
 
Infused with the compelling narrative drive, piercing insight, and psychological drama that have made his novels bestsellers, CORONADO is sure to satisfy this acclaimed writer's devoted following while they eagerly await his next novel.

Darkness, Take My Hand

An electrifying thriller that is at once gut-wrenchingly violent and achingly melancholy.

Lehane's hold is wholly unremitting and compelled me to read the novel in a single day

Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He has written seven novels, A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR, DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND, SACRED, GONE BABY GONE, PRAYERS FOR RAIN, MYSTIC RIVER, SHUTTER ISLAND and a short story collection, CORONADO. MYSTIC RIVER was turned into an Oscar-nominated film, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins. 
 
Before becoming a full-time writer, Mr Lehane worked as a counsellor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. His one regret is that no one ever gave him a chance to tend bar. He lives in the Boston area.

When wisecracking detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro agree to protect the son of a prominent psychiatrist who believes she may have angered the Boston Irish Mafia, they soon find bodies are piling up around them - seemingly unconnected with their case. And what's more all the clues point to an unlikely suspect - a serial killer who has been in prison for twenty years, so he can't be killing again, can he? 
 
As Angie and Patrick try to find out what kind of human being could perform such horrifying acts of rape, mutilation, torture and dismemberment, they discover that the killer's motive is disturbingly rooted in their own distant past. In a series of heart-stopping climaxes that grow ever more terrifying and bloody, the two work frantically with the Boston cops, the FBI, the local Mafia, and the folks from their old neighbourhood to unearth the killer before they become victims themselves.

A Drink Before The War

The first in Lehane's electrifying crime series featuring the duo Kenzie and Gennaro

Hip, and with a plot in overdrive, relentlessly violent and cathartic

Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He has written seven novels, A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR, DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND, SACRED, GONE BABY GONE, PRAYERS FOR RAIN, MYSTIC RIVER, SHUTTER ISLAND and a short story collection, CORONADO. MYSTIC RIVER was turned into an Oscar-nominated film, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins. 
 
Before becoming a full-time writer, Mr Lehane worked as a counsellor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. His one regret is that no one ever gave him a chance to tend bar. He lives in the Boston area.

Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are tough private investigators who know the blue-collar neighbourhoods and ghettos of Boston's Dorchester section as only natives can. Working out of an old church belfry, Kenzie and Gennaro take on a seemingly simple assignment for a prominent politician: to uncover the whereabouts of Jenna Angeline, a black cleaning woman who has allegedly stolen confidential Statehouse documents. 
But finding Jenna proves easy compared to staying alive. The investigation escalates, uncovering a web of corruption extending from bombed-out ghetto streets to the highest levels of state government. 
 
With slick, hip dialogue and a lyrical narrative pocked by explosions of violence, A Drink Before the War confronts a city in which institutionalized bigotry and corruption are often the norm, and the true nature of 'racial incidents' is rarely clear. Dennis Lehane's remarkable debut is at once a pulsating crime thriller and a mirror of our world, one in which the worst human horrors are found closest to home, and the most vicious obscenities are committed in the name of love.

Mystic River

The film tie-in edition of the electrifying NEW YORK TIMES bestseller

Get Dennis Lehane's Mystic River. Boy, does he know how to write

Enormously impressive: page-turning but thoughtful; moving in its sad inevitability... One of the finest novels I've read in ages

Heart-scorching... penetrating... a powerhouse of a novel

Lehane's best book by far. Like all his writing, it shimmers with great dialogue and a complex view of the world

A stylish, genuinely gripping whodunnit that will keep even the sharpest thriller fan asking questions until the very last page

Mystic River may be definitively brutal, but it is also satisfyingly thoughtful

There are threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected. 
 
When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up their street. One boy got in the car, two did not, and something terrible happened - something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever. 
 
Twenty-five years later, Sean Devine is a homicide detective. Jimmy Marcus is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave Boyle is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay -demons that urge him to do horrific things. 
 
When Jimmy Marcus' daughter is found murdered, Sean Devine is assigned to the case. His personal life unravelling, he must go back into a world he thought he'd left behind to confront not only the violence of the present but the nightmares of his past. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy Marcus, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave Boyle, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood...

Prayers For Rain

A heart-pounding, visceral psychological thriller

With sharp dialogue, inventively gruesome violence and the darkest of dark humor, Lehane's fifth novel proves again that he's the hippest heir of Hammett and Chandler

A masterpiece. Stunning. Brilliant. Mesmerizing. Satisfying. All that and so much more... Steal this book if that's the only way you can get your hands on it

Lehane's gritty psychothrillers have carved a distinctive patch on the map of contemporary crime writing... One of the most electrifying thriller writers

The well-oiled plot mechanics, edge-of-the-knife dialogue and explosive bursts of violence are polished and primed in this hard-boiled shocker

Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro's relationship has hit the skids - their long-standing professional commitment and growing romance have disintegrated due to seemingly irreparable personal differences. But despite these problems, Prayers for Rain brings them together again to close down a predator whose modus operandi seems to put him beyond the law. This killer's insidious murder weapon is within his victims' minds: no smoking gun, no bloody knife, just merciless manipulation until despair drives his targets to kill themselves. 
 
As Patrick and Angie attempt to identify and save his next victim, this sinister force turns on them and thus begins a dangerous battle of wits: a tormenting, life-threatening game of psychological warfare in which simple survival seems a mixed blessing - because not even the winner will emerge unscathed.

Sacred

The electrifying sequel to Darkness, Take My Hand.

[A] stellar effort...The punishing pace and internal plot logic perform in perfect tandem...Lehane proves he belongs in the big leagues with another gritty and surpassingly entertaining mystery

[Dennis Lehane] turns the hard-boiled detective novel into an elegiac treatise on the corruption of the soul. With the wonderfully written Sacred, he shows that he gets better each time out

With its tight dialogue, explosive action scenes and heart wrenching emotional crises, Sacred is difficult to put down

Dying billionaire Trevor Stone hires private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro to find his missing daughter. Grief-stricken over the death of her mother and the impending death of her father, Desiree Stone has been missing for three weeks. So has the first investigator Trevor Stone hired to find her: Jay Becker, Patrick's mentor. As Patrick and Angie begin their search, they are led down a trail of half-truths and corruption into a world in which a therapeutic organization may be fronting for a dangerous cult; a hi-tech private investigation firm may be covering up lethal crimes; and a stolen cache of millions in illegal funds may be tied to both disappearances and a tanker full of heroin. 
 
Nothing is remotely what it seems as the detectives travel from the wind-blown streets of Boston to the rum-punch sunsets of Florida's Gulf Coast and back again, searching for a woman and a man who could be saints or sinners, victims or victimizers, alive or dead. And the more Patrick and Angie discover, the more they realize that on this case, any wrong step will certainly be their last.

Dennis Lehane

Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda Cready. 
 
Despite extensive news coverage and dogged investigation into her abduction, the police have uncovered nothing. And as the Indian summer fades, Amanda McCready stays gone - vanished so completely that she seems never to have existed. 
 
Then a second child disappears. 
 
Confronted with a police force seething with lethal secrets, Kenzie and Gennaro soon discover that those who go looking for the missing may not come back alive.

Dennis Lehane

Books by Dennis Lehane

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