From Publishers WeeklyMartin, who introduced antiquarian Peter Fallon in his debut novel Back Bay (1979), brings him back for a second quest in this sprawling bibliomystery, which traces the tightly interlaced histories of the fictional Wedge family and Harvard University. Fallon, a proud Harvard grad, assists in the university's annual fund-raising appeals. One call, to Ridley Wedge Royce, lands him not a donation but a tip. The intriguing possibility that the Wedge family once owned a rare and unknown Shakespeare manuscript-a text purportedly linking Will Shakespeare and Harvard's founder-is enough to hook Fallon. But others are on the same scent and willing to go to any lengths to root out the manuscript if it still exists. How it came into the possession of the Wedges, and what happened to it next is gradually revealed as Martin spins through 300 years of American history-from the Salem witch trials and the Boston Tea Party to the Civil War and up to the radical late 1960s-telling a tale of Harvard the institution growing from a tiny establishment under beastly first master Nathaniel Eaton to become America's premier university. Fallon's search takes a back seat to the historical material, but the novel provides good entertainment and copious Crimson lore.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistMartin continues to entertain with the successful formula he perfected in best-sellers Back Bay (1979) and Cape Cod (1991). The author races back and forth through time in order to solve a bookish mystery rooted in historical events. When antiquarian bookseller Peter Fallon follows the clues he hopes will lead him to recover a lost Shakespeare play written in the bard's own hand, he himself becomes the target of both underworld thugs and unscrupulous academics. The most compelling action takes place in the past as he traces the utterly fascinating evolution of Harvard University by interweaving it with the intimate history of one of New England's first families. Bound by oath to preserve John Harvard's library, Issac Wedge takes care to squirrel away the Shakespearean quarto the dying Harvard entrusted to his care. Realizing that Puritan reactionaries would most certainly destroy the play, Wedge hands it down for safekeeping to his own son, establishing a pattern that is repeated by each succeeding generation until it appears that the manuscript has been lost. Or has it? It is up to Fallon to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. The unexpected twists and turns through history will keep readers guessing and the pages turning. Margaret FlanaganCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From New York Times bestselling author William Martin comes a WWII thriller as intense as The Day of the Jackal and as gripping as The Eye of the Needle. In December '41, Martin takes us on the ultimate manhunt, a desperate chase from Los Angeles to Washington, D. C., in the first weeks of the Second World War. On the day after Pearl Harbor, shocked Americans gather around their radios to hear Franklin Roosevelt declare war. In Los Angeles, a German agent named Martin Browning is planning to kill FDR on the night he lights the National Christmas Tree. Who will stop him? Relentless FBI Agent Frank Carter? Kevin Cusack, a Hollywood script reader who also spies on the German Bund of Los Angeles, and becomes a suspect himself? Or Vivian Hopewell, the aspiring actress who signs on to play Martin Browning's wife and cannot help but fall in love with him?The clock is ticking. The tracks are laid. The train of narrow escapes, mistaken...

Meet the Pratt clas. Driven men. Determined women. Through six turbulent generations, they would pursue a lost Paul Revere treasure. And turn a family secret into an obsession that could destroy them. Here is the novel that launched William Martin's astonishing literary career and became an instant bestseller. From the grit and romance of old Boston to exclusive -- and dangerous -- Back Bay today, this sweeping saga paints an unforgettable portrait of a powerful dynasty beset by the forces of history...and a heritage of greed, lust, murder and betrayal.Review"A rip-roaring page turner. A perfect read!" (Boston Globe)"Spellbinding...Ingenious." (Cincinnati Enquirer)"Marvelous...captures the reader from page on and holds to the explosive ending." (King Features Syndicate)Martin's first novel is a clever and entertainaing blend of history, family, saga, and mystery. Its focus is on a magnificent gold and silver tea set that, made by Paul Revere and presented to George Washington by the merchants of Boston, becomes a key factor in the destinies of a prosperous Boston family, the Pratts, for 250 years. The set is stolen from the White House in 1814 by Horace Pratt in revege for governmet trade restrictions, and buried in the mud of the Back Bay. Later that part of the bay is landfilled, and the set's whereabouts become a mystery, solvable only by someone who can decipher certain clues in a Pratt diary. Shuttling between past and present, the narative detailsthe attempts of generations of pPRatts, and others, to retrieve the treasure, and encompasses a while string of violent deeds, including suiccide and murder. Matters reach an exciting though tragic climax in the1970s when twogroups opf serachers find the sert almost simultaneously. (Publishers Weekly)Don't be fooled by the title: this mystery/adventure is no Beacon Hill tea party but a Southie-style rouser starring several generations of Yankee tycoons - the crafty Pratts - and their immigrant descended allies and enemies. The first American Pratt is Boston merchant Horace, who, disapproving of President Madison's trade policies in 1814, decides to fence a magnificent treasure, "The Golden Eagle Tea Set" - 31 pieces of flawless silver created by Paul Revere and presented to the White House in perpetuity by Washington. But somewhere, amid the British invasion chaos, the tea set goes astray - on a wild sea journey to a bizarre grave where it will stay until the 20th century. So it's up to present-day history grad student Peter Fallon and Evangeline Carrington, a Pratt descendant, to put together the Pratt family secrets and get to the tea set before it's found by various deadly Bad Guys - including a Pratt-gone-to-seed and a powerful local bully-boy planning to take over the Pratt industrial empire. Fallon and Evangeline, on the run a good deal of the time, work with some classy clues to the Tea Set's location: there are verses from Milton's Paradise Lost, for example, scattered far and wide - one discovered in the belongings of a west coast call girl (who's murdered) , another on a church altar chalice. And the Tale of the Tea Set flips back and forth neatly between the centuries, grisly with Set-linked drownings and murders, spiced with some old scandals. Martin has carefully researched the topography of old Boston and tidily balances his inventive plot with narrow escapes and stopwatch action, including a subway tunnel dig and shootout. Rather gory, very farfetched treasure-hunt fun and mayhem - a bracing brew for long cold nights. (Kirkus) About the AuthorWilliam Martin is the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, an award-winning PBS documentary, and a cult classic horror movie, too. His first novel, Back Bay, introduced treasure hunting hero Peter Fallon, who has now appeared in five novels, and spent fourteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. SInce then Martin has been telling stories of the great and the anonymous in American history, from the Pilgrims to 9/11. His novels, including Cape Cod, Annapolis, City of Dreams, and The Lincoln Letter, have established him as "a storyteller whose smootness equals his ambition" (Publisher's Weekly). He lives near Boston with his wife and has three grown children. In 2005, he was the recipient of the prestigious New England Book Award, given to "an author whose body of work stands as a significant contribution to the culture of the region."

Rare-book dealer Peter Fallon returns in a thrilling historical novel about the California Gold Rush, by New York Times bestselling author William MartinBound for Gold continues New York Times bestselling author William Martin's epic of American history with the further adventures of Boston rare-book dealer Peter Fallon and his girlfriend, Evangeline Carrington. They are headed to California, where their search for a lost journal takes them into the history of Gold Rush. The journal follows young James Spencer, of the Sagamore Mining Company, on a spectacular journey from staid Boston, up the Sacramento River to the Mother Lode. During his search for a "lost river of gold," Spencer confronts vengeance, greed, and racism in himself and others, and builds one of California's first mercantile empires. In the present, Peter Fallon's son asks his father for help appraising the rare books in the Spencer estate and reconstructing...