Bøger af Bill Thompson

There's nothing especially unusual in the enterprise of taking stock of one's life. As the late Barry Lopez wrote in Horizons, his exquisite 2019 memoir, "We, all of us, look back over our lives, trying to make sense of what happened, to see what enduring threads might be there." For my part, I am not sure how many coherent threads I have found, or if things make any more sense to me than they did when I began the writing.For all my 32 years as a book review editor, I grumbled about how unseemly and presumptuous it was for callow pop stars and otherentertainers to be penning "memoirs" while they were still wet behind the ears. My only excuse for writing one now is that I am, astonishingly, 75, with a tenuous grasp of detail, and just egotistical enough to think four or five people other than me might want to read a book about my life so far.Full disclosure: My life is based on a true story.- excerpted from the Preface

It's a Friday in New Orleans, ten days before Mardi Gras. As Carnival season begins, eerie events unfold, coinciding with the first downtown parades. These inexplicable occurrences, termed "Harbingers," mystify locals. In a Bourbon Street strip club, a mysterious figure in a cloak adorned with ancient symbols disappears in a puff of smoke. Simultaneously, during the parade on St. Charles Avenue, an unannounced float labeled "Krewe of Moros" appears. High atop the float rides Harbinger of Doom, an enigmatic figure with a golden wand, surrounded by ghostly riders who terrify onlookers. The float vanishes into the night, leaving the city bewildered. As Mardi Gras week continues, so do the Harbingers, each becoming more ominous and deadly than the last. Paranormal investigator Landry Drake and his friends return to battle an ancient being named Bezaliel, who inhabits a haunted mansion in the French Quarter and may be the force behind the Harbingers. As the Carnival chaos becomes terrifying and deadly, secrets and malevolence intertwine, shrouding New Orleans in fear. Days before Mardi Gras, the most ominous and catastrophic event of all takes place. The people have had enough. As they flee the city, Mardi Gras is all but forgotten. Landry Drake and his crew make one last effort to save Carnival and the city itself, but is it too late? In this ninth Bayou Hauntings installment, Landry and Cate rescue a dog they name Simba. As he becomes part of their lives, they learn that he's more than just a companion. He can lend a helpful paw when they need one. Dread Reckoning is a gripping supernatural thriller, exploring the sinister forces lurking within the city's vibrant traditions. This tale delves into the hart of terror, weaving mystery and the unknown into the fabric of New Orleans history.

Seventeen-year-old Nate Dax sometimes asks himself if a person can die who's never been alive. He's an Outcast - he doesn't have a government chip so the authorities don't know he exists. But if they find him he'll be put to death immediately. Today it's 2094 and Nate hides in what used to be called Colorado when the United States was a country.Everything that's wrong now started with the disastrous presidential election of 2016, when most Americans didn't like either candidate. Four years later the people revolted, tossing out the incumbent and voting for a social democracy that lasted for twenty years. That election - the one in 2040 - was the last in America. Two years later came the disasters. Doomsday prophets called them God's wrath, but they were simply natural phenomena on an unthinkable scale. The Pacific earthquakes and tsunamis killed millions and weakened the San Andreas Fault. The Big One struck with fury, obliterating southern California. America floundered as its leaders helplessly wondered how to respond to such destruction. Others watched too, pleased at what was happening. Soon the enemies of the once-mighty nation took advantage of America's weakness and struck. The Great War of 2042 - also called the Twenty-Minute War - was a terrible demonstration of what concentrated nuclear war can do and it brought down America and the world as it had been. Nations were abolished and the World Union assumed control of planet Earth.What the government did regarding population control is one reason why Outcasts exist. But how can Outcasts like Nate live when they can't buy or sell anything, go into a store, attend a football game or go to school?When Nate's mother and father disappear he thinks he knows what's happened. He has to save them in a world where Outcasts like him will be killed if they're captured. Are there others like him out there ... people who can help? Nate Dax must find out.

NOT SINCE 9/11 . . .One evening in the midst of prime-time programming, networks worldwide interrupt to announce that Air Force Two, a Boeing 747 carrying the Vice President and Secretary of State of the USA, has disappeared after leaving Honolulu, Hawaii on a flight to Hong Kong. An extensive search and rescue effort will soon be underway. President William Henry Harrison IV hears the news aboard Air Force One as he flies with his wife and children from the Caribbean to Dallas. The president's plane changes course, heading now to a secure military installation in Florida.Then the unthinkable happens. Twenty minutes after the first plane disappeared, Air Force One vanishes too. Its last reported location was over the deepest part of the Caribbean Sea, an area known as the Cayman Trench. These two incidents, now unmistakably part of a single plan, harken back to that terrible morning on 9/11 when one tragic crash became two, then three, and the world realized it was all part of a massive terrorism plot.In Washington, Speaker of the House Chambliss T. Parkes, a greedy, vulgar buffoon, is rushed to a secret location as the nation goes to DEFCON 1, the highest threat level, for the first time in history. If the planes are truly gone, Parkes will become President of the United States.As financial markets crash, rioters take to the streets and mass hysteria threatens to destroy the framework of free-world government, the CIA must find answers. Were the two most secure aircraft in the world sabotaged? How could it have been anything else? But how could it have happened? Who is behind it and why? Brian Sadler, a wealthy adventurer and the missing President's closest friend, becomes part of the mission to uncover a plot with worldwide implications. What could possibly get worse?

oThe Pope hears the confession of a senior official of the Vatican Bank. What he learns could shake the foundations of the Christian faith.oA suicide bomber destroys a Fifth Avenue antiquities gallery. A dozen people die and an eighteenth-century manuscript is whisked away. Who went to such lengths to obtain an old Knights Templars diary, and why?oA Mafia godfather with a deadly agenda escapes from a Guatemalan prison and plots revenge on those who put him there.oA Cardinal decodes pages of ancient symbols to learn the secret of Oak Island and its enigmatic Money Pit.In 1795 three teenage boys dug in an old pit on Oak Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. They wanted to find out whose engineering expertise created a shaft nearly two hundred feet deep and if it contained treasure as the local people believed. The boys eventually gave up but syndicate after syndicate was formed over the next two hundred years to find the answer to its secrets.Millions of dollars were spent and several lives were lost in the treasure hunt. None of the searchers found riches. A mysterious rock inscribed with a symbolic clue turned up. It said, "Forty feet below two million pounds are buried." But as excavations in the pit went deeper and deeper those backing the project faced bitter frustration. A set of elaborate traps caused the Money Pit to flood each time someone neared the prize at the bottom. Brian Sadler and a devious Cardinal of the church are pitted against each other in a race to learn secrets protected by the Knights Templars for a thousand years. A former kingpin of the New York mob, dethroned and disgraced, plans a systematic elimination of his enemies. Sadler and his girlfriend Nicole Farber become targets of the ruthless killer as this story careens to its incredible conclusion. Does the Money Pit contain relics that could shake the very foundations of Christianity? The Pope himself becomes involved as Brian Sadler discovers the startling answer to the secret of Oak Island.

As the President of the United States disappears within the bowels of a Mayan temple the world holds its breath. What lies deep beneath the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, Mexico? Does it shed light on a thousand-year-old question? Amateur archaeologist Brian Sadler intends to find out. Hundreds of years ago the Maya proliferated throughout Mexico and Central America, evolving from farmers and warriors to master architects and stonemasons in an inconceivably short span of time. Their massive multi-story temples are built of stone blocks - some weighing more than a hundred tons and sitting a hundred feet above the ground. These stones fit together so precisely a sheet of paper couldn't slip between them. Yet these Indians apparently built their multi-story temples using nothing but stone hand tools. Who - or what - taught them how? This book offers a theory. When, in one such Mayan ruin, a U.S. President vanishes without a trace from a chamber with only one exit, America's newly appointed President calls on his old friend Brian Sadler to find out the answer. Deep in the jungles of southern Mexico Sadler makes an astonishing discovery - something that might literally be The Strangest Thing . . . ever. This is the third title in the Brian Sadler Archaeological Mystery series. First was the award-winning book The Bethlehem Scroll, followed by Ancient: A Search for the Lost City of the Mayas. It features stockbroker-turned-antiquities dealer Brian Sadler.

Buried beneath the streets of London are the answers to an ancient mystery-A wealthy man has secrets he struggles to keep hidden-A hundred people he blackmailed want his painful death-A partner will stop at nothing to keep ancient artifacts his and his alone. Whatever it takes, there will be no sharing of the fame he'll receive.Get your copy today!Deep below a quaint street in London businessman Roberto Maas unearths a secret room. A sarcophagus has rested there for a thousand years. An astonishing set of diaries containing secrets lost for centuries is discovered. The journals are amazing - they were written by a monarch whom history says never existed.As time runs out, Roberto races to learn what the discoveries beneath the ancient city really mean.Get this book now!

FIRST PLACE EVVY AWARD WINNER FOR FICTION! Three artifacts from the Dead Sea caves. An eyewitness account of a night of wonders, written on an ancient scroll. Men who would kill to keep everything secret. Get your copy today! Stockbroker-turned-amateur archaeologist Brian Sadler learns about a mysterious parchment written by a child. Knowing it would make him an instant success, Brian turns to a mobster for help to get it. Dealing with the mob means things must go exactly right - or you may lose your life.You'll keep turning pages as Brian jets from Dallas to New York, London and Egypt, trying to get the world's most important document before others can snatch it. Buy this book now!

Art and Craft presents the hand-picked fruit of Bill Thompson's three decades covering writers and writing as book review editor of Charleston, South Carolina's Post and Courier. Beginning with a foreword by Charleston novelist Josephine Humphreys, this collection is a compendium of interviews featuring some of the most distinguished novelists and nonfiction writers in America and abroad, including Tom Wolfe, Pat Conroy, Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Bragg, and Anthony Bourdain, as well as many South Carolinians. With ten thematic chapters ranging from the Southern Renaissance, literature, biography, and travel writing to crime fiction and Civil War history, Art and Craft also includes a sampling of Thompson's reviews.A foreword is written by South Carolina novelist Josephine Humphreys, who is author of Dreams of Sleep (winner of the 1985 Ernest Hemingway Award for First Fiction), Rich in Love (made into a major motion picture), The Fireman's Fair, and Nowhere Else on Earth.Featuring: Jack Bass, Rick Bragg, Roy Blount, Jr., Robin Cook, Pat Conroy, Patricia Cornwell, Dorothea Benton Frank, Herb Frazier, Sue Grafton, Carl Hiaasen, Sue Monk Kidd, Brian Lamb, Bret Lott, Jill McCorkle, James McPherson, Mary Alice Monroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Carl Reiner, Dori Sanders, Charles Seabrook, Anne Rivers Siddons, Lee Smith, Mickey Spillane, Paul Theroux, Tom Wolfe

HAS A NAZI GOLD TRAIN BEEN HIDDEN IN A MOUNTAIN TUNNEL SINCE WORLD WAR II?Paul Silver, an international businessman and amateur adventurer, arrives in Berlin looking for information about a fabled Nazi train full of priceless objects and gold. Along with answers he finds a deranged man who hated him in the past, a man who wants revenge more than life itself. There have been rumors for decades about a train filled with so much wealth it could fund Hitler's dream of a Fourth Reich. A Romanian family believes its patriarch, one of Hitler's trusted officers, possesses a coded diary - a book that will lead to vast treasure hidden somewhere in Europe at the end of the war.Paul soon learns nothing is as it should be. A hundred-year-old murderer, a gypsy fortune-teller, a trio of greedy relatives and a search for the mysterious Nazi train lead Paul Silver on the most exciting adventure of his life.

Written by a stockbroker and stock trader with over 35 years experience and geared towards both new and experienced investors alike, this book covers the many order types available such as 'Market and Limit Orders', 'Fill or Kill', 'Stop Limit', 'Immediate or Cancel' and many more. Other subject areas include how to read and interpret basic and expanded quotes, the After-Hours Market, Short Selling, Margin Trading, Stock Splits and more. A worthwhile read even for non-stock traders, the book also provides interesting factual information such as: Why do we call them stocks? (It's related to stockade.) What was the purpose of the wall that gave Wall Street its name? Why did the New York Stock Exchange trade in 1/8's of a dollar for over 200 years only ending the practice at the dawn of the 21st century? Why are they called Bull and Bear Markets? What does Nasdaq actually stand for? What do the statues above the entrance of the New York Stock Exchange represent? The book also provides historical pictures of the New York Financial District as well as an overview of how the paper currency of the United States has changed over the years.

"Lightwaves: A Film Critic's Odyssey" is a hand-picked collection of the best interviews, reviews, movie histories, and weekly columns written by Bill Thompson during his 19 years as film critic for the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier, accompanied and amplified by new thematic essays.

2019 INDEPENDENT BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR POLITICAL THRILLER & RELIGION-FICTION!For over two thousand years there have been whispered rumors of a vast treasure hidden somewhere in Israel. Using the prophecies of Isaiah as their basis, many believe there is a cavern where a thousand golden objects - the sacred relics of the Second Temple - lay strewn about in disarray where they were hurriedly tossed the night the Romans burned Jerusalem.Television personality and antiquities dealer Brian Sadler and his wife arrive in Jerusalem and find danger and uncertainty everywhere they go. In a controversial move, the U.S. president has moved the American embassy to West Jerusalem, inciting riots and anger from the Palestinians.Brian's colleague, a Syrian who owns a shop in the Old City, offers to show him a cache of wondrous objects, but everything isn't as it appears. Brian questions if the treasure exists and in a dank underground room, he learns that danger and deceit must be overcome before he can learn the answer. He faces both a ruthless terrorist and someone he once trusted, both of whom want the same things he does. If the words of the Bible are correct and if Isaiah's prophecy is about to be fulfilled, who will find the hidden treasure of Jerusalem's Second Temple? An imminent war and a kidnapping put Brian's mission in peril. It's a race to find the relics before ISIS does, and the sacred icons are lost forever.

2019 INDEPENDENT BOOK AWARDS WINNER FOR HORROR!2019 SILVER IPPY AWARD FOR HORROR!2018 FIRST PLACE EVVY AWARD WINNER FOR HORROR!Deep in the Louisiana bayou, an ancient mansion sits empty and abandoned.Callie Pilantro inherits the house and finds a mysterious child there who appears and disappears at will.Even the walls of the mansion hold long-forgotten secrets.Get your copy today!Follow Callie as she struggles to find the secrets of her house even as someone or something tries to stop her. It all ends one eerie night. Will it be too late for Callie?Buy it now!

A BUSLOAD OF AMERICAN TOURISTS IS KIDNAPPED AND HELD FOR RANSOM IN GUATEMALAAs a sadistic killer holds a group of archaeology buffs hostage deep in the jungle, one of the tourists escapes. Paul Silver came on this trip to learn about the ancient ruins at Piedras Negras, a site that may hold secrets from twelve thousand years ago. For now his objectives are set aside. He has to plan a rescue. The captives - his friends - are so far from civilization that their release could put them in more peril than before. The Guatemalan jungle is a dangerous place, full of predators as frightening as the rebels themselves. Paul can't act quickly enough to save everyone from the rogue guerilla and his men but as the murderer announces his next victims, Paul must move, regardless of the dangers.He rescues Hailey Knox, a beautiful archaeology student who discovers a connection at Piedras Negras linking two ancient civilizations to this part of the Americas - the same mysterious connection that Paul Silver came here to find. After Paul deals with the rebels, Hailey shows him a cave where an astonishing wall and a secret chamber will reveal how and why an Egyptian pharaoh was doomed to eternity in hell.

The Halloween The Town Will Never Forget!The Galvin family has the least normal household in the sleepy beach community of Marston since Uncle Bob came to stay after their mom died. The family's secrets are hard to keep hidden from the people in town who whisper about strange happenings at their house. Life becomes very interesting for Bobby Galvin as his unusual uncle embarks on a quest to prove an ancient legend about nearby Gunners Cove, rumored for centuries to be the place pirates hid their fortunes.A secret mission and an exciting search lead Bobby and his uncle to an astonishing discovery one Halloween night as they learn the true meaning of The Legend of Gunners Cove.

COULD FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD NOAH PROCTOR HAVE SLAUGHTERED HIS FAMILY IN THEIR BEDS, ARRANGED THEIR BODIES ON A COUCH AND PUT THEIR HEADS ON THE MANTEL?EVERYONE IN TOWN THINKS SO, BUT NOAH''S NOT TALKING.Proctor Hall is one of Lafourche Parish''s oldest sugarcane plantations. After Noah supposedly murdered his parents and little sister in 1963, he went off to an institution while caretakers maintained the place. Twenty-six years later, the man who never spoke returned home. A girl disappears and people believe Noah''s up to his old tricks.Four college students visit the now-abandoned farmhouse as part of a class project, and they fall victim to whoever -- or whatever -- still resides within its walls. Famous paranormal investigator Landry drake conducts a seance there, uncovers long-hidden secrets and learns that the horror of Proctor Hall is still at work.