The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery. Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization. Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.

Hear that voice inside your head? The one that nitpicks all your new ideas? That's your monkey. This hypercritical little critter loves to make you second-guess yourself. It stirs up doubt. It kills your creativity. But it can be stopped. And acclaimed author Danny Gregory is here to show you how. After battling it out with his own monkey, he knows how to shut yours down. Gregory provides insight into the inner workings of your inner critic and teaches you how to put it in its place. Soon you'll be able to silence that voice and do what you want to do—create. Now follow his lead and Shut Your Monkey.

"Includes The line, a companion music CD by Eric Maring"--Jacket.

On any given morning more than a dozen gun towers eerily protrude through the dense blanket of fog at the waters edge. Lurking beneath the fog is a hulking monstrosity of concrete and steel designed to house Californias most dangerous criminals. Like the sign upon entering Dantes Inferno: Abandon all hope ye who enter here, San Quentin State Prison is a landscape of horror both harsh and stark. Its mere existence speaks in direct testimony to Californias urban decay. Originally constructed from the hull of a ship in 1852, San Quentin is Californias oldest state prison. It is nestled in the lush greenery of Marin County, just twelve miles north of San Francisco across the expanse of the historic Golden Gate Bridge. With a half-dozen sleepy little towns tucked away at the base of Mt. Tamalpais, Marin seems as unlikely a place as any to build what has become one of the most notorious prisons in the United States. By 1980, San Quentins population had exploded to three thousand while the institution itself had expanded across four hundred acres. During its heyday in the 1970s, San Quentin was a Level 4 maximum-security prison. Widely regarded as gladiator school, it was the most violent prison in the country. Housing over two hundred inmates on its infamous death row, the institution boasted four hundred and sixty assaults while its murder toll soared to a staggering, and unprecedented sixty-one. For most men at San Quentin, November 8, 1980, was just another day. It was not, however, for Mark Cauchi. Nor was it for James Dance. One of them was going to die that day, and both men knew it.

Writer Mark O'Kane is in a downward spiral. His last novel tanked. His wife left him. And his drinking is out of control. So when a chance meeting with enigmatic businessman Frank Fochs leads to a cushy job on the tropical island of Madu, it sounds like Mark's salvation: he can finally write his comeback novel and set his life on a brighter path.But when Frank disappears, Mark is left holding the bag for his boss's shady business dealings. And after a corpse washes up in the local lagoon, Mark may even be charged with Frank's murder. As he skirts the border between regret and desire, Mark discovers that the demons of his past are not so easily outrun, and that paradise comes with a price."Banging the Monkey is for anyone who has ever dreamed of chucking it all and starting over. Debut author Tod A injects pulp noir with a punk prose rhythm to weave a darkly comic tale about life at the end of the American Century."