Martin Vail, the brilliant "bad-boy" lawyer every prosecutor and politician love to hate, is defending Aaron Stampler, a man found holding a bloody butcher's knife near a murdered archbishop. Vail is certain to lose, but Vail uses his unorthodox ways to good advantage when choosing his legal team--a tight group of men and women who must uncover the extraordinary truth behind the archbishop's slaughter. They do, in a heart-stopping climax unparalleled for the surprise it springs on the reader...

During the 1800s, stories filled medical journals as well as fiction (Poe's "The Premature Burial") of people being buried before they actually died. Canvassing medical records of the time, the author presents an engrossing and witty history of the fear and facts of being buried alive. Illustrations.

It begins with a shocking, unsolved murder. In small town in southern Illinois, the butchered body of Linda Balfour--with a cryptic code printed in blood on the back of her head--forges a gruesome link to the brutal murder of Bishop Rushman, the beloved Chicago clergyman who had been dismembered years before by the angelic-looking altar boy, Aaron Stampler. The same Aaron Stampler whom defense attorney Martin Vail saved from the electric chair... Now Vail is Chicago's chief prosecutor, facing the nightmare of his life. If Stampler has been locked away in a high-security institution for the past ten years, how could he have killed Linda Balfour? Then another altar boy turns up dead with a similar inscription in blood on the back of his head. If Aaron Stampler isn't committing these killings, who is? Martin Vail's career--maybe even his life--hangs on the answer...

Why FEAR? Fear is gripping. It can paralyze. It can force people to do things they normally wouldn't do. Many are repulsed by it because of the trepidation it causes. It has many facets due to it's unique nature, therefore few choose to explore its depths. I can understand why. It awakens in us those primal forces that we've fought so hard to control or contain. Yet we all acknowledge it's there. If we're caught off guard, we know it can unexpectedly take control. For many, this thought frightens them most of all... However, there are other aspects to this ancient force. For some, it has the ability to excite or even arouse... so I decided to take a journey into it's deepest, darkest depths and share what I discovered. With that being said, I ask you to join me in the chapters that follow. For even in darkness, great discoveries can be made.

DIVExplores the treatment and image of the black female or "Black Venus" as seen in early 19th French literature./div

William Diehl stunned readers with Primal Fear and Show of Evil, the national bestsellers featuring Chicago lawyer Martin Vail. Now, in his gripping new novel of suspense, Diehl enters uncharted territory, pushing Vail and the legal system he represents to the brink of destruction. After an ultra-right-wing militia seizes truckloads of highly volatile weapons, the president turns to Illinois attorney general Martin Vail. His job: nail the terrorists in their tracks. Vail plunges into his new, near-impossible mission, one that soon explodes into a personal nightmare as his most chilling adversary, Aaron Stampler, returns--seemingly from the dead--to exact a vengeance that could bring Vail to his knees. . . .

Why is horror in film and literature so popular? Why do viewers and readers enjoy feeling fearful? Experts in the fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology posit that behaviors from our ancestors that favored survival and adaptation still influence our actions, decisions and thoughts today. The author, with input from a new generation of Darwinists, explores six primal narratives that recur in the horror genre. They are territoriality, tribalism, fear of genetic assimilation, mating rituals, fear of the predator, and distrust or fear of the Other.