Bücher von Paul Watkins

From the author of The Ice Soldier, comes a real-life adventure among the fjords and icy mountains of Norway.Certain geographies speak to people. We are awed by mountains, challenged by the ocean, haunted by the bleakness of deserts. The effect of landscape on human consciousness is at the heart of novelist Paul Watkins's exhilarating travel story. Long bewitched by the stark beauty of the Scandinavian Alps, Watkins sets off among the ice-clad peaks and dark fjords of the arctic with only a tent and rucksack. On the way, he stops at rustic inns, follows the paths of other solitary travelers, navigates the punishing weather, and confronts the magisterial presence of the past among these mountains--a journey that makes for one of our finest accounts of the life and the land in the frozen north.

On the eve of World War II, David Halifax, a young American painter, receives a scholarship to come to Paris and work under the tutelage of the mysterious Russian artist Alexander Pankratov. But as Nazi forces encroach, Halifax realizes the true purpose of his visit: to forge masterworks of the Paris museums, and with the aid of a wily art trader, barter the fakes to Hitler's legion of art dealers. What develops is a riveting cat-and-mouse game that moves through Paris's silent streets, through the tunnels beneath its museums, and eventually into the war-torn countryside of Normandy.

It is 1921, and young Ben Sheridan's Irish-American father mysteriously dies in their small Rhode Island town. Determined to learn the truth about his family's cloudy past, he sets sail for Ireland, and quickly becomes involved in a struggle between soldiers of the newly formed Irish Republican Army and the brutal British troops. Amidst the lush and rugged Irish countryside, and the horrible violence unfolding across it, Ben must search for the truth of his identity, and the ties of his family's blood.

Although Paul Wedekind has created a new life for himself as a fisherman on the coast of Rhode Island, he is haunted by his violent past. As a patriotic young man, he enlisted in the East German Stasi and was sent to Afghanistan, where he and a friend were taken prisoner by the Mujahadin. Years later Paul is sent to America as a contact for the KGB, where his life is changed forever by one woman. Together, these two exiles must find the strength to resist demands of the men who claim to own them.

As Sebastian Westland journeys from childhood to the bloody proving ground of men, he loses everything by which he knows himself: his past, his innocence, finally his name. His struggle to survive a war he scarcely comprehends is rendered in the urgent, beautifully spare, memorable prose of a born storyteller.

Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn is a coming-of-age novel of ample beauty, insight, and intensity. Defying the wishes of his family, James Pfeiffer--twenty years old and newly expelled from college--heeds the call of the open waters off the Rhode Island coast. Joining the crew of a broken-down scallop trawler, James seeks to learn the ways of fishermen like his father. Through endless days of exhausting labor in the company of dangerous men, James learns shockingly brutal and unexpectedly sobering lessons. But as James discovers the secrets of his motley crewmembers, he realizes that every fisherman has his own reasons to love the sea, in all its promise and treachery.

Lumber baron Noah Mackenzie has a bitter history with the Algonquin forest, and now he's trying to clear-cut the part he considers his own. In the remote Maine town of Abenaki Juntion, only Madeleine Cody stands up to Mackenzie. Using her small newspaper, The Forest Sentinel, she has long tried to peacefully stop the excessive logging. But when radical Adam Gabriel arrives at Abenaki Junction, he proposes a new and dangerous form of protest. Gabriel pushes both Madeleine and Mackenzie to defend what they love - no matter the cost.