November 9, 2015
In bestseller Woods’s extravagant 36th Stone Barrington’s novel (after 2015’s Foreign Affairs), the peripatetic multimillionaire travels to England, where Dame Felicity Devonshire, the director of MI6, gives him a tour of Windward Hall, the Hampshire estate Felicity tells Stone he should buy from its terminally ill owner, Sir Charles Bourne. The same day that Stone pays £10 million for Windward Hall, he purchases a new wardrobe, a Bentley, and a Porsche in London. The murder of a Hampshire neighbor, Sir Richard Curtis, provides a minor distraction. Meanwhile, Hell’s Bells, the latest movie from Stone’s filmmaker son, Peter, has made an enemy of Don Beverly Calhoun, the leader of an L.A.-based cult called the Chosen Few. Calhoun also takes a dislike to Stone, who discovers that Calhoun is attempting to purchase Curtis’s newly available estate. A series of escalating, sometimes amusing, tit-for-tat maneuvers ensue and eventually turn deadly. As his many fans have come to expect, Stone remains unflappable throughout. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit.
November 1, 2015
In this moments-after sequel to Foreign Affairs (2015), Stone Barrington acquires an English country estate, a brand-new enemy, and a corpse on his front lawn. The corpse, the least consequential of these three developments, is that of Sir Richard Curtis, Stone's new neighbor when he purchases Windward Hall from Sir Charles Bourne, a dying family friend of Stone's sometime lover Dame Felicity Devonshire, head of MI6. Wilfred Burns, a hermit who's left the Royal Marines, where he served with Sir Charles and Sir Richard, to live quietly on the Windward grounds, promptly confesses to the crime and hangs himself in his cell. Stone's not satisfied with the confession, but it's hard for him (or the reader) to keep his mind on it when he's preoccupied with an orgy of consumer spending--not just the Windward estate, but a splendid pair of paintings, a new Bentley, and a wardrobe suitable for a country squire--and the attentions of his new lover, interior decorator Susan Blackburn. Not to mention Dr. Don Beverly Calhoun, who's taken offense at Hell's Bells, the smashing new fictional film directed by Stone's son, Peter, because he thinks it's a libelous portrait of the Chosen Few, the religious cult he leads. Calhoun threatens lawsuits but delivers stalkers with guns, all of them handily confiscated by Stone's colleagues in New York and Connecticut law enforcement. When Calhoun makes an offer on Curtis House, the prospect of having him as a neighbor is more than Stone can abide, and the two declare open war on each other. Complications ensue, but they're never all that complicated. As Stone continues to bed top women, buy every piece of real estate in sight, and vanquish the competition with the wave of a hand, you can't help but be struck by his increasing resemblance to Donald Trump. Or is that suggestion grounds for a libel suit?
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December 1, 2015
Stone Barrington is known for his crazy adventures, but even he needs a break, so he buys a large estate in England from wealthy Sir Charles Bourne, who is dying. Stone takes a liking to Bourne and is even more taken with the estate's interior designer, Susan. All goes smoothly for Stone, until his son, Paul, becomes a target of a religious cult, the Chosen Few. After Paul's latest movie, Hell's Bells, depicted a not-so-flattering picture of the group's leader, Dr. Don, the cult is out for blood. So Stone is at it again, trying to stop Dr. Don's evil plan for his son, while tackling another task: who murdered his new neighbor? While Dr. Don and his followers are the obvious choices, Stone learns that not everything is as it seems and sometimes the people closest to you are the ones who hold the darkest of secrets. Woods offers another wild ride with his hero, bringing readers back into a world of action-packed adventure, murder and mayhem, steamy romance, and a twist you don't see coming.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)