Raymond Khoury Books In Order

The Last Templar

‘It has served us well, this myth of Christ.’ Pope Leo X, 16th Century In a hail of fire and flashing sword, as the burning city of Acre falls from the hands of the West in 1291, The Last Templar opens with a young Templar knight, his mentor, and a handful of others escaping to the sea carrying a mysterious chest entrusted to them by the Order’s dying Grand Master. The ship vanishes without a trace. In present day Manhattan, four masked horseme*n dressed as Templar Knights emerge from Central Park and ride up the Fifth Avenue steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the blacktie opening of a Treasures of the Vatican exhibit. Storming through the crowds, the horseme*n brutally attack anyone standing between them and their prize. Attending the gala, archaeologist Tess Chaykin watches in silent terror as the leader of the horseme*n hones in on one piece in particular, a strange geared device. He utters a few cryptic Latin words as he takes hold of it with reverence before leading the horseme*n out and disappearing into the night. In the aftermath, an FBI investigation is led by anti terrorist specialist Sean Reilly. Soon, he and Tess are drawn into the dark, hidden history of the crusading Knights, plunging them into a deadly game of cat and mouse with ruthless killers as they race across three continents to recover the lost secret of the Templars.

The Templar Salvation

At last, the book more than a million fans are waiting for: the sequel to The Last Templar. With its iconic title and unmistakable cover, Raymond Khoury’s million copy selling The Last Templar remains one of the most memorable thriller publications of the last decade. Finally, after four long years, Khoury returns to the world of the Templars with The Templar Salvation, a sequel that’s every bit as eye popping and as gripping as its predecessor. Constantinople, 1203: As the rapacious armies of the Fourth Crusade lay siege to the city, a secretive band of Templars infiltrate the imperial library. Their target: a cache of documents that must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Doge of Venice. They escape with three heavy chests, filled with explosive secrets that these men will not live long enough to learn. Vatican City, present day: FBI agent Sean Reilly infiltrates the Pope’s massive Vatican Secret Archives of the Inquisition. No one but the Pope’s trusted secondi get in but Reilly has earned the Vatican’s trust, a trust he has no choice but to violate. His love, Tess Chaykin, has been kidnapped; the key to her freedom lays in this underground tomb, in the form of a document known as the Fondo Templari, a secret history of the infamous Templars…
With his trademark blend of incendiary history and edge of your seat suspense, Raymond Khoury’s The Templar Salvation marks a triumphant return to the rich territory that launched his bestselling career.

The Devil’s Elixir / Second Time Around

FBI agent Sean Reilly and his girlfriend, archaeologist Tess Chaykin, heroes of Raymond Khoury’s bestselling Templar novels, return in another edge of your seat thriller that reaches from present day back to 1700s Mexico and possibly beyond. What if there was a drug, previously lost to history in the jungles of Central America, capable of inducing an experience so momentous and so unsettling that it might shake the very foundations of Western civilization? What if powerful forces on both sides of the law got wind of that drug and launched a vicious, uncompromising pursuit to possess it? In Raymond Khoury’s million copy selling Templar novels, Reilly and Tess traveled the globe to unravel ancient mysteries with present day ramifications. In The Devil’s Elixir, they find themselves dragged into a race against the clock, against a brutal drug kingpin known as ‘El Brujo’ the sorcerer and even against government authorities to merge two divergent trails, one several hundred years old, the other as current as a heartbeat, that could drag humanity to the brink of self destruction. Packed with the nonstop suspense and unexpected twists Raymond Khoury fans delight in, The Devil’s Elixir is destined for bestseller lists everywhere.

The Encoder

‘It has served us well, this myth of Christ.’ Pope Leo X, 16th Century In a hail of fire and flashing sword, as the burning city of Acre falls from the hands of the West in 1291, The Last Templar opens with a young Templar knight, his mentor, and a handful of others escaping to the sea carrying a mysterious chest entrusted to them by the Order’s dying Grand Master. The ship vanishes without a trace. In present day Manhattan, four masked horseme*n dressed as Templar Knights emerge from Central Park and ride up the Fifth Avenue steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the blacktie opening of a Treasures of the Vatican exhibit. Storming through the crowds, the horseme*n brutally attack anyone standing between them and their prize. Attending the gala, archaeologist Tess Chaykin watches in silent terror as the leader of the horseme*n hones in on one piece in particular, a strange geared device. He utters a few cryptic Latin words as he takes hold of it with reverence before leading the horseme*n out and disappearing into the night. In the aftermath, an FBI investigation is led by anti terrorist specialist Sean Reilly. Soon, he and Tess are drawn into the dark, hidden history of the crusading Knights, plunging them into a deadly game of cat and mouse with ruthless killers as they race across three continents to recover the lost secret of the Templars.

The Sanctuary

In the powerful new thriller from the author of the international bestseller The Last Templar, a geneticist and a CIA agent on a deadly quest to find the most dangerous book in the world discover a secret that has destroyed everyone in its path for centuries

Naples, 1750. In the dead of night, three men with swords burst into the palazzo of a marquis. Their leader, the Prince of San Severo, accuses the marquis of being an imposter, and demands to know a secret only the marquis harbors. In the fight that ensues, the false marquis escapes over the rooftops of Naples, leaving behind a burning palazzo and a raging prince now obsessed with finding his quarry at any cost.

Baghdad, 2003. An army unit on a routine mission makes a horrifying discovery: a state of the art, concealed lab where dozens men, women, children have died, the subjects of gruesome experiments. The mysterious scientist they were after, a man believed to be working on a bioweapon and known only as the hakeem the doctor escapes, taking with him the startling truth about his work. A puzzling clue is left behind: a circular symbol of a snake feeding on its own tail.

As the power of the symbol comes to light, revealing the centuries of destruction left in its wake, one unsuspecting woman stands at the center of a conspiracy that could change the world forever. In the masterful hands of international bestseller Raymond Khoury, The Sanctuary delivers the same rapid fire suspense and provocative scholarship that made The Last Templar a coast to coast blockbuster.

The Sign

Another cutting edge thriller set at the intersection of science, religion, and history from the bestselling author of The Last TemplarNew York Times bestselling author Raymond Khoury whose debut novel, The Last Templar, has sold more than a million copies in the United States, and whose second, The Sanctuary, was also a major national bestseller returns with The Sign. Like the first two, this new thriller combines gripping contemporary suspense with a high concept mystery rooted in history, philosophy, religion, and science. And like those novels, it is bound for bestseller lists nationwide. In Antarctica, a scientific expedition drops anchor for a live news feed. As the CNN journalist begins her report, a massive, shimmering sphere of light suddenly appears in the sky, enveloping the ship in luminous white light before disappearing as mysteriously as it arrived the entire event witnessed by an incredulous world audience. Meanwhile in a dusty bar in Egypt, a dozen men are lazily discussing the state of the world when the brilliant, glowing symbol on the television stops them cold. One man breaks out in a sweat, crosses himself repeatedly, and rushes out of the bar muttering the same phrase over and over again: It can t be. Across the Internet and around the globe, a stunning controversy threatens to consume the world: Has God finally decided to reveal himself? Or is something more sinister at hand? Raymond Khoury/Steve Berry interview STEVE BERRY: Your new thriller, The Sign I m gonna come right out and say it: I think it’s your best one yet. What do you think? RAMOND KHOURY: Tough call. It s my new baby, and much as I adore its elder siblings, it does have that newborn magic to it. STEVE: Trust me, it is. It s also a bit of a departure from your first two books, in that it doesn t have the past and present storylines. Knowing how stories kind of take on a life of their own, that wasn t a conscious decision from the get go, was it? RAYMOND KHOURY: No, it wasn t premeditated. It s just the way the story came out. The whole story happens in the present. It takes place over a few manic days I think you re familiar with that pacing, right? and it deals with the present, it s about a what if situation that s very today and now, there s a mystery, something to figure out, but there s no throwback to the past, no long lost secret to uncover. STEVE BERRY: It s also very topical. Your editors must be pleased. RAYMOND: I guess it happened that way because the story came out of some very strong feelings I had, feelings about what was going on around the world, in the US and abroad. STEVE: Tell me about that process. Where the story came from. RAYMOND: It s where they all come from, isn t it? That kernel, that one thought or one observation you have that just sticks and triggers a book, the one that bugs you late at night and that you can t shake. This one came to me while watching the news one day, and every item, one after another, it was all bad news. Not just bad, but it was like a lot of people were behaving so insanely in so many places around the world and, sadly, a lot of it was fuelled by the manipulation or distortion of religious faith STEVE: by intolerance RAYMOND: exactly. Intolerance and closed minds. And it got me thinking. About how divided we are, about how so many people all over the world believe in the absolute infallibility of their faith and how it rules every aspect of their lives you know what I mean, we re right, everyone else is wrong, that medieval mindset and wondering if anything could ever unite the planet under a single faith. STEVE: One global religion. RAYMOND: Well, imagine if something did happen that convinced everyone that what we had until now, all these different religions that have grown over the last few thousand years what if something new came along that was so overwhelming that it was impossible to ignore? Would we listen? Would we drop our previous faiths and embrace it? STEVE: But your book s about much more than that. Without wanting to give too much away, it s really a political thriller, isn t it? RAYMOND: It s always so hard to talk about a book without giving too much away STEVE: it s the fine line we walk. RAYMOND: True. But yes, you re right it s really about the absolute power something like that would bring and how it could be abused. Cause above all else, it s a thriller. There s got to be a brilliantly dastardly scheme, right? STEVE: Always. And this one certainly is dastardly. One thing I ve noticed, though, in all three of your books so far they re all, essentially, about the big questions that face us: why we believe, whether or not we have to die. Religion, longevity, life and death, science vs. faith…
Big questions. And in this one, you revisit though in a completely different way the power of religion, the good it can bring as well as the bad, something that was also central to THE LAST TEMPLAR. Will this always be your signature genre books that have a big, central theme at their core? RAYMOND: You asked me earlier about where the story came from. For me, in order to get excited about a book, it has to have a big central theme about how we live at its heart, something I m interested in exploring. It s got to be about something I care about deeply. That s what drives the story and the characters forward for me. That s what I hope makes the books stand out. That they re not just page turners which ain t easy in itself but that they re also about something. I see it in your books too. A point of view about things, a passion for laying out interesting information about a topic that interests you. Michael Crichton used to do that very successfully. Dan Brown, of course, does it brilliantly. That s what makes the books worth writing, I think. STEVE: And in reading the book, it s clear you still had tons of research to do, even though there isn t a historic mysery to unravel? RAYMOND: Absolutely. Some of it was about history the monasteries in Egypt, for one. Again, part of the story, organically. Had to be done, and we do love our history, don t we? STEVE: Guilty as charged. RAYMOND: But for this book, I didn t need to do that much of it nothing like what you did for THE CHARLEMAGNE PURSUIT, for instance. Which I loved, by the way. Particularly since you beat me to using the Voynich Manuscript in a story! STEVE: We do seem to be spookily in sync with our writing as further evidenced by The Sign s opening in Antarctica RAYMOND: I know! STEVE: So tell me Matt and Gracie. Are we going to see them again? RAYMOND: I don t know. On the one hand, I envy your situation with Cotton Malone, you ve got a solid anchor for your books, you re building this great world around him, his son and Stephanie and Henrik and Cassiopeia who I hope we see again real soon and it s meaty and it s epic and like the rest of your readers, I m hooked and I want to know what they do next. You ve got that, Lee Child has had it since day one with Reacher, Harlan Coben with Myron Bolitar, the list goes on. Great characters. I d love to do that one day, but it has to feel right. I wasn t in that frame of mind in my first two books, certainly the world after the end of THE SANCTUARY would be a very different place from the world Mia started out in at the beginning of that book. Tess and Reilly, I could maybe bring back. A lot of fans have asked for that. But with The Sign, Iinitely think Matt and Gracie are characters that I could bring back. I d like to put them through another wringer, and it feels like it would come naturally. But before I do that, I m writing the next book which introduces a new lead character, so they ll be getting a bit of a breather. STEVE: They sure can use it. Good luck with the book. RAYMOND: Thank you.

No Rest for the Dead

More than twenty New York Times bestselling authors team up to create a first rate serial novel a collaboration that combines the skills of America’s greatest storytellers to produce a gripping, spellbinding mystery. Alexander McCall Smith. Sandra Brown. Faye Kellerman. J.A. Jance. Jeffery Deaver. Kathy Reichs. Lisa Scottoline. Jeff Lindsay. These are only a handful of the names that make up the all star lineup of authors behind No Rest for the Dead, a tale of vengeance, greed, and love that flows seamlessly, in the words of David Baldacci, as it pas*ses from one creator s mind to the next. When Christopher Thomas, a ruthless curator at San Francisco s McFall Art Museum, is murdered and his decaying body is found in an iron maiden in a Berlin museum, his wife, Rosemary, is the primary suspect, and she is tried, convicted, and executed. Ten years later, Jon Nunn, the detective who cracked the case, is convinced that the wrong person was put to death. In the years since the case was closed, he’s discovered a web of deceit and betrayal surrounding the Thomases that could implicate any number of people in the crime. Solving this case may be Nunn s last chance for redemption but the shadowy forces behind Christopher s death will stop at nothing to silence the past forever. In this innovative storytelling approach, each of these twenty six bestselling writers brings their distinctive voice to a chapter of the narrative, building the tension to a shocking, explosive finale. No Rest for the Dead is a thrilling accomplishment that only America s very best authors could achieve.