Novels
- The Wall (1998)
- War Torn (2003)
- Fangland (2007)
Novels Book Covers
John Marks Books Overview
The Wall
A New York Times Notable Book A compelling, intelligent thriller that ‘places the reader in the vortex of the Cold War endgame in Eastern Europe…
captivating.’ New York Times Book Review. One historic evening in November, Berlin erupts in giddy celebration as The Wall between East and West crumbles after twenty eight long years. The borders have shifted. The rules have changed. But in this extraordinary novel which follows a cast of men and women, spies and journalists, lovers and brothers, each caught up in the last days of the Cold War triumph is accompanied by terror and freedom is laced with danger. From revelry in Berlin to riots in Prague, uneasiness in Budapest to uprising in Romania, this beautifully crafted thriller takes us back to a cataclysmic moment that changed our understanding of the world and of ourselves. Includes a Readers Guide inside, as well as an exclusive interview in which John Marks addresses the political and social significance of The Wall Author’s literary and journalistic talents combine to create a thriller that’s both exciting and enlightening filled with the authentic atmosphere gained from his five years in Berlin A ‘history lesson through fiction,’ a la Cold Mountain, Los Alamos, Memoirs of a Geisha, or An Instance of the Fingerpost Includes a map of central Europe and chronology of historic Cold War events’Insightful…
gripping…
Marks manages to capture perfectly the heady mixture of hope and fear surrounding the collapse of the East German government in 1989.’ Chicago Tribune’A former Berlin bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report, Marks handles his involved story line with assurance. An intelligent, memorable and thoroughly engaging debut.’ Publishers Weekly starred review
War Torn
From the author of the gripping Cold War thriller and New York Times Notable Book The Wall comes its suspenseful sequel, set in Berlin and the former Yugoslavia. John Marks’ first novel, The Wall, a thinking man’s thriller, was compared to Graham Greene’s espionage novels and, in both its depth and contemporary relevance, to Robert Stone’s Damascus Gate. Now, in War Torn, Marks reveals another pivotal moment in history through the lens of a love affair between an American journalist and a woman from the former Yugoslavia. War Torn begins in the aftermath of the Cold War in Berlin, where a century of trauma is coming to an end and it is finally possible to speak with confidence about the future. Close by, but worlds away, the nightmare is just beginning in Mostar, where civil war is about to erupt, robbing its citizens of their homeland and obliterating everything they cherish. War Torn is a story of people caught up in war who cannot stop to make sense of it but must fight simply to survive. And of what happens to them when the dust settles, when what counted before family, loyalty, home no longer matters, or even exists. John Marks depicts history in the making, and its impact on two lives has implications for us all.
Fangland
An acclaimed novelist and former 60 Minutes producer grandly reinvents the Dracula epic in the halls of a certain television newsmagazine In the annals of business trips gone horribly wrong, Evangeline Harker’s journey to Romania on behalf of her employer, the popular television newsmagazine The Hour, deserves pride of place. Sent to Transylvania to scout out a possible story on a notorious Eastern European crime boss named Ion Torgu, she has found the true nature of Torgu’s activities to be far more monstrous than anything her young journalist’s mind could have imagined. The fact that her employer clearly won’t get the segment it was hoping for is soon the very least of her concerns. Back in New York, Evangeline’s disappearance causes an uproar at the office and a wave of guilt and recrimination. Then suddenly, several months later, she’s heard from: miraculously, she’s convalescing in a Transylvania monastery, her memory seemingly scrubbed. But then who was sending e mails through her account to The Hour employees? And what are those great coffin like boxes of objects delivered to the office in her name from the Old Country? And why does the show’s sound system appear to be infected with some strange virus, an aural bug that coats all recordings in a faint background hiss that sounds like the chanting of…
place names? And what about the rumors that a correspondent has scored an interview with Torgu, here in New York, after all? As a very dark Old World atmosphere deepens in the halls of one of America’s most trusted television programs, its employees are forced to confront a threat beyond their wildest imaginings, a threat that makes gossip about an impending corporate shakeup seem very quaint indeed. Written in the form of diary entries, e mails, therapy journals, and other artifacts of early twenty first century American professional class life, compiled as an informal inquest by a very interested party, Fangland manages both to be a genuinely in fact triumphantly frightening vampire novel in the grand tradition and a, yes, biting commentary on the way we live and work now.
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