For forty-six days, bus driver Walter Demming and eleven schoolchildren have been buried underground, held captive in the fortified compound of a fundamentalist cult. Deprived of daylight, fresh air and contact with the outside world, they endure the terrifying rants of the cult's leader, the charismatic Samuel Mordecai. He joyfully predicts the arrival of Armageddon - in exactly five days' time. All attempts at negotiations have failed. Enter tenacious crime reporter Molly Cates, the only journalist ever to have interviewed Mordecai. It was the worst assignment of her life - until this one. She has gained his trust before, and she must try again. But this time the stakes are impossibly high. And she has just five days...
Mary Willis Walker is the author of Zero at the Bone, which won both the Agatha and Macavity awards and was nominated for an Edgar; The Red Scream, winner of the Edgar Award; and Under the Beetle's Cellar, recipient of the Hammett Prize, the Anthony Award, and the Macavity Award. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she is now at work on her fifth novel.
Read more
