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Douglas Preston

Author of Relic

103+ Works 72,241 Members 2,358 Reviews 175 Favorited

About the Author

Douglas Jerome Preston was born on May 20, 1956 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received a B.A. in English literature from Pomona College in 1978. His career began at the American Museum of Natural History, where he worked as an editor and writer from 1978 to 1985. He also was a lecturer in English show more at Princeton University. He became a full-time writer of both fiction and nonfiction books in 1986. Many of his fiction works are co-written with Lincoln Child including Relic, Riptide, Thunderhead, The Wheel of Darkness, Cemetery Dance, and Gideon's Corpse. His nonfiction works include Dinosaurs in the Attic; Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado; Talking to the Ground; and The Royal Road. He has written for numerous magazines including The New Yorker; Natural History; Harper's; Smithsonian; National Geographic; and Travel and Leisure. He became a New York Times Best Selling author with his titles Two Graves and Crimson Shores which he co-wrote with Lincoln Child, and his titles White Fire, The Lost Island Blue Labyrinth and The Lost City of the Monkey God. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Disambiguation Notice:

This author is Douglas Preston. DO NOT COMBINE THIS PAGE WITH ANY JOINT PAGES OF DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are two different people, who have written books collaboratively and separately. Their author pages should not be combined with each other, or with any of the variants using both their names. Please see "Who Should/Shouldn't Get combined" on the Author wiki page. Thank you.

Image credit: Uncredited photo at literati.net

Series

Works by Douglas Preston

Relic (1995) 5,238 copies
The Cabinet of Curiosities (2002) 4,031 copies
Reliquary (1997) 3,598 copies
The Book of the Dead (2006) 3,525 copies
Brimstone (2004) 3,392 copies
The Wheel Of Darkness (2007) 3,105 copies
Dance of Death (2005) 3,060 copies
Still Life with Crows (2003) 3,040 copies
The Monster of Florence (2008) 2,610 copies
Cemetery Dance (2009) 2,368 copies
Thunderhead (1999) 2,253 copies
Fever Dream (2010) 2,226 copies
Riptide (1998) 2,149 copies
Tyrannosaur Canyon (2005) 2,080 copies
The Codex (2003) 2,076 copies
The Ice Limit (2000) 1,961 copies
Mount Dragon (1996) 1,731 copies
Blasphemy (2008) 1,638 copies
Cold Vengeance (2011) 1,573 copies
Two Graves (2012) 1,515 copies
White Fire (2013) 1,406 copies
Gideon's Sword (2011) 1,405 copies
Impact (2010) 1,329 copies
Blue Labyrinth (2014) 1,236 copies
Crimson Shore (2015) 1,086 copies
Gideon's Corpse (2012) 910 copies
The Obsidian Chamber (2016) 905 copies
City of Endless Night (2018) 871 copies
The Lost Island (2014) 817 copies
Old Bones (2019) — Author — 783 copies
Verses for the Dead (2018) 742 copies
Beyond the Ice Limit (2016) 600 copies
Crooked River (2020) 584 copies
Bloodless (2021) 522 copies
The Scorpion's Tail (2021) 517 copies
The Kraken Project (2014) 515 copies
The Pharoah Key (2018) 498 copies
Diablo Mesa (2022) 352 copies
The Cabinet of Dr. Leng (2023) 334 copies
Extraction (2012) 277 copies
Jennie (1994) 215 copies
Dead Mountain (2023) 191 copies
Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel (2022) — Editor; Contributor — 128 copies
The Lost Tomb (2023) 84 copies
Extinction: A Novel (2023) 18 copies
The Forgotten Killer (2014) 15 copies
Riptide [abridged audiobook] (1998) — Author — 4 copies
Le Cabinet du Dr Leng (2023) 2 copies
L'antre du diable (2022) 2 copies
O ‰vÂirus do apocalipse (2013) 2 copies
A sötétség kereke (2008) 1 copy
La costa cremisi (2016) 1 copy
Il fiume del male (2023) 1 copy
Strangers 1 copy
Desperation 1 copy
Kirjavaliot (2007) 1 copy
Nel fuoco 1 copy

Associated Works

Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night (2006) — Contributor — 756 copies
FaceOff (2014) — Contributor — 501 copies
The Big Book of Adventure Stories (2011) — Foreword — 113 copies
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2020 (2021) — Contributor — 100 copies
In Search of Ice Age Americans (2002) — Foreword — 27 copies
National Geographic Magazine 2015 v228 #4 October (2015) — Contributor — 20 copies
Reader's Digest Select Editions 1998 v06 #240 (1998) — Author — 9 copies
Válogatott könyvek (2000) 4 copies

Tagged

adventure (838) Agent Pendergast (646) archaeology (431) audio (186) audiobook (350) crime (535) detective (193) Douglas Preston (242) ebook (611) FBI (256) fiction (4,419) goodreads (150) hardcover (266) history (208) horror (1,181) Italy (230) Kindle (399) library (155) murder (382) mystery (3,137) mystery-thriller (268) New York (291) New York City (218) non-fiction (616) novel (254) own (314) paperback (210) Pendergast (1,624) Pendergast series (233) Preston & Child (371) read (836) science fiction (596) serial killer (203) series (609) supernatural (181) suspense (1,274) thriller (4,076) to-read (2,807) true crime (264) unread (242)

Common Knowledge

Legal name
Preston, Douglas J.
Birthdate
1956-05-26
Gender
male
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Places of residence
Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA
New York, New York, USA
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Round Pond, Maine, USA
Education
Pomona College
Cambridge School of Weston
Occupations
editor
writer
manager of publications
professor
research associate
School of American Research (Boardmember)
Relationships
Preston, Richard (brother)
Dickinson, Emily (Ancestor)
Organizations
American Museum of Natural History
The Atlantic Monthly
Smithsonian
The New Yorker
Laboratory of Anthropology (Santa Fe)
PEN New Mexico
Agent
Eric Simonoff (Janklow & Nesbit Associates)
Matthew Snyder
Short biography
Douglas Preston is the author of thirty-five books, both fiction and nonfiction, twenty-two of which have been New York Times bestsellers, with several reaching the number 1 position. He has worked as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. His first novel, RELIC, co-authored with Lincoln Child, was made into a movie by Paramount Pictures, which launched the famed Pendergast series of novels. His recent nonfiction book, THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE, is also in production as a film. His latest book, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD, tells the true story of the discovery of a prehistoric city in an unexplored valley deep in the Honduran jungle. In addition to books, Preston writes about archaeology and paleontology for the New Yorker, National Geographic, and Smithsonian. He is past co-president of International Thriller Writers and serves on the board of the Authors Guild. He is the recipient of numerous writing awards in the US and Europe, including an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Pomona College.
Disambiguation notice
This author is Douglas Preston. DO NOT COMBINE THIS PAGE WITH ANY JOINT PAGES OF DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are two different people, who have written books collaboratively and separately. Their author pages should not be combined with each other, or with any of the variants using both their names. Please see "Who Should/Shouldn't Get combined" on the Author wiki page. Thank you.

Members

Reviews

Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child’s The Cabinet of Dr. Leng is the twenty-first novel in the Pendergast series focused on FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. The story begins following the events of Bloodless, which introduced a time machine in the vein of Michael Crichton’s Timeline that can use quantum tunneling to peer into parallel realities that feature a different time rather than traveling back along the time of one’s own reality. Constance Greene used the device to travel to a New York City of the 1880s in order to save some version of her siblings from their grisly fates and to extract vengeance from Dr. Enoch Leng, Pendergast’s ancestor and the man who experimented on and killed her sister to develop his Arcanum, eventually using it to prolong his own and Constance’s life. For his part, Pendergast decides not to follows Constance’s directions and reconstructs the machine she destroyed in order to save her from Leng, a threat in any timeline. In this, the novel returns the series to one of its strongest previous entries while offering the chance for Preston & Child to flex their historical fiction skills.

Meanwhile in the present, Lt. Vincent D’Agosta finds himself returning to the Museum of Natural History, the site of two of Pendergast’s earliest cases, in order to investigate a classic locked-room mystery. Out in Denver, Special Agent Armstrong Coldmoon investigates a murder on a nearby Reservation. His superiors and the local police think the case is open-and-shut, but his doubts reveal the duplication and theft of Native American artwork and items of cultural patrimony with links to D’Agosta’s case. Soon, Pendergast’s two former partners find themselves working together to uncover how many items were stolen and where they ended up.

The story concludes on a cliffhanger, with a teaser promising a final confrontation between Pendergasts past and present. In expanding upon a narrative that began in The Cabinet of Curiosities, Preston & Child find themselves on safe ground so that long-time fans can follow the narrative leaps time travel brings to the story. The B-story focused on D’Agosta and Coldmoon gives each a chance to shine while affording them the opportunity to learn from each other’s insights. A good addition to the Pendergast series that promises an exciting conclusion in the forthcoming twenty-second novel.
… (more)
½
 
Flagged
DarthDeverell | 17 other reviews | Mar 18, 2024 |
You’ve got to be kidding me? Aliens? This went to Hell way faster than the Pendergast books did
 
Flagged
corliss12000 | 14 other reviews | Mar 16, 2024 |
I was hesitant to read this since these authors have ruined my favorite character, Agent Pendergast for me, but my second favorite is Corrie, so I read it. It was actually pretty good in my opinion, although I thought the prion bit was a bit of a stretch
 
Flagged
corliss12000 | 50 other reviews | Mar 16, 2024 |
A corpse in a ghost town lead Nora Kelly and Corrie Swanson to a deadly battle with the military.
½
 
Flagged
DrApple | 20 other reviews | Mar 15, 2024 |

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Statistics

Works
103
Also by
28
Members
72,241
Popularity
#175
Rating
3.8
Reviews
2,358
ISBNs
1,685
Languages
23
Favorited
175

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