Quando Jaclyn Blackstone varca la soglia del suo studio, Eldon Chance non può immaginare che quella che all'apparenza è solo l'ennesima paziente affetta da amnesie possa rappresentare il più grave pericolo che abbia mai corso. Il dottor Chance è un rinomato neuropsichiatra di San Francisco nel bel mezzo di un divorzio difficile, alle prese con i problemi di una figlia adolescente piuttosto complicata, con l'invidia dei colleghi e con grane finanziarie che non gli danno tregua. Jaclyn, affetta da un grave disturbo della personalità, lo intrappola in una rete di sesso e inganni, mistero e crimine, in una dimensione psichica in cui il binario della realtà scorre parallelo a quello dell'illusione. Il dottor Chance sa che l'unico modo per uscire vivo da quel gioco estremo è guardare negli occhi la follia, riconoscerne le facce, sventarne le insidie e allo stesso tempo coglierne le infinite inclinazioni, ma per far questo ha bisogno di ritrovare quell'istinto di sopravvivenza rabbioso, al limite dell'irragionevole.

From Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Kem Nunn and “principal heir to the tradition of Raymond Chandler and Nathanael West” (The Washington Post)—an intense psychological suspense novel about a San Francisco neuropsychiatrist who becomes sexually involved with a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder, whose pathological ex-husband is an Oakland homicide detective.

A dark tale involving psychiatric mystery, sexual obsession, fractured identities, and terrifyingly realistic violence—Chance is set amid the back streets of California’s Bay Area, far from the cleansing breezes of the ocean. Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist, is a man primed for spectacular ruin. Into Dr. Chance’s blighted life walks Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused, attractive wife of an Oakland homicide detective, a violent and jealous man. Jaclyn appears to be suffering from a dissociative identity disorder. In time, Chance will fall into bed with her—or is it with her alter ego, the voracious and volatile Jackie Black? The not-so-good doctor, despite his professional training, isn’t quite sure—and thereby hangs his fascination with her. Meanwhile, Chance also meets a young man named D, a self-styled, streetwise philosopher skilled in the art of the blade. It is around this trio of unique and dangerous individuals that long guarded secrets begin to unravel, obsessions grow, and the doctor’s carefully arranged life comes to the brink of implosion.

Amid San Francisco’s fluid, ever-shifting fog, in the cool, gray city of love, Dr. Chance will at last be forced to live up to his name. Chance is a twisted, harrowing, and impossible-to-put-down head trip through the fun house of fate, mesmerizing until the very last page.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

 A reissue of the classic novel that inspired the movie Point Break and pioneered a genre.

People go to Huntington Beach in search of the endless parties, the ultimate highs, and the perfect waves. Ike Tucker has come to look for his missing sister and for the three men who may have murdered her. In that place of gilded surfers and sun-bleached blonds, Ike's search takes him on a journey through a twisted world of crazed Vietnam vets, sadistic surfers, drug dealers, and mysterious seducers. He looks into the shadows and finds parties that drift toward pointless violence, joyless vacations, and highs you may never come down from . . . and a sea of old hatreds and dreams gone bad. And if he's not careful, his is a journey from which he will never return.

From National Book Award-nominated Kem Nunn comes an exquisitely written tale of loss and redemption along California's untamed borderland, confirming his reputation as a master of suspense and a novelist of the first rank.

When Fahey, once a great surfer, now a reclusive ex-con, meets Magdalena, she is running from a pack of wild dogs along the ragged wasteland where California and Mexico meet the Pacific Ocean -- a spot once known to the men who rode its giant waves as the Tijuana Straits. Magdalena has barely survived an attack on her life and Fahey, against his every instinct, takes her in.

An environmental activist, Magdalena is engaged in the struggle for the rights of the thousands of peasants streaming from Mexico's impoverished heartland to work in the maquilladoras -- the foreign-owned factories that line her country's border, polluting its air and fouling its rivers. She is passionate about her work, and perhaps has taken too many risks with her own safety.

As Magdalena attempts to reconstruct the events that delivered her, battered and confused, into Fahey's strange yet oddly seductive world, she examines every lead, never guessing the truth about the man who has marked her for death. Armando Santoya, beset by personal tragedy, an aberration born of the very conditions Magdalena has dedicated her life to fight against, is leading a trio of killers on a drug-fueled mission to end her life -- and that of Fahey, her new protector, confidant, and friend -- in a final duel on the beaches of the Tijuana Straits.

Huntington Beach è un sole abbagliante, è l'olio di cocco che fa luccicare i corpi abbronzati di ragazze seducenti. Huntington Beach è Surf City, la città del surf, sulla costa sud della California. Qui i maestri della tavola vi insegnano i segreti per domare le onde. lke è arrivato dal deserto per cercare sua sorella. lke è solo un ragazzo, ha con sé pochi soldi e un foglio di carta. Sul foglio ci sono tre nomi. Tre uomini partiti con Ellen per il Messico e ritornati soli. Surf City non è però solo il suo volto solare ma anche quel mondo notturno che si risveglia quando si accendono le luci delle insegne per le strade. Voci che cantano la malia di una vitalità cupa, personaggi che iniziano lke alla perdita della propria innocenza.

From Kem Nunn, the National Book Award-nominated author of Tapping the Source and The Dogs of Winter, comes an exquisitely written tale of loss and redemption. Nunn renders the dangerous beaches and waters of California's borderland as only the critically acclaimed poet laureate of surf noir can, and Tijuana Straits confirms his reputation as a master of suspense and a novelist of the first rank.

When Fahey, once a great surfer, now a reclusive ex-con, meets Magdalena, she is running from a pack of wild dogs along the ragged wasteland where California and Mexico meet the Pacific Ocean -- a spot once known to the men who rode its giant waves as the Tijuana Straits. Magdalena has barely survived an attack that forced her to flee Tijuana, and Fahey takes her in. That he is willing to do so runs contrary to his every instinct, for Fahey is done with the world, seeking little more than solitude from this all-but-forgotten corner of the Golden State. Nor is Fahey a stranger to the lawless ways of the border. He worries that in sheltering this woman he may not only be inviting further entanglements but may be placing them both at risk. In this, he is not wrong.

An environmental activist, Magdalena has become engaged in the struggle for the health and rights of the thousands of peasants streaming from Mexico's enervated heartland to work in the maquilladoras -- the foreign-owned factories that line her country's border, polluting its air and fouling its rivers. It is a risky contest. Danger can come from many directions, from government officials paid to preserve the status quo to thugs hired to intimidate reformers.

As Magdalena and Fahey become closer, Magdalena tries to discover who is out to get her, attempting to reconstruct the events that delivered her, battered and confused, into Fahey's strange yet oddly seductive world. She examines every lead, never guessing the truth. For into this no-man's-land between two countries comes a trio of killers led by Armando Santoya, a man beset by personal tragedy, an aberration born of the very conditions Magdalena has dedicated her life to fight against, yet who in the throes of his own drug-fueled confusions has marked her for death. And so will Fahey be put to the test, in a final duel on the beaches of his Tijuana Straits.

Ritrovarsi di colpo nel bel mezzo di una veglia funebre, davanti a un cadavere disteso in un congelatore della Coca-Cola tra i cubetti di ghiaccio e le lattine di birra in fresco? Non sarebbe così terribile se il morto non fosse il fratello di Dan Brown, un biker schizzato come un 'dobermann con un tumore al cervello', con un ampio passato di risse e vita di strada alle spalle. Perché Earl, rappresentante di elettrodomestici ex cantante, deve cantare sulla tomba del defunto e, poi, inseguire l'assassino. Ma anche Earl sta inseguendo qualcosa: una terra, la Pomona Valley, dove il suo bisnonno aveva creato i primi aranceti. Ma soprattutto, sta inseguendo lei, Pomona Queen: nello stesso tempo un'idea e una ragazza con un coltello in mano.

Lost in a southern California barrio, Earl Dean has a hard time believing there is one living soul in this foul-smelling night who wants to be found by a salesman hawking vacuum cleaners. What awaits Earl in the faint flow of a distant porch light is the world of Dan Brown...
Dan Brown's brother has been killed. Dan has plans to handle the revenge, and Earl has strayed into the cross fire. Dan is the last of the road warriors, a murderous, drug-crazed biker who only thinks of laws as things to break. But more than Buddy Brown lies dead in the moonlight. From a time when the valley was the hub of the nation's citrus industry to the defoliated sorry mess of today, it has come down to one fact. Earl Dean, broken-hearted vacuum cleaner salesman, owns the last single acre of orange groves in Pomona. And like his great-grandfather before him, he must come forward to claim his inheritance.

Returning to the California surf and turf of his celebrated first novel, Tapping the Source, the author offers a morality tale featuring a legendary surfer who finds his way past witchcraft, gangsters, insanity, and monster waves to peace. Reprint.

€ 20,80