Part of Series
Americans work more and get less than ever before. What happened to the ‘Great American Dream’ they were promised? Howard Hughes knew, and it cost him his freedom. Jason Hammond is about to find out, too—and it might cost him his life. LAS VEGAS, NOVEMBER 1970—In a darkened suite on the top floor of the Desert Inn, billionaire Howard Hughes gives his last will and testament to twenty-year-old Chase Wheeler. Chase is a member of the kitchen staff who, through his simple good nature, has gained Hughes’s trust. Hughes tells him to keep the will hidden, because it contains information that will anger many powerful people—including a group working in the shadows to bring America to ruin. Just over a week later, Hughes’s minders abruptly move him out of Las Vegas in the middle of the night, and Chase Wheeler vanishes without a trace. In the years that follow, Chase’s widowed mother will gradually lose her desire to live as the chances of finding her beloved son dwindle to nothing. PRESENT DAY—Demolition expert Randy Miller discovers forty-eight pages of Hughes’s rough notes just hours before the Desert Inn is imploded. Still in financial straits due to the Great Recession, Randy and his wife, Jeanine, decide to put a few of the pages on eBay. Days later, the Miller family is attacked by a gunman who wants them all. The Millers take their children into hiding and contact the only person they feel they can trust—Jason Hammond, the master sleuth who recently made international headlines when he closed the case on the Kennedy assassination. Jason reads through the cryptic notes and realizes they contain a great deal of information about Hughes’s legendary lost will. If discovered now, it would endow certain people with great fortune while stripping it from others—more than adequate motivation for someone to bring a professional killer into the equation. But the situation is far from that simple. Jason is determined to find the will before anyone else, in order to provide closure for the Miller family as well as Chase Wheeler’s sole surviving relative, his embittered sister Denise. But Jason gets more than he bargained for when his investigation leads him to the chilling truth behind America’s decline—and the terrifying reality that the people responsible for it aren’t done yet....
Author
Wil Mara has worked as an author for over 34 years and currently has more than 325 books in print. He has written both fiction and nonfiction, for children and adults. His books have won multiple awards, reached bestseller lists, earned excellent reviews, and been translated into more than a dozen languages. 2005’s Wave won the New Jersey Notable Book Award, and 2012’s The Gemini Virus remained on Amazon’s list of ‘Ten Bestseller Medical Thrillers’ for 14 consecutive weeks. The most recent novel in his disaster series, Fallout, was nominated for the Edgar Award for Novel of the Year. And his children’s nonfiction publications have won countless awards and terrific reviews in all the leading trade journals, including Booklist, School Library Journal, Kirkus, and others. Much of his work for children has been nonfiction for the school-library market. He also ghostwrote five of the popular ‘Boxcar Children’ mysteries. And starting in 2019, Rosen Publishing released the first of his new ‘Twisted’ series, which has been described as “Twilight Zones for kids.” It became the most pre-ordered fiction series in the company’s history. The first ‘Twisted’ book, The Videomaniac, was released on January 1 and sold through its first printing in less than a month. The second, House of a Million Rooms, was released on March 1 and, just a few weeks later, was chosen as a Main Selection Title by the Junior Library Guild. Wil was also an editor, administrator, and executive inside the industry for over 20 years, working for such houses as Scholastic, McGraw-Hill, Macmillan, and Prentice-Hall until turning to fulltime writing in 2005. He is an associate member of the NJASL and an executive member of the Board of Directors for the New Jersey Center for the Book, which is an affiliate of the US Library of Congress. He is also the vice president of the Literary Alliance of New Jersey, the host of the ‘Voice of American Libraries’ podcast, and the 2019 recipient of the Literary Lion of New Jersey Award, whose past winners include Gus Friedrich, Dean Emeritus of Rutgers University, and Joyce Carol Oates, National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist. Wil is also an experienced speaker, presenter, and voice artist, having visited more than 300 schools and other institutions, and done the audio readings for many books, including his 2012 thriller The Gemini Virus. He continues to speak to audiences across the country (including via video) and do voice work as his writing schedule permits.
