Master of the Delta（ISBN=9780156033206）

"Piercing . . . Consuming suspense almost too concentrated to bear." (New York Daily News )PRAISE FOR THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING "[Dianas] inexorable descent into mania, narrated by her brother Dave, is as gripping as the mystery itself. A-." (Entertainment Weekly )

In 1954 Mississippi, Jack Branch returns to his father's Delta estate, Great Oaks, to perform an act of noblesse oblige: teaching at the local high school.While conducting a class on evil throughout history, Jack is shocked to discover that his unassuming student Eddie is the son of the Coed Killer, a notorious local murderer. Jack feels compelled to mentor the boy, encouraging Eddie to examine his father's crime and using his own good name to open the doors that Eddie's lineage can't. But when the investigation turns in an unexpected direction, Jack finds himself questioning Eddie's motives--and his own. As the deadly consequences of Jack's actions fall inescapably into place, Thomas H. Cook masterfully reveals the darker truths that lurk in the recesses of small-town lives and in the hearts of well-intentioned men.

THOMAS H. COOK was born in Fort Payne, Alabama in 1947. He is the author of twenty-one novels and two works of nonfiction. He has been nominated for the Edgar Award seven times in five different categories, including Best Novel for Red Leaves, which was also nominated for the British Crime Writers' Association's Duncan Lawrie Dagger and won the Barry for Best Novel. The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best Novel. He lives in New York City and Cape Cod.