Andrew Klavan – författare

Follow Andrew Klavan to a deeper, richer understanding of the words of Jesus.

Andrew Klavan believed what he read in the Gospels, but he often struggled to understand what Jesus really meant. So he began a journey of wrestling with the beautiful and often strange words of Jesus.

He learned Greek in order to read the Gospels in their original languages, and he vowed to set aside any preconceptions about what the Scriptures say. But it wasn''t until he began exploring how some of history''s greatest writers wrestled with the same issues we confront today--political upheaval, rejection of social norms, growing disbelief in God--that he found a new way of understanding what Jesus meant.

In The Truth and Beauty, Klavan combines a decades-long writing career with a lifetime of reading to discover a fresh understanding of the Gospels. By reading the words of Jesus through the life and work of writers such as William Wordsworth and John Keats, Mary Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge--the English romantics--Klavan discovered a way to encounter Jesus in a deeper and more profound way than ever before.

For readers seeking to find renewed meaning in the words of Jesus--and for those who are striving for belief in a materialistic world--The Truth and Beauty offers an intimate account of one man''s struggle to understand the Gospels in all their strangeness, and so find his way to a life that is, as he says, "the most creative, the most joyful, and surely the most true."

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Andrew Klavan explores how artists'' imaginative engagement with the darkness can point the way to living beautifully in the midst of a tragic world.

"Andrew Klavan''s book illuminates even as it explores the deepest darkness, finding truth and beauty in art born of unflinching confrontations with evil." --Daniel McCarthy, editor-in-chief, Modern Age

In his USA Today bestselling The Truth and Beauty, Andrew Klavan explored how the work of great poets helps illuminate the truth of the gospels. Now, the award-winning screenwriter and crime novelist turns his attention to the dark side of human nature to discover how we might find joy and beauty in the world while still being clear-eyed about the evil found in it.

The Kingdom of Cain looks at three murders in history--including the first murder, Cain''s killing of his brother, Abel--and at the art created from imaginative engagement with those horrific events by artists ranging from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Alfred Hitchcock.

To make beauty out of the world as it is--shot through with evil and injustice and suffering--is the task not just of the artist but, Klavan argues, of every life rightly lived. Examining how that transformation occurs in art grants us a vision for how it can happen in our lives.

Klavan eloquently argues that it is possible to be clear-eyed about the evil in the world while remaining hope-filled about God''s ability to redeem it all.

No one was more surprised than Andrew Klavan when, at the age of fifty, he found himself about to be baptized. The Great Good Thing tells the soul-searching story of a man born into an age of disbelief who had to abandon everything he thought he knew in order to find his way to the truth.

Best known for his hard-boiled, white-knuckle thrillers and for the movies made from them--among them True Crime and Don’t Say a Word--bestselling author and Edgar Award-winner Klavan was born in a suburban Jewish enclave outside New York City.

He left the faith of his childhood behind to live most of his life as an agnostic until he found himself mulling over the hard questions that so many other believers have asked:

In The Great Good Thing, Klavan shares that his troubled childhood caused him to live inside the stories in his head and grow up to become an alienated young writer whose disconnection and rage devolved into depression and suicidal breakdown.

In those years, Klavan fought to ignore the insistent call of God, a call glimpsed in a childhood Christmas at the home of a beloved babysitter, in a transcendent moment at his daughter''s birth, and in a snippet of a baseball game broadcast that moved him from the brink of suicide. But more than anything, the call of God existed in stories--the stories Klavan loved to read and the stories he loved to write.

Join Klavan as he discovers the meaning of belief, the importance of asking tough questions, and the power of sharing your story.

John Shannon is a petty thief on the run. A three-time loser framed for a murder he didn’t commit, he knows the cops are closing in on him and that he is facing life in prison—or death by lethal injection. Then, as if out of nowhere, a bizarre text message draws him to a meeting in the dark of night. A foreigner who calls himself the “Identity Man” offers Shannon an incredible chance to start again: a new face, a new home, a new beginning.

Soon, to his amazement, Shannon finds himself living a life he never dreamed possible. In a ruined city that is trying to rebuild, he finds work as a carpenter and a wood carver. He meets the beautiful Teresa Grey and for the first time falls in love with the sort of woman who could make him a better man.

It seems too good to be true—and it is. Just as Shannon feels within sight of redemption, all hell breaks loose. It turns out this ruined city is crawling with corruption. There are crooked politicians, gangsters, dirty cops everywhere—and, for some reason he doesn’t understand, all of them seem to want Shannon dead.

John Shannon has run out of second chances, and now he is running out of time. Moving through the darkness in the burnt-out shambles of a dirty town, he has got to ferret out the secret of his new life—and fast—if he wants to be left with any life at all.

They are two sworn enemies with a single obsession: a woman on the run from them both.

Scott Weiss is a private detective. John Foy is a professional killer. The woman is Julie Wyant, a hooker with the face of an angel.

Julie spent one night with Foy—a night of psychopathic cruelty that Foy called love. Desperate to get away from him, she vanished without a trace. And Foy wants her back.

There’s only one man who can find her: Weiss, the best locate operative in the business. She’s begged him not to look for her, fearing he’ll bring the killer in his wake. But Weiss can’t stay away.

Now, from a town called Paradise, through a wilderness that feels like hell, Weiss searches for Julie—and the killer follows, waiting for his chance.

They are two expert hunters matching move for move—until it ends in gunfire on Damnation Street.

Sustained by a deep religious faith, Jason Harrow has built a stable family and become a pillar of principle and patriotism in the Midwest. Then the phone rings, and his past is on the other end of the line. A woman with whom he once shared a life of violence and desire claims her daughter is missing—and Jason is the one man who can find her.

Returning to New York City, Jason finds himself entangled in a murderous conspiracy only he can see and only he can stop—a plot that bizarrely links his private passions to the turmoil of a world at war. Hunted by terrorists and by the police, Jason has only hours to unravel an ex-lover’s lies and face the unbearable truth: In order to prevent a savage attack on his country, he’s going to have to risk his decency, his sanity, and his life.

Praise for ANDREW KLAVAN

“The most original American novelist of crime and suspense since Cornell Woolrich.” –Stephen King

“Klavan does tough-guy heroes and sexual tension better than anyone writing today.” –Janet Evanovich

“Klavan, who has a perfect sense of timing, delivers all the cliffhangers and hairpin turns that you want from a beat-the-clock suspense thriller.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Klavan writes with an artisan’s eye, a pro’s assurance, and a poet’s touch.…[He] is one of my drop-everything-and-read authors.” –Gregg Hurwitz

“Klavan winds his tale tighter and tighter until the reader is hopelessly spellbound.” –Clive Cussler

“Klavan’s confidently wry style keeps things punched up throughout.” –The Atlantic Monthly

The first book in an exciting new series reminiscent of The Bourne Identity and 24Charlie West studies hard, stays focused and has just gotten the phone number of the prettiest girl in his class. He is thinking about joining the air force after graduation. He is a third degree black belt. He never gets in trouble. Until now. Charlie has woken up in a nightmare. He''s strapped to a steel chair, and someone outside the door just ordered his death. . . Even worse - he can''t remember a thing about how he got here. By calling on his deepest reserves of strength and focus, Charlie manages a desperate escape. . . but his nightmare isn''t ending. There''s a whole year of his life that he can''t remember. A year in which he was convicted of murdering his best friend and working with terrorists. Charlie knows that can''t be true. But what is? Staying alive long enough to figure out the answers may be the least of his worries. . .