Book 1 ~ DARK GOLD
"Thrills and chills...sunken gold, black magic, sea monsters, a beautiful Brazilian in a bikini--what more could you want from a summer thriller?"
~Kirkus, starred review
His summer after college graduation was never supposed to turn out this way. But when Jack Duran's vagabond brother Dan goes missing in Mexico, Jack heads to Puerta Vallarta to find him. With his two best buddies in tow, Jack follows Dan's trail of shady dealings, which lead him to a Bahamian yachtsman and his bikini-clad crew. Sailing down the jungle-covered coast, they soon discover that Dan had been searching for a shipwreck. But some treasures are meant to stay buried...
"Fraught with shivering suspense and a hauntingly eerie atmosphere. Dark Gold grips with feverish intensity. As literate as it is frightening."
~James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Sigma Force novels
"...a page-turner that will take readers back to the days when a good book meant you stayed up all night under the covers with a flashlight."
~Publishers Weekly
Book 2 ~ NIGHT OF THE FURIES
The Duran brothers and a beautiful archaeologist exploring ancient mysteries in the Greek Isles get swept into a deadly maelstrom of Bacchanalian horror.
"Fast, furious, sexy, and unique, David Angsten's NIGHT OF THE FURIES turns a tour of the Greek Isles into a gripping story of ancient history and bloody retribution. This book demands to be read in one sitting."
~ James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Oracle
"Maybe David Angsten has created a new genre - the 'mythic adventure,' where we absorb the fascinating ancient history behind the mythology of exotic places, while running for our lives alongside his protagonists as they flee present-day manifestations. These books are as edifying and dramatic as historical novels, but always suspenseful, and dependably atmospheric with dread and sexual tension. …NIGHT OF THE FURIES makes myth credible, tangible, and finally frightening"
~ Roy Freirich, author of Winged Creatures and Deprivation
Book 3 ~ THE ASSASSIN LOTUS
When his brother disappears with the seeds of an ancient lotus plant long thought to be extinct, Jack Duran, along with his brother's archaeologist girlfriend, set off on a search for him along Asia's fabled Silk Road. From the Caspian Sea to the Karakum Desert, from the alleys of Bukhara to the mosques of Samarkand, the two elude a coterie of ruthless spies and killers to uncover the long-lost secret of soma--and the source of the legend of Shangri-La.
"...rife with nail-biting tension... The action rarely stops. Angsten hits all the genre highlights--action, suspense, mystery--in this worthwhile thriller."
~ Kirkus Reviews
"...a genuine suspenseful page-turner steeped in the esoteric history and traditions of both Hinduism and Buddhism."
~ Boookgasm
what is the NIGHT-SEA TRILOGY?
The meaning of "Nekyia"
In the eleventh book of Homer’s Odyssey, the wandering hero Odysseus sets sail to the Underworld, the ghostly land of the dead. He travels across a region of perpetual fog and darkness to seek the counsel of the spirit of Tiresias, the famous sightless prophet of Thebes, whose truth-telling wisdom will help guide his way back home.
This dark descent of Odysseus is known as the Nekyia, the “night-sea journey.” Such death-defying journeys span of history of myth, from the Sumerian saga of Gilgamesh to Dante’s descent into Hell, from Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick to the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Like the descent of the sun into the night, the journey into darkness is a prelude to rebirth, a voyage of discovery and recovery of the whole man, a life-renewing passage that will lead him, finally, home.
Each novel in the Night-Sea Trilogy is a different nekyia, and each can be read on its own, but all three follow the same young man, Jack Duran, in his passage from youth to manhood, and are therefore best read in sequence.
So godspeed and bon voyage—I hope you make it home!
~DA