Wyoming ranch country and the frozen industrial edge of Alaska sit thousands of miles apart, but in The Weight of Cold Things, the distance between them begins to collapse around Deputy Sheriff Gree Gooding. Lisa Towles sends Gree north in search of a missing sheriff while the unresolved death of her husband, buried family history, a mysterious black-ops program, and a landscape capable of killing in minutes tighten around the investigation. The result pairs the grit of a contemporary Western with a conspiracy thriller whose secrets have been accumulating beneath the ice for decades. 

The Weight of Cold Things

by Lisa Towles

Genre: Psychological Thriller, Arctic Noir

While searching for her missing boss, a Wyoming Deputy Sheriff accidentally discovers a secret facility and conspiracy of silence surrounding a series of mysterious deaths in Deadhorse, Alaska.

Wyoming Deputy Sheriff Gree Gooding has one mission: find her missing boss. The trail leads four thousand miles north—to Deadhorse, Alaska, an oil-drilling outpost clinging to the edge of the Arctic Circle. A place where daylight is rationed, where the cold can kill in minutes, and where her husband AJ, a petroleum geologist, vanished six months ago. 

The clues don't just point to her boss's disappearance. They reach back into Gree's own past— to the Wyoming ranch she left behind, to the family secrets buried in its soil, and to the grief frozen like permafrost inside her. 

When the investigation cinches around a decades-long cover-up — a black ops program called Arc Dominion — Gree realizes someone's been waiting for her. Someone knew she'd follow the thread. This was never about a missing sheriff. It's about the conspiracy AJ died trying to expose — and whether she can finish what he started. 

The cold doesn't forgive.
It doesn't forget.
And it's about to give up its dead. 

For fans of Yellowstone and The X-Files — where neo-Western grit meets a decades-long government conspiracy buried beneath the Arctic ice.

The investigation in The Weight of Cold Things is compelling because Gree is following more than one disappearance. Sheriff Peter Barrett is missing, but AJ’s death six months earlier is still shaping nearly every decision she makes, and the trail north begins connecting the two cases in ways that challenge what she thought she understood about both men. Towles uses that overlap to make grief part of the mystery rather than simply part of the protagonist’s backstory. 

The geography gives the novel another distinctive edge. Gree moves between Wyoming ranch country and Deadhorse, Alaska, where an oil-drilling outpost, Arctic conditions, and the history surrounding Arc Dominion create a setting that is both physically dangerous and central to the conspiracy itself. The supplied excerpt also reaches back to Prudhoe Bay in 1974, signaling that the secrets Gree encounters were set in motion long before her investigation began.

Prologue

Winter, 1974 - Prudhoe Bay, Northwest Alaska

They gutted an iceberg with two sticks of dynamite, forty years ago when the shabby construction camps rose on the iconic Dalton Highway. Oil was struck in Prudhoe Bay in 1968, setting off an irreversible string of events: an ecological nightmare, an eight-billion-dollar pipeline transporting crude oil 800 miles south from the North Slope to Valdez, and passage for seventy thousand oil workers to the most menacing outpost on earth: Deadhorse. 

A stolen scrap of bread. Chronic insomnia. Drug abuse. One worker snapped, nicking dynamite from the munitions depot, flailing his arms, all the while forgetting how fast the detonating cord burns to the quick. The shock wave bulleted shards of ice in every direction, thrusting the assailant twelve feet in the air in a whirl of fire and black smoke. He became the first prize, the Number One. His victim, the second man, escaped. 

It took two days for the particles to clear the air, finally revealing an exquisite, dome-like crevasse in the ice the depth of five residential garages — one after the other in a long, hollow train. Except this garage had no yard outside because nothing grew in this place but resentment. No gas grill on a redwood deck, no family huddled in the adjacent house. Only the unrelenting cold and ice: on the floor, walls, ceiling. He loved it that way, the Caretaker, the exclusivity of his access and the singularity of his dark secret. 

That spring, the suited men came in droves sporting fine clothing and city shoes to explain the gravity of their problem, which later evolved into their pitch. Well, their problem had just solved itself, hadn’t it? No one knew about this place and nobody but him would ever find it. Some secrets were just not for sale.

Chapter 1

Present Day December 18 - Inglewood Ranch, Cody, WY

I could feel it in my bones, this unspeakable energy of change. Not a buzz, it was more like a low hum I could almost hear when I closed my eyes and got real still. I’d woken with it today, of all days, this visceral knowing that despite the regularity of my errand, it would have a disruptive impact on my life, such as it was. My work in Jackson, a five hour drive from our family ranch in Cody, was an odd arrangement to begin with, and the two-bedroom condo I rented near the Teton County Sheriff’s Office was uninhabitable without AJ. Even still, there was something else in the air today. Cholo, our ranch hand and my lifelong friend, sensed something too, though it wasn’t his way to articulate his thoughts. Instead, he put cinnamon in the coffee, his quiet way of offering comfort. I could smell it the whole way in from the barn. 

I’d gone out before first light, watching the fluff of gray dawn cover my beloved Inglewood, hoping to shake the image of a recurring dream and to brush AJ’s quarter horse, Rain. At first, it was to console him, knowing horses had unique and profound ways of grieving. Lately, though, the cold vigil seemed more about me. Rogue, the word had been coming to me since AJ’s death — a blurry dream-hand opening to a tiny piece of paper on which a single word was written. Was it him reaching out from his watery grave? What did it mean? 

Cholo passed me a cup when I reached the kitchen, shutting out the ten-degree wind chill behind me. I unzipped my coat and sipped quietly just inside the door, letting the hot coffee slide down my throat, waiting for whatever his face was preparing. 

“Been three weeks now.”

I nodded, three weeks since Sheriff Peter Barrett disappeared — my boss, mentor, now another silent ache in my heart. 

“I heard about the fire,” he added. “How many is that now?”

“Does it matter?” I asked him. “Seven.”

“You think they’re connected. Don’t you?”

I shrugged, pretending. But any sane person would. “I’m not an arson investigator. Bryce at the State Fire Marshal’s Office is looking into it.” 

“Really?”

I laughed. “Come on. Bryce has a good team working for him. I know two of those guys.” 

“They haven’t been out here since Thanksgiving.” Cholo stared back, thick brows angled over large, black eyes. 

“I know, okay? What do you want me to do? I’m not the sheriff.” The words caught in my throat. 

“You never know about people,” he said with that quiet wisdom I’d never seen in anyone else, like he understood the longings in my heart for answers that hadn’t yet come. Peter Barrett, Jackson’s most beloved sheriff, vanished three weeks ago today. 

Cholo was right about Bryce, too. Interagency politics aside, I’d need to call and follow up on the arson investigation they said they were running. Add it to the growing list. 

He took a long sip, still watching me.

“Well, spit it out already,” I said.

“I can’t take you to the airport.”

“It’s alright, I’ll get an Uber.”

Cholo’s jaw was set tight but his eyes were uncertain, like he was trying to think of an excuse but couldn’t do it. 

“What’s the big deal?”

“Woody’s gonna take you.”

“Woody!” My voice cracked like a whip. I set the cup on the counter with a clunk and rezipped my coat. Ah…the cinnamon. Son of a bitch. 

“He wants to talk to you.”

“Does he now?” I grabbed the warm mug for reinforcement and sucked down the last three gulps. “Does he want to talk about how he stole two of our horses, stole money from me? He robbed us, Cholo, all of us. And by doing so, he broke something precious.” I didn’t like the sound of that word, precious. Made it seem like Woody was important to me, and despite the intrusive logic of that truth, there was no place for Woody here anymore. 

“He says he’s sorry.”

“Not to me he didn’t. Besides, sorry’s just a word.” Already mad at seven in the morning, great. I zipped my coat and turned my back to him, facing the door. “A real apology is a change in behavior.” My eyes were wide as I waited for him to take my challenge. To come to Woody’s rescue, explain how the drugs made him do it or the excuse-of-the-day. 

Still fuming, I left via Uber at 7:30 a.m. without another word to either Cholo or my dad. Woody could kiss my ass as far as I was concerned. I’d have to pay for my cold heart, of course. The world has a quiet way of keeping score.

***

By 3:00 p.m., I was standing on the corner of Wave and McClellan Streets in Monterey, California. Eleven hundred miles away in historic Cannery Row, a sliver of sea was visible between the brownstones on Lighthouse Avenue. The sun felt warm on my face and bare arms. Mid December in California, I’ll be damned. A premonition, I couldn’t put my finger on it, made me take notice, warning me to be careful. Something bad was coming. 

Ash was right, I was loath to admit. There were holiday decorations and tacky music everywhere, but it just didn’t feel like Christmas in a hilltop penthouse overlooking the ocean, waves beneath me reflecting a cloudy sky. The beauty of California’s coast was unmistakable, but in my heart, Christmas was indelibly marked by snow. 

“Is that you?” Cholo asked me later, answering his mobile on the third ring.

“I guess. Some version of me, anyway.”

“What are you doing out there, Gree? You hate California.”

He knew, of course; we’d discussed it back and forth for weeks. Why go now, why go at all? After being on and off the market for ten years, my mother’s condo had finally found a buyer. I came here to sign papers, to once again acknowledge the sting of her death and bring my feet one step closer to the present. But that wasn’t what he was asking. Like all Cholo’s questions, they were part real world and part spirit world. I knew what he meant. I just wasn’t sure I was willing to answer yet. 

“How’s Dad?” I deflected.

“He’s concerned about how it will look to the community, you leaving town after Peter’s disappearance.”

“I don’t recall asking his opinion.” He was right, though. It was too sudden, but it would be a short trip. Besides, everything was broken right now anyway. 

“No, but he’s always willing to share it, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I laughed.

“He’s splitting wood right now,” Cholo said.

“Great idea for a man who just had a heart attack.”

“Come on, it was a mild one. He didn’t even know he was having it. Besides, it’s gonna be zero tonight. We’ll be using that wood.” 

I guess I shouldn’t complain. The fact that they were staying in the same house, after such a long standoff, was nothing short of miraculous and I had nothing to do with it. Maybe the rock of resentment got too heavy to haul around anymore. I was dying to know who thawed first, but I’d never ask. You didn’t do things that way out here. Not in Wyoming, not in this family. 

“Could you make sure he’s got a jacket on? For God’s sake keep an eye on him. If left to his own devices he’d chop wood in a—” 

“Gretchen.”

It was my dad’s voice now, Ash Gooding, former Sheriff of Park County, who to this day insists on calling me by my birth name instead of the nickname my mother gave me. 

“How’s sunny California?”

It was meant as an insult. Everyone in town got lots of mileage from the fact that I wasn’t a native of Wyoming, even though I’d lived there since I was five. 

“It’s midnight, Wyoming time. What are you doing up this late? Do you miss me that much?” I joked to an awkward silence. I rambled on for a while, telling him about the dark orange sunset I’d seen from the balcony after signing a four-inch stack of papers. Hadn’t they ever heard of digital copies? Apparently, this mortgage company insisted on paper-everything. Ash listened. I heard the clinking of ice in his glass. Would this be his third or fourth by now? I decided not to mention the wood chopping. 

“You didn’t tell her?” he mumbled to Cholo. “Mmm.”

“Tell me what?”

A murmur of conversation in the background. Maybe his hand was covering the phone. And maybe this was what Cholo was hiding from me this morning. 

“Dad, what is it? Tell me.”

“I can’t. Gotta show you. Guess we’ll have to wait till you get back.”

Sonofabitch. I knew my dad, and that meant no manipulation or psychology would wriggle out of him whatever he was keeping from me. After signing over ownership of what had been my mother’s dream home, I left the key with the bankers and took with me a cedar box of my mother’s mementos, which I would undoubtedly squirrel away somewhere and forget about for the next decade. All the better, right? Avoidance, since AJ’s death six months ago, had become a sort of new religion. Didn’t avoidance almost always turn to cancer somewhere down the road? 

When I got back, I didn’t bother going home first before looking for Ash. He’d planted an evil seed of dread and apprehension, and he knew it too. Maybe punishing me for something; he’s a Gemini after all. I flew into Cody from San Francisco instead of Jackson, where I’d worked for the past twelve years as deputy sheriff under Peter Barrett, one of the kindest men I’d ever met. Why did I feel like Ash’s secret had something to do with him? The buzzing in my bones this morning...maybe that was the warning. Jesus, no. Not that. The vague comfort of the word missing was too hard to give up. 

Three in the afternoon to Ash Gooding meant five o’clock somewhere. There's this ratty bar on the edge of town called Stagecoach, Ash’s favorite. Drafty as hell with dusty floors, swivel stools, and random darts scattered on the floor looking for their board, threatening tetanus. Weird part about it was that the owner isn't a wrinkled prune of a man but someone belonging on the cast of Below Deck, a body intended for board shorts, tanned legs and a white polo shirt hauling up ropes with three-ply triceps. He was trying to be unassuming in a plain brown t-shirt stretched out at the neck, pretending he didn't care about his looks. His artificially whitened smile betrayed the deception - laughing eyes with something sinister behind them, a joke no one knew about but him. 

“How’s it going?” the guy asked.

I exhaled. “G&T, please. Been a long day.”

“Coming up.”

When Runway Model set down the glass, I suddenly didn’t feel like talking. The weight of air travel, of the milestone I’d crossed and today’s sad anniversary, burned behind my eyes. They watered as I took the first swallow. I turned on the stool to look around. Ha, I knew it. 

“Ash,” I said, walking across the creaking floorboards. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Drinking here alone, that’s what.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“You can come to my house in Jackson and drink with me. Wouldn't that be nicer?”

He laughed. “Not necessarily. Besides, too long a drive.”

“Look, you can stay here and punish yourself for Mom's death all you like. I know what day it is.” 

The slap of the men’s room door distracted us from the tension. It was a sad old story with no ending. I smelled Cholo’s Irish Spring soap behind me. I turned, my left arm involuntarily reaching for him, tugging the frayed edge of his Carhartt jacket. 

“Well.” I stood back a ways. “You two got real chummy in the one day I left town.” They were looking sideways at each other in some silent communication. Ranchers at a bar in the middle of the afternoon; it didn’t make sense. “What’s the deal?” 

Cholo nodded. “You’d better sit down.”

The Weight of Cold Things should appeal most strongly to thriller readers who like investigations with several layers operating at once: a missing sheriff, a dead petroleum geologist, unexplained fires, family secrets, and a covert program whose history reaches back decades. Gree is also carrying enough personal history into the case that readers who prefer psychologically complicated investigators have more to follow than the mechanics of the conspiracy alone. 

The novel’s combination of Wyoming ranch life, Arctic oil country, law enforcement, fringe operations, and buried institutional secrets also makes it a natural fit for those drawn to neo-Westerns and conspiracy fiction. The tour describes the blend as Yellowstone meeting The X-Files, which captures the unusual territory Towles is working in: grounded family and regional tensions pushed into a mystery that keeps widening beyond the local case.

Lisa Towles believes stories hold the world together - and the best ones expose what we hide even from ourselves. She builds that belief into her main characters - Mari Ellwyn, Angus Mariner, Kurt Farin - each one drowning in dark secrets, running from unthinkable truths. The award-winning author of 14 mystery thrillers, her books pull readers into worlds of global espionage, fringe technology, and shadow governments. Her titles include Terror Bay (NYC Big Book Award), Codex (BookFest First Place), The Ridders (American Fiction Award), and her E&A Series thrillers Hot House and Salt Island both reached Amazon Kindle #1 Bestseller. 

Her next thriller, The Weight of Cold Things - described as Yellowstone meets The X-Files - publishes in August 2026. When she's not writing, she interviews authors on her Story Impact Podcast and coaches writers on how to be visible and memorable to readers. Follow her to get notified of new releases.

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Cold is doing more than setting the atmosphere in The Weight of Cold Things. It preserves what has been hidden, hardens grief, and turns Deadhorse into the kind of place where the past can remain untouched for years—until Gree starts asking the wrong questions. Her search for Peter Barrett keeps circling back to AJ, her family, and a history she has spent considerable energy trying not to examine too closely. 

Gree is not arriving in Alaska as a detached investigator. She is already grieving, angry, suspicious, and carrying unfinished business from Wyoming. That makes the conspiracy personal before she even understands its scale. Readers who like their thrillers grounded in character as much as danger may find that tension—between the case she is pursuing and everything she would rather leave buried—one of the strongest reasons to follow her north.

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A model railroad sits inside Jim Peters's cabin at Turtle Lake, complete with buildings, roads, bridges, cars, and trucks. It looks like a hobby. It is actually a model of a crime scene that has not happened yet. That detail establishes the peculiar machinery behind Bob Milne's Turtle Lake: a crime thriller in which careful observation, ordinary objects, and lessons drawn from predators in the natural world become part of an elaborate plan.

Peters is not plotting for money alone. As comptroller at Ramsey Motors, he has uncovered a scheme involving the company and its insurer, U.S. Underwriters, that threatens employees' retirement and insurance benefits before operations move overseas. His response is an extortion plot designed to expose the corruption and protect those employees—a plan ambitious enough to eventually make national headlines. With its September 7, 2026 publication approaching, today's teaser offers an early look at how that scheme begins to take shape.

The premise of Turtle Lake turns corporate wrongdoing into a problem its protagonist intends to solve through strategy rather than conventional heroics. Jim Peters is a comptroller, and the materials supplied for the book emphasize that his plan depends on simple, everyday methods. The intriguing complication is where he finds part of his tactical inspiration: the behavior of alpha predators.

That relationship between human calculation and animal instinct gives the thriller its distinctive angle. The opening excerpt moves deliberately through carnivores, prey, birds, frogs, insects, and humans before revealing Peters studying a miniature representation of the crime scene he intends to create. Nature is not merely scenery surrounding Turtle Lake; observation of it appears woven into the way Peters understands behavior and prepares his scheme.

There is also an uncomfortable moral tension built into the premise. Peters is responding to a plan that would harm employees, yet his answer is extortion and a carefully engineered crime of his own. That collision between motive and method gives readers more to consider than whether his elaborate plan will succeed.

Life is a dangerous place to be. The woods, skies, lakes, and oceans are filled with creatures bent on killing and eating each other. Nothing in nature dies of old age, as the adage goes.

Prey animals are taken down by predators. It’s as if prey animals are made to be food.

Carnivore predators possess razor-sharp canine-like teeth. Carnivores are the watchers from the shadows. All of them, such as lions, tigers, bobcats, and wolves, are wired the same way. They don’t eat lettuce for lunch. To a carnivore, you simply look like another rabbit in the grass.

There’s another carnivore that is often overlooked – humans. Humans have canine teeth. They are born wired with the same instincts as the alpha predators.

We’re taught to control it. Supposedly.

Birds will tell you when the sun is going to come up. At the faintest glimmer of dawn's early light, they begin to converse with each other, presumably to find out where the bugs are that day. Usually, we don't hear them in their earliness. Our day starts later. Usually.

Frogs and insects do the same during the pre-dawn moments, buzzing and croaking in the woods, fields, and swamps. Presumably they do this to find out where the predators are. It's been said that frogs might be telling each other where the rattlesnakes and blue herons are at any given time. We don't usually hear them croaking away in the early hours of the day. Usually.

Today, however, as the woods came to life with this early morning serenade, Jim Peters could hear them very clearly. It was August of 1990. He was in his cabin in mid-Michigan, situated on the edge of a quiet, deep-woods nature refuge known as Turtle Lake. Peters was lying in bed backwards, that is, with his feet at the head of the bed and his head at the foot of the bed, chin resting on his wrists as he looked at a model train set.

The train set, an ancient Lionel from the 1940s, included buildings, roads, bridges, cars, trucks, a shopping center, and a train running through it. The set looked ordinary enough to the casual passerby or rare visitor to the cabin. But in fact, it was window dressing, a model of the crime scene that was to come. The train had nothing to do with it.

In a short while, when the birds, frogs, and bugs had quieted down, Peters would push a button and Mozart's opera The Magic Flute would float from the speakers connected to his compact disc machine. Peters liked Mozart. The music was pure and uncluttered. It flowed from one section into another so smoothly that it was hard to tell a transition had taken place. The complexities of its composition flowed as smoothly as pouring oil.

As smoothly as the diabolical scam he was planning.

Turtle Lake should interest crime and suspense readers who enjoy watching a complicated scheme develop piece by piece, particularly when the person orchestrating it occupies morally uncertain ground. Jim Peters's background as a comptroller also makes this a different sort of setup from a thriller driven by a detective, professional criminal, or action hero.

Readers fascinated by animal behavior and the parallels people draw between human conduct and the natural world have another reason to take notice. Peters treats predator behavior as useful information, while the excerpt establishes Turtle Lake's woods and wildlife as part of the story's thinking about instinct, danger, and survival. The 1990 Michigan setting, corporate corruption plot, and meticulously planned extortion scheme round out a combination suited to readers who prefer suspense built around observation and strategy.

Bob Milne has been hailed throughout his 60-year career as one of the best ragtime/boogie-woogie piano players of all time. A solo concert performer, he traveled all over the world playing for dignitaries and celebrities as well as small town audiences. He was given the title of National Treasure by the Library of Congress and deemed an Ambassador of Music by the U.S. Department of State.

Bob’s extraordinary musical abilities were the subject of numerous brain studies, which have inspired a popular RadioLab podcast.

Little did they know that Bob was also a talented writer.

For years he wrote articles about his saloon-playing days for music publications. Many of these stories were compiled into a book called The Journeyman Piano Player: Adventures in Gracious Dining. Bob has written reams of poetry, some of which became lyrics to songs that he composed. The longest piece of poetry he ever wrote was the lyric book for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a grand opera he composed and orchestrated.

Mr. Milne has been fascinated by nature his entire life. At a young age he realized that instincts are present in all species of birds, mammals (including humans), and literally every living thing in nature. He has used this information countless times over his lifetime to predict what the human species will do in future situations.

Bob is now retired from the long piano tours and is enjoying his woodland home. Today he spends his time studying nature in the woods. Signed copies of his book may be purchased through his website.

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A comptroller studying a model railroad while the Michigan woods wake around him is an unexpectedly quiet starting point for a scheme destined for national attention. Yet that contrast appears central to Turtle Lake. Jim Peters is watching, arranging, and anticipating—behaviors that echo the author's recurring interest in how creatures, including humans, respond to their surroundings.

The larger question is what happens when Peters applies those observations to people who have power, money, and their own reasons to protect themselves. His goal may be to defend employees from a corrupt scheme, but the method he chooses puts him firmly inside dangerous territory. For suspense readers, that makes the approaching September release worth watching: the outcome depends not simply on executing a plan, but on whether Peters understands human predators as well as he thinks he does.

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A river engineered to become cleaner instead becomes the path of an expanding firestorm, placing cities, landmarks, and potentially the world in danger. In Fireline, Peter Berk turns an environmental solution into the source of a fast-moving disaster as a young chemist races to stop the compound he warned should never be released. The threat begins in the Potomac and advances toward Manhattan, giving this eco-thriller a crisis measured not only by lives and miles, but by the terrifying possibility that reaching the Atlantic could make containment impossible.

A scientific experiment gone horribly wrong sends an apocalyptic firestorm raging throughout the Eastern Seaboard. If it reaches the Atlantic, it might just be game over for the world.

An unhinged scientist introduces a nano-based chemical compound into the Potomac that's designed to purify the world's waterways but that instead sets the river on fire and rapidly spreads directly toward Manhattan, with only the young chemist who first warned against the experiment the world's best hope of stopping it.

Fireline takes us from the heart of Washington, D.C. to the Statue of Liberty—all of which are directly impacted by an out-of-control firestorm snaking its way to the Atlantic where it could go on to threaten every corner of the world.

A science-gone-astray disaster novel, Fireline also touches on such timeless themes as personal redemption, heroism in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, friendship, and even father-son dynamics—all handled with touches of humor and romance.

The central danger in Fireline begins with an invention intended to solve a genuine environmental problem. A nano-based compound designed to purify contaminated water instead makes the Potomac combustible, transforming the very system it was meant to protect into a route for destruction. That reversal gives the disaster a particularly unsettling foundation: the catastrophe is not caused by nature alone, but by scientific certainty pushed forward despite a warning.

The scale of the threat expands with the river. Washington, D.C., Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and the Atlantic lie along the firestorm’s path, while the young chemist who opposed the experiment must confront both the consequences of its release and the scientist responsible for it. The race to contain the compound therefore operates on two levels—stopping the immediate blaze and preventing the technology from becoming a worldwide disaster.

Berk also places personal conflicts inside the larger emergency. Redemption, friendship, strained father-son dynamics, humor, and romance give the characters concerns that exist beyond survival. Those elements may appeal to readers who want a disaster thriller to remain focused on the people making decisions inside the crisis rather than relying on spectacle alone.

Fireline is suited to readers who enjoy eco-thrillers, scientific disaster fiction, large-scale action, and suspense stories built around a rapidly advancing deadline. The journey from the Potomac toward Manhattan gives the novel a geographic momentum that may particularly appeal to readers who like watching a crisis spread across recognizable locations.

The book may also interest fans of cautionary stories about experimental technology, scientific ethics, environmental intervention, and the consequences of ignoring expert objections. Readers who prefer their action thrillers to include personal redemption, family tension, friendship, romance, and occasional humor will find those elements incorporated into the wider fight to stop the firestorm.

Peter Berk has written six novels, three TV pilots and a dozen screenplays, including several with his father which became the basis for the TimeLock series of novels. The original TimeLock novel is a Finalist in the 2023 Chanticleer International Book Awards for Science Fiction, Mystery, and Global Thrillers. TimeLock was also named as a Distinguished Favorite in the TechnoThriller category of the 2024 Independent Press Award. TimeLock 2: The Kyoto Conspiracy was published in 2023 and the third book in the series will be published by IngramElliott. Peter and his family live in Southern California.

Website * Peter Berk on Facebook * IngramElliott on Facebook * Peter Berk on Instagram * IngramElliott on Instagram

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Fireline builds its suspense around a danger that grows more difficult to contain with every mile it travels. The young chemist at the center of the crisis understood the risks before the experiment began, but being correct is no protection once the compound enters the Potomac and the river itself becomes the fuel line. Peter Berk’s premise turns environmental ambition into a warning about unchecked certainty while keeping the story focused on the people responsible for preventing a regional catastrophe from becoming a global one. 

Readers who enjoy fast-moving disaster fiction with scientific stakes, recognizable settings, and a human struggle for redemption should find plenty to consider along the firestorm’s path.

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A package sent from West Berlin in 1988 draws New York art curator Daniel Singer into a family history shaped by war, persecution, concealed identities, and decisions made more than four decades earlier. In Between These Walls, Michael Newman connects the final days of World War II with the unresolved questions of a later generation, following one American family and two German families through the Holocaust, the founding of Israel, and conflicts that continue to influence Daniel’s search for the truth. Rooted in the author’s family history and visits to locations central to the novel, the story examines what happens when secrets preserved for survival can no longer remain hidden.

History often hides its deepest secrets behind closed doors and within silent walls. Some stories remain buried for decades, waiting for the right moment to emerge and demand to be told. Between These Walls is not merely a work of historical fiction, but a profound exploration of identity, survival, and the unbreakable bonds that connect generations across time and tragedy. Written by Michael Newman, this compelling narrative weaves together threads of war, persecution, and redemption into a tapestry that refuses to release its grip on the reader's heart and mind.

A Tale Woven from Three Families

In the summer of 1988, New York art curator Daniel Singer receives a mysterious package from West Berlin, sealed with security tape that will shatter everything he thought he knew about himself and his family. What begins as a simple delivery transforms into an extraordinary odyssey that spans continents and decades, pulling Daniel into a labyrinth of secrets that have been carefully guarded for over forty years.

Newman masterfully constructs a dual timeline that oscillates between May 1945 and July 1988, creating a narrative bridge across generations. In the dying days of World War II, on the American occupied side of Germany's Elbe River, US Army Medical Corps Colonel Samuel Singer stumbles upon the shot-up wreck of a smoldering SS staff car. Inside: a badly injured driver, a dead German Army officer carrying the ID of a Nazi war criminal, and a young blonde woman, also dead in the back seat. This haunting discovery sets in motion a chain of events that will echo across four decades.

The story sweeps across the battlefields of World War I, through the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, into the founding of Israel, and through three Middle East wars. Each historical moment is rendered with meticulous attention to detail and emotional authenticity.

The involvement of the Mossad, Israel's legendary intelligence agency, adds layers of intrigue and suspense to Daniel's quest. As he uncovers shocking truths about his heritage, Daniel must navigate a treacherous landscape where the past and present collide, where old wounds remain fresh, and where the consequences of long-buried secrets threaten to destroy everything he holds dear. Following one American family and two German families, Newman crafts a narrative that explores not just acts of evil and callous indifference but also acts of heroism, generosity, and love in the time of Adolf Hitler's rise and eventual defeat.

A Labor of Love Rooted in Personal History

Newman's research was exhaustive and deeply personal. He traveled throughout Europe, visiting the actual locations that appear prominently in the book. He walked the streets of Berlin, discovering the stolpersteine, the engraved brass plaques embedded in the cobblestone streets marking where Jewish families lived before the Nazis deported them to their deaths in Auschwitz. He ventured to the Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden near Munich, Hitler's wartime summer home perched high in the Bavarian Alps. Most significantly, he visited Mauthausen concentration camp itself, where his own father had been imprisoned by the Nazis in 1944-45.

"My visits to Mauthausen, Berlin and Hitler's summer home at Eagle's Nest were the motivators for me to write Between These Walls," Newman explains.

"These places provided me with the inspiration and ideas for the plot and premise of the book. With the global rise in antisemitism, the words 'Never again' couldn't ring truer."

The book's website features a compelling gallery of images from Newman's travels, including photographs of historical documents, and the actual locations featured in the story

Discover the Truth Behind the Walls

Between These Walls is available for purchase through multiple platforms, making it accessible to readers worldwide. The novel is available in both paperback and Kindle editions.

The mystery begins with a physical object—a sealed package from West Berlin—but the questions it raises extend far beyond its contents. Daniel Singer must reconsider his identity, his relationship to Colonel Samuel Singer, and the events that joined three families during the collapse of Nazi Germany. That structure gives the historical material a direct consequence in the later timeline rather than treating the past as background information.

The novel also approaches twentieth-century history across several connected periods. Its scope moves from World War I and the rise of Adolf Hitler through the Holocaust, the end of World War II, the founding of Israel, and later Middle East conflicts. Daniel’s investigation provides the thread linking those events as he discovers how wartime choices can shape descendants who were not present when the original decisions were made.

Newman’s personal connection to the material adds another dimension to the book. His father survived imprisonment at Mauthausen, while his mother, aunt, and grandmother survived in hiding in Budapest. The author’s visits to Mauthausen, Berlin, Berchtesgaden, and other historically significant locations informed the setting and premise of the novel. That background does not make Daniel’s story autobiographical, but it explains the seriousness with which the book approaches memory, survival, and the responsibility of later generations to understand what occurred.

Between These Walls is suited to readers of multigenerational historical fiction, dual-timeline mysteries, World War II novels, and stories centered on concealed identities or family secrets. The movement between 1945 and 1988 may especially appeal to readers who enjoy watching evidence from one era gradually alter the meaning of events in another.

The book may also interest readers seeking fiction connected to the Holocaust, the aftermath of Nazi persecution, the founding of Israel, and the continuing effect of wartime trauma on later generations. The presence of military history and intelligence intrigue broadens the story beyond a private family drama, while Daniel’s search keeps the larger historical scope tied to a personal question: who is he, and why was the truth hidden from him?

Michael Newman brings an unparalleled authenticity to Between These Walls because he writes not as a distant observer of history, but as someone whose life has been indelibly shaped by it. The son of Holocaust survivors, Newman has always had a deep interest in the Second World War, not as an academic pursuit, but as a personal mission to understand and honor the experiences that defined his family's existence. He received first-hand accounts of what happened during WWII in the concentration camps, particularly Mauthausen, where his father was imprisoned.

Newman's mother, aunt, and grandmother were hidden by Righteous Gentiles in Budapest during World War II. His father fought in the Hungarian Army, dug trenches in a forced labor battalion near Stalingrad, and later endured eight terrible months at Mauthausen in Austria. In 1956, at age twelve, Newman himself became a refugee, slogging through mud and snow, dodging guard huts to escape into Austria after the crushed Hungarian uprising against the Soviets.

Years later, as a successful self-made real estate magnate and founder of InterRent, a real estate investment trust on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Newman could have allowed his professional achievements to define him. Instead, he chose to honor his heritage by telling a story that needed to be told. He has since taken his wife, three children, and one granddaughter on trips to Mauthausen, ensuring that the next generation never forgets.

During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, concerned over what he perceived as one-sided news coverage against Israel, he had the opportunity to travel, surreptitiously, to Israel. Using a connection with an Israeli intelligence colonel, Newman spent a week in the war zone, visiting bomb shelters, air raid command centers, and troops in the field. This experience became a model for a character in his book who helped Israel fight for independence in 1948.

"I am not a religious person, but I do identify myself with what happened during the Holocaust and I am very much a Zionist and support the founding of Israel," Newman says.

This conviction breathes through every page of Between These Walls, giving the novel an emotional authenticity that resonates with readers across all backgrounds.

Today, Newman lives on Toronto's waterfront with his wife, Dixie, and their Morkie, Mia. Surrounded by five children and eleven grandchildren, he has transformed the pain of his family's past into a gift for future generations. Writing books, as Newman admits, is "a career change I wasn't expecting to make at this stage of life. It's been gratifying for the ego." He is currently working on a sequel with the working title A Daughter's Revenge, and has hired a screenwriter on spec to craft a six-part series based on his first book.

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Between These Walls places a family mystery inside a much larger historical reckoning. Daniel Singer’s package from West Berlin forces him to confront the possibility that the identity he inherited was constructed from wartime secrecy, while the 1945 timeline reveals why silence may once have seemed necessary. Michael Newman uses that connection between personal discovery and documented history to examine how survival decisions continue to affect people born long after the immediate danger has passed. 

For readers interested in historical fiction that asks later generations to confront what earlier generations endured, concealed, or sacrificed, Daniel’s search offers a story in which opening one package also means opening a past that can no longer remain behind closed walls.

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