{"product_id":"the-wrong-manisbn-9780345464842","title":"The Wrong Man","description":"Scott Freeman is a man of reason–a college professor grounded in the rational and practical. But he becomes uneasy after finding an anonymous love letter hidden in his daughter’s room: “No one could ever love you like I do. No one ever will. We will be together forever. One way or another.” But the reality of Ashley’s plight far exceeds Scott’s worst suspicions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne drink too many had led Ashley, a beautiful, bright art student, into what she thought was just a fling with a blue-collar bad boy. But now, no amount of pleading or reasoning can discourage his phone calls, ardent e-mails, and constant, watchful gaze. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMichael O’Connell is but a malignant shadow of a man. His brash, handsome features conceal a black and empty soul. Control is his religion. Cunning and criminal skill are his stock-in-trade. Rage is his language. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe harder Ashley tries to break free, the deeper Michael burrows into every aspect of her life, so she turns in desperation to her divorced parents and her mother’s new partner–three people still locked in a coldly civilized triangle of resentment. But their fierce devotion to Ashley is the common bond that will draw them together to face down a predator. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor Ashley’s family, it is a test of primal love that will drive them to the extreme edge–and beyond–in a battle of wills that escalates into a life-or-death war to protect their own.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the bestselling master of suspense, John Katzenbach, The \u003ci\u003eWrong Man\u003c\/i\u003e is an elegantly crafted and breathtakingly intense read that asks the question, “How far would you go to save the child you love?”Praise for John Katzenbach’s The Madman’s Tale\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A tour de force . . . superior storytelling.”\u003cbr\u003e–The Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This haunting story will linger in your mind long after you’ve left the asylum. . . . Katzenbach’s wonderful, tense narrative flows effortlessly, drawing you deeper and deeper into a chilling atmosphere of evil, darkness, and shadows.”\u003cbr\u003e–The Miami Herald\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Beautifully written, thoroughly engrossing.”\u003cbr\u003e–The Boston Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[An] impossible-to-put-down thriller.”\u003cbr\u003e–Publishers Weekly\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)John Katzenbach is the New York Times bestselling author of nine previous novels: the Edgar Award—nominated In the Heat of the Summer, which was adapted for the screen as The Mean Season; The Traveler; Day of Reckoning; Just Cause, which was also made into a movie; The Shadow Man (another Edgar nominee); State of Mind;\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eHart’s War, which was also a major motion picture; The Analyst; and The Madman’s Tale. Katzenbach has been a criminal court reporter for The Miami Herald and Miami News and a featured writer for the Herald’s Tropic magazine. He lives in western Massachusetts.The History Professor and the Two Women\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When Scott Freeman first read the letter that he found in his daughter’s  top bureau drawer, crumpled up and stuffed behind some old white athletic  socks, he knew immediately that someone was going to die.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was not the sort of sensation that he could instantly have defined, but  it overcame him in much the same way that any feeling of impending dread  might, finding a distinct cold place deep within his chest. He remained  rooted in his place, while his eyes repeatedly traveled the words on the  sheet of paper: No one could ever love you like I do. No one ever will. We  were meant for each other and nothing will prevent that. Nothing. We will  be together forever. One way or another.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The letter was not signed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It had been typed on common computer paper. The type font had been  italicized, to give it an almost antique sensitivity. He could not find  the envelope that it had been delivered in, so there was no handy return  address, not even a postmark that he could check. He put the letter down  on the bureau and tried to smooth out the creases that gave it an angry,  urgent appearance. He looked again at the words and tried to imagine them  to be benign. A puppylike protest of love, nothing more than a temporary  infatuation on the part of some college classmate of Ashley’s, a crush,  and that she had kept it concealed for no real reason, other than some  misplaced romantic foolishness. Really, he told himself, you are  overreacting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But nothing he imagined in that moment could overcome the sensation icing  him inside.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Scott Freeman did not think of himself as a rash man, nor was he quick to  anger, or prone to swift decisions. He liked to consider every facet of  any choice, peering at each aspect of his life as if it were the edge of a  diamond, examined under a microscope. He was an academic both in trade and  nature; he wore his hair shaggy-long, to remind himself of his youth in  the late sixties, liked to wear jeans and sneakers and a well-worn  corduroy sports coat that had leather patches on the elbows. He wore one  set of glasses for reading, another for driving, and he was always careful  to have both pairs with him at all times. He kept fit by a daily  dedication to exercise, often running outdoors when the weather was  suitable, moving inside to a treadmill for the long New England winters.  He did this, in part, to compensate for the occasions when he would drink  heavily alone, sometimes mixing a marijuana cigarette with Scotch on the  rocks. Scott took pride in his teaching, which allowed him a certain daily  flamboyant showmanship when he looked out across a packed auditorium. He  loved his field of study and looked forward to each September with  enthusiasm, and little of the cynicism that afflicted many of his  colleagues at the college. He thought he had the most steady of lives and  feared that he put too much excitement in the details of the past, so  occasionally he indulged in some contradictory behavior: a ten-year-old  Porsche 911 that he drove every day unless it snowed, rock and roll  blaring from the stereo. He kept a battered, old pickup truck for the  winters. He had an occasional affair, but only with women near his own  age, who were more realistic in their expectations, saving his passions  for the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Celtics, and the Bruins, and all the  college’s sports teams.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He believed that he was a man of routine, and sometimes he thought that  he’d had but three real adventures in his adult life: Once, while kayaking  with some friends along the rocky Maine coast, he’d been separated from  his companions by a strong current and sudden fog and found himself  floating for hours in a gray soup of quiet; the only noise surrounding him  had been the lapping of the wavelets against the plastic kayak sides, and  the occasional sucking sound of a seal or porpoise surfacing close by. The  cold and damp had enveloped him, creeping closer, dimming his vision. He  had understood that he was in danger, and that the extent of his trouble  might be far greater than he could imagine, but he’d kept calm and waited  until a coast guard boat had emerged from the vaporous mist that had  enclosed him. The captain had pointed out that he’d only been yards away  from a powerful offshore current that in all likelihood would have swept  him seaward, and so he became sig-  nificantly more frightened after his rescue than he’d been when he’d  actually been at risk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    That had been one adventure. The other two were of greater duration. When  Scott was eighteen and a freshman in college in 1968, he had refused to  obtain a student deferment from the draft, because he felt it morally  unacceptable to allow others to be exposed to dangers that he was  unwilling to share. This heady romanticism had sounded high-minded at the  time, but had been eviscerated by the arrival of a letter from the draft  board. In short order he’d found himself drafted, trained, and on his way  to a combat support unit in Vietnam. For eleven months he’d served in an  artillery unit. His job had been to relay coordinates received over the  radio to the fire mission commander, who would adjust the height and  distance on the battery of guns, then order the rounds released with a  great whooshing sound that always seemed much deeper and more profound  than any thunderclap. Later, he had nightmares about being a part of  killing beyond his sight, beyond his reach, almost out of his hearing,  wondering, when he’d awakened in the deep of night, if he had killed  dozens, maybe hundreds, or perhaps no one. He’d rotated home after a year,  never once having actually fired a weapon at anyone he could see.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    After his service, he’d avoided the politics that gripped the nation and  delved into his studies with a single-mindedness that surprised even  himself. After seeing war, or, at least, an aspect of it, history  comforted him, its decisions already made, its passions reverberating in  time passed. He did not speak of his time in the military and now,  middle-aged and carrying a degree of tenured respect, doubted that any of  his colleagues knew he’d been a part of the war. In truth, it often seemed  to him as if it had been a dream, perhaps a nightmare, and he’d come to  think that his year of conflict and death only barely existed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His third adventure, he knew, had been Ashley.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Scott Freeman took the letter in his hand and went over and sat down on  the edge of Ashley’s bed. It had three pillows on it, one of which,  inscribed with a needlepoint heart, he’d given her on Valentine’s Day more  than ten years earlier. There were also two stuffed bears, which she’d  named Alphonse and Gaston, and a frayed quilt, which had been given her  when she was born. Scott looked at the quilt and remembered that it had  been a small joke, in the weeks before Ashley’s birth, when both her  prospective grandmothers had given the child-to-be quilts. The other one,  he knew, was on a similar bed, in a similar room, at her mother’s house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His eyes traveled over the rest of the room. Photographs of Ashley and  friends taped to one wall; knickknacks; handwritten notes in the flowing,  precise script of teenage girls. There were posters of athletes and poets,  a framed poem by William Butler Yeats that ended with the words I sigh  that kiss you,   for I must own, that I shall miss you when you have grown, which he’d  given   her on her fifth birthday, and which he’d often whispered to her as she  fell   into sleep. There were photographs of her various soccer and softball  teams, and a framed prom picture, taken in that precise moment of teenage  perfection, when her dress clung to her every newfound curve, her hair  dropped   perfectly to her bare shoulders, and her skin glowed. Scott Freeman  realized that what he was looking out upon was the collected stuff of  memories, childhood documented in typical fashion, probably no different  from any other young person’s room, but unique in its own way. An  archaeology of grow-  ing up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    There was one picture of the three of them, taken when Ashley was six,  perhaps a month before her mother left him. It had been on a family  vacation to the shore, and he thought the smiles they all wore had a  helpless under-  current to them, for they only barely masked the tension that had  dominated their lives. Ashley had built a sand castle with her mother that  day. The rising tide and waves poured over their every effort, washing  every structure aside despite their frantic digging of moats and pushing  together of sand walls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He searched the walls and desk and bureau top, and he could see no sign of  anything even the slightest bit out of place. This worried him more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Scott looked down at the letter. No one could ever love you like I do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He shook his head. That was untrue, he thought. Everyone loved Ashley.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    What frightened him was the notion that someone could believe the  sentiment expressed in the letter. For a moment, he tried again to tell  himself that he was being foolish and overprotective. Ashley was no longer  a teenager, no longer even a college student. She was on the verge of  joining a graduate program in art history in Boston and had her own life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was unsigned. That meant she knew who sent her the letter. Anonymity  was as strong a signature as any written name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    By the side of Ashley’s bed was a pink telephone. He picked it up and   dialed her cell phone number.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She answered on the second ring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Hi, Dad! What’s up?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Her voice was filled with youth, enthusiasm, and trust. He breathed out  slowly, instantly reassured.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “What’s up with you?” he asked. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A momentary hesitation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He didn’t like that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Not too much. School is fine. Work is, well, work. But you know all that.  In fact, nothing seems to have changed since I was home the other week.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He took a deep breath. “I hardly saw you. And we didn’t get much chance to  talk. I just wanted to make sure that everything is okay. No troubles with  the new boss or any of your professors? Have you heard anything from that  program you’ve applied to?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Again, she paused. “No. Nothing really.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He coughed once. “How about boys? Men, I guess. Anything I should know  about?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She did not immediately answer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Ashley?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “No,” she said quickly. “Nothing, really. Nothing special. Nothing I can’t  handle.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He waited, but she didn’t say anything else.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Is there something you want to tell me about?” he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “No. Not really. So, Dad, what’s with the third degree?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She asked this question with a lightheartedness that didn’t match his own  sense of worry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Just trying to keep up. Your life zooms along,” he said. “And sometimes I  just need to chase you down.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She laughed, but with a slightly hollow tone. “Well, that old car of yours  is fast enough.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Anything we need to talk about?” he repeated, then scowled, because he  knew she would notice the redundancy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She answered quickly, “No. For the second time. Why do you ask? Is  everything okay with you?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Yes, yes, I’m fine.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “What about Mom? And Hope? She’s okay, isn’t she?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He caught his breath. The familiar way she used the name of her mother’s  partner always took him aback, though he knew he shouldn’t be surprised  after so many years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “She’s fine. They’re both fine, I guess.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “So what’s with the call? Something else bugging you?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He looked at the letter in front of him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “No, not at all. No particular reason. Just catching up. And anyway,  that’s what dads do: We’re always bugged. We worry. All we can imagine are  worst-case scenarios. Doom, despair, and difficulty, lurking at every  turn. It’s what makes us the uniquely boring and deadly dull people we  are.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He listened to her laugh, which made him feel a little bit better.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Look, I’m heading into the museum and we’re going to lose service. Let’s  talk again soon, okay?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Sure. Love you.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I love you, Dad. Bye.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He placed the phone back on the cradle and thought that sometimes what you  don’t hear is much more important than what you do. And, on this occasion,  he had heard nothing but trouble.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      Hope Frazier watched the opposing team’s outside midfielder closely. The  young woman tended to overplay her side of the field, leaving the defender  behind her exposed. Hope’s own player, marking back closely, didn’t yet  see the way she could use the risks taken by her opposite number to create  a counterattack of her own. Hope paced a small ways down the sideline,  thought for a moment about making a substitution, then decided against it.  She removed a small pad of paper from her back pocket, seized a stub of  pencil from her jacket, and made a quick notation. Something to mention in  training, she thought. Behind her, she heard a murmur from the girls on  the bench; they were accustomed to seeing the notebook come whipping out.  Sometimes this meant praise, other times it turned into laps after the  next day’s practice. Hope turned to the girls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Does anyone see what I see?”","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304403980517,"sku":"NP9780345464842","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345464842.jpg?v=1730757223","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-wrong-manisbn-9780345464842","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}