Kindle Nation Daily Thriller of the Day
by John Oehler
4.3 stars – 76 Reviews
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:
Winner of First Place for Adult Genre Novels, awarded by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. Tepui is an “intelligent, cutting edge” tale of adventure, intrigue, and forbidden love.
In 1559, forty-nine Spaniards exploring a tributary of the Orinoco River reached a sheer-sided, cloud-capped mountain called Tepui Zupay. When they tried to climb it, all but six of them were slaughtered by Amazons. Or so claimed Friar Sylvestre, the expedition’s chronicler. But Sylvestre made many bizarre claims: rivers of blood, plants that lead to gold.
Jerry Pace, a burn-scarred botanist struggling for tenure at UCLA, thinks the friar was high on mushrooms. Jerry’s best friend, the historian who just acquired Sylvestre’s journal, disagrees. He plans to retrace the expedition’s footsteps, and wants Jerry to come with him. Jerry refuses, until he spots a stain between the journal’s pages—a stain that could only have been left by a plant that died out with the dinosaurs. Now he has to find that plant.
But the Venezuelan wilderness does not forgive intruders. Battered and broken, they reach a remote Catholic orphanage where the old prioress warns of death awaiting any who would venture farther. But an exotic Indian girl leads them on, through piranha-infested rivers and jungles teaming with poisonous plants, to Tepui Zupay—the forbidden mountain no outsider has set eyes on since the Spaniards met their doom.
This is a story about life’s surprises—the challenges, risks—and how they transform us. It is also a tale of Beauty and the Beast and the eye of the beholder.
Reviews:
“For sheer brilliance of ideas, John Oehler stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Dan Brown. Oehler’s writing is powerful and meticulous, his characters compassionate, enticing, and sexy. His supporting characters surprise the reader time and again. Look no further than TEPUI for a riveting page-turner.” — Chris Rogers, bestselling author
“The writing is crisp, the characters are compelling, the plot engaging, and the historic and scientific details are fascinating, without being overbearing. The story drew me in from the very first paragraph.” —Robert Vaughan, bestselling author and inductee into the Writers Hall of Fame
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