William Martin

Meet a “storyteller whose smoothness matches his ambition.”(Publisher's Weekly): In his boyhood, William Martin loved what he later called "big stories on broad canvases." He read the historical novels of C.S. Forester and Esther Forbes. He sat transfixed by the big movies of the early sixties. So after college he went to Hollywood to try his hand at screenwriting but discovered that his instincts were better suited to novels. His first, "Back Bay," introduced treasure hunter Peter Fallon in a new kind of adventure that joined the contemporary mystery-thriller to the historical novel. In his twelve novels (including six bestselling Peter Fallon adventures), Martin has tracked national treasures across the landscape of the American imagination, chronicled the lives of the great and the anonymous in American history, and brought to life legendary American locations, from Cape Cod to Washington DC in "The Lincoln Letter." And after publication of his Gold Rush epic, "Bound for Gold," the Providence Journal called him "the king of the historical thriller." "December '41," published in the summer of '22, provides readers with an other propulsive journey through American history. He has also written an award-winning PBS documentary on the life of Washington, a cult-classic horror movie, has contributed book reviews to the Boston Globe and The New England Quarterly, and has taught writing across the country, from the Harvard Extension School to the legendary Maui Writers Conference. He lives near Boston with his wife and has three grown children. He was the recipient of the 2005 New England Book Award, given to "an author whose body of work stands as a significant contribution to the culture of the region." He has also won the Samuel Eliot Morison Award and the Robert B. Parker Award.