David O. Stewart

Overview

A Barnes & Noble Top 10 "Mystery Pick" for August 2013!

In 1900, John Bingham lies dying in Cadiz, Ohio. He tells his doctor, Jamie Fraser, that he learned a terrible secret thirty-five years before when he prosecuted John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators. That secret of the Lincoln assassination, he confides, could destroy the republic, but will die with him.

Fraser, a 39-year-old widower who is weary of small-town doctoring, becomes obsessed with Bingham’s secret. Fate throws him together with the voluble Speed Cook, the last black man to play in the big leagues and aspiring newspaper publisher. Together they puzzle over the fragmentary evidence of the Booth conspiracy and set out to learn more. Their trail takes them to Booth’s nephew (a star actor himself) and the man’s beautiful business manager (who captures Fraser’s heart), and leads to the nation’s leading cotton tycoon, a man with murky connections to the Sons of Liberty, a Northern pro-Confederacy group from the 1860s.

Fraser and Cook face immense risks -- a mugging on an Indiana riverside, a race riot in New York City, and a terrifying trap atop the new Williamsburg Bridge. Confounding their pursuers with resourcefulness and courage, they reach a Washington, DC showdown with the shadowy tycoon and the senior surviving general of the Confederate Army and the appalling truth of Mr. Bingham’s secret.

For a video of David O. Stewart's talk on The Lincoln Deception, click here.

For a video of David O. Stewart's talk on "Family of Assassins: The Surratts of Maryland," click here.

Overview

Against the backdrop of the Paris Peace Conference that would remake Europe in the wake of World War I, The Paris Deception  reunites Dr. Jamie Fraser and Speed Cook, protagonists of the acclaimed The Lincoln Deception, in an intriguing presidential mystery.

After four years of horror The Great War has ended, and President Woodrow Wilson’s arrival in Paris in December 1918 unites the city in ecstatic celebration. Major Jamie Fraser, an army physician who has spent ten months tending American soldiers, is among the crowd that throngs the Place de la Concorde for Wilson’s visit. As an expert on the Spanish influenza, Fraser is also called in to advise the president’s own doctor on how best to avoid the deadly disease. Despite his robust appearance, Wilson is more frail than the public realizes. And at this pivotal moment in history, with the Allied victors gathering to forge a peace treaty, the president’s health could decide the fate of nations.

While Fraser tries to determine the truth about Wilson’s maladies, he encounters a man he has not seen for nearly twenty years. Speed Cook—ex-professional ball player and advocate for Negro rights—is desperate to save his son Joshua, an army sergeant wrongly accused of desertion. Pledging to help Cook, Fraser approaches Allen Dulles, a charming American spy who is also Wilson’s close aide. Soon Cook and Fraser’s personal quest dovetails with the dramatic events unfolding throughout Paris, as French premier Georges Clemenceau narrowly survives an assassination attempt and peace negotiations begin to unravel. Rivalries and hidden agendas abound. At stake is not only Joshua Cook’s freedom, but the fragile treaty that may be the only way to stop Europe and the world from plunging into another brutal war.

With a cast of vividly drawn characters that includes T.E. Lawrence, David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill, The Paris Deception provides a riveting and expertly researched blend of history and suspense—illuminating, deftly plotted, and thoroughly satisfying.

Overview

As the Roaring Twenties take off, corruption seems everywhere--from the bootleggers flouting Prohibition to the cherished heroes of the American Pastime now tarnished by scandal. Swept up in the maelstrom are Dr. Jamie Fraser and Speed Cook, and Babe Ruth...

The Babe, the Sultan of Swat, is shattering records in his first season as a New York Yankee, hitting more home runs than any other team in the American League. Larger than life on the ball field and off, Ruth discovers what the Chicago White Sox players accused of throwing the 1919 World Series have learned-- scandal can reach baseball heroes. Rumors swirl around Ruth’s 1918 World Series win for the Boston Red Sox. Under scrutiny by the new baseball commissioner and enmeshed with gambling kingpin Arnold Rothstein, Ruth turns for help to Speed Cook--a former professional ballplayer himself before the game was segregated and now a promoter of Negro baseball--who knows the dirty underside of the sport.

Cook in turn enlists the help of Dr. Jamie Fraser, whose wife Eliza is producing a silent film starring the Yankee outfielder. Restraint does not come easily to the reckless Ruth, but the Frasers try to keep him clean while Cook investigates.

At the same time, a shocking terrorist attack throws together Cook’s son and Fraser’s daughter. Their interracial romance is as perilous in 1920 as any public scandal--even more so because Joshua is heavily involved in bootlegging. Trying to protect Ruth and their own children, Fraser and Cook find themselves playing a delicate game against dangerous adversaries.

Once again masterfully blending fact and fiction, David O. Stewart delivers a nail-biting historical mystery that captures an era unlike any America has seen before or since in all its moral complexity and dizzying excitement.