Curse the Names: A Novel

One man sees an atomic apocalypse coming—and tries to warn the world—in this novel with “a sly, Hitchcockian touch”from an Edgar Award finalist (Publishers Weekly).

High on a mesa in the mountains of New Mexico, a small town hides a dreadful secret. On a morning very soon there will be an accident that triggers a terrible chain reaction, and the world we know will be wiped out.

James Oberhelm, a reporter at Los Alamos National Laboratory, already sees the devastation, like the skin torn off a moment that is yet to be. He believes he can prevent an apocalypse, but first James must escape the devices of a sensuous young blood tech, a lecherous old hippie, a predator in a waking nightmare, and a forsaken adobe house high away in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains whose dark history entwines them all.

A massive bomb is ticking beneath the sands of the Southwest, and time is running out to send a warning. James has to find a way to pass along the message—even if it ruins him.

“Arellano pulls off the not-inconsiderable feat of making the disintegration of his hero more compelling than the end of the world as we know it. ” —Kirkus Reviews

“Reads like a top-notch thriller … Alternating between the hilarious and the dreamlike, the novel is imbued with the sense of foreboding inherent to Los Alamos’s infamous ‘gift’ to mankind. ” —George Mastras, author of Fideli’s Way and writer/producer, Breaking Bad

“Nothing in New Mexico has ever been more secret than Los Alamos, the Atomic City, where a diverse group of geniuses built the first atomic bombs and changed the face of the world forever. That’s the setting and premise for this excellent novel by Cuban-American Robert Arellano. Disaster is about to happen and one man can avert it … maybe. ” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

© 2011 Akashic Books (E-bog): 9781617751097

Release date

E-bog: 27. december 2011