Cari Mora

A resilient young woman must outwit a sadistic psychopath in this pulse-pounding thriller from the author of The Silence of the Lambs, a "master still at the top of his strange and chilling form" (Wall Street Journal).Twenty-five million dollars in cartel gold lies hidden beneath a mansion on the Miami Beach waterfront. Ruthless men have tracked it for years. Leading the pack is Hans-Peter Schneider. Driven by unspeakable appetites, he makes a living fleshing out the violent fantasies of other, richer men.

Cari Mora, caretaker of the house, has escaped from the violence in her native country. She stays in Miami on a wobbly Temporary Protected Status, subject to the iron whim of ICE. She works at many jobs to survive. Beautiful, marked by war, Cari catches the eye of Hans-Peter as he closes in on the treasure. But Cari Mora has surprising skills, and her will to survive has been tested before.

Monsters lurk in the crevices between male desire and female survival. No other writer in the last century has conjured those monsters with more terrifying brilliance than Thomas Harris. Cari Mora, his sixth novel, is the long-awaited return of an American master.

“"With Cari Mora , Harris does what he does best -- takes us on a spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat ride steeped in intrigue and nail-biting suspense. You will not sleep. You will not eat. This book screams to be devoured in one sitting."-- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette”

"Cari Mora is Harris' response to the Me Too movement. He already has proven his mastery of complex female characters in the form of Clarice Starling, but the protagonist and title character here takes things to another level . . . The result is a novel that is extremely well-written from start to finish and gives us a heroine to both root for and respect."--Bookreporter.com
"Cari Morais at its best as a sustained meditation on the ineffable extent of humankind's capacity for brutality in the name of personal gain . . . carries an irony befitting Harris's ongoing consideration of how light and dark are often interchangeable."--Slant Magazine
"[Cari Mora] is delectable . . . as well as smart and tough and emotionally and physically scarred, all of which makes her a worthy adversary for the various monsters."--New York Times
"[Thomas Harris's] latest is another penetrating exploration of signature themes -- the nature of evil, the persistence of trauma, and the strange, fateful gravity that so often seems to exist between individuals on either side of law and morality . . . It's an electric setup, and Harris handles the suspense as finely as you would expect from one of the genre's foremost practitioners. Cari Mora will keep readers up all night in the best possible way."--CrimeReads
"A less accomplished or ambitious writer might have crafted a worthy thriller with only one or two of the story strands that Mr. Harris weaves; but the several plot elements in Cari Mora are always in fine balance, as befits the work of a unique master still at the top of his strange and chilling form."--Wall Street Journal
"For Thomas Harris fans, Cari Mora will be comfort food: whimsically brutal and odd and silly, lacking only Hannibal's signature cannibalism."--Oregonian
"Harris builds the plot skillfully, with violence and betrayal punctuated by moments of calm and reminiscence. The contest for the gold turns into a fight for survival that rockets to the final pages. Cari Mora is a pulse-pounding thriller, and Cari is an engagingly badass character."--Tampa Bay Times
"Harris explores the dark side of human passion in this pulse-pounding novel. His first book in 13 years, Cari Mora will not disappoint fans of disturbing, taut thrillers."--BookPage
"Harris's characters are interesting, and his meticulous research impressive . . . an adept novel."--Winnipeg Free Press
"It's vintage Harris, with nice twists and elegant ways of expressing just how bad bad people can be . . . Refreshingly, entertainingly creepy and with nary a fava bean in sight."--Kirkus Reviews
"The best of Harris's work, and this includes his latest, long-awaited novel, Cari Mora, has just that feeling of absolute, unquestionable reality. Through a combination of elements -- a perfectly realized authorial voice, the steady accumulation of terrible details, an empathetic vision of lost and damaged souls -- Harris has created a sense of dreadful intimacy that we cannot escape, that forces us to gaze at unthinkable things, and never look away. No one has illuminated this kind of darkness more thoroughly or effectively than Harris. It seems unlikely that anyone ever will."--Washington Post
"The heist story that makes up the bulk of Cari Mora is inventive and crisp, with a prose style that owes less to the floridness of the last two Hannibal novels than it does to the late and much-lamented Elmore Leonard."--Slate
"There is no doubting that Mr. Harris is the undisputed king of memorable grotesquerie . . . one has no choice but to recommend Mr. Harris's highly skilled performance."--East Hampton Star
"This page-turner begins intensely, builds in suspense then executes a high-action finale . . . Harris writes in cinematic takes and doesn't waste words . . . a good, fiendish read."--USA Today
"With Cari Mora, Harris does what he does best -- takes us on a spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat ride steeped in intrigue and nail-biting suspense. You will not sleep. You will not eat. This book screams to be devoured in one sitting."--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"A fantastic novel and character study of a survivor."--Monsters, Madness and Magic
"Read this book to escape for a couple nights into the darkest of worlds."--Aleo Review of Books

Thomas Harris was born in 1940 in Jackson, Mississippi, USA. He was raised in the town of Rich where his father worked as a farmer. He earned his bachelor's degree in English from Baylor University in Texas in 1964. While attending school, he also worked for the local newspaper.

After graduating, Harris traveled Europe for a time. Back in the USA, he worked for the Associated Press out of New York. Not coincidentally, his duties for the press included covering murders and other crimes. This helped fuel his imagination in the fictional world, and he began to write macabre stories for magazines that began to show his attention for detail that would make his subsequent novels so popular.

In 1975, he wrote his first novel, Black Sunday, about a diabolical plot to kill thousands with a blimp during the Superbowl. Perhaps ahead of his time, the terrorism of 11 September, 2001, led to many stadiums being turned into no-fly zones due to fears of a similar attack. The book was turned into a film -- Black Sunday (1977) -- a very short two years after being published. Following its success, he devoted his career entirely to fictional novelization.

In 1981, Harris wrote his first book in the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, Red Dragon. Though the character of Lecter did not become famous (or infamous, as the case may be) for another decade, the book did spark a loosely-based movie, Manhunter (1986), which was quickly dismissed at first, grossing back only about half its cost. Then, in 1988, Harris wrote another novel about the character Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs. This time, he gave the character more of a presence, although he still did not dominate the book. When this was turned into a film three years later as The Silence of the Lambs (1991), it became an instant hit and swept the "Big 5" at the Academy Awards, becoming only the third movie to do so.

After the success of The Silence of the Lambs in both movie and book form, there became a growing demand among fans - and film producer Dino De Laurentiis -- for there to be another chapter in the Hannibal Lector series. It took 11 years between novels, but Harris finally delivered again in 1999 with the best-selling novel Hannibal. It was made into a film two years later in Hannibal (2001) and, although dismissed by some critics and fans for straying from the book in parts (as well as Jodie Foster's non-appearance as Agent Clarisse Starling), it set opening records in box office sales for an R-rated film.

Because of the large box office take and the fact that Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his role in the second Lecter film, did not play Lecter in Manhunter (1986), De Laurentis and Harris came to terms to make a second version of the first book, this time properly titled Red Dragon (2002). This film version was more in keeping with the book than the first film was.

Unable to escape from being known as the man who created Lecter, Harris again agreed to make not only another novel on the character, but to write the material for the film adaption as well. The current working title is Behind the Mask. As of 2005, Harris resides in Miami, Florida, and Sag Harbor, New York, USA.

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