JOHN GROSSMAN

Nate O'Riley, a high-powered D.C. lawyer and recovering alcoholic, must fight both a morally corrupt legal system and his own recurring addiction to find Rachel Lane, a young woman working as doctor deep in the Brazilian wetlands. Rachel has inherited a multi-billion-dollar fortune, but with her other siblings clamoring for a piece of the pie, she unknowingly needs Nate's help to fend them off. But Nate's journey to Brazil becomes a greater, more dangerous adventure than he expected, eventually proving that he needs her help much more than she needs his. An independent, self-assured woman, Rachel opens Nate's eyes to a world he had never known: a world devoid of corruption, money and liquor, and instead, filled with faith and spirituality. A Publishers Weekly best-seller for 31 weeks, THE TESTAMENT was the magazine's longest-running fiction hardcover best-seller in 1999.

The season of light, joy, and gift-giving was once regarded as a time of darkness, danger, and dissipation. Drawing from his extensive collection of antique postcards, greeting cards, and other ephemera, Grossman presents a picture of Christmas past that, frankly, looks a lot more like Halloween.