Today I'm delighted to share with you all a new release spotlight for Gods of Deception by David Adams Cleveland! Gods of Deception is an epic historical thriller filled with espionage, intrigue, family, and so much more. This is a pretty hefty book, coming in at just over 900 pages, and it's not for the faint of heart, but if you stick with it you'll find that Gods of Deception takes readers on a journey that is immensely compelling and unforgettable. It's a little overwhelming to first jump into this large story, but fortunately David Adams Cleveland has writing that just draws you in right away and slowly reveals new characters, plot, settings, and storylines to follow.
Below, you'll find some general information about Gods of Deception, as well as some early praise it's received from various review outlets, so be sure to read on!
Author: David Adams Cleveland - Website
Pub. Date: May 17th, 2022
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Pages: 928
Find it: Amazon | Bookshop.org
Pub. Date: May 17th, 2022
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Pages: 928
Find it: Amazon | Bookshop.org
SYNOPSIS:
“At age ninety-five, Judge Edward Dimock, patriarch of his family and the man who defended accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss in the famous 1950 Cold War “trial of the century,” is writing his memoir at his fabled Catskill retreat, Hermitage, with its glorious Italian Renaissance ceiling. Judge Dimock is consumed with doubts about the troubling secrets he’s kept to himself for over fifty years—secrets that might change both American history and the lives of his entire family. Was his client guilty of spying for Stalin or not? And if guilty, did Hiss’s crimes go far beyond his perjury conviction—a verdict that divided the country for a generation? Dimock enlists his grandson, George Altmann, a brilliant Princeton astrophysicist, in the quest for truth. Reluctantly, George finds himself drawn into the web of deceit that has ravaged his family, his curiosity sparked by a string of clues found in the Judge’s unpublished memoir and in nine pencil sketches of accused Soviet agents pinned to an old corkboard in his grandfather’s abandoned office. Even more dismaying, the drawings are by George’s paternal grandfather and namesake, a once-famous painter who covered the Hiss trial as a courtroom artist for the Herald Tribune, only to die in uncertain circumstances in a fall from Woodstock’s Fishkill Bridge on Christmas Eve 1949. Many of the suspected spies also died from ambiguous falls (a KGB specialty) or disappeared behind the Iron Curtain—and were conveniently unable to testify in the Hiss trial.
George begins to realize the immensity of what is at stake: deceptive entanglements that will indeed alter the accepted history of the Cold War—and how he understands his own unhappy Woodstock childhood, growing up in the shadow of a rumored suicide and the infidelities of an alcoholic father, a roadie with The Band.
In Gods of Deception, acclaimed novelist David Adams Cleveland has created a multiverse all its own: a thrilling tale of espionage, a family saga, a stirring love story, and a meditation on time and memory, astrophysics and art, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey into the troubled human heart as well as the past—a past that is ever present, where the gods of deception await our distant call."
Early Praise:
“In the early days of the Cold War, many Americans simply could not believe that a perfect gentleman like Alger Hiss could be a red spy. David Adams Cleveland uses his gifts as a storyteller to imagine deeper human truths behind the headlines. Gods of Deception is a lushly vivid tale of a haunted time.” —Evan Thomas, author of The Very Best Men and Being Nixon
"Time's Betrayal is a vast, rich, endlessly absorbing novel engaging with the great and enduring theme of literary art, the quest for an identity. Moreover, it seamlessly expands that quest beyond the individual to the family, to the nation. Time's Betrayal achieves a rare state for massively ambitious novels: it is both complex and compelling. David Adams Cleveland has instantly taken a prominent place on my personal list of must-read authors." — Robert Olen Butler on Time's Betrayal, Pulitzer prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
“Cleveland has crafted a classic summer read.” —Shelf Awareness on Love’s Attraction
About the Author:
(bio from publisher)
David Adams Cleveland is a novelist and art historian. His latest novel, Time’s Betrayal, was named Best Historical Novel of 2017 by Reading the Past. In summer 2014, his second novel, Love’s Attraction, became the top-selling hardcover fiction for Barnes & Noble in New England, and Fictionalcities.uk included Love’s Attraction on its list of top novels for 2013. His first novel, With a Gemlike Flame, drew wide praise for its evocation of Venice and the hunt for a lost masterpiece by Raphael. His most recent art history book, A History of American Tonalism, won the Silver Medal in Art History in the Book of the Year Awards, 2010; and Outstanding Academic Title 2011 from the American Library Association; it was the best selling American art history book in 2011 and 2012. David was a regular reviewer for Artnews, and has written for The Magazine Antiques, the American Art Review, and Dance Magazine. For almost a decade, he was the Arts Editor at Voice of America.
He and his wife live in New York where he works as an art adviser with his son, Carter Cleveland, founder of Artsy.net, the new internet site making all the world’s art accessible to anyone with an internet connection. More about David and his publications can be found, here, on his author site.
