The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder

by Douglas Preston, David Grann (Foreword by)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The kind of history you don't need to be a buff to love. Douglas Preston has a knack for fascination, and here he's compiled a whole lot of it, including tombs, treasures and tons of insights into curiosities dating back to the dinosaurs.

From the #1 bestselling author of The Lost City of the Monkey God, a jaw-dropping discovery of an Egyptian tomb opens up a slew of archaeological mysteries and deadly tales. Now in paperback with an EXCITING BONUS ADVENTURE!

What’s it like to be the first to enter an Egyptian burial chamber that’s been sealed for thousands of years? What horrifying secret was found among the prehistoric ruins of the American Southwest? Who really was the infamous the Monster of Florence?

From the jungles of Honduras to macabre archaeological sites in the American Southwest, Douglas Preston's explorations have taken him across the globe. The Lost Tomb brings together a compelling collection of true stories about buried treasure, enigmatic murders, lost tombs, bizarre crimes, and other fascinating tales of the past and present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538741238
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/28/2025
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Douglas Preston worked as a writer and editor for the American Museum of Natural History and taught writing at Princeton University. He has written for the New Yorker, Natural History, National Geographic, Harper’s, Smithsonian, and the Atlantic. The author of several acclaimed nonfiction books—including Lost City of the Monkey God, Cities of Gold and The Monster of Florence—Preston is also the coauthor with Lincoln Child of the bestselling series of novels featuring FBI agent Pendergast.

Place of Birth:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Education:

B.A., Pomona College, 1978

Website:

http://www.prestonchild.com

Editorial Reviews

[S]o skillfully sketched is the lure of the unknown in Preston’s collection of essays. From the safe distance of the pages of The Lost Tomb, we are allowed a delicious taste of what it is to be consumed with the desire to know, even when all evidence points to the fact that, maybe, we are better off leaving a mystery alone.”—Bookpage, starred review

AMAZON HISTORY BOOK OF THE MONTH DECEMBER 2023—Amazon

“[A] gripping compendium of his journalistic work […] Throughout, Preston tackles his subjects with the obsessive enthusiasm of an amateur detective and the skills of a seasoned novelist; even those who read the articles when they first were published will take pleasure in new afterwords that provide updates about Preston’s theories. This is unbeatable reading for armchair sleuths.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Buffs of buried-treasure and long-ago true-crime tales will enjoy Preston’s expertly woven tales."—Kirkus

"Sometimes nonfiction is even more intriguing than fiction, and Preston certainly knows how to keep readers’ attention while taking them on a journey into the mysteries of the past."—New York Journal of Books

"“The pieces are so good and the reporting so thorough that The Lost Tomb is a worthy addition to library collections.”—Booklist

"[I]mmersive and unputdownable"—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

"[T]he true crime book you've been waiting for."—The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The Lost Tomb is a seminal work about things that really do go bump in the night that proceeds to show us exactly how that can be. An extraordinary achievement in all respects.”—BookTrib

“If Indiana Jones had kept a diary, it might have read much like Preston’s new nonfiction work. After discovering a forgotten city in the Amazonian forest, an undertaking he documents in The Lost City of the Monkey God, the author travels across the globe, seeking to solve some of the ancient world’s most beguiling mysteries.”
 —Alta

“THE LOST TOMB could not have come along at a better time […] this is a book worth savoring.”—Book Reporter

"[A] must-read for adventure, true crime, and New Mexico enthusiasts."—New Mexico Magazine

"A welcome addition to Preston’s truly gripping and impressive body of work."—BookTrib

Praise for The Lost City of the Monkey God

"Memoirs of jungle adventures too often devolve into lurid catalogs of hardships [but] Preston proves too thoughtful an observer and too skilled a storyteller to settle for churning out danger porn. He has instead created something nuanced and sublime: a warm and geeky paean to the revelatory power of archaeology...Few other writers possess such heartfelt appreciation for the ways in which artifacts can yield the stories of who we are."—The New York Times Book Review

"A well-documented and engaging read...The author's narrative is rife with jungle derring-do and the myriad dangers of the chase."—USA Today

"Deadly snakes, flesh-eating parasites, and some of the most forbidding jungle terrain on earth were not enough to deter Douglas Preston from a great story."—The Boston Globe

"Breezy, colloquial and sometimes very funny...A very entertaining book."—The Wall Street Journal

"This modern-day archeological adventure and medical mystery reads as rapidly as a well-paced novel, but is a heart-pounding true story."—Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)

From the Publisher

A well-documented and engaging read...The author's narrative is rife with jungle derring-do and the myriad dangers of the chase.

USA Today

Deadly snakes, flesh-eating parasites, and some of the most forbidding jungle terrain on earth were not enough to deter Douglas Preston from a great story.

The Boston Globe

This modern-day archeological adventure and medical mystery reads as rapidly as a well-paced novel, but is a heart-pounding true story.

Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)

Breezy, colloquial and sometimes very funny...A very entertaining book.

The Wall Street Journal

Preston has an unerring sense of suspense, of how to hold the reader in his grip.”

David Grann

Buffs of buried-treasure and long-ago true-crime tales will enjoy Preston’s expertly woven tales.

Kirkus

2023-09-15
More adventure journalism from the noted thriller author.

As Preston, author of The Lost City of the Monkey God, writes in an engaging introduction, “I could never have become a novelist without first being a nonfiction journalist”—or a childhood reader of adventure tales, including one about the presumed pirate booty buried on Nova Scotia’s Oak Island. The author remembered that particular yarn as a grownup, traveled there, and wrote a story for Smithsonian that was “the most popular [article] the magazine had ever published.” His story, like many included here, turns up more questions than answers, but it’s worth noting that it also spawned a long-running reality-TV series that, if nothing else, speaks to our fascination with all things buried. One piece centers on the so-called Monster of Florence, whose brutal crimes Preston tracks long after the fact, confident that he could reveal the true story behind them, only to conclude, “Any crime novel, to be successful, must contain certain basic elements: there must be a motive; evidence; a trail of clues; and a process of discovery that leads, one way or another, to a conclusion,” adding, “life…is not so tidy.” Among the assorted untidy puzzles is the twisted tale of Kennewick Man, a skeleton that turned up in an eroding Washington riverbank and that touched off a huge controversy when its DNA suggested ancient European origins. It’s one of several archaeology-based pieces that deal with similar controversies: whether the possibility that cannibalism may have taken place in the ancient Southwest (with the ghoulish problem one archaeologist faced: “he needed a way to identify human tissue that had passed through the digestive system of another human being”), or why hundreds of skeletons were found at a lake high in the Himalayas.

Buffs of buried-treasure and long-ago true-crime tales will enjoy Preston’s expertly woven tales.

Kirkus Reviews