William Martin Books

William Martin, recipient of the 2005 New England Book Award, is the author of nine novels, an award-winning PBS documentary, and a horror movie now considered a cult classic.

His first novel, Back Bay (1980) spent fourteen weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, and eighth, The Lost Constitution, appeared on the Mass Market List in 2008. The works in between have established him, in the words of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, as a "master story-teller." At the publication of Annapolis, a saga about the U.S. Navy, Publisher's Weekly said "Martin is the maritime Michener." Of his biographical novel, Citizen Washington, USA Today wrote, "Deft, spicy, and excitingly readable... This fiction is so complex in its understanding of humanity as to seem actually true."

And he has joined the historical novel and the mystery-thriller to create a genre all its own. In Back Bay, Cape Cod, Harvard Yard, The Lost Constitution, and now, City of Dreams, his characters track the passage of priceless artifacts through American history while, in alternating chapters, the history comes to life.

Four of those books star Boston rare-document hunter Peter Fallon and his girlfriend Evangeline. In the latest, City of Dreams they're in Manhattan, hunting a mahogany box containing $20,000 worth of Continental bonds, the unretired debt of the American Revolution. With interest, those bonds are now worth over a billion dollars.

Booklist said of City, "Martin has a winning formula and it shines through again here. Readers follow the money and travel back in time to meet fascinating characters, while in the present, Fallon and Evangeline prove to be thoroughly compelling protagonists."