Retired Miami Homicide Detective Jimmy Paz has put the darkness behind him. But now he, his wife, and their young daughter are being haunted by terrifying dreams. And when affluent Miami businessmen begin dying gruesomely in their fortress-like homes—with the footprints of a giant jungle cat found at the crime scenes—Paz has no choice but to get involved, because what he loves most may be the next thing devoured.

From the acclaimed author of Tropic of Night, Valley of Bones, The Book of Air and Shadows, and The Forgery of Venus comes the final book in his masterful Jimmy Paz series, hailed by the Washington Post as a "miracle of intelligent fiction . . . among the essential novels of recent years."

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Deep in the jungles of Colombia, an American priest is shot dead in his makeshift church.

A few weeks later an Indian shaman arrives in South Florida, armed only with a bag of totems and the fearsome power of his vengeful god.

As a Miami Homicide Detective, Jimmy Paz saw terrible things that defied rationality. Now retired, he's put the darkness behind him. But suddenly he, his wife, and their young daughter are being haunted by horrific dreams—terrifying visions of a giant jungle cat. And when affluent Miami businessmen begin dying gruesomely in their fortress-like homes—with the footprints of a massive animal found at the crime scenes—the baffled police must turn to Paz, who has experience with the impossible. Paz cannot refuse, for he's tied to this case by a shocking secret from his past. And what he loves most may be the next thing devoured in this nightmare of carnage and sacrifice.

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Beginning with a consideration of Nietzsche's inflammatory and critical insight that the modern world is framed by the death of God, Michael Gruber confronts contemporary disenchantment and its necessary offspring, the "universalization of terror." By making truth relative, negating the value of beauty, and rendering questions about the good dubious if not obsolete, terror permeates all aspects of our psychosocial existence with the threat of dehumanization. In response to this terror, which is the fundamental mood of our time, Gruber advocates re-imagining our destiny as a path of initiation.

Describing an inner awakening to the spiritual world, whose earthly manifestation of its inherent divinity invites and necessitates our conscious participation, Gruber offers readings and practices that promote the incarnation of "noble souls." Referring to the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Steiner, An Unknown Destiny describes how psychotherapy can move beyond healing the ego to transcending the ego. Gruber shows how opening the soul to meditative or intuitive forms of thinking can contribute to the development of new soul faculties of perception and to the experience of moral freedom. Most important, he shows how the incomplete and continuously evolving Mystery of Golgotha can inspire the emergence and presence of modern human beings infused with Christ consciousness--reverence, wisdom, peace, and love.

"An Unknown Destiny is like a stream of fresh water in which all psychotherapeutic approaches would do well to immerse and possibly transform. Gruber's reading of the works of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Steiner concerning the realm of terror that pervades our world, is not only a tour de force of reflection upon the writings of these seminal figures, but a clear and highly accessible one. Michael Gruber has done a great service to psychotherapy. I learned a lot." --Nathan Schwartz-Salant, Ph.D., Jungian analyst, author of The Mystery of Human Relationship and The Black Nightgown

"Michael Gruber brings together key points in Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Steiner to point out the connection between psychotherapy and the path of initiation appropriate to our time. In this way, he locates the essential spiritual challenges from our greatest thinkers. Gruber has an appreciation of the mythic that approaches, at times, that of A.K. Coomaraswamy. But he does more. He shows how living thinking, the fresh experience of being, and the awakening from technology's hypnotic thrall, can all become realities for us. In doing so, Gruber clears a path for the self-aware individual to become no longer a passive recipient of mass culture, but a point source of love and wisdom." --Michael Lipson, Ph.D, psychotherapist, author of Stairway of Surprise

"Michael Gruber has written a truly remarkable, courageous-beyond-belief book. He shows how modern psychology serves terrorist structures of consciousness. He further shows that only a truly spiritual psychology can break through these forms. His creative reading of Nietzsche opens the path of therapy as modern initiation. His work with Rudolf Steiner reveals the presence of pathologies of spirit that are still being approached as psychological difficulties; and how to approach them anew. Finally, his understanding of Heidegger shows the way to the imaginal reality of the unity of person-world. A truly breakthrough book!" --Robert Sardello, Ph.D., author of Love and the World and Silence, cofounder and codirector of The School of Spiritual Psychology...

Jane Doe lives in the shadows under an assumed name. A once-promising anthropologist and an expert on shamanism, everyone thinks she's dead. Or so she hopes.

Jimmy Paz is a Cuban-American police detective. Straddling two cultures, he understands things others cannot.

When the killings start -- a series of ritualistic murders -- all of Miami is terrified. Especially Jane. She knows the dark truth that Jimmy must desperately search to uncover. As their lives slowly interconnect, Jane and Paz are soon caught in a cataclysmic battle between good and an evil as unimaginable as it is terrifying . . .

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Chaz Wilmot makes his living cranking out old-master parodies for ads and magazine covers. When he's offered a job restoring a Venetian palace fresco, he is at first, skeptical—he immediately sees it is more a forgery than a restoration. But he is soon seduced by the challenge and throws himself into the work, doing the job brilliantly.

This feat attracts the attention of Werner Krebs, a shady art dealer who becomes Wilmot's friend and patron. Wilmot is suddenly working with a fervor he hasn't felt in years, but without warning, he finds himself reliving moments from his past—not as memories but as if they are happening all over again. Soon, he believes he can travel back to the 17th century where he lived as the Spanish artist Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez. Wilmot begins to fantasize that as Velazquez, he has created a masterpiece and when the painting actually turns up, he doesn't know if he painted it or if he imagined the whole thing.

Little by little, Wilmot enters a secret world of gangsters, greed and murder, with his mystery patron at the center of it all, either as the mastermind behind a plot to forge a painting worth hundred of millions, or as the man who will save Wilmot from obscurity and madness.

Miraculously inventive, this book cements Gruber's reputation as one of the most imaginative and gifted writers of our time.

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Chaz Wilmot makes his living cranking out old-master parodies for ads and magazine covers. When he's offered a job restoring a Venetian palace fresco, he is at first, skeptical—he immediately sees it is more a forgery than a restoration. But he is soon seduced by the challenge and throws himself into the work, doing the job brilliantly.

This feat attracts the attention of Werner Krebs, a shady art dealer who becomes Wilmot's friend and patron. Wilmot is suddenly working with a fervor he hasn't felt in years, but without warning, he finds himself reliving moments from his past—not as memories but as if they are happening all over again. Soon, he believes he can travel back to the 17th century where he lived as the Spanish artist Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez. Wilmot begins to fantasize that as Velazquez, he has created a masterpiece and when the painting actually turns up, he doesn't know if he painted it or if he imagined the whole thing.

Little by little, Wilmot enters a secret world of gangsters, greed and murder, with his mystery patron at the center of it all, either as the mastermind behind a plot to forge a painting worth hundred of millions, or as the man who will save Wilmot from obscurity and madness.

Miraculously inventive, this book cements Gruber's reputation as one of the most imaginative and gifted writers of our time.

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A fire destroys a New York City rare bookstore—and reveals clues to a treasure worth killing for. . . . A disgraced scholar is found tortured to death. . . . And those pursuing the most valuable literary find in history are about to cross from the harmless mundane into inescapable nightmare.

From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Tropic of Night comes a breathtaking thriller that twists, shocks, and surprises at every turn as it crisscrosses centuries, from the glaring violence of today into the dark shadows of truth and lies surrounding the greatest writer the world has ever known.

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