[Molly Cates 02] • Under the Beetle's Cellar

The author and heroine of *The Red  Scream* return in a novel so terrifying, so  filled with squirming suspense, it's bound for the  bestseller lists. When *Kirkus  Reviews* greeted Mary Willis Walker's last book,  *The Red Scream,* with "welcome  to the big time," they weren't kidding. That  novel established Walker as an author with  "the kind of clout that sets publishers' mouths  watering" (*The Philadelphia  Inquirer*). And now she has done it again, with an  unforgettable tale ripped from the headlines and  more terrifying than our worst nightmares. Kidnapped  by a cult of religious fanatics, an Austin school  bus driver and eleven of his young charges have  been held underground at the group's highly  fortified compound for forty-six days. While a team of  federal negotiators begins to lose all hope of  rescuing the hostages, crime reporter Molly Cates sets  outto discover everything she can about the cult's  iron-willed leader, Samuel Mordecai. And as  the clock ticks inexorably, she takes the role of  Clarisse Starling opposite Mordecai's Hannibal Lecter,  engaging in a psychological confrontation as  harrowing as any in *The Silence Of  The Lambs*. Tough, terrifying, and relentlessly  heart-wrenching, this is a novel whose images no reader will  ever forget.