The new bestseller from the world's most popular author.

In his eleventh novel John Grisham will once again confirm his reputation as the master storyteller of his generation. In The Brethren he takes his readers into the depths of Trumble, a minimum security federal prison, home to the usual assortment of criminals - drug dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax evaders, two Wall Street crooks, one doctor, at least four lawyers.
And three former judges who call themselves The Brethren: one from Texas, one from California, and one from Mississippi. They meet each day in the law library, their turf at Trumble, where they write briefs, handle cases for other inmates, practice law without a license, and sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. And they spend hours hatching schemes to make money.
Then one of their seams goes awry. It ensnares the wrong victim, an innocent on the outside, a man with dangerous friends, and The Brethren's days of quietly marking time are over.

'Shan had become! a connoisseur of fear, learning to appreciate its many textures and physical reactions. There was a vast difference, for example, between the fear of the torturer's bootsteps and the fear as an avalanche descended on an adjacent work crew. And none compared to the fear that kept him awake nights as he searched through his miasma of exhaustion and pain, the fear of forgetting the face of his father. In the first days, during the haze of hypodermics and political therapy, he had come to realise how valuable fear could be...'

Set against the astonishing landscape of a beleaguered Tibet and the epic struggles of its people against Chinese Imperialism, The Skull Mantra marks the debut of a major new talent with this mesmerizing literary thriller.
When a decapitated body is discovered by the prison work gang on a remote mountainside, regional party commander Colonel Tan enlists the help of veteran investigator Shan Tao Yun. Under orders from Beijing, Shan is serving an indefinite , prison term for embarrassing a high-ranking Party Minister but thr commander has little choice but to order his temporary release in the hope of closing the case before the arrival of a group of American tourists.
But when the headless corpse is identified as a Chinese prosecutor the prisoners down tools. The Buddhist monks in the camp would rather be tortured or shot than work on a road where a 'hungry ghost' is lurking, especially as they believe the murder was committed by Tamdin, a supernatural demon bent on avenging Chinese persecution.
In his quest for the truth Shan uncovers political and religious intrigue involving an American mining project, Tibetan sorcerers, corrupt Chinese Party officials, secret monasteries and the Buddhist resistance movement. The Skull Mantra is a moving and unusually beautiful thriller absorbed in the past and present of an extraordinary country and its people.