The Cold Dark Heart of the World

Fidget is driven by a hunger that has rampaged longer than people have walked upon the planet, a hunger that has never been sated or defeated. It drives him on a bloody killing spree from the Shores of New Jersey to the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina.

Literature & Fiction

Roberts, Wilson

Genre Fiction

Wilder Pubns Ltd

Born in Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theater in 1849, George Berrell died in 1933, after a life he often described as one of growing up with the country. His travels of self-discovery and those of his life on the stage are illustrative of a nation moving from travel on foot and horseback to that of automobiles and Boeings first major airliner, the 247. Berrell saw it all and performed on stages in early Deadwood to St. Louis and Chicago and all points in between. Torn between his affection for John Wilkes Booth and the actress Catherine Terrell, pursued by Miranda Ives, the daughter of a primitive preacher, one of Quantrill's Raiders who proclaimed that he was destined for her, Berrell's personal and theatrical life spanned the continent, ending in the motion pictures where in 1917 he appeared in John Ford's first full-length western, "Straight Shooting." Based on Berrell's memoir, Shadows and Acts is the story of a large chunk of American history as seen through one man's eyes.

Shadows and Acts

Wilder_Publications

It is the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars. February Heat, set on St. Ursula, a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands, is the first novel in a trilogy featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. In this tale Frank finds his calm and secure life on St. Ursula in jeopardy when he receives a phone call from Liz Ford, a woman he briefly met when returning home on the ferry from St. Thomas. Awakened by her 2:36 am call telling him someone had just tried to kill her and asking for his help, Frank and his friend, Chance agree to help her. After a shoot-out on a beach, they find they must accompany her to Philadelphia where they find her physician husband has been murdered. Before they can safely return to St. Ursula Frank and Chance break into the offices of a mysterious New Hampshire college with connections to the Liz's husband's medical practice and the drug ring with which the doctors are involved. Frank's situation is complicated by his troubled relationships with Howard Penn, the island's Chief Inspector of Police, who despises expatriate Americans, and L. Arthur Parker, St. Ursula's Prime Minster, who will do anything, use anyone in any way he can to assure his continuance in office.

February Heat

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Set in the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars, October Fury is the final novel in the St. Ursula trilogy, featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. St. Ursula is a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands. Herbie Lewis, a local bar musician asks Frank to investigate the death of his brother, Jeff. While it was ruled to be an accidental drowning, Herbie is convinced that Jeff was murdered. As a hurricane approaches St. Ursula and the Virgin Islands, Frank and his friend Chance are drawn into a confrontation with unscrupulous marketers, owners of a pyramid scheme that purports to be founded upon religious principles. The narrative, alternately tense and humorous, follows Frank and Chance as the storm builds and hits St. Ursula, the fury of the storm mirroring the fury of events as they discover the truth of Jeff's death and the crimes and corruption surrounding it.

October Fury

Storms: Tales of Irmariageddon

Storms: Tales of Irmariageddon is the final novel in Wilson Roberts’ St. John trilogy. Set on St. John, the smallest and least developed of the three main United States Virgin Islands, just prior to and during the 2017 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, Storms tells of the havoc wrought upon the island and its people as the two hurricanes ripped through the Caribbean with fearsome winds and tides, leaving shattered homes, businesses and lives in their wake. Storms is a novel for everyone who loves St. John; for everyone who knows someone who loves St. John; for everyone who understands what it means to love their community. Storms is a novel for everyone who understands that a beloved community cannot be allowed to perish, whether as a result of greed, ignorance, wind, fire or rain.
Each novel in Wilson Roberts’ trilogy is a stand-alone tale. Major characters in one book are often part of the background in subsequent books. The first, Murder in Coral Bay, introduces readers to the island of St. John, a Caribbean jewel in the United States Virgin Islands, where Roberts and his wife, Diane Esser, had a home for thirty years. In the wake of a murder, a few of the courageous and honest officers’ struggle against their corrupt police department as they attempt to bring a murderer to justice.
It Happened on St. John, the second novel in the St. John trilogy, is a love letter to the island, in which the community unites to fight the schemes of two con-artists and their fraudulent, extravagant plan to develop a marina that, if it were ever to be built, would threaten the island’s natural and social ecology, as well as its economy. It is the story of a community of trades people, musicians, artists, business owners, artisans; a community in which people put aside small differences to help one another in the face of adversity.
Like Wilson Roberts’ three previous Caribbean novels, February Heat, Caribbean Ice and October Fury, which were set on the fictional British island of St. Ursula, the St. John trilogy presents fully realized characters living in fully realized places. Their lives and loves, their struggles and victories, their grounding in the communities in which they live will remain with readers long after they have closed the books on the final pages.
In addition to Storms: Tales of Irmariageddon, Wilder Publications has published thirteen novels by Wilson Roberts and a book of poetry, Before the Storm and Other Poems.

The Serpent and the Hummingbird

THE SERPENT AND THE HUMMINGBIRD tells of men and women who find themselves brought together as they seek common ground in a world close to our own, but bizarre enough to approach the grotesque that Flannery O'Connor said was necessary to shock readers into a realization of the misshapen nature of our times. Faith and the patterns of belief and practice that grow from faith can distort our lives or help us find order in a world of chaos. Sometimes they do both. THE SERPENT AND THE HUMMINGBIRD takes the reader into precarious border lands where faith and chaos can seem indistinguishable. All the novel's central characters struggle with matters of faith, be it in science, religion, hallucinations, or pure reason. Set in Lunsford, Random County, North Carolina a town the mountains of the western part of the state, THE SERPENT AND THE HUMMINGBIRD tells the story of six people, women and men whose lives become entwined in a complex mixture of love, fear, and violence, culminating in a ritual during which people handle deadly serpents as an expression of religious beliefs based on their interpretation of biblical passages. THE SERPENT AND THE HUMMINGBIRD was described in the Tennessee Library Journal as an insightful and sensitive depiction of serpent handling believers. The explosive culminating scenes Edd Guy's church are astonishing descriptions of the bizarre ends to which true believers can be driven.

There Will Be Time is a grab bag of a novel, a murder mystery, a comic look at life in a small college in the Carolina mountains where relations between faculty, staff, and administration are on a relatively first name basis and everyone seemingly knows everybody else's business. Wilson Roberts knows such places, having taught at Lees-McRae College in the Carolina Mountains, Paul Smiths College in the northern Adirondacks, Delaware Valley College in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Greenfield Community College in Massachusetts. He brings wit and insight into his depiction of campus life, as in his description of the single faculty apartment building at Banner Grove College: "The apartments had been built quickly and cheaply by a sub-assistant dean of grass cutting who hadn't spent a cent more than necessary to get an occupancy permit from the building inspector, who was his wife's brother." There Will Be Time will entertain any reader. It's a thrilling murder mystery filled with humor, suspense, a love of life in academic Siberia, and amusing insights into that life.

There Will Be Time

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

The Serpent and the Hummingbird, tells the story of six people whose lives become entwined in a complex mixture of fear, love, violence and bizarre religious practices, as they struggle with matters of belief, reflecting the confusions, the threats, and promises of deeply held faith central to our current political, social, and economic dialogues. The story deals with these issues in a timely fashion, and is peopled with fully realized characters who live in a world close to our own, but bizarre enough to approach the grotesque that Flannery O'Connor said was necessary to shock readers into a realization of the misshapen nature of our times.

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Books by Roberts, Wilson

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Roberts, Wilson. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Cold Dark Heart of the World

Shadows and Acts

February Heat

October Fury

Storms: Tales of Irmariageddon

Storms: Tales of Irmariageddon

The Serpent and the Hummingbird

There Will Be Time

The Cold Dark Heart of the World

The Serpent and the Hummingbird