Guilt, memory, and redemption swirl through this inventive science-fiction-based thriller from Edgar-finalist Sternbergh (Shovel Ready). In Caesura, an isolated Texas town that's part penal colony, part rehabilitation experiment, Sheriff Calvin Cooper keeps the peace in a community that mixes the most savage of criminals with the victims of horrible crimes. What allows the two groups to coexist is that all their memories have been selectively edited to erase their recollections of their respective crime experiences. The fragile calm shatters when first one, then two residents are shot dead in a place where guns don't officially exist. As the wider world intrudes, Cooper must handle new arrivals, work with the shadowy institute that has supplied the research and technology for memory editing, and defend his town against cynical outside forces that could burst the bubble that defines Cooper's world. It's a clever premise, but the many contrivances that support the plot don't hold up as t

Helping maintain an uneasy peace in The Blinds, a rural Texas community of criminal misfits who were given a chance at a new life after having their memories altered, sheriff Calvin Cooper struggles with personal secrets in the wake of a suicide and murder.

A blistering thriller from the Edgar-nominated author of Shovel Ready--a speculative modern Western with elements of Cormac McCarthy, Jim Thompson, and the Coen brothers that is wickedly funny, razor-sharp, and totally engrossingImagine a place populated by criminals-people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who've been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don't know if they've perpetrated a crime, or just witnessed one. What's clear to them is that if they leave, they will end up dead. For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace--but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town's residents revolt. Cooper has his own secrets to protect, so when his new deputy starts digging, he needs to keep one step ahead of her--and the mysterious outsiders who threaten to tear the whole place down. The more he learns, the more the hard truth is revealed: The Blinds