Distant Sons, Tim Johnston
Distant Sons, Tim Johnston
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
Club: $15.99

Distant Sons

Author: Tim Johnston

Narrator: Shaun Taylor Corbett

Unabridged: 12 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/17/2023


Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author of Descent and The Current Tim Johnston returns with an absorbing new crime novel set in a small Wisconsin town haunted by the unsolved disappearance of three boys in the 1970s.
 
What if?
 
What if Sean Courtland’s old Chevy truck had broken down somewhere else? What if he’d never met Denise Givens, a waitress at a local tavern, and gotten into a bar fight defending her honor? Or offered a ride and a job to Dan Young, another young man like Sean, burdened by secrets and just drifting through town?

Instead, over the course of just a few short weeks, Sean and Dan form a deep friendship as they get drawn into the lives of the people they meet—from Denise and her father, to Marion Devereaux, who needs some work done on his house, to Corinne Viegas, a savvy detective with top-notch instincts—all haunted in different ways by the disappearance of three young boys decades ago, in the 1970s. And as these characters converge, an irreversible chain of events is set in motion that culminates in shattering violence, and the revelation of long-buried truths.

Evocative and gritty, Distant Sons is another immersive, gripping suspense novel by Johnston about how the most random intersection of lives can have consequences both devastating and beautiful.
 

About Tim Johnston

Tim Johnston, a native of Iowa City, is the author of The Current and the New York Times bestseller Descent, as well as a young adult novel, Never So Green, and the story collection Irish Girl, winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Julie on April 08, 2024

Ah, now this is a good read. It took a few chapters to recall why main character Sean Courtland's backstory rang a bell: I met him in Tim Johnston's debut novel, Descent, a story I found maddeningly inconsistent. But Distant Sons is something else entirely. Johnston layers a decades-old mystery of t......more

Goodreads review by Carla on November 22, 2023

I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. This book was great. I was like wow. I couldn't put it down and read it in two days. The book has a lot of characters but they all touch each others lives in different ways. Its not only a great crime mystery but also a book about how unexpectedly so many liv......more

Goodreads review by Drew on September 12, 2023

Johnston writes the perfect literary thriller, crime drama. Just enough plot, just enough pacing to keep the pages turning but his prose, good lord, the man can flat write, and I didn't want this one to end. Third book in and he keeps getting better and better with each one.......more

Goodreads review by Bill on December 27, 2023

Ever since devouring Descent and The Current, I had been waiting on baited breath for Tim Johnston's next release. Finally it happened in October, and while I was excited to read it, I was hesitant to because that would mean that the sooner I read it, the longer I'd have to wait until his next one! Bu......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on November 28, 2023

I have enjoyed Johnston's two previous novels, and this one is similar, though it did not work for me quite as well. Reading his novels has its own comfort, even though they inevitably involve some terrible crime. Here there was a series of flashbacks, and old crime echoing into the future, that fel......more


Quotes

"Distant Sons is a mystery about a serial killer, yes, but it’s also not that at all: It’s a heartbreaking story about family, failure, and the fallout from violence. Tim Johnston has crafted a riveting novel that takes us into struggling blue collar America, and locates the hope hidden inside devastating loss. A beautiful book."
 ——Janelle Brown, bestselling author of Pretty Things

“Tim Johnston has once again raised the bar for the literary thriller. Distant Sons is elegant and edgy, refined and complex. It excavates the truth from the darkest recesses of the past and shines a light towards the possibility of a redemptive future.”—Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women and Sing Her Down

"Tim Johnston returns in dazzling form with DISTANT SONS, an intricate, haunting novel sure to resonate with fans of Dennis Lehane, Peter Heller, and James Lee Burke. Johnston's plot is tense and his pacing swift, but he's after bigger game here, with questions of identity, intentions, and legacies merging in a tale that will linger long after it is finished. He's also one of the finest prose stylists in the game, stacking polished sentences with a master's touch. Don't miss this one." —Michael Koryta, New York Times bestselling author of An Honest Man

"Tim Johnston’s Distant Sons is the kind of novel that inspires writers like me to want to step up our game. His prose is both elegant and raw, with characters so real you want to sit down and have a beer with them. Mr. Johnston is a writer with a gift, and if you haven’t had the pleasure to read him, I highly recommend picking up this book."—Allen Eskens, bestselling author of The Life We Bury and Forsaken Country

"This book kept me up at night. Eerie, unsettling, and addictive."—Ash Davidson, author of Damnation Spring

“A slow-burn novel that quietly elevates the fragile codes of honorable men.”—Kirkus Reviews