DESC: Stephen Carter follows up 2007's bestselling NEW ENGLAND WHITE with a long, ambitious, racially-charged political thriller that imagines a vast conspiracy orchestrated by a secret society called the Palace Council. When, in 1954, recent Amherst graduate Eddie Wesley discovers the murdered body of a prominent black lawyer, and shortly later his sister Junie goes missing, he finds himself caught up in a mystery that will span decades, and will envelop not only his own life but the fate of the country itself. Vietnam, Watergate, JFK, Nixon, and Langston Hughes all play a role in Carter's wonderfully paranoid vision of radical politics and shadowy cabals. Readers will be riveted as they follow Eddie through the twists and turns of the sinister plot, and through 20 years of American history.