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Cold City is the first of three Repairman Jack prequels, revealing the past of one of the most popular characters in contemporary dark fantasy: F. Paul Wilson's self-styled "fix-it" man who is no stranger to the macabre or the supernatural, hired by victimized people who have no one else to turn to.

We join Jack a few months after his arrival in New York City. He doesn't own a gun yet, though he's already connected with Abe. Soon he'll meet Julio and the Mikulski brothers. He runs afoul of some Dominicans, winds up at the East Side Marriott the night Meir Kahane is shot, gets on the bad side of some Arabs, starts a hot affair, and disrupts the smuggling of preteen sex slaves. And that's just Book One.

Dark City is the second of a new prequel trilogy, Repairman Jack: The Early Years by F. Paul Wilson.

It's February 1992. Desert Storm is raging in Iraq but twenty-two-year-old Jack has more pressing matters at home. His favorite bar, The Spot, is about to be sold out from under Julio, Jack's friend. Jack has been something of a tag-along to this point, but now he takes the reins and demonstrates his innate talent for seeing biters get bit. With a body count even higher than in Cold City, this second novel of the Early Years Trilogy hurtles Jack into the final volume in which all scores will be settled, all debts paid.

Rage, terror, and redemption: these are the stones upon which F. Paul Wilson builds the concluding chapter of Repairman Jack: The Early Years, the prequel trilogy focusing on the formative years of Wilson's globally popular supernatural troubleshooter.

The strands of Jack's life, established in the first two books, Cold City and Dark City, are now woven into a complete pattern. Centered around an obscure group of malcontents intent on creating a terrible explosion in New York City in 1993, Fear City shows the final stages of young Jack becoming Repairman Jack. It is a dark and terrible story, full of plots and needless mayhem, with secret agents, a freelance torturer, a secret society as old as human history, love, death, and a very bleak triumph. Jack threads his way through this intricate maze, as people he loves are stripped away from him in a way that presages the later epic series of novels.

Much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Gia, Repairman Jack doesn't deal with appliances. He fixes situations - situations that too often land him in deadly danger. His latest fix is finding a stolen necklace which, unknown to him, is more than a simple piece of jewelry.

Some might say it's cursed, others might call it blessed. The quest leads Jack to a rusty freighter on Manhattan's West Side docks. What he finds in its hold threatens his sanity and the city around him. But worst of all, it threatens Gia's daughter Vicky, the last surviving member of a bloodline marked for extinction.

Note from the author:

Some of you who read pre-1998 editions of The Tomb have questioned (and rightfully so) how Legacies, so obviously a contemporary novel, could take place only months after The Tomb, which was definitely set in the mid 1980s. The answer is simple: I cheated. I changed The Tomb for the new 1998 edition.

You see, I never planned to bring Jack back. But when I did, I realized I'd either have to set his new stories in the eighties, or go back and change The Tomb. I chose the latter and removed all references that would moor The Tomb in a specific era. The 1998 edition is now what we authors like to call "the preferred text."

All the new Repairman Jack novels loop out from The Tomb and will weave their way back toward Nightworld. I don't know how many we'll end up with. When they stop being fun to write or when I notice I'm starting to repeat myself, I'll quit and move on to something else.

Although a sequel to THE TOMB, the second Repairman Jack novel, stands on its own. If you've never met Repairman Jack, LEGACIES provides an excellent introduction to the character. Its "Santa Jack" fix remains a fan favorite.

After nearly a decade and a half of refusing to bring back Repairman Jack, F. Paul Wilson finally caved in and wrote LEGACIES.

Dr. Alicia Clayton has inherited the family home, a place that holds such dark memories for her than she wants it razed. But someone will go to any lengths - even murder - to prevent that. Why? What secret does the house hold that makes it worth killing for? She hasn't enough to go to the police, so she turns to an urban mercenary known as Repairman Jack.

Repairman Jack, F. Paul Wilson's vigilante hero from the New York Times bestseller The Tomb, returns in a thriller that thrusts him back into the weird, supernatural world that he thrives in.

Looking for clues to the mysterious disappearance of leading conspiracy theorist Melanie Ehler, Jack attends a convention of bizarre and avid conspiracy theorists. It's a place where aliens are real, the government is out to get you, and the world is hurtling toward an inevitable war of good versus evil incarnate.

Jack finds that nobody can be trusted--and that few people are what they seem. Worse yet, Jack's been having vivid dreams that make him wonder whether he's headed for a clash with his own past--maybe The Tomb's evil rakoshi beasts aren't through with him quite yet.

Can you imagine a new chemical compound, a nonaddictive designer drug that heightens your assertiveness, opens the door to your primal self, giving you an edge wherever you compete, whether on the street or the football field, in a classroom or a boardroom? Wouldn't you be tempted to try it... just once? What happens if it releases uncontrollable rage and makes you a killer?

After fifteen years of separation, Jack is contacted by his long-lost sister, Kate, to help her track down the source of her girlfriend Jeanette's sudden trance-like behavior. Referred by a mysterious stranger who gives only Jack's name and phone number, Kate is shocked to find out that the "repairman" she seeks is none other than her little brother--and not altogether happy to find out what little "Jackie" has been doing with himself for all these years. With Jack leading the way, Kate finds out that Jeannette's behavior can be traced back to the experimental therapy she underwent for a brain tumor: now Jeannette's brain and those of several other subjects are infected by a mutated virus. Like any good virus, it wants to multiply--and if Jack can't stop the virus in its path, there will be deadly results.

Meanwhile, Jack is traveling on the 9 train when suddenly a passenger goes berserk and starts shooting at random--leaving Jack no choice but to throw himself into the spotlight by putting the shooter down. Worse for Jack, one of his fellow passengers is a reporter for the local tabloid, The Light, who sees Jack's heroism as his ticket to journalistic stardom. The reporter promises to make Jack a celebrity hero, a household name--which could mean the end of Repairman Jack as we know him.

Repairman Jack doesn't believe a house can be haunted. But he's about to change that tune...

F. Paul Wilson's engaging, self-employed, off-the-books fixer, Repairman Jack, returns for another intense, action-packed adventure just a little over the border into the weird, in The Haunted Air. First introduced years ago in the bestseller The Tomb, Jack has been the hero of a series of exciting novels set in and around New York City, including Legacies, Conspiracies, All the Rage, and Hosts.

"Repairman Jack is a wonderful character, ultracompetent but still vulnerable. Wilson strolls into X-Files territory and makes it his own, keeping the action brisk and the level of suspense steadily rising," said the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle.

It started off as a lark, a late-night jaunt from a boring party to the home of a psychic medium, with Jack dragged along as a reluctant participant. But as soon as Jack and Gia step across the threshold, the house and the earth itself shake to the accompaniment of a tortured scream.

Menelaus Manor sits atop a major geologic fault known as Cameron's Line. But that's not it's only problem. The house has a horrific history. Its original owner died of cancer; his son blew his brains out in the basement; the couple that bought it next were found dead in their bed with their throats slashed; shortly thereafter a child was horribly mutilated in an upstairs bedroom.

The current owners, Lyle and Charlie Kenton, clever practitioners of spiritualist hocus-pocus, use high-tech tricks to dupe their marks. Perhaps they're too good: they've lured too many clients from other mediums and are now under attack. Unable to go to the police for fear of exposing their own scams, they hire Repairman Jack to fix their problem.

Jack takes the job, figuring he'll straighten out the situation by engaging in one of his favorite pastimes: scamming a scammer. But soon he learns that this fix-it involves more than professional jealousy in the spook trade. The earthquake marked the awakening of something in Menelaus Manor, something that used to be someone, an entity full of rage and brought back for a specific purpose.

But this entity has an agenda all its own...

Before he's finished Jack will travel from the seamy world of psychic scams to the inner circle of a well-connected murder cult, and finally into the dark heart of madness where he must strike a deal with a rage-filed entity returned from the dead.

Following last year's successful The Haunted Air, F. Paul Wilson returns with another riveting episode in the saga of Repairman Jack, the secretive, ingenious, and heroic champion of those whose problems no one else can solve. As Dean Koontz says, "Repairman Jack is one of the most original and intriguing characters to arise out of contemporary fiction in ages. His adventures are hugely entertaining."

In Gateways, Jack learns that his father is in a coma after a car accident in Florida. They've been on the outs, but this is his dad, so he heads south. In the hospital he meets Anya, one of his father's neighbors. She's a weird old duck who seems to know an awful lot about his father, and even a lot about Jack.

Jack's arrival does not go unnoticed. A young woman named Semelee, who has strange talents and lives in an isolated area of the Everglades with a group of misshapen men, feels his presence. She senses that he's "special," like her.

Anya takes Jack back to Dad's senior community, Gateways South, which borders on the Everglades. Florida is going through an unusual drought. There's a ban on watering; everything is brown and wilting, but Anya's lawn is a deep green.

Who is Anya? Who is Semelee, and what is her connection to the recent strange deaths of Gateways residents-killed by birds, spiders, and snakes-during the past year? And what are the "lights" Jack keeps hearing about-? Lights that emanate twice a year from a sinkhole deep in the Everglades... lights from another place, another reality.

If he is to protect his father from becoming the next fatality at Gateways, there are questions Jack must answer, secrets he must uncover. Secrets... Jack has plenty of his own, and along the way he learns that even his father has secrets.

Repairman Jack is back! An anonymous mercenary, with no last name and no social security number, Jack has thrilled a veritable army of readers ever since his bestselling debut in The Tomb. Jack can fix any problem, supernatural or otherwise, for a price. Now, in his latest gripping adventure, he takes on two cases at once.

The first involves a nun being blackmailed by someone who has photos of her she doesn't want made public. What's in those photos, she won't say, but with her meager savings just about exhausted, she hires Jack to help her.

The second seems straightforward enough, as an elderly woman hires Jack to find her missing son. But to locate his quarry, Jack must infiltrate the inner reaches of the Dormentalist Church, a secretive, globe-spanning cult whose members include some of the biggest and most powerful names in entertainment, sports, and politics. Ruthless in its pursuit of critics and enemies, the Church hides a sinister agenda known only to its ruling elite.

But Jack can be ruthless, too, going to darker lengths than ever before as he crisscrosses the two fix-it jobs to settle the deadliest of scores!

The ninth Repairman Jack novel brims with murder, international terrorism, sibling rivalry, and a truly infernal device. A mutual tragedy throws Jack together with his brother Tom, a judge from Philadelphia. They've never been close, and it doesn't take Jack long realize that's a good thing. Tom and he are opposites.

Still, Tom convinces Jack to go on a trip to get to know each other better. He has a map locating a wreck off the coast of Bermuda and wants Jack to help him find it. Reluctantly Jack agrees. But instead of treasure they find a strange object, part organic, part manmade, known as the Lilitongue of Gefreda. Ancient lore claims that it is a means "to elude all enemies and leave them helpless." The big question is, why does Tom want such a thing?

And if the Lilitongue lives up to the legend, where does it take you? No one seems to know. Matters take a bizarre and dangerous turn-no surprise for a Repairman Jack novel--when someone accidentally activates the Lilitongue.

It starts off so simply: Jack, still feeling down after the tragic events of Infernal, is hanging in Julio's when a regular named Timmy asks him for help. His teenage niece has been missing since this morning; the police say it's too early to worry, but Timmy knows something bad has happened. Jack says he'll put the word out on the street. This innocent request triggers a chain of seemingly coincidental events that lead Jack into the darkest days of his life.

As has become evident in the series, Jack has been singled out, unwillingly, as the champion of one of the two supernatural forces contending for control of all human life on Earth. Neither of these forces are good or evil, just dangerous and amoral. They value and notice individual humans about as much as we do mosquitos.

Jack is desperate... and the last thing you want to do is make Jack desperate. That's when things begin to blow up and people begin to die.

A hang-onto-your-hat-and-heart thriller of triumph and tragedy that barrels along at F. Paul Wilson's trademark breakneck pace.

Jack has been on hiatus since the events in Harbingers. With his lover Gia's encouragement he dips a toe back into the fix-it pool. Christy Pickering's eighteen-year-old daughter is dating Jerry Bethlehem, a man twice her age. Christy sensed something shady and sinister about him, so she hired a private investigator to look into his past. But the PI isn't returning her calls. Will Jack find out why?

Jack learns there's a very good reason for the unreturned calls: The PI is dead, a victim of a bizarre water-torture murder. As Jack delves into Jerry Bethlehem's past he learns that the man is not who he says he is. Who--and what--he is will have a devastating effect on Jack's life and future, adding another piece to the puzzle of who he really is and why he's been drafted into this cosmic shadow war.

By the Sword takes up the adventures of Repairman Jack directly after Bloodline. Jack is hired to find a legendary Japanese sword, a katana stolen from the Hiroshima Peace Museum and brought to New York City. Central characters include the members of a weird Japanese cult, a young Japanese businessman and his three Yakuza bodyguards, plus Hank Thompson, the Kicker cult leader from Bloodline. The cult, the businessman, the Yakuza, and the Kickers are looking for the sword as well.

Also in the mix is the pregnant teenager carrying a child, loaded with abnormal DNA, who will be a decisive force in the cosmic shadow war raging behind the scenes. She becomes a pawn in the game, hunted by both sides. Following his usual m.o., Jack maneuvers all sides into a bloody melee from which he plans to waltz away with the fabled katana. Of course, when things don't go as planned, Jack must improvise (and he hates to improvise). By the Sword takes F. Paul Wilson's trademark breakneck pacing and interweaving storylines to a new level.

On September 11, 2001, a man drifts in a boat off lower Manhattan as the towers burn. He removes a small box from his pocket and presses a button. As he waits for the south tower to collapse, he thinks: The vast majority will blame the collapse on the crazy Arabs who hijacked the planes and the Islamic extremists who funded them--the obvious choice. A few will notice inconsistencies and point fingers elsewhere, blaming the government or Big Oil or some other powerful but faceless entity. No one--absolutely no one--will guess the truth behind the who and why of this day.

Years later, someone does. Repairman Jack's childhood friend, Weezy Connell (the genius girl from the Tor Teen novel, Jack: Secret Histories), has started fitting together the pieces of the puzzle and anonymously posting her conclusions on the Web. But she can't stay anonymous forever. Someone is after her. Jack becomes involved in her troubles and in the paranoid mazes of the 9/11 Truth Movement, where conspiracy theories point in every direction.

They're all wrong. The truth is stranger, darker, and more evil than anyone can imagine. It involves the cosmic shadow war into which Jack has been drafted. And if the plot behind it--millennia in the planning--succeeds, it will forever change life on this Earth.

The End of the World is at hand!

Munir Habib's life has become a nightmare. His tormentor has warned Munir not to report the kidnapping of his family, or else they will pay a terrible price. A friend realizes something is terribly wrong and tells Munir he doesn't have to go to the cops. There's a guy who fixes situations like this-Repairman Jack. Jack is backed into helping Munir despite his ongoing involvement in the cosmic shadow war between the Ally and the Otherness. Or perhaps because of it. He's chafing at being forced into the defensive role of protecting the Lady, the physical embodiment of the consciousness of the planet Earth.

Meanwhile, the Septimus Order and the Kickers are seemingly working in concert on a plot to extinguish the Lady and open the way for the Otherness to take over our reality. To top it all off, Dawn Pickering finally goes into labor and delivers a baby she only glimpses as it's whisked away, and is terrified by what she sees. Later she's told the baby died, but she doesn't believe it. Neither does Weezy. Neither does Jack. All these interlocking plots mean doom for humanity. But Jack never gives up or gives in.

Bound by his promise to Glaeken, Jack has refrained from making any direct moves against Rasalom. But things have changed so there's nothing holding Jack in check any longer. Other changes are occurring as well. Jack is healing at an accelerated rate--much like Glaeken did when he was immortal. This can only mean that Glaeken's time is almost up and when he dies, Jack takes his place.

Rasalom continues to plot against the Lady. Twice she has died and returned; a third time and she will be gone, leaving a clear path for the Otherness to infiltrate this reality. But Ernst Drexler, formerly Rasalom's go-to guy for logistical support, fears he will be left out in the cold when the Change comes. He forms an uneasy alliance with Jack, who is preparing to face their old enemy.

Meanwhile, Dawn Pickering is searching for her supposedly dead baby. The trail leads her to a mansion in a remote Long Island coastal town, where she discovers a truth she could have never imagined.

Now the stage is set for Jack's massive assault on Rasalom. Jack knows he's got just one shot. But it's not just a matter of taking out Rasalom: he also must safely retrieve Dawn's child and minimize collateral damage. So, he comes up with a foolproof plan.

But fools are always with us....

Ever come across a situation that simply wasn't right--where someone was getting the dirty end of the stick and you wished you could make things right but didn't know how? Fourteen-year-old Jack knows how. Or rather he's learning how. He's discovering that he has a knack for fixing things. Not bikes or toys or appliances--situations....

It all starts when Jack and his best friends, Weezy and Eddie, discover a rotting corpse--the victim of ritual murder--in the fabled New Jersey Pine Barrens. Beside the body is an ancient artifact carved with strange designs. What is its secret? What is the secret of the corpse? What other mysteries hide in the dark, timeless Pine Barrens? And who doesn't want them revealed?

Jack's town, the surrounding Barrens, his friends, even Jack himself... they all have... Secret Histories.

When his five-year-old neighbor goes missing, Jack can't help feeling responsible. He should have taken Cody home when he found him riding his bicycle near the Pine Barrens. And then a lost man wanders out of the woods after being chased all night by... something. Jack knows, better than anyone, that the Barrens are dangerous--a true wilderness filled with people, creatures, and objects lost from sight and memory. Like the ancient, fifteen-foot-tall stone pyramid he, Weezy, and Eddie discover. Jack thinks it might have been a cage of some sort, but for what kind of animal, he can't say. Eddie jokes that it could have been used for the Jersey Devil. Jack doesn't believe in that old folk tale, but something is roaming the Pines. Could it have Cody? And what about the strange circus that set up outside town? Could they be involved? So many possibilities, so little time...

Everyone loves senior Carson Toliver, the captain and quarterback of the football team, heartthrob of South Burlington County Regional High--especially the girls. Even Jack's best friend Weezy has a crush on him. And unlike most of the popular kids at school, he's not stuck up. Jack even sees him defending a piney kid who is being bullied in the hall. Which is why Jack is so surprised when Weezy tells him that Carson took her on a date and attacked her.

Jack tries to convince her to report Carson, but Weezy would rather just forget it ever happened. She begs him not to tell anyone, and Jack reluctantly agrees. But then Carson starts telling his own version of what happened that night and suddenly everyone is calling her "Easy Weezy." Jack's concern turns to rage. Carson needs to be taught a lesson. With the help of the pineys--reclusive inhabitants of the mysterious Jersey Pine Barrens who have secrets of their own--Jack finds a way to exact secret vengeance...

In F. Paul Wilson's third young adult novel, the teenage Jack demonstrates the skills that will serve him later in life as the urban mercenary known as Repairman Jack.