A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta

Blues is the cornerstone of American popular music, the bedrock of rock and roll. In this extraordinary musical and social history, Robert Palmer traces the odyssey of the blues from its rural beginnings, to the steamy bars of Chicago`s South Side, to international popularity, recognition, and imitation.

Palmer tells the story of the blues through the lives of its greatest practitioners: Robert Johnson, who sang of being pursued by the hounds of hell, Muddy Waters, who electrified Delta blues and gave the music its rock beat, Robert Lockwood and Sonny Boy Williamson, who launched the King Biscuit Time radio show and brought blues to the airwaves, and John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, B. B. King, and many others.

After a horrible accident claims the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever Bloom can see people s auras, hear their thoughts, and know someone s entire life story by touching them. Going out of her way to avoid human contact to suppress her abilities, she has been branded a freak at her new high school — but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste.

Damen is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy. He s the only one who can silence the noise and random energy in her head - wielding a magic so intense, it s as though he can peer straight into her soul. As Ever is drawn deeper into his enticing world of secrets and mystery, she s left with more questions than answers. And she has no idea just who he really is - or what he is. The only thing she knows to be true is that she s falling deeply and helplessly in love with him.

Winter of the World is the second novel in Ken Follett`s uniquely ambitious and deeply satisfying Century trilogy. On its own or read in sequence with Fall of Giants and Edge of Eternity, this is a magnificent, spellbinding epic of global conflict and personal drama.