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Cash & Colcord #2
Paradox
Not yet published
Expected 21 Apr 26The new powerhouse team of Douglas Preston & The new powerhouse team of Douglas Preston & Aletheia Preston are joining together to "enter the world" of the New York Times bestselling Extinction.
One of the holiest relics in Christendom, inexplicably defaced…
A paranoid old prospector, ritualistically murdered…
A controversial exobiologist, tortured and dismembered…
When a reclusive man is found dead under grisly circumstances in the Colorado wilderness, CBI Agent Frankie Cash and Eagle County Sheriff Jim Colcord, whom we met in the New York Times bestseller, Extinction, team up again on their most enigmatic and dangerous case yet. Their investigation uncovers a trail of bizarre killings, baffling money transfers, and a fanatical secret society.
And all the while, the resurrected Neanderthals, who vanished into the Colorado mountains, seem to be biding their time for something…spectacular.
One of the holiest relics in Christendom, inexplicably defaced…
A paranoid old prospector, ritualistically murdered…
A controversial exobiologist, tortured and dismembered…
When a reclusive man is found dead under grisly circumstances in the Colorado wilderness, CBI Agent Frankie Cash and Eagle County Sheriff Jim Colcord, whom we met in the New York Times bestseller, Extinction, team up again on their most enigmatic and dangerous case yet. Their investigation uncovers a trail of bizarre killings, baffling money transfers, and a fanatical secret society.
And all the while, the resurrected Neanderthals, who vanished into the Colorado mountains, seem to be biding their time for something…spectacular.
352 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication April 21, 2026
6571 people want to read
About the author
Douglas Preston
182 books13.5k followersDouglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in the deadly boring suburb of Wellesley. Following a distinguished career at a private nursery school--he was almost immediately expelled--he attended public schools and the Cambridge School of Weston. Notable events in his early life included the loss of a fingertip at the age of three to a bicycle; the loss of his two front teeth to his brother Richard's fist; and various broken bones, also incurred in dust-ups with Richard. (Richard went on to write The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event, which tells you all you need to know about what it was like to grow up with him as a brother.)
As they grew up, Doug, Richard, and their little brother David roamed the quiet suburbs of Wellesley, terrorizing the natives with home-made rockets and incendiary devices mail-ordered from the backs of comic books or concocted from chemistry sets. With a friend they once attempted to fly a rocket into Wellesley Square; the rocket malfunctioned and nearly killed a man mowing his lawn. They were local celebrities, often appearing in the "Police Notes" section of The Wellesley Townsman. It is a miracle they survived childhood intact.
After unaccountably being rejected by Stanford University (a pox on it), Preston attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he studied mathematics, biology, physics, anthropology, chemistry, geology, and astronomy before settling down to English literature. After graduating, Preston began his career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as an editor, writer, and eventually manager of publications. (Preston also taught writing at Princeton University and was managing editor of Curator.) His eight-year stint at the Museum resulted in the non-fiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, edited by a rising young star at St. Martin's Press, a polymath by the name of Lincoln Child. During this period, Preston gave Child a midnight tour of the museum, and in the darkened Hall of Late Dinosaurs, under a looming T. Rex, Child turned to Preston and said: "This would make the perfect setting for a thriller!" That thriller would, of course, be Relic.
In 1986, Douglas Preston piled everything he owned into the back of a Subaru and moved from New York City to Santa Fe to write full time, following the advice of S. J. Perelman that "the dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the freedom to starve anywhere." After the requisite period of penury, Preston achieved a small success with the publication of Cities of Gold, a non-fiction book about Coronado's search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. To research the book, Preston and a friend retraced on horseback 1,000 miles of Coronado's route across Arizona and New Mexico, packing their supplies and sleeping under the stars--nearly killing themselves in the process. Since then he has published several more non-fiction books on the history of the American Southwest, Talking to the Ground and The Royal Road, as well as a novel entitled Jennie. In the early 1990s Preston and Child teamed up to write suspense novels; Relic was the first, followed by several others, including Riptide and Thunderhead. Relic was released as a motion picture by Paramount in 1997. Other films are under development at Hollywood studios. Preston and Child live 500 miles apart and write their books together via telephone, fax, and the Internet.
Preston and his brother Richard are currently producing a television miniseries for ABC and Mandalay Entertainment, to be aired in the spring of 2000, if all goes well, which in Hollywood is rarely the case.
Preston continues a magazine writing career by contributing regularly to The New Yorker magazine. He has also written for National Geographic, Natural History, Smithsonisan, Harper's,and Travel & Leisure,among others.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/dougla...
As they grew up, Doug, Richard, and their little brother David roamed the quiet suburbs of Wellesley, terrorizing the natives with home-made rockets and incendiary devices mail-ordered from the backs of comic books or concocted from chemistry sets. With a friend they once attempted to fly a rocket into Wellesley Square; the rocket malfunctioned and nearly killed a man mowing his lawn. They were local celebrities, often appearing in the "Police Notes" section of The Wellesley Townsman. It is a miracle they survived childhood intact.
After unaccountably being rejected by Stanford University (a pox on it), Preston attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he studied mathematics, biology, physics, anthropology, chemistry, geology, and astronomy before settling down to English literature. After graduating, Preston began his career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as an editor, writer, and eventually manager of publications. (Preston also taught writing at Princeton University and was managing editor of Curator.) His eight-year stint at the Museum resulted in the non-fiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, edited by a rising young star at St. Martin's Press, a polymath by the name of Lincoln Child. During this period, Preston gave Child a midnight tour of the museum, and in the darkened Hall of Late Dinosaurs, under a looming T. Rex, Child turned to Preston and said: "This would make the perfect setting for a thriller!" That thriller would, of course, be Relic.
In 1986, Douglas Preston piled everything he owned into the back of a Subaru and moved from New York City to Santa Fe to write full time, following the advice of S. J. Perelman that "the dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the freedom to starve anywhere." After the requisite period of penury, Preston achieved a small success with the publication of Cities of Gold, a non-fiction book about Coronado's search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. To research the book, Preston and a friend retraced on horseback 1,000 miles of Coronado's route across Arizona and New Mexico, packing their supplies and sleeping under the stars--nearly killing themselves in the process. Since then he has published several more non-fiction books on the history of the American Southwest, Talking to the Ground and The Royal Road, as well as a novel entitled Jennie. In the early 1990s Preston and Child teamed up to write suspense novels; Relic was the first, followed by several others, including Riptide and Thunderhead. Relic was released as a motion picture by Paramount in 1997. Other films are under development at Hollywood studios. Preston and Child live 500 miles apart and write their books together via telephone, fax, and the Internet.
Preston and his brother Richard are currently producing a television miniseries for ABC and Mandalay Entertainment, to be aired in the spring of 2000, if all goes well, which in Hollywood is rarely the case.
Preston continues a magazine writing career by contributing regularly to The New Yorker magazine. He has also written for National Geographic, Natural History, Smithsonisan, Harper's,and Travel & Leisure,among others.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/dougla...
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This is the sequel to the fabulously entertaining Extinction, but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
Frankie Cash and Jim Colcord probe a series of ritualistic murders, including the grisly death of an exobiologist. Their investigation reveals a fanatic secret society, a mysterious alien artifact that’s gone missing, and the theft of a religious relic. The resurrected Neanderthals remain hidden somewhere in the mountains and aren’t a part of this story.
This is meant to be a thriller, and is coauthored by Douglas Preston’s daughter. You can tell right away that something is different because it doesn’t read the same and includes social commentary that added nothing valuable to the story. The whole de-extinction theme was absent and this plot centers on some sort of extraterrestrial element and some crazy religious misguided fervor. It was unnecessarily complex and the whole police procedural and investigative dynamic was off between Cash and Colcord. I was most irritated and unhappy with how the big reveals were NOT actually ever spelled out. Without spoilers, I can’t specific exactly what I’m talking about but certainly the reader has earned some sort of detail about the artifact and about the motivations behind the two different groups. It was all very vague. I don’t like senseless violence and some of this was quite grisly and brutal with of course the nearly impossible escape that Cash and Colgord engineer from the brink of death. This was definitely not what I was hoping for in this follow-up to Extinction. I don’t know that I will read another by this duo. I have read almost every book Douglas Preston has written and this just didn’t hit the mark of his work.
I was able to listen to the audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC, both provided by the publishers. It was quite interesting to see what changes were made between the written and the audio production. The narrator, Stephanie Nemeth-Parker, did a fantastic job of voicing all the characters and had a great range of accents. She has great dramatic flair and brought the characters to life. Although a full cast recording would have really been wonderful, Stephanie’s voice enhanced my experience with the book.
Frankie Cash and Jim Colcord probe a series of ritualistic murders, including the grisly death of an exobiologist. Their investigation reveals a fanatic secret society, a mysterious alien artifact that’s gone missing, and the theft of a religious relic. The resurrected Neanderthals remain hidden somewhere in the mountains and aren’t a part of this story.
This is meant to be a thriller, and is coauthored by Douglas Preston’s daughter. You can tell right away that something is different because it doesn’t read the same and includes social commentary that added nothing valuable to the story. The whole de-extinction theme was absent and this plot centers on some sort of extraterrestrial element and some crazy religious misguided fervor. It was unnecessarily complex and the whole police procedural and investigative dynamic was off between Cash and Colcord. I was most irritated and unhappy with how the big reveals were NOT actually ever spelled out. Without spoilers, I can’t specific exactly what I’m talking about but certainly the reader has earned some sort of detail about the artifact and about the motivations behind the two different groups. It was all very vague. I don’t like senseless violence and some of this was quite grisly and brutal with of course the nearly impossible escape that Cash and Colgord engineer from the brink of death. This was definitely not what I was hoping for in this follow-up to Extinction. I don’t know that I will read another by this duo. I have read almost every book Douglas Preston has written and this just didn’t hit the mark of his work.
I was able to listen to the audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC, both provided by the publishers. It was quite interesting to see what changes were made between the written and the audio production. The narrator, Stephanie Nemeth-Parker, did a fantastic job of voicing all the characters and had a great range of accents. She has great dramatic flair and brought the characters to life. Although a full cast recording would have really been wonderful, Stephanie’s voice enhanced my experience with the book.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I was excited to learn that Cash & Colcord were returning after the excellent “Extinction.” Douglas Preston always delivers fast-paced, suspenseful thrillers. A harmless old conspiracy theorist was painfully tortured and murdered. Money wasn’t the motive, so C&C need to follow more unusual clues that take them from the Catholic Church to UFO enthusiasts. I enjoyed the fringe science aspect, the alien theories and one very suspenseful confrontation involving our heroes against the baddies. I didn’t care for the preachy political correctness that I had never noticed in Preston’s books before (I don’t know for sure, but I blame Aletheia Preston, Douglas’s daughter). There is an irrelevant conversation about preferred pronouns shoehorned in the middle of an otherwise interesting side plot, as well as a Catholic priest with very progressive views on established doctrine. Mostly, as a Catholic, the way my Church is portrayed is offensive. Cash’s viewpoints are her own and, despite my bristling at her treatment of a priest, I could live with that. It’s the whole position of the novel with regards to Catholicism that goes out of its way to gratuitously compare a whole subset of my church to the Spanish Inquisition. Literally. This probably won’t be a problem for readers of other faiths, but it affected my enjoyment of this book. Back to Stephanie Németh-Parker, her impeccable narration gives every single character a distinctive voice, which is important when trying to follow so many storylines. I enjoyed the suspense, I just hope that Preston goes back to simple, entertaining stories without social commentary.
I chose to listen to this audiobook and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Macmillan Audio.
I chose to listen to this audiobook and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Macmillan Audio.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
There have been a few books or audiobooks that I have read (or listened to) that I have finished and thought to myself, “What in the world did I just experience?” while laughing. It was odd and quirky and thoroughly enjoyable. I just finished “Paradox” and thought, “What in the world did I just listen to?” and it was not in a good way.
I had never read or listened to any of Douglas Preston’s work before I was chosen to listen to the audiobook of “Paradox” by the publisher. Realizing this was the second book in a series, I quickly found the audiobook of “Extinction” (book #1) and listened before starting this audiobook. The difference between the two novels is so vast, that you will have no problem understanding that Aletheia apparently wrote this with Douglas’ name associated or writing a small portion at best.
“Extinction” was a really good thriller that had a few moments of making a point. “Paradox” is a point being made with a really shallow “thriller” wrapped around it. It fails on both parts. It’s just bad.
The only positive is Stephanie Nemeth-Parker as the narrator. As always, she does a phenomenal job. But even she can’t save this hot mess.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing an ARC for an unbiased review.
I had never read or listened to any of Douglas Preston’s work before I was chosen to listen to the audiobook of “Paradox” by the publisher. Realizing this was the second book in a series, I quickly found the audiobook of “Extinction” (book #1) and listened before starting this audiobook. The difference between the two novels is so vast, that you will have no problem understanding that Aletheia apparently wrote this with Douglas’ name associated or writing a small portion at best.
“Extinction” was a really good thriller that had a few moments of making a point. “Paradox” is a point being made with a really shallow “thriller” wrapped around it. It fails on both parts. It’s just bad.
The only positive is Stephanie Nemeth-Parker as the narrator. As always, she does a phenomenal job. But even she can’t save this hot mess.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing an ARC for an unbiased review.
Read
December 22, 2025Sherriff Colcord calls Agent Frankie Cash to help investigate a bizarre murder deep in the Flat Top Wilderness in the the Rocky Mountains. The victim is an illegal squatter in a cabin by Solitary Lake. They find him laid out on the kitchen table dressed in a white gown, looking like he is peacefully asleep. There is a possibility of Neander involvement -the reanimated Neanderthals creatures who caused the disaster at the Erebus Resort in the previous book in this series. Also a priest sent on a secret mission from the Vatican and a possible secret death squad may be involved. The investigation gets weirder and more dangerous from this point to the thrilling conclusion.
The character development is excellent but the plot development is slow.
There is a spine-tingling epilogue foreshadowing another book in the series.
Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an advance copy for my honest review.
The character development is excellent but the plot development is slow.
There is a spine-tingling epilogue foreshadowing another book in the series.
Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an advance copy for my honest review.
February 9, 2026
I’ve been anxiously awaiting the second installment in this series. I’m so happy to return back to this world with Cash & Colcord. This was an addictive sci-fi thriller that kept me hooked till the very end. While this one was different from the first book, it still kept me on the edge of my seat. The ritualistic murders and some of the other scenes in the story definitely gave me goosebumps while listening. So good! I love how sci-fi elements were blended in with ancient beliefs. Aahh, so good!
The narrator, Stephanie Németh-Parker did such a fantastic job. I was thoroughly engaged till the very end and note from the authors. It really makes you wonder what other people believe.
The stakes are getting dangerous for Cash & Colcord. Will they be able to solve the ritualistic murders before it’s too late and their next?
A very special thanks to Macmillan Audio for the gifted ALC.
The narrator, Stephanie Németh-Parker did such a fantastic job. I was thoroughly engaged till the very end and note from the authors. It really makes you wonder what other people believe.
The stakes are getting dangerous for Cash & Colcord. Will they be able to solve the ritualistic murders before it’s too late and their next?
A very special thanks to Macmillan Audio for the gifted ALC.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Preston and daughter are now the authors of this series, and I seriously enjoyed this book, beyond belief as I am not the most scientific person.
The book was well written/crafted, had some amusing characters, and a great way to spend some quality time with a book on a day when the weather is not cooperating.
Highly recommended...I already pre-ordered a copy for myself. (There are few authors I have the whole hard-covered collection of ... Pendergast novels, Linda Castillo, Catherine McKenzie, Kevin Kwan and Dan Brown,
The book was well written/crafted, had some amusing characters, and a great way to spend some quality time with a book on a day when the weather is not cooperating.
Highly recommended...I already pre-ordered a copy for myself. (There are few authors I have the whole hard-covered collection of ... Pendergast novels, Linda Castillo, Catherine McKenzie, Kevin Kwan and Dan Brown,
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
Sequel to Extinction. A man is found gruesomely murdered in the wilderness where the Neanderthals vanished at the end of the previous book. The murder doesn't look related, but there is definitely something mysterious going on. CBI Agent Cash and Sheriff Colcord are on the case--which gets twisty and complicated and ever more sensational, as conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork.
Suspense edging into horror.
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Suspense edging into horror.
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Loved this mystery sci-fi thriller. Kept me glued to pages from beginning. Fast-paced, interesting story line. Did not expect the ending. First part of story is complety detective genre which I Love in books and movies, with twists that keep you guessing. Second part is more sci-fi. Mystery reveals at the end and so unexpected. Loved It Definitely recommend!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
an excited and interesting book that has you really thinking outside the box.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews