The Jersey Devil: a gripping cryptid thriller set in the Jersey Pine Barrens

by Douglas Corleone

THE JERSEY DEVIL

Black Atlas #2

From bestselling thriller author Douglas Corleone, a new case for investigator Zack Hitchens, where folklore isn’t a story. It’s an incident.

In the New Jersey Pine Barrens, something is tearing through the fast, silent, and wrong. Livestock vanish. Witnesses swear they’ve seen wings and a wolfish muzzle. Then the bodies start turning up… and the details don’t match any predator on record.

Zack Hitchens has chased monsters before. On Everest, he learned the hard way that survival doesn’t mean safety -- and that the official story is rarely the true one. When he’s pulled into a fresh outbreak of violence on the East Coast, he expects a hoax, a cult, or a killer hiding behind a legend.

What he finds is worse.

Because the Jersey Devil isn’t just hunting. It’s testing boundaries, learning what people will believe, what they’ll ignore, and how easily panic can be managed… if someone is managing it.

As the Pine Barrens close in and the evidence turns impossible, Zack realizes this case is connected to something patterns he’s seen before, files that disappear, witnesses who don’t stay witnesses for long.

And if he can’t expose the truth in time, the next incident won’t be contained.

Start the Black Atlas series with The Yeti, then continue the adventure with The Jersey Devil.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication July 7, 2026

About the author

Douglas Corleone is the highly acclaimed and award-winning author of contemporary thrillers. His debut novel, ONE MAN'S PARADISE, introducing hotshot defense attorney Kevin Corvelli was a finalist for the 2010 Shamus Award for Best First Novel and winner of the 2009 Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award. Corleone's other novels in the Kevin Corvelli series include NIGHT ON FIRE and LAST LAWYER STANDING.

Douglas Corleone's highly acclaimed international thriller, GOOD AS GONE, featuring former U.S. Marshal Simon Fisk, was hailed by the Huffington Post as a "heart-wrenching, adrenaline-producing adventure that...leaves the reader gasping for breath." The second book in the series, PAYOFF is due out in August 2014.

Recently Douglas Corleone was selected by the Estate of Robert Ludlum, internationally bestselling author and creator of the Jason Bourne series, to continue Ludlum's series of thrillers featuring ex-Navy SEAL and former covert government agent Paul Janson. ROBERT LUDLUM'S THE JANSON EQUATION will hit stores early in 2015.

A former New York City criminal defense attorney, Douglas Corleone now resides in the Hawaiian Islands with his family, where he is currently at work on his next novel.