Review
"
New Year Island is a page-turner, with more twists than a den of snakes. It's fast moving and unpredictable, with distinctive characters, gripping images, well-crafted action scenes, nice, apt touches of humor, and plot twists we never see coming. The characters' motivations, anxieties, fears, and phobias are all quite believable. Draker keeps a lot of psychological balls in the air beautifully. These people are believable, which is what makes the whole thing so scary."
-- Michael J. Carr Editor of Brad Meltzer's #3 NY Times Bestseller
The Zero Game"A twisty, engaging thriller featuring well-developed characters. A reality show becomes a test of survival for 10 strangers stranded on a small island in Draker's debut thriller. ...Draker has ample room to develop his cast, which he does effortlessly; ...it's easy to root for their survival in this story about the terrifying things that desperate people can do."
-- Kirkus Reviews
From the Back Cover
Camilla Becker is a survivor.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake took her parents from her when she was seven and left her buried under a collapsed freeway. Twenty three years later, she's a producer of acclaimed animated films for children and runs a foundation to brighten orphans' lives. The invitation to be a contestant in a new reality show is not really Camilla's thing, but the studio promises funding and publicity for her charity.
Ten strangers meet aboard a luxury megayacht in San Francisco. They come from all walks of life and very different backgrounds. The show's hosts screened thousands of possible candidates in utmost secrecy before choosing these specific ten.
Their destination is an island off the coast of California, abandoned for decades, where nature's own grand spectacle of survival plays out year after year. An island that has already claimed lives.
The contestants will be marooned, cut off from all other human contact for two weeks, to compete for the five million dollar grand prize.
But nothing is what it seems. Everyone is hiding secrets. And each of them has, in the past, already survived something that would kill most people.
Now they find themselves trapped in a game where the stakes are even higher. Camilla must choose whom to trust as they are forced to confront each other, their own darkest impulses, and nature in violent revolt against a game so deadly that the most terrifying experiences of their lives were only its qualifying round.
Maybe there isn't meant to be a winner...
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