Book of Judas: A Novel

Book of Judas: A Novel

by Linda Stasi
Book of Judas: A Novel

Book of Judas: A Novel

by Linda Stasi

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Overview

From hard-hitting New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi comes Book of Judas, a riveting religious thriller featuring beloved protagonist Alessandra Russo.

When her infant son is placed in mortal danger, New York City reporter Alessandra Russo is forced to save him by tracking down the missing pages of the Gospel of Judas, a heretical manuscript that was unearthed in Al-Minya, Egypt, in the 1970s. The manuscript declares that Judas was the beloved, not the betrayer, of Jesus.

The Gospel disappeared for decades before being rediscovered, rotted beyond repair, in a safety deposit box. Rumors insist that the most important pages had been stolen—pages that Alessandra now must find, if they even exist.

Do the lost pages contain a secret that will challenge Christianity's core beliefs about the creation of life, or that might hold the power to unleash Armageddon? What if such explosive documents fell into the hands of modern-day terrorists, dictators, or religious fanatics?

Alessandra plunges into a dark world of murder, conspiracy, and sexual depravity...and most importantly, a race against the clock to save her own child.

In this exciting follow-up to The Sixth Station, award-winning journalist Linda Stasi brings her formidable investigative skills, big city street smarts, and fast-flying pen to a thriller that will leave readers breathless.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781466863361
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Publication date: 09/19/2017
Series: Alessandra Russo Series , #2
Sold by: Macmillan
Format: eBook
Pages: 384
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

LINDA STASI, the popular and well-read columnist for the New York Daily News, and previously for the New York Post, is also an on-camera TV co-host with Mark Simone on NY 1 -Spectrum “What a Week!”

Brash, funny and opinionated, the acerbic Stasi’s first novel, The Sixth Station, published in January of 2013 by Forge Books was hailed as, “A helluva religious thriller,” by Nelson DeMille, while Steve Berry said, “You’ll be grabbing the pages so tight your knuckles will turn white!” Booklist said of the book, “Dan Brown and Steve Berry fans have another controversial novel in which to lose themselves.” For The Sixth Station, Stasi was selected as a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award.

Stasi’s anxiously awaited sequel, Book of Judas, has received acclaim from mega bestselling authors such as Sherrilyn Kenyon, who calls it, “An innovative masterpiece!”

Stasi has appeared on TV talk shows and news channels such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball, Good Day New York, and The View, as well as CNN, Fox News, MSNBC news shows, and many others.

She is a regular guest on iHeartRadio’s nationally broadcast Mark Simone Show, Boston’s “Matty In The Morning,” and countless others around the country.

Stasi has also authored the non-fiction books – Looking Good Is the Best Revenge, A Field Guide to Impossible Men, Simply Beautiful, Boomer Babes, and Scotto Sunday Suppers.

Not afraid to say what’s on her mind in her popular Wednesdays and full-page Sunday columns in the New York Daily News, her readership has reached more than 600,000 in a single day.

She was named “One of the Fifty Most Powerful Women in NYC” and has won numerous awards including Best Columnist by the Newswomen’s Club of NY, Best Humor Columnist, and Woman of the Year by the Boys Town of Italy for her charitable work such as driving a tractor-trailer in an 18-truck convoy from NYC to the gulf states with relief supplies for Hurricane Katrina victims.


LINDA STASI, the popular and well-read columnist for the New York Daily News, and previously for the New York Post, is also an on-camera TV co-host with Mark Simone on NY 1 -Spectrum “What a Week!”

Brash, funny and opinionated, the acerbic Stasi’s first novel, The Sixth Station, published in January of 2013 by Forge Books, hit Amazon’s top 25 and was hailed as, “A helluva religious thriller,” by Nelson DeMille, while Steve Berry said, “You’ll be grabbing the pages so tight your knuckles will turn white!” Booklist said of the book, “Dan Brown and Steve Berry fans have another controversial novel in which to lose themselves.” For The Sixth Station, Stasi was selected as a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award.

Stasi’s anxiously awaited sequel, Book of Judas, has received acclaim from mega bestselling authors such as Sherrilyn Kenyon, who calls it, “An innovative masterpiece!”

Stasi has appeared on TV talk shows and news channels such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball, Good Day New York, and The View, as well as CNN, Fox News, MSNBC news shows, and many others.

She is a regular guest on iHeartRadio’s nationally broadcast Mark Simone Show, Boston’s “Matty In The Morning,” and countless others around the country.

Stasi has also authored the non-fiction books – Looking Good Is the Best Revenge, A Field Guide to Impossible Men, Simply Beautiful, Boomer Babes, and Scotto Sunday Suppers.

Not afraid to say what’s on her mind in her popular Wednesdays and full-page Sunday columns in the New York Daily News, her readership has reached more than 600,000 in a single day.

She was named “One of the Fifty Most Powerful Women in NYC” and has won numerous awards including Best Columnist by the Newswomen’s Club of NY, Best Humor Columnist, and Woman of the Year by the Boys Town of Italy for her charitable work such as driving a tractor-trailer in an 18-truck convoy from NYC to the gulf states with relief supplies for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

"The son of a bitch is dead. Wanna get drunk?" It was my pal Roy on the other end.

"What?"

"You know, hammered?"

"Roy? You sound like you've gone nuts."

"Yup, nuts," he answered, barely suppressing a laugh. Roy had been my best friend since high school. Death wasn't something he usually took lightly — especially not since 9/11 when he'd lost so many of his firefighter buddies.

"Who's dead?"

"Seriously, Russo?"

"Wait! Let me take this off speaker. I'm in the newsroom," I said, wondering who and what he was talking about.

"I don't care! I want the world to know. Ding dong, the ole son of a bitch is dead!"

"Oh my God! Your father? He died?" I asked, trying to keep my voice controlled.

"Finally!"

"I'm sorry. I mean, I know he was horrible to you, but your attitude is ..."

"You sound like a girl," he said, which he knew would rile me up because I liked to think of myself as a woman who's tough as any guy. The soldiers I was embedded with in Iraq used to say I could take it like a man. And I can.

I answered his poke with one of my own. "You should show some respect for the dead, Roy Boy."

"You mean the same kind of respect dead Morris always showed me?"

Roy's dad, Morris Golden, had always been an abusive brute — to his wife and to his son. His abuse got even worse, if possible, after he found out that his hero firefighter son was gay. He could no longer beat him — Roy'd become a big, strapping man — but verbal abuse from a parent can be a punch to the gut at any age.

"Jesus, you didn't kill him or anything?" I asked, a little panicked now. Silence. "Roy? Did you kill him?"

What he said was: "Have you ever heard such great news on such a winter's day?"

"It's spring."

"It is?"

"Shut up and stop being an ass. I'm sorry about your dad, Roy. I mean that, but I'm seriously concerned that you —"

He cut me off. Roy was trying to string me along, which had been our pattern since we were kids. But this was no time for games. I was late for the news meeting but I was equally concerned that Roy had finally snapped and killed the old bastard.

"That is not the attitude I expect from my oldest friend," he mock-sighed. "Elation. Unmitigated joy. Piss-in-your-pants happy. All good. Feeling sorry that he's dead? Not so good," he said instead.

"Roy, cut the shit and answer me! How did he die? Tell me you didn't kill him."

"That's two questions. And you yourself, Ali, didn't answer my first one. Do you want to go get drunk?"

Getting more concerned by the second, and losing my patience with his games — and it took a lot for me to lose my patience with Roy; he was the one person besides my oldest girlfriend, Dona, to whom I allowed this kind of slack — I sucked it up and said, "I'll ask you one more time. Buddy, did you kill your father?"

"Nope. I wanted to, but I didn't. He called, I went over. Dead!"

Just then, a copy kid started hovering around my desk.

"Ali, the meeting's starting in five," he said. Then, "The editor said to get your ass in there. And he means it."

I gave him a look — learned at my mother's knee — that could scare a Taliban leader out of his sunglasses. It seemed to scare whatever courage he had left, right out of him, too.

"I didn't say that — Mr. Brandt did," the kid choked out. "He said to quote him exactly!"

"OK, OK," I snapped, "but as you can see, I'm very busy on the phone, here. With a source. Tell that to Mr. Brandt."

Now the kid looked like he might projectile vomit. I brushed him away, warning, "Go ahead, tell him. You can't be timid in this game, kiddo. Get moving!"

Apparently twenty-two-year-old males have no understanding of the dangers of continually poking sleepdeprived, water-retaining new mothers who also happen to be dealing with friends who sound like they're on the edge.

Back on the phone, Roy was still talking, saying, "I been called a lotta things in my time, but a source? Soused yes, source no."

"But how did he die?" I repeated.

"Here, ask him," he said. "He's right here! In his house. We're — I'm — waiting for the coroner."

"Jesus, Roy. You're in your old house in Hicksville just sitting there with your dead father?"

"It's like a pre-shivah. But with the dead guy present, and without the snacks or the crowds. Not that this old bastard will have anybody to mourn him, or that I'll even sit shivah. But I'm always up for some nice hamentashen and dry pound cake."

The copy kid came back from the conference room, hovering again like a fly on bad meat.

"I said I'll be right in dammit!" The kid turned on his heels and scooted away just as the HR lady walked by. She gave me the look that said, "We don't speak to other employees like that."

I wanted to tell her to drop dead, but we don't speak to other employees like that. We used to all the time — it's a newsroom, for God's sake, not a yoga retreat — but even we reporters are now supposed to be civil. What is this world coming to?

"Roy, I gotta go. And please, go wait outside or something. Don't just sit there ..."

"Outside? And give up the comfort of the living room? Or maybe I should call it the dead room now?"

"You're in the living room? With the corpse? For Christ's sake, Roy!"

"Hey, this was a long time coming. Let me enjoy the moment, will ya?"

"Ugh, that's rough, even from you. And by the way, how did he die again?"

Once more he ignored my question and chirped, "Yup — me and dead Pops — we're in the living room and I'm staying right here. I want to make sure he's really dead."

"You're a sick bastard."

"See you tonight and we'll celebrate?" he asked, as though I hadn't just called him a sick bastard.

"All right," I said. "I'll meet you tonight, if I can get a sitter." As I sort of mentioned, I was then the proud (read: harried) single mother of a six-month-old bouncing baby boy named Pantera Russo. Or Terry for short, because, as my mother reminded me daily, "Pantera is no name for a child."

"I'll drive into the city," Roy said. "Got the old man's car. I should say the old man's old car."

"Not the '85 Buick?"

"None other. Whaddaya say we meet at El Quijote — seven-ish?"

"Ish, and if I can get the sitter to stay. I'll text you. Gotta run or I'll get fired," I said, while running to the conference room, cell phone to my ear.

"You're a Pulitzer winner, they can't fire you."

"I never actually won. Bye!"

"Oh, Russo?"

"What? Please, honey, I'm late for the morning news meeting!"

"I forgot to tell you something."

"I know you're in a bad way, but I will be, too, in about thirty seconds if I don't get in there ..."

I remember that I was standing in The Standard's newsroom just under the big screen that digitally flashed the headlines right next to the ancient clock that didn't do anything much. You tend to remember things like where you were when your life changes forever.

He couldn't be stopped. "Just listen to this one last thing," he said, now sounding — what? Desperate? Excited?

"On his deathbed — yup, the deathbed confession really does happen — even though that was last night and I didn't know he was dying." Roy continued, somewhat out of breath, "Old Morris, he grabbed my hand, my good beer mug hand at that, in his boney mitt, and said, 'Son'— like the old bastard ever called me anything but 'Useless' —'Son, I need to tell you that I stole something.'

"'Yeah, like what — my childhood?' I told him, so he squeezed my hand like he wanted to break it, which he probably did, and wheezed out, 'Stop whining, Useless.' I swear he said that. Then he said, 'What I stole were some pages. A codex. When I was bank manager.' He called it a 'Judas bible' that had been left in a safety-deposit box in his bank branch in Hicksville. He claims he only stole some pages because he wanted to save them from rotting."

"Wait a damned minute!" I said, stopping short and putting my rush to the morning meeting on a brief hold. "I've heard about that. It was called the Gospel of Judas. I know it because we covered it when National Geographic negotiated for it. But — I swear — even though it was mentioned that it had been left in a Citibank in Hicksville, I never made the connection that it was our branch — our Hicksville branch. But, Roy, it was supposed to be rotted into a bazillion pieces."

"Well, not all of it was found then, my father told me. He said he stole it way back in the 1980s or something. Then he sealed it up in a brass tube in the house."

"Jesus! No pun intended. How many pages did he steal?"

"He didn't say."

"But why those particular pages? Did he tell you that at least?"

"Yeah, but get this: he said he stole only the pages that revealed Jesus' secret to resurrection. Like Jesus' resurrection was nothing but a magic trick." He spat with such disgust, I felt like I'd have to clean my phone receiver. Roy's Jewish faith was solid — but he'd always had a real soft spot for Jesus. Thought He was a cool dude. His words, not mine.

I wasn't swayed and like the good reporter that I am, stuck to the storyline. "Did Morris expect you to use this resurrection magic trick on him or something?"

"I sincerely doubt that. If that were the case for sure he woulda chosen somebody else," he answered, knowing that I knew their brutal father-son history. "But my father also said that the stolen pages were like two thousand years old and because of what was in them, they were worth — are you ready?"

I was more than ready. A great story like this would take me off the "she's-just-back-from-maternity-leave-so-stick-her-on-the-easy-boring -city-council-since-she'll-have-to-rush-home-beat," and put me back where I had been before I took maternity leave. I knew that even thinking about the story opportunities as my oldest friend was sitting next to his father's stiffening body was probably so awful it would condemn me in my next life to manning a toilet-bowl brush in a public toilet in China, but still, I am a reporter at heart.

"He said these resurrection pages or whatever the hell they are, are worth," pause, pause, "ten million bucks!" I nearly dropped my phone and just stood there stockstill with Bob glaring daggers at me from inside the glasswalled conference room.

"How much did you say?"

"Ten million."

"You inherited something worth ten million from that tightwad? Oh, I'm sorry, your father, that tightwad." How could it be that dour, dull Morris the bank manager was actually an international man of mystery? Impossible. The guy rode a bike to work to save fifteen cents on gas — way before it was hip to ride a bike to work. He had three suits, all dark blue, and one good pair of shoes that he resoled over and over again for thirty-five years. "Bastard!"

I wasn't going to be cleaning the toilets in Hebei province in my next life for saying that at least. Roy's father was an abusive terror. I remember he made Roy work like Cinderella around the house for an allowance, which he was made to use to pay for his own piano lessons, which Roy despised in the first place. Roy would be left with zero money for regular kid stuff like the ice cream truck, and when his mother got caught slipping him a couple of bucks out of her tightly controlled grocery money, Morris knocked her around so bad that she ended up in the hospital. She told the doctors she'd fallen down the stairs. How many times a day do doctors hear that one?

"There's a hitch though," Roy continued.

"A hitch?"

"He said that if these pages are unlocked in the wrong way without the proper keys, it'll release Armageddon."

"Armageddon? That could be a hitch, yes," I sort of joked back.

Then, "See, though, even if all the spells or whatever the hell is needed to open it properly are followed, he said that if terrorists got hold of it, it would give them the power to raise the dead and control who lives and who dies."

"You're talking all the power in the world! Jesus H., Roy."

"I realize that," he said, perhaps finally taking in, or maybe believing what his old man had said.

"Hey, kiddo? Forget El Quijote, I'll come out to Hicksville."

CHAPTER 2

I walked into the morning news meeting with a look of shock on my face. I mean, how do you absorb something like, "I inherited ten million dollars but it's in a tube that could unleash Armageddon?"

I tried to walk in unnoticed because I was so late. Good luck with that, sister.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Russo," Bob Brandt, the editor, snarled at me as I opened the glass door. I mumbled an apology that I didn't mean.

The twenty-two-year-old hipster geniuses were already reading off their story ideas for the day — all gleaned courtesy of BuzzFeed or one of the other 24/7 news/pop culture sites.

One dope in a wool cap with dirty hair peeking out said, "A woman in Peoria, in Illinois — right? She exploded her Chihuahua in the microwave by putting him in to dry after his bath." Talk about a laugh riot! Or so you'd think by the reaction in the room.

"Get it up right away," Bob barked, I mean, growled — dammit — I mean, said. At sixty-two, Bob had survived the paper wars and was still up and taking nourishment — the guy was a phenomenal editor — and had steered The Standard from print to almost all digital without dropping dead or losing old-time readers.

The old tabloid maxim, "If it bleeds, it leads," is, in this digital age, being replaced by a new one: "If it clicks, it sticks." If a story doesn't get the clicks, it doesn't stay on the homepage for long. Everything is tracked instantly and constantly.

"Exploding pet? That will explode with clicks and shares," he joked, (sort of), taking a slug of his mocha latte.

What happened to newsroom bosses who came in drunk and drank their coffee black with a shot of Scotch?

"Who doesn't love a good exploding dog story," a seasoned reported moaned. That's what news media has turned into, I thought to myself for the ten thousandth time: clicks, hits, shares, and lifting from other sources lifted from other sources. And by sources I didn't mean actual people like cops and politicians and insiders looking to drop a dime or some keystrokes or whatever on somebody they disliked to a reporter they trusted. No, no, no.

We reporters were no longer encouraged to cultivate human sources; now we were encouraged to scour other sources for stories in this 24/7 news-cycle world. Quicker, easier, and a whole lot cheaper than sending someone to Peoria to interview the dog exploder. Leave it to TV news, with their big budgets, to chase those stories.

As soon as a story went live (online), anyone/everyone could crib, sorry "advance," that story, which means that by adding a factoid or two, anyone could claim a new version of the same story as their own, with even, yes, a new byline. (As the exploding-dog lady would surely be any minute now.)

Reporters are now required to have the hacking skills of Julian Assange, the writing chops of Hemingway, and the ability to churn it all out in thirty minutes or less. Failing that, you work for one of the millions of pop-up Web sites, or are a self-professed expert/YouTube sensation without credibility but millions of followers, all of which helps legit news to become less and less important every day.

The one or two old-time columnists/drunks still around weren't around that day since they rarely made it in before noon unless they had slept on their desks in a drunken heap the night before. None of them, however, had this story. I had it and it was all mine!

Man! A possible ten million dollar find in my best friend's house! The lost pages of the Gospel of Judas, completely intact. Maybe.

I was deep into my own head when I realized that Adam, the digital editor, was asking the assembled group for a roundup of the best overnight stories. Some new and unknown boy, also in a wool cap — it was spring for God's sake! — talked about a new scientific breakthrough in which there were ten ways to lose weight while eating pizza and tacos. Ten — count 'em — ten!

This new form of news — ten this, twenty that — is called lift and list. Lift someone else's story and highlight it with a list of bullet points. We used to call those bits cover lines — the things you see on the covers of magazines — now they're called news stories.

"Great!" someone else chimed in. "Let's order in some pizza!" Ha-ha. What a card. "Tacos!" someone else added in a near explosion of hilarity. "Let's chow down!"

(Continues…)



Excerpted from "Book of Judas"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Linda Stasi.
Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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