“Your mother was twenty-seven when it came to her. Now you’re twenty-seven, and it’s come to you.” The skin of Alex’s arms tingled with goose bumps. By her twenty-seventh birthday insanity had come to his mother. . . . Turning twenty-seven may be terrifying for some, but for Alex, a struggling artist living in the Midwest, it is cataclysmic. Inheriting a huge expanse of land should make him a rich and happy man; but something about this birthday, his name, and the beautiful woman whose life he has just saved, has suddenly made him–and everyone he loves–into a target. A target for extreme and uncompromising violence . . . In Alex, Terry Goodkind brings to life a modern hero in a whole new kind of high-octane thriller. Longtime fans and new readers alike will not forget . . . THE LAW OF NINES.