Mortal Fear
A man with a secret life risks everything to clear his name in this “ingenious suspense thriller”(The New York Times Book Review) from the bestselling author of the Penn Cage series.
By day, Harper Cole trades commodities from his isolated home in the Mississippi Delta. By night he leads quite a different life, serving as a systems operator for an exclusive, annonymous erotic online service that caters to the rich and famous. But now a stranger has penetrated the network's state-of-the-art security, brutally murdering six celebrated female clients.
Falsely accused of these horrible crimes, Harper realizes there's only one way to lure the elusive madman offline and into the open. But as he enacts his daring plan, Harper will put everything and everyone he holds dear directly in the path of a brilliant, unstoppable killer...
Greg Iles
Greg Iles was born in Germany in 1960, where his father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic during the height of the Cold War. His mother was raised on a subsistence farm in Louisiana and began picking cotton at the age of three. Iles spent his youth in Natchez, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. While attending Ole Miss, Greg lived in the cabin where William Faulkner and his brothers listened to countless stories told by “Mammy Callie,” their beloved nanny, who had been born enslaved.
Iles wrote his first novel in 1993, a thriller about Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, which became the first of seventeen New York Times bestsellers. Primarily set in the Deep South, his later novels have been made into films, translated into more than twenty languages, and published in more than thirty-five countries worldwide. His new novel will continue the story of Penn Cage, after the epic trilogy that ended with New York Times #1 bestseller Mississippi Blood.
Iles is a member of the legendary lit-rock group “The Rock Bottom Remainders.” Like bandmate Stephen King, Greg returned to the musical stage after recovering from his injuries, and joined the band for their "final" two shows in Los Angeles in 2012. A nonfiction memoir by the band, titled Hard Listening, was published in 2018, but by then the band had begun playing shows again. In 2020 they released a social-distancing video produced by Greg and his son Mark, called "DON'T Stand By Me!" They just don't know when to quit.
Iles passed away from a 29-year battle with Mulitple Myeloma on August 15, 2025. He lived in Natchez, Mississippi with his wife Caroline and had four children.
Mississippi
Mississippi consists of five books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
