<DIV><DIV><P>With their bestselling First North Americans series, the Gears have astounded an avid international audience of millions. Now these master storytellers turn to the American Southwest, to one of the most enigmatic people to ever inhabit this continent—the Anasazi. At its pinnacle in A.D. 1150, their empire was vast and sophisticated, unequalled until the arrival of the Europeans—and then they simply disappeared.</P><P>Dr. Maureen Cole, one of the world's foremost physical anthropologists, is called in to examine and evaluate a mass grave discovered in New Mexico. The burial site contains nothing but the shatttered skulls of women and children. As Dr. Cole works to unravel the mystery of these deaths, strange things begin to happen around her. The walls of her laboratory crumble, her generator quits, and she begins to hear whispering voices emanating from the plastic bags of bones....</P><P>Available for the first time in a trade paperback edition, <I>The Visitant</I> is the first book in the Anasazi Mysteries series, which marked the beginning of an exciting new direction for the Gears—one sure to appeal to the Gears's large and dedicated following as well as fans of Tony Hillerman's Native American mysteries.</P></DIV></DIV>