A legendary surf break. A brutal unsolved murder. And a place where outsiders aren't welcome.

Heart Attacks is California's last secret surf spot, a remote stretch of coast whispered about in bars and surf shops, but known to very few. The waves can tower more than thirty feet. The waters are shark-infested. The locals are hostile. And getting there means crossing land where strangers have no business being.

For down-and-out photographer Jack Fletcher, an invitation to shoot the legendary waves alongside surfing icon Drew Harmon could be the break he desperately needs.

But there's more waiting for Jack on this isolated coastline than the perfect wave.

Drew's young wife, Kendra, has become obsessed with the unsolved murder of a local girl. Convinced that someone knows what really happened, she is determined to uncover the truth—even as her questions begin to draw dangerous attention.

As Jack is pulled deeper into their world, the wild beauty of the coast gives way to something darker. Because in a community built on secrets, some people will do anything to keep the past buried.

Atmospheric, gripping and charged with menace, The Dogs of Winter is a psychological thriller about obsession, violence and the dangerous pull of the unknown.



Kem Nunn is a third-generation Californian whose previous novels include The Dogs of Winter, Pomona Queen, Unassigned Territory, and Tapping the Source, which was the basis of the film Point Break. Tijuana Straits won the Los Angeles Times Book Award. His latest novel, Chance, was recently made into a major TV series starring Hugh Laurie and Gretchen Mol. He lives in Southern California, where he also writes screenplays for television and film including John from Cincinnati, Deadwood and Sons of Anarchy.



Terrific... And what a story it is: deftly, beautifully plotted... Nunn has written something truly powerful; to say this book is about surfing is to say The Sun Also Rises is about bullfighting. He has made the sport a metaphor for life lived at its edges, at its most intense. This is a fine, strong novel; if there's justice in the world, it will give Nunn the reputation he deserves



Like all great books, The Dogs of Winter operates on several levels of meaning-along with the page-turning suspense... Nunn trusts the tools of his trade above all else, and The Dogs of Winter is his triumph and our treasure, a mature, ambitious, highly readable masterpiece



Stunning... extraordinary... compelling, violent, and very American... The Dogs of Winter has enough story to keep a reader on the edge of his seat for days on end... an amazing book



Nunn's secret in ruling this small domain is to combine surfing with something more deserving of a spun yarn. In The Dogs of Winter, spiritually possessed Indian lands just happen to border a legendary northern California surfing spot. But there are no endless summers or dances with wolves for Nunn; his creaky old surfers numb themselves on pills and beer, and his Indians litter from pickup trucks



If Elmore Leonard and Cormac McCarthy had teamed up to write a surf novel, they might have produced The Dogs of Winter... Nunn does a masterful job of driving this... potboiler to its climax... By the time the sea foam clears, Nunn has added a modern-day adventure sport to the long list of literary confrontations between man and nature-a very twentieth-century version of a struggle once played out in tales of pioneering, exploration, and the harpooning of great white whales