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Books written by Brian D'Amato

Brian D'Amato received a BA from Yale and an MA from the City University of New York. He has shown his paintings, sculptures and interactive installations at galleries and museums in the U.S. and abroad including the Whitney Museum, the Wexner Center for Contemporary Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1992 he co-curated a show at the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York that was the first gallery show exploring the then-new medium of 'virtual reality.'

He has written for magazines including Harper's Bazaar, Index, Vogue, Flash Art, and most frequently Artforum, and has taught art and art history at City University of New York, The Ohio State University, and Yale. While working at an art gallery in New York City, Brian wrote Beauty, a thriller about cosmetic surgery. It was published in 1992 and became a best-seller in the U.S. and abroad, also translated into several popular languages. Dean Koontz called it "The best first novel I have read in a decade."

Brian has always been interested in Maya art and culture and in 1993 he started working on The Sacrifice Game trilogy, a set of thrillers which take place partly in A.D. 664, at the beginning of the ancient Maya's Late Classic period, and which incorporate consciousness projection through time and recombinant game theory. The first novel in the series, In the Courts of the Sun, was published by Dutton in the U.S. on March, 26, 2009. Foreign editions published so far include German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Romanian, and Ukranian. The second novel in the series, The Sacrifice Game, was published by Dutton in the U.S. on July 5th, 2012. Beauty was republished by Little, Brown and Company's Mulholland Classics line in the U.S. on March 12, 2013.

A percentage of Brian's after-tax profits on The Sacrifice Game trilogy project help support environmental, educational, and archaeological projects in the Maya area.

Brian can usually be found either in New York, Michigan, or Chicago, often with his Labrador Retriever, Woofy.

In the Courts of the Sun
In the Courts of the Sun

The year is 2012. Math prodigy Jed De Landa is enlisted to decipher an ancient Mayan codex containing the secrets of the Sacrifice Game. It foretells the end of civilization, and only Jed can prevent the coming apocalypse.

Sacrifice Game
Sacrifice Game

In Brian D’Amato’s cult classic, In the Courts of the Sun, a team of scientists sent math prodigy and Mayan descendant Jed DeLanda back in time to the year AD 664 to learn the "Sacrifice Game," a divination ritual that the ancient Maya used to predict the apocalypse on December 21, 2012. But after arriving in the body of a willing human sacrifice instead of a Mayan king, Jed’s experiences led him to the fateful decision that rather than avert the apocalypse, he must ensure instead that the world ends.

Using his knowledge of the divination game, Jed sets in motion a series of events that will bring about the destruction of humanity, ending the world’s pain and suffering once and for all. But before the plan can be completed, the organization that sent him into the past discovers his intention and devotes every resource to stop him.

Taking readers back to the dizzying action of ancient times, The Sacrifice Game is a breathtaking odyssey in which Jed must survive bloody wars, ruthless leaders, shifting alliances, and unspeakable betrayal to learn about the Game, before his time in both the ancient Mayan empire and the present day runs out.