Brian’s adventure travels resulted in Darwin’s Race, his first novel (Medallion Press 2009). An interest in art and lost treasure led to his second thriller, The Retriever. His third thriller, The Devil’s Gospel is based on a long-time fascination with Charles Darwin. The Lost is the second book in The Retriever series. Five Dangerous Things, blends high-stakes adventure and a touching love story. Enjoy a good conspiracy? Check out Escape Room and Good Friday. Rear Naked Choke is for sports fans, a modern Rocky story set in the world of mixed martial arts. His latest, Entanglement blends love and science in a timeless love story.
Brian is the Vice President of Marketing and Communications and Executive Associate Athletic Director at the University of Maryland, his alma mater. He lives in Arlington, Virginia where he is hard at work on his next book.
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Go Terps!

Brian Ullmann is the author of 10 novels. When he's not writing, he can be found on a mountain or at a poker table.
Books

2023
Entanglement
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ENTANGLEMENT: In quantum science, when two particles link together in a certain way no matter how far apart they are.
ENTANGLEMENT: In relationships, when two people find themselves connected in ways that are emotionally and physically complicated.
This is not your ordinary love story. This is about two people who cannot be together, yet must be together, the impossibility and inevitability of fate, and the extraordinary lengths we will go to in pursuit of a timeless love.

2022
Rear Naked Choke
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Johnny Boyd is a bartender in a small West Virginia town, working in a neglected bar named Bar. A typical Saturday night means slinging cheap beer and breaking up drunken scuffles. Then one fight changes everything, when Johnny learns that the guy he knocked out is the mixed martial arts middleweight champion of the world.
When the knockout becomes a viral sensation, Johnny is thrust into the bright lights of an official big-time fight, amidst the even brighter lights of Las Vegas, to be broadcast around the world. At stake, a new life that clings precariously to a title shot against a champion hell-bent on his own form of redemption.
A thrilling story about opportunity and adversity, of punches thrown and punches taken, and an underdog striving to escape the choke of a small-town, Rear Naked Choke is Rocky for a new era.

2021
Good Friday
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Does a French masterpiece by Nicolas Poussin hold the secret to the greatest conspiracy in human history?
The chance discovery of the painting thrusts two strangers - Chase Taylor and a mysterious young woman named Ariadne - into a globetrotting quest to unravel a 2,000-year-old mystery. As a series of clues lead them into the heart of a vast conspiracy, Chase and Ariadne come face to face with a dark Brotherhood, an ancient sect sworn to protect the secret...at all costs.
From the author of Darwin's Race and Escape Room comes an unforgettable thriller about an ancient truth that asks the question: Should some secrets stay buried?

2019
Escape Room
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Five strangers receive identical invitations with an unfamiliar address and a tantalizing question: CAN YOU ESCAPE?
They arrive at a seemingly abandoned warehouse where they are welcomed by a Gamemaster, who introduces Escape Room, a game where they must work together to decipher a series of clues to escape from a locked room. The five strangers solve a series of ingenious puzzles to escape the room only to discover the Gamemaster's lifeless body and two killers bent on leaving no witnesses. Their escape leads them halfway around the world, as they uncover a shocking conspiracy, a battle between art and science, free will and global domination, and something that unites them all that just might prove their salvation.
The Maze Runner meets The Game (the David Fincher-directed film), Escape Room is an action-packed conspiracy thriller that will delight readers of Clive Cussler, Dan Brown and James Rollins.
THE ESCAPE IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.

2017
Five Dangerous Things
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Scott Humphries is in a rut. An uninspired job, nonexistent love life, a steady diet of takeout pizza. When his father falls unexpectedly ill, Scott is reminded that time is fleeting, and challenges himself to do four dangerous things. When the first dangerous thing ends in a terrible accident, he starts to question his risky quest. And then he meets Molly.
Embracing risk herself, she convinces Scott to carry on and joins him on his journey. But Molly is harboring a secret of her own, and as they share the dangerous experiences, they both realize that falling in love just might be the most dangerous thing of all.
A heart-breaking story of adventure and love and tragedy, Five Dangerous Things will remind you that sometimes life begins with taking a chance on the unknown.

2017
Blood Canyon
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The canyonlands. Two million acres of impenetrable gorges and soaring sandstone in the desert southwest. Completely uninhabited, dotted only with the crumbling remains of enigmatic ruins left behind when the ancestral Pueblo peoples abruptly disappeared in the 13th century.
Craig Edwards, along with his teenage daughter and young son, escape into these canyons, seeking adventure and family-bonding. But everything changes after the discovery of a long-lost ruin and the rescue of a badly-injured anthropologist. Suddenly, the cryptic petroglyphs found in the ruins and the mutterings of the disoriented professor begin to point to an unimaginable conclusion.
To protect his family, Edwards now must battle an ancient enemy, in one of the most remote places on earth.

2013
The Lost
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In the final days of World War II, a group of soldiers known as the Monuments Men swept through Europe, saving thousands of works of art from the Nazis. And yet thousands of priceless paintings and sculpture were never recovered. The fate of this ‘lost museum’—worth hundreds of millions of dollars—became one of the enduring mysteries of World War II.
Jonathan Dougherty is the Retriever. Hired to return a masterpiece once stolen by Hitler’s Nazis, Jonathan soon learns he’s just a pawn in more sinister and dangerous plot. Jonathan soon discovers a cryptic clue hidden in a stolen masterpiece, a secret that plunges him into a world of looted artwork and international intrigue. It also makes him the target of dangerous assassins determined to follow the same enigmatic coded messages. Could the clues lead to the answer to World War II’s most enduring mystery?
A high-stakes adventure sure to please readers of Dan Brown and Clive Cussler, The Lost is the thrilling story of a modern-day hunt to learn the truth about the fate of the world’s great lost masterpieces.
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2012
The Devil’s Gospel
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A impossible discovery in Madagascar. A brutal slaying of a team of paleontologists. A set of mysterious bones in a forgotten safety deposit box.
Still mourning the loss of his wife, Trevor Austin finds himself piecing together parts of a 150-year-old conspiracy, hunted by a relentless assassin named Genoa bent on keeping the astonishing truth a secret: Darwin was wrong.
From the author of Darwin's Race and The Retriever, comes an adventure story like no other. Blending science and suspense, The Devil's Gospel will appeal to readers of James Rollins, Dan Brown and Michael Crichton. Are you ready for the truth?

2012
The Retriever
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Jonathan Dougherty is a man without a home, without belongings. A private man, a loner. He is also a man for hire. Driven by an inner determination to right wrongs, he has dedicated his life to finding lost and stolen items, and returning them to their rightful owners.
Johnathan Dougherty is the Retriever.
Drawn into the murky and deadly world of illicit antiques, lorded over by an unscrupulous and ruthless collector, Jonathan comes face to face with his own mysterious past, and discovers that his fate is forever tied to a lost Inca treasure.
Forced into a remote South American jungle in search of the greatest treasure in history, Jonathan soon realizes that rediscovering the lost gold not only means uncovering his past, but that his very life depends on it.

2009
Darwin’s Race
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Twelve contestants compete in the most ambitious adventure race ever attempted—to advance into the deepest unexplored gorge on Earth. As they plunge deeper into the gorge, death follows, and the racers realize that the mist-shrouded gorge is not as uninhabited as believed.
Darwin’s Race has all the ingredients I love in a thriller: Fun characters, a hero we can root for, nasty villains, a fine chick...and a mythological monster. Most important, the author did the research and knows mountaineering, which makes the story plausible and smooth. A big thumbs up.
Steve Alten, NY Times best-selling author of MEG & The Loch