Listen to an audio clip from Iron House, from New York Times bestselling author and North Carolina native John Hart.

Michael — don’t worry about his last name because it won’t be his real one — left North Carolina as a 10-year-old fugitive. An orphan, he knew little but neglect, violence, and hard knocks at the Iron Mountain Home for Boys, an institution deep in the hills. He fled after one of the boys, who bullied his 9-year-old brother, Julian, was murdered. Michael was determined to take care of Julian, even if that meant leaving him.

Michael made his way to the streets of New York, and because he was tough and smart, a prominent Mob family took him in. Twenty-three years later, Michael is a well-known master in the business of killing. But then Michael falls in love with Elena, a young woman who only knows him as a handsome, honest young man of modest means. Determined to make a new start so that his life won’t taint Elena, Michael asks his patron for permission to leave the “business.” But the elderly Mob boss is dying, and his blood son doesn’t intend to let Michael out alive.

When Michael takes Elena to North Carolina for safety, they only encounter more danger. Reunited with Julian, Michael finds himself, his brother, and his brother’s adoptive stepmother, the wife of a U.S. senator, embroiled in a web of mysteries and violence that reaches back to their early days.

Iron House, John Hart’s fourth novel, elevates this Durham-born and Rowan County-raised native even farther up the ranks of the best writers of literate thrillers. Along with a plot that grabs you and holds you until the last page, Iron House offers accomplished writing. It also gives rich insights into human nature — not only its evil capabilities, but also its love and loyalty.

Iron House by John Hart. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. 2011, 421 pages, hardback, $25.99.