A Glutton for Punishment

Amidst the divisiveness of the latter stages which the 2020 pandemic presented in society, concerned citizen Alex Domingue takes it upon himself to become involved in local politics and affect positive change in his community. As a corporate professional, veteran, and well-educated man, Alex has developed an extensive resume of working with many people from different backgrounds and points of view to accomplish critical missions. He feels uniquely qualified to move the needle towards a better future.

What awaits him, however, are multiple ongoing political turf wars. As it becomes evident that local politics are no less combative than national affairs, Alex quickly learns that his fellow Republican candidate (Sam Demonikov) for the Board of Education is in the midst of a vengeance escapade towards several for whom he holds violent disdain.

Alex must navigate increasingly dangerous issues. Through hostile disagreements, threats to his safety, and eventual attempts on his life, Alex learns that apparent villains are decent. Apparent heroes are narcissistic villains. In the face of grave danger, he must make bold decisions which do nothing to appease violent opposition from those who were once his partners. The extremes of both sides, including his own as he would learn, threaten the opportunity for rational solutions.

The Clara Conjecture

The Clara Conjecture is a new interpretation of historical facts. In 1938 Germany occupied Austria. Professor Lise Meitner, no longer shielded by her Austrian passport from measures against Jews, was fired. An equal of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, she had led the world’s best theoretical physics institute for nearly 30 years. In Berlin she designed the experiment that would split the uranium atom to produce energy. Before it could be executed she fled to Sweden. Without the ability to continue her research, impoverished, fearing for her relatives in the Nazi Reich, she became depressed.

In the tiny community of women scientists in Stockholm she met a psychoanalyst, the Canadian Dr. Leone McGregor Hellstedt (alter ego “Clara”), who rescued Lise with psychotherapy and money. When her German colleagues performed Lise’s experiment, they asked her to explain the result: she did, in terms of Einstein’s E=mc², and called the new phenomenon “nuclear fission” in her article for Nature. Early in 1939 physicists everywhere grasped the menace of nuclear energy. From her former colleagues and students Lise received information about the Nazi atomic bomb program and relayed it to Clara, who then informed Allied spies including William Stephenson (“Intrepid”) of British Security Coordination and Ian Fleming of British Naval Intelligence.

Informed by this detailed knowledge of Nazi atomic bomb initiatives, the Allies were able to efficiently sabotage facilities, kill key personnel, deny resources, and thus cripple the German program that had begun more than two years before the Manhattan Project.

The Nightingale Sings

On the Greek island of Lesbos, in the seventh century BCE, a young lyric poet hones her craft while navigating the world of love, loss, friendship and sex, after having suffered years of abuse by a member of her father’s household. After a series of attempts at a healthy relationship, all the while struggling with the effects of post-traumatic stress and profound grief, she is forced to leave her home for a faraway land across the sea. There she would make a name for herself as an artist that would spread all across the Mediterranean, continuing her search for love and friendship, and trying to raise her only child in a safe and nurturing environment – until her whole world is suddenly upended.

The Nightingale Sings is an imaginary tale of what might have been in the life of the historical Sappho of Lesbos, whose artistry would lead to her becoming one of the most revered poets of the ancient world, and would still be cherished today – more than two and a half thousand years after her death.

And so, the story begins with a simple celebration.

A birthday party for a nine-year-old girl…

The Memphite Equation

The locations and physical descriptions are factual – the prophetic embellished future is yet to be foretold. During July 15–17, 2007, an epochal event occurred in Manchester, England – the first international biblical conference on the 3000-year-old copper scroll, which later brewed a dangerous controversy. The copper scroll is among a group of scrolls found in 1947 and 1952, but this is the only one carved in metal and is not strictly a religious scroll. Dr. David E. Burton, a recent Harvard graduate, attended the conference. After Q&A, when what he saw didn’t come up, feeling baffled, he shared his idea that there was an equation on the scroll. From that moment, his life, family, an old and enigmatic organization (existing since 1863) he later joins, and the world change forever.

Kraut

Kraut is historical fiction centered in Germany between 1928 and 1950. The plot grew from actual accounts told by a Canadian woman reflecting on her life. From the vantage point of Northern Ontario in 2008, the protagonist, Anna Muller, remembers growing up in Leipzig. As a young girl, Anna displays qualities that set her apart from others her age. Then emerging from the shelter of an artistic family and the protection of her father, Anna moves to the salon of her surrogate aunt, Frieda, to begin an apprenticeship as a beautician. However, Tante Frieda identifies Anna’s talent and trains her for much more than cutting hair. Anna’s character is revealed through dangerous missions with the underground resistance, as well as, her poignant relationships. Irrevocably altered by the storm of betrayal, violence, and loss during the war years, Anna develops the skills necessary to survive not only the advent of Hitler and the Third Reich as they thrust the world into war; but also, the postwar conditions which intensify and prolong the suffering of the German populace and take Anna from Leipzig across Checkpoint Charlie into West Germany. Struggling amidst subterfuge and military dominance, Anna eventually escapes the labyrinth and finds her way to Canada. Kraut explores still relevant themes such as propaganda, racism, and women's rights through the daily experiences of the characters. From these descriptions and historical information, we can better understand the following two underpinning questions: How were the Nazis able to come to power in such a civilized western culture; and secondly, how did the holocaust occur unchecked by the German populace? Perhaps readers will think about parallels today in our world of broken economies and diminished confidence due to the pandemic. Ultimately, however, Kraut is a compelling story about a German woman who not only survives the atrocities of the Second World War, but who continues to live with dignity and passion.

In the Name of Your Father

An act of war reverberates through the life of a young man who flees his homeland of Afghanistan after its occupation by the Red Army in 1979. He finds refuge in the United States, forging a new path as a medical doctor, building a family, and embracing his admiration for his adoptive country, albeit with reservations lingering in the depths of his heart. However, the world changes dramatically on 9/11, ushering in a new era for him and his fellow Americans, albeit in divergent ways. As the United States engages in successive military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, his affection for America begins to wane. Through his firsthand experiences as a volunteer surgeon in these war-torn nations, he witnesses the devastating consequences of conflict, and his disillusionment with his adopted homeland deepens. Amidst this mounting disenchantment, a question looms: Will he be driven to take action? As the protagonist grapples with the profound disillusionment that has settled within him, the reader is swept along a thought-provoking journey. With nuance and subtle introspection, the novel explores the complex nature of war and its transformative power, immersing readers in a tale that delves into the depths of one man’s shifting allegiance and the weighty choices that lie ahead.

Splintered Waters: Tryst with Destiny

Splintered Waters: Tryst with Destiny is an epic tale of struggle for independence, a soul-touching love story, and taboos of caste and forbidden affairs. It is a captivating saga of unshakable friendship, World War II, and the healing power of love. Destiny takes two friends, Lal Singh and Hakam, on very different paths. Compelled by circumstances, Lal Singh returns to his ancestral village where life-changing events await. Hakam continues the fight for freedom from the British but is captured and tortured. In an ironic twist of fate, Hakam’s son, Baldev, joins the British and fights on the knife-edged mountain peaks of Burma in WWII. Independence from the British results in mass migration, ripping apart long-established communities. Newly married Baldev must keep a promise he made on the battlefield to a dying friend and desperately tries to rejoin his own family. Would he be able to?

Nauvoo: A City Set on a Hill

Brigham Young was the American Moses who led pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Colonizing vast tracks of the arid West, they made the deserts bloom. Few know of the beginnings and the crucibles forced upon early Mormons. And what of the drivings in the east and Missouri? What of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and new revelations from God, spreading across two continents, energizing thousands to leave their homes to build Zion, gathering to Nauvoo for the end of times? 1842 was an axial year. In England, Queen Victoria oversaw the industrial revolution that enriched some but unemployed millions. In America, people wrestled with slavery, Manifest Destiny, relocation of Native Americans, and religious awakening. Principled men and women rose to proclaim their vision, sacrificing reputations, lives, and wealth on the altar of convenience. Milena Stuart and her brother Diomedes were captured in the net of dreams, choosing to immigrate for opposing reasons, witnessing for themselves the turbulence erupting on the broad frontier. Would God allow this Camp of Israel to be driven from the States or would divine protection be manifest? Would that providence come in a timely fashion or in the form of isolating rag-tag refugees from the growing inferno that would soon consume the nation in the Civil War? Nauvoo is a victorious tale of joy and hope, fear and despair, sinners and saints. And the story goes on.

Guns and Crosses

1881 – Nearly a generation has passed since the War Between the States. The atrocities of war have changed some men for the worse and set John Channing, a war veteran, on the path of being one of the most feared and notorious outlaws the west has ever seen. The Channing Gang makes a name for themselves, cutting a swath of violence westward until Channing meets Rebekah Wallace, the daughter of a preacher, as they seek to start a new church in a burgeoning New Mexico town. Channing is forced to examine his life and chooses a new path, but his former gang and the town's mayor have other ideas. As events escalate, the former outlaw has his faith severely tested and he has to make a decision as to whether he will revert to the way of the gun or the way of the cross.

Finding the Bones

Finding the Bones is a dark romance set against the youth rebellion and revolutionary violence of the 1910s—an era not unlike 1960s’ America—where idealistic young men and women seek to create a more just society but often fall victim to retribution or disillusionment. Charlie Everett, a journalist on the make, and Olivia St. James, an ardent feminist and journalist in her own right, find themselves caught in a deadly embrace from which neither can escape. “A fine, sophisticated historical novel from author Avery Russell in which she draws from her family history, especially the life of her journalist father who is Charlie Everett in the novel; her father’s first wife portrayed as Olivia St. James; and their mutual friend Maurice Hadley, in real life the early abstract painter Marsden Hartley. Russell’s omniscient narrator moves deftly among her substantial cast of characters, showing us the lives of bohemians and expatriates of pre-World War I and beyond. If there is any symbol of the partially thwarted lives that the central characters endure, it is in Hartley’s poem ‘Finding the Bones,’ which provides the title for the book, where the bones of a dead bird are found with its wings still on and its feathers attached, the last vestiges of a life and an ardor Charlie himself experienced among the bones he hid from everyone. ‘Fixed were the wings,’ Hartley wrote; now they are stiffened, and life has moved on to a ‘fresh history of stifled things.’” — Townsend Ludington, author of Marsden Hartley: The Biography of an American Artist (1992) and Seeking the Spiritual: The Paintings of Marsden Hartley (1998); Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Autumnfield

Jacob Brodie came to Texas in 1836. With no family left in Kentucky, he decided to stay and make his home in the new Republic after Texan independence had been won. It’s 1848 and after a decade and more of battling Comanche Indians and bandits along the borders, Jacob now commands his own company of Texas Rangers. But unattached and with no family, life in Texas has been a lonely existence. The arrival in Galveston of a clipper ship from England will ultimately change Jacob’s world. For on that ship is a man, an attorney, bearing important news. From this man, Jonah Kitchen, Jacob Brodie learns he is the sole male heir to a vast estate in Berkshire, England, from where his mother’s family originated. Likewise, with this estate comes an earldom. A new life begins for Jacob in England, complete with distrustful relatives whom he’s never met and servants who live drastically separate lives. There are also greedy, neighboring land owners who nurture a burning resentment towards this family. While becoming immersed in the upper class of Victorian English society, Jacob feels more and more like a fish out of water as he continues to cling to his honest and simple, yet rough American frontier upbringing. This is a story about a man from the New World trying hard to find his way in the old one. Ultimately, Jacob finds in England family, romance, love, and tragedy.

Worlds Clash

Lilith, the Princess of Darkness, gives a tour of some spine-chilling episodes in human experience that gives us the opportunity to consider how rational beings can embark on self-destructive campaigns. The Princess is also a provocateur who uses ingenious recitation of old facts. This work presents challenges with stark insights and bold interpretations. Examining events through multiple prisms reveals hidden connections and intricate designs that produce exquisite models of evil, forming a delicate tapestry of cruelty deserving to be hung in the Louvre of desolation.

The chain of dismal episodes forms a litany of horror that embraces mankind in Lilith’s kiss of death. Each event can be strung on a golden cord, forming a necklace of black pearls. The Sisyphean struggle to create a better world involves events that are heartbreaking because the tragedies they embody could easily be avoided with only a small application of rational thought. Such temptation is seductive, however, because reason seldom prevails unless accompanied by a sprinkling of humor.