BOOK EXCERPT This excerpt establishes the main theme and the high stakes. Prologue Vienna, July 1847 Helga winces as a contraction ripples through her. She knows it is time. She dresses and then wakes her mother, who will accompany her to the lying-in clinic. Within the half-hour they are ready, shawls wrapped tightly around them. Helga clutches the banisters as she follows her mother down the stairs and out onto the street. Slivers of dawn start to separate the darkness as t

BOOK EXCERPT ‘Luigsech of the Cornovii?’ Boudicca stopped short, shock widening her bright eyes. ‘What in the name of Andraste are you doing here?’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I could ask you the same. We’re a long way from the lands of the Iceni.’ Boudicca’s face darkened. ‘We were bringing the tribe’s yearly tribute to the Roman scum.’ She gestured to the water. ‘It belongs to the gods now.’ Luciana frowned, regarding the woman. Boudicca, her childhood foe in the Beltane chariot

Book Blurb: A Homeric American Novel An American Slave in Barbary: The Odyssey of Winston Prescott Jones is the story of a first-generation American student whose commercial ship is captured in the summer of 1801 by Muslim pirates. He spends the next sixteen years as a captive in Algiers. He rises to become a confidant to the Dey of Algiers, who is desperate to know what made the American shopkeepers and farmers believe they could defeat the British war machine, and how they

BOOK EXCERPT Sam Clemens Arrives on the Scene John Dee took out his kerchief and wiped perspiration at his brow. Who were these Burtons? This situation was spiraling and not in a good way. “So, you are going to write out a statement about Ricky’s death?” “My cub pilot Sam Clemens is gonna record my statement. Yours too. And the squaw singer’s. He’s damned good at writing things up.” The door opened and a young man with wavy red hair entered. “You called for me, Captain Martin