As throngs of humanity pack Rome's St. Peter's Square, all await the news from the Sistine Chapel as to who will be the next Pope. But no one is more anxious than Iraqi American Sami Yusuf, for he and one of the papal candidates share a well-kept secret. When it is finally announced that Cardinal Paul Rogan has been elected Pope, Sami knows the one thing about Father Rogan that no one in the crowd does-he is a humble shepherd who molests his unsuspecting sheep.

Many years earlier, while Sami was a Jesuit school student in Baghdad, he was molested by Father Rogan. Deathly afraid of revealing the abuse for fear of losing his family's honor, Sami eventually emigrated to the United States and joined the Air Force. Meanwhile, Father Rogan slowly moved up in the Catholic Hierarchy-while quietly ruining one young boy's life after another. Now amid sectarian mayhem and the occupation of Iraq, Sami must visit his ailing dad in Baghdad. But first he must fulfill his most important life's mission-to cleanse the honor that Father Rogan stripped from his family.

In this compelling tale that spans three continents, a vendetta drives an Iraqi American pilot into international dram that culminates with unexpected ramifications that change everything forever.

'A moving, compelling, deeply human novel about love, hope and resilience in a city under siege. Everyone should read it' Emma Stonex, bestselling author of The Lamplighters Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents - whether Muslim, Croat or Serb - push the makeshift barriers aside. When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege. As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.

"Toes of Apollo" is an exciting nautical adventure dramatizing the best and the worst about the U.S. Coast Guard. It's the "Caine Mutiny" on steroids Lt. (jg) Tom Stierwell, a twenty-two year old office falls in love with the beautiful daughter of Captain Kearse, an out-of-control commanding officer on the Coast Guard's "Albatrosss," a unique mystery ship operating in the Eastern Mediterranean, six-thousand miles from the USA. The location is on land and ashore in tumultuous Greece where the Colossus of Rhodes once stood, where religion and greed are a deadly reality on an island of Muslim minarets and the rebuilt castle of Christian crusaders.

In this story I have disclosed some of the dark machinations in the Fuhrer's mind when he unleashed the dogs of war in bloody cruelties without conscience. I have tried to reveal uniquely German predispositions or mindsets, if you will, that caused Germans to accept Hitler's leadership. For it was they, the German people, the Volkish Bevolkerung who believed, and it was true, that the Versailles Treaty imposed merciless reparations upon the German people that affected them in complex ways-to annihilate their nationhood, their sovereign compacity forever to make wat. Yet while it virtually destroyed the Kaiserreich of Post WWI and, tructh to tell, said many times, set the stage for Hitler's popularity. The rise of national Socialism, the Nazi Party and WWII the Treaty shoes how mistaken and despotic revenge can be. Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Col. Von Stauffenberg did not want to destroy the German people. They schemed to kill the diabolical fiend Adolph Hitler.

Five tales of battle, intrigue, the sea and adventure from the Napoleonic era
Conan Doyle was justifiably famous for his great detective Sherlock Holmes. But in fact Doyle's first love was historical fiction, and he had a particular interest in and affinity with the age of Napoleon. This led him after the 'demise' of Holmes to create another character much closer to his heart-the impossibly brave, boastful and not very bright, French hussar-Brigadier Gerard. That character's full adventures-complete with all the original magazine illustrations-is available as a Leonaur edition. Fortunately for the many enthusiastic aficionados of Doyle and the Napoleonic Age his efforts in that period of history did not end with Gerard. Here are Doyle's other classic novelettes and stories of the epoch of empires-each one a gem-brought together in a single volume available in soft cover and hard cover for collectors to enjoy over again. Includes Uncle Bernac, The Great Shadow, A Foreign Office Romance, A Straggler of 1815, The 'Slapping Sal' and Doyle's essay on his own Napoleonic history library.