The Fermenting of Johnny Hazan draw parallels between the stages of the maturing of grape juice into wine and the maturing of a boy into manhood. The story begins with a married couple who adopt a male child they do not know was theirs-a child who was conceived during a one night stand which took place twol years before they married. The adopted boy's mother then treats him as "some rich man's bastard," and only discovers that he is her son when he is 22. The book ends with the boy's becoming a mature man who managed to mature his wretched childhood into the wine of that forgetfulness which leaving any childhood, good or bad, requires. After thinking about how a novelist might best treat of the process of maturing into an adult non-academic-but not inaccurate-way, I visited Rob DeFord, the owner and vintner of a successful local winery in Maryland, (Boordy), and asked him if he thought that wine-making and successful parenting had much in common. He agreed enthusiastically that they did, and then proceeded to give me an afternoon-long master class in viticulture. "Fermenting" presents the parallels between the mystery of grape juice becoming wine and a boy, Johnny, becoming an adult. I think this approach provides both a deeper, as well as more accurate, account of the strangeness of human maturing than the all-too-sober accounts found in academic journals and the popular press, or even many coming-of age novels being published today. To my knowledge, there are no novels like this present one. I wrote it because I felt that America has begun to see that the Dr. Spock's of America take whining children and turns them into whining adults, and that children's maturing presents deeper problems and issues than our academics or psychiatrists can present in their writings. To quote James Q. Wilson, formerly a professor at Harvard and at UCLA, "Culture creates a problem for social scientists like me, however. We do not know how to study it in a way that produces hard numbers and tested theories. Culture is the realm of novelists and biographers, not of data-driven social scientists."

This suspense comedy, whose central characters are Inspector John Horn and his sidekick, soon-to-be-wife, Francesca Flaminare, involves the attempt by a secret society of Assassins in India to steal near-bomb-grade Plutonium in order first, to construct a bomb and then, using the threat of thermonuclear war if they are not recognized, to declare a separate state. One of their own submits to being killed in order to confuse the police by an apparent "perfect crime." Several of their number are murdered to silence them as the police close in. Finally, the ring-leader, a doctor, is apprehended and handed over to an Indian Army officer to stand trial in India, where he will be executed. After they have solved this case, Horn and Francesca marry one another.

This comedy is a "Punch & Judy" show of the heart. "Punch," Jean-Philippe Gautier, a remarkably handsome Anglo-Frenchman, is deeply in love with Olympia, i.e., "Judy." Olympia, who is just as deeply in love with him, feels she has been cursed with what she (wrongly) considers to be a homely face and cannot believe that Jean-Philippe's frequent advances are not motivated by a Gallic contempt for Americans in general and in particular for rich American women in love with French heart-throbs. They spend their time clubbing one another because of their mutual misunderstandings, but finally marry at the end. Set in Vienna, Philadelphia and Paris, the story will appeal to those readers who appreciate gracefully written, seriously funny writing. Its target audience is the thoughtful, literate post-pubescent reader who has learned that the greatest acts of love often take place outside the bedroom. My motivation in writing this novel is expressed in its Dedication: To all who have willingly lost the battle between the sexes in order to win love. In writing this book, I wanted to present a realistic picture of what loving individuals are like, rather than the current twaddle written by psychology majors or by the broken-hearted.

"The Archer Who Shot Himself in the Back," (69,408 words; 191pages). It begins with a random murder, ordered by an insane "Prophet," interrupting the honeymoon of a pair of newly retired Military Intelligence operatives, and ends with the "Prophet" being defeated in a polo match against the new bride. "The Archer" story concerns the events of the first three months after good guys John Horn and Francesca Flaminare are married. It opens on the (fictional) island of d'Oc located in the English Channel which, like the (really existent) island, Sark, is a left-over from the time when France claimed possession of England and the Channel islands. Francesca inherits a manor house through her father, and the couple moves there to enjoy life together. Like Sark, d'Oc is politically independent and is managed by members of the hereditary line reaching back to French times-presently knows as "The Dame of Sark." In this fictional case, the Dame of d'Oc is one Dame Primrose, and the action begins with a dispute over the ownership of a medieval castle on a small island just off the coast of d'Oc. The dispute concerns who is the proprietor of the castle? On the one hand, there is an insane cousin of Dame Primrose, one Giles Grimsby, who claims to be a descendent of Ishmael, one of the sons of the patriarch, Abraham. Giles claims that he is the lawful owner of the castle, and inhabits it with a band of followers who look to him as a prophet who is going to unite Christians and Muslims under his rule. In the course of his travels to collect money and disciples, he kills several orthodox Christians who loudly decry his mission as heretical madness. On the other hand, there exists, to this day, a band of Arabs (I have given them blue-eyes for effect) who are descended from a regiment of Crusaders whose lord went over to the side of the Arabs, and, as proof of his conversion, willed the castle to the descendents of his regiment. In this story, a Sheik of the tribe sends his son to infiltrate Giles' group to find out what is going on at the castle, and, when he falls under suspicion, Giles has him perform a feat of archery which the Crusaders learned from their foes-namely, to shoot an arrow into the air so that it lands within a few feet of the archer. (This permitted the archer to stand on one side of a wall and kill men on the immediate other side.) When the Sheik's son shoots the arrow into the air, Giles' men instantly drag him to a bale of hay just in front of him and he is killed by his own arrow as it returns. Since only members of that tribe still know how to do this, Giles knows who the young man was and why he was there. The Sheik learns of the murder and comes to the island to avenge it.

Featuring essays from renowned scholars, this volume in the Westminster Handbooks to Christian Theology series provides an insightful and comprehensive overview of the theology of Karl Barth (1886-1968). This volume offers concise descriptions of Barth's key terms and concepts, while also identifying the intricate connections within Barth's theological vocabulary. Masterfully compiled and edited, this volume features the largest team of Barth scholars ever gathered to interpret Barth's theology. The result is a splendid introduction to the most influential theologian of the modern era.

Contributors include Clifford B. Anderson, Michael Beintker, Eberhard Busch, Timothy Gorringe, Garrett Green, Kevin Hector, I. John Hesselink, George Hunsinger, J. Christine Janowski, Paul Dafydd Jones, Joseph L. Mangina, Bruce L. McCormack, Daniel L. Migliore, Paul D. Molnar, Adam Neder, Amy Plantinga Pauw, Gerhard Sauter, Katherine Sonderegger, John Webster, and many others.

I have long been struck by the biblical story which recounts Pharaoh's daughter's transgression of her father's murderous law to kill all male Hebrew babies by saving a Hebrew baby boy whom she named ?Moses.? When that adopted child became an adult, he murdered an Egyptian, fled the country, and later received the law of Israel on Sinai, one item in which prohibits murder. This novel, ?The Peculiar Transgression Of Pharaoh's Daughter?, is based on that story. Reading it, we are presented with what seems to be developing into a splendid drama whose theme is the eternal strife between Love and Law?a strife which often ends with an individual transgressing Law because of the demands of Love or, contrariwise, transgressing Love because of the demands of Law. In the Biblical treatment of this strife, however, Law simply trumps Love and Deity gives the Supreme Law forbidding murder to a man whose very life was spared because of the love in a young girl's heart. Any writer who presents an end to this strife simply by dismissing the strife between Love and Law in favor of Law simply becomes an advocate for Law. In the real world, the best we can hope for is to moderate this eternal strife through provisional treaties my characters more or less grudgingly end up initialing. The absolute victory of either contestant dehumanizes them both.

A seriously comic account of the consequences we humans face when we take it for granted that, because love in any of its forms-including love of money, etc.-is "natural," it needs neither shaping nor definition. It centers on a love affair between an economist, Claudia, and a poet, Stafford, an affair which is nearly derailed by Claudia's liason with a neurologist-sexologist who knows nothing of the necessity for budgeting pleasure. The novel concerns the success or failure of its characters to shape, and so place limits on, their passions and desires. Its principal characters include a rogue financier, an economist, a Catholic priest, a political scientist, a scholarly Rabbi, a poet and a Caribbean Island Weed-woman. In short, the novel is about human nature and human bodies, and the need to shape our body's demands and needs for satisfaction. NATURAL LOVING is a different kind of novel. For one, my characters are presented as acting primarily on what they think, rather than as more or less blindly reacting to social pressures, personal history, or the demands of their blood chemistry. Also, novels since Rousseau tend to presuppose that we only require a minimum of institutional pressure to shape us into dutiful Consumers; humans' folly in his picture, is defined as anything which disturbs the chain of supply and demand.