Bøger af John T. Cullen

This anthology celebrates the accomplishments of TEEN POET John T. Cullen. As a teenager, age 19 and a sophomore at a major New England university, he also finished his first complete novel titled SUMMER PLANETS (galaxy-sized imagination, classic SF novel). He began his professional writing career at age 17 as a summer interne newspaper reporter with a major metropolitan daily. He wrote virtually all the poetry in this volume during his teens, and some in his early twenties. The selection in Teen Poet covers much of his poetry written ages 13-19, with a few as late as 22. They are a varied, turbulent blend of sensations, broken heart, lost loves (and some very sunny, steamy affairs gone good), in addition to political, religious, and philosophical ponderings. Circumstances caused him to spend a great amount of time (daily) hitchhiking on New England highways before he owned a car, especially while attending the University of Connecticut at the remote Storrs campus. His highway hitching culminated in a 4,000+ mile Kerouac-like thumbing odyssey from New England to Oregon and then down to the Mexican border at San Diego, with $40 in his pocket, a home-made backpack, and a plastic bag for cover at night. He slept in a ditch in Pennsylvania, the prairies of Kansas, forests of Oregon, and beaches of California. From an early age he became an artist with words, loving various influences from music, literature, and art. Among his many favorite poets to name just a quick few, in no particular order, spanning millennia: Pablo Neruda, Catullus, Rainer Maria Rilke, the Psalmist, Sappho, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Edgar Allan Poe, and... the line stretches around the block. In music, his influences range from Mozart to Junior Walker to John Coltrane to Bob Dylan to Steve Miller (and many more). In art, he has many favorites again and to name just a few: Rembrandt, for his use of darkness to emphasize light and personality in his subjects; Botticelli, for Simonetta Vespucci and Primavera and Venus; the ancient Pompeiian wall artist for his original Primavera; and many more. John T. Cullen always carries a pen and scraps of paper while smoking and drinking coffee in student dives, capturing the moment's passions and their interior explosive reflections. His free-form, jazzy lyrics illuminate life like puddles on a rainy day: reflected neon as we hustle by the bus stop, usually with a pretty girl's image and questioning eyes looking sultry in the dusky atmosphere. He has been a professional writer since age 17 (summer interne newspaper reporter on a New England metro daily) and a novelist since age 19 (SUMMER PLANETS, SF Novel). In his 20s, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served honorably for five years in Germany, still writing poetry, short stories, and novels when not on duty or driving all over Europe in his old orange VW van. In addition to his UConn BA in English, he earned a Master's in Business Administration from Boston University while serving near Heidelberg, Germany. Returning to The World, he worked as a technical writer in a rocket factory filled with groaning ghosts and angry demons. He is now retired and finally publishing long-ago works filled with youthful wonder, many for the first time in the light of day but fresh as ever.

In an age of thrillers and mystic secrets, here is a true-life Da Vinci Code: the Sator Enigma, from ancient Rome. Is it Christian? Is it Pagan? What did it mean to the Romans? Should it mean anything to us in modern times?For centuries, scholars have been baffled by a mysterious inscription found in ruins across the Roman Empire: at a military headquarters in Syria, a sport complex in Pompeii, two British colonial towns... it must have been a saying or a spell of extraordinary importance in the Roman world.NOTE: updates & Info at satorarepotenet.com.At last, the mystery is solved--and the solution is more meaningful (even today) than anyone imagined. History researcher and writer John T. Cullen has discovered the only plausible translation and explanation of the ancient Sator Arepo inscription, after scholars have spent centuries trying to unravel the ancient code. And yes, it is just as meaningful to all moderns as it was in the ancient world. In fact, while it was never a Christian artifact during Roman imperial times, it became the underpinning of Christian theology in the doctrine of free will and individual responsibility to choose right or wrong.After the disintegration of the Western Roman empire, the Sator Square's meaning was lost to history (until now), but its powerful, pragmatic message became as fundamental to Christian theology as Classical neo-Platonism, even though the Sator Square was a Pagan artifact of Roman agrarian origin.The inscription is remarkably the same everywhere we turn in Roman ruins from Asia to Europe: Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas. Because it is a perfect, four-way palindrome, it is often also called a Rotas Square (Rotas Opera Tenet Arepo Sator). Its meaning, commonly understood across the ancient Roman nation of more than fifty million souls stretching from the British Isles to the Indian Ocean, from nearly the Arctic Circle to nearly the Equator, is now understandable again after fifteen centuries of superstition and incomprehension.It is the most perfect four-way palindrome ever devised. It is arrayed in a repetitive five-by-five square that reads the same left-right, right-left, up-down, down-up. It works because of the linguistic properties of Latin, an almost perfectly inflected language, which is perfect for creating world-class puzzles.What does the Sator Enigma mean? Famous composers (Anton Webern), Classics scholars (C. W. Ceram, Jerome Carcopino, and many others), and mystics have turned their attention to it--sometimes desperately, always in cosmic awe--but the meaning has utterly eluded them. One man did his Ph.D. thesis in Classics at Yale University years ago, on this very subject, without managing to crack the Sator Code.The most common translation ("The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort") can be dismissed as utter nonsense. The correct answer has been hidden in plain sight for two thousand years, all across the Roman Empire and until now, obscured under layers of superstition and magic.During an intensive study of ancient Roman topology, unrelated to the Sator Square, the author happened upon this ancient inscription (of which he had been aware for many years, without ever thinking he could solve it). During the summer of 2007, with research sources on ancient Roman topology coincidentally spread all around him at his desk one night, John T. Cullen came across the Sator Square and idly toyed with it. Within moments, he spotted what turned out to be the key--something nobody else has ever noticed. From there, it was only a matter of two weeks until he had a meaningful translation. From that, quite logically, a world of many layers and astounding implications unfolded as the Sator Enigma opened up and revealed its secrets.

The tragic and fascinating story of the Beautiful Stranger is uncovered for the first time since her mysterious and violent death. It's a noir 1892 San Diego gaslamp true crime involving blackmail, the Gilded Age, and 'men in powerful places' as the Yellow Press hinted. Her demise led to the famous ghost legend - a Coronado Mystery finally explained by John T. Cullen, a San Diego author. The story was a national sensation across the United States that year, powered with rumors and titillations.The truth, as finally uncovered by the author, is far stranger and more fascinating than the scandalous news stories of the time, or even the muddled ghost legend that endures to this day.In her shocking and heart-wrenching death, Lizzie (age 24) became that quintessential Victorian ideal of womanhood - the Innocent but Fallen Angel, epitomized in Thomas Hardy's tragic and sentimental novel Tess, A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (1891). Both Tess and Lizzie were beautiful young women brought low by an evil world - only Lizzie was the real deal.Because so much was at stake, the true crime at the Hotel del Coronado led to a nefarious cover-up - and one of the USA's most famous ghost legends. Lizzie was the dead woman - not Kate Morgan. Lizzie still famously haunts the Hotel del Coronado, for those who believe in ghosts. Against a vast backdrop of true historical context, this real story comes to life as a human study of two women - Kate Morgan and Lizzie Wyllie - along with their lover John Longfield (a married Detroit bookbindery foreman, Lizzie's boss, who 'ruined' Lizzie in Victorian terms. We also learn as background about kings and queens, moguls and presidents, and a tragic crown princess who move in Hotel del Coronado owner John Spreckels' circles.Dead Move is a detailed scholarly analysis that solves an amazing puzzle of many moving parts - and the author is able to shine light on each of the tantalizing clues, dead ends, and false leads - many of them deliberately planted. Why? To save the reputation of one of the nation's wealthiest men, John Spreckels, at a critical moment in history.John Spreckels owned virtually all of San Diego and Coronado in 1892, including the newspapers. There was no effective police department - so his security agents covered for him at a critical time. He was in Washington, D.C. with family friend President Benjamin Harrison, trying to stave off rival corporations' overthrow of the monarchy in Honolulu with the loss of Spreckels sugar plantations in Hawai'i. The Spreckels Machine could not afford any breath of scandal. The author has concluded that Spreckels' agents were all over the doomed blackmail plot from the beginning. The monarchy was overthrown six weeks after the Beautiful Stranger episode at Spreckels' hotel in Coronado, long after Lizzie's mysterious death.The last word was had by John Longfield, who spread the final false rumor as he returned to his wife and children in Detroit, having rid himself of the girl he ruined. Lizzie (not Kate Morgan) lay dead at the hotel. Longfield closed the loop by covering for Kate and the Spreckels Machine, saying Lizzie had fled to Canada - a complete lie. The fortune promised by Kate Morgan did not materialize - but John Longfield went scot-free and Kate Morgan evaporated into history, leaving her name and identity attached to the dead girl. Today, San Diego author John T. Cullen has lifted the veil on this engaging story and set the record straight.Readers can enjoy the (nonfiction) analysis in Dead Move, or the noir 1892 period thriller (Lethal Journey, fiction) closely based on the true crime analysis - or get both books in one volume titled Coronado Mystery.

As the Year 5000 Old Calendar (A.D.) draws near, the human empire at the galaxy's core of power starts crumbling from corruption and a loss of purpose. Smelling blood, seeking revenge, enemy alien fleets waste no time attacking the capital, Mercury Free Port City (FPC) near Arcturus.Jared Fallon, born to a poor family, worked his way up as a scholar and champion Olympic athlete. He is handsome, intelligent, honest, and ambitious. He dreamed of serving as a fleet combat officer with a great future. Instead, his life is stolen by a beautiful, ruthless young woman-the heiress of power and fortune, Princess Lyxa. Lyxa collects human beings the way others own pets. She has the power, privilege, and rank to do whatever she wants in a heartless society where democracy has become a myth. Mercury FPC is history's most powerful economic republic (empire in all but name). The Byzantine city-nation is vast, powerful, morbidly corrupt, and under attack from inside and out. Jared Fallon struggles with an even darker stuff in his own life. His lover and owner Princess Lyxa keeps Jared Fallon on a short leash, assigned to the office of Interior President Cyrus Mbe. That puts Jared in the midst of highest-level conspiracy politics including a plot to seize power by his conflicted, tormented boss Mbe. In his loneliness and isolation, Jared's only friend is Stella, a female djia or diaphane, a see-through person whose nervous system is a glowing, dimly green shell of energy. Stella, his closest and most loyal friend, loves him beyond all measure, though they cannot be physically intimate. She would die for him, and he loves her as a sister and companion. Stella is one of a new class of engineered people called djia (diaphanes, or translucent persons with electron clouds instead of faces, and bodies made of neural nets shrouded in a dull green electronic glow). A djia will be your most loyal friend and companion, as with our hero Jared Fallon and his electronic sister and soul mate, the enigmatic Stella. These djia, created by a cruel corporate galaxy three thousand years from now, have gender (male or female) but not sexuality. Jared keeps thinking about escaping from the collapsing empire and from his own stolen life. He wants to become a soldier of fortune and adventurer beyond the most distant frontiers. Sensing his emotional distance from her, Princess Lyxa genetically engineers another djia named Lelli to spy on Jared. Lelli is just as strong and sweet, and loyal to Lyxa, as Stella is to Jared. Djia, however, secretly communicate with each other via psi net. Djia are just as loyal to each other as to their human companions. Amid political chaos, as enemy alien fleets start pulverizing the suburbs of Mercury FPC, Lelli warns Jared and Stella, who flee on one of the last ships outbound. Newly free on a sunny wonderful summer world named Arcturus, Jared meets the love of his life-a beautiful young golden-blonde surfer woman. Mala Alamala works in a bookstore by the beach, where sunshine and soft samba rhythms float in the air. Together, they dream of happiness and love. But total war, betrayal, and destruction soon arrive. Their happiness is short-lived, and once again the only option is to escape.Jared and Mala flee for a yet more remote paradise planet named Lethe (Forgetfulness), where light and darkness converge in a final starbath. This story is intoxicating, beautiful, intense, melancholy, and unforgettable. This sweeping, poetic, and melancholy tale of galactic apocalypse, betrayal, and conspiracies is the first novel completed by a 19-year old college sophomore who was a published poet age 18; working journalist ages 17-19 as summer intern reporter on a CT métro daily; student at the University of Connecticut. Essentially the same story, with a little later polish, including fuller development of the diaphanes or djia people.

A smart, attractive young woman on vacation with her girlfriends unexpectedly meets the horrors of nature. She learns that nothing has changed since the age of dinosaurs. Worst among raptors are those deadly sociopathic humans who swim silently among the good, searching for their next victim. Alina and three fellow professionals, young single women, are on vacation at a posh western US resort, enjoying sunshine, lake boating, and good cuisine. They chat and joke with nice fellow tourists, including handsome young men, on a street of lakefront bars with dancing, drinks, and dating opportunities.Among the young people dancing in a crowded, throbbing sports bar is a silent young man you'd never notice unless you looked directly into his dark, crazed, hateful eyes. He is nameless, has a swastika tattoo, and never actually connects with other human beings or any other living creature for that matter. He is a sociopath, lacking conscience and social connectedness. Tonight, he chooses Alina as his target.A new date rape drug is the ultimate hallucinogen, which he drops into Alina's drink. In seconds, her life is transformed as dark visions rise from her subconscious. The horror that awakens in her is hard-wired in our human DNA and lying asleep for millions of years in a Jurassic swamp pre-existing most mammals, and all primate life. As Alina learns in a terrifying night, the dinosaur age lives on among us - in our back yards, on our streets, and even in many homes.Luckily, Alina's three girlfriends rescue her and take her back to her hotel before Mr. Swastika can do any more harm... but her nightmare only begins.Alina is a professional woman in her twenties, a progressive, humane, highly educated, dedicated, and capable Nurse Practitioner. She and her friend Dori, an RN, are on vacation at this fabulous resort with balmy winds, bright sunshine, white-washed cottages, and a sparkling lake full of sailboats under a blue sky. Joining them are pals Laura and Sheri, school teachers - to relax, enjoy butterflies and birds, inhale the pungent blossoms of spring, and go dancing in sleek nightclubs.Everything changes when that shadowy young man drops a pill in her drink. It's a Jurassic moment, causing Alina's subconscious knowledge to rise from the evolutionary swamp and take over her civilized life.Alina is a history buff on the side. Lately, she's been reading about the Belle Époque (Beautiful Era) in the decades before World War One. In the fabulous cultural center of Vienna during the years 1907 to 1913, two unknown (but later famous) young men walked the same boulevards and breathed the same air. Who knows if they even rubbed shoulders or spoke with each other? One was young Jewish author named Felix Salten, who would soon create the children's classic Bambi (which carries its own ominous, shadowy message, easy to see if we open our eyes and really look).The other youth in Vienna was a vagrant, a purposeless drifter, a homeless youth of 18 brewing evil: Adolf Hitler, filled with an inner, growing Jurassic ferocity that would tear apart the world with reptile claws to orchestrate mass slaughter on an industrial scale never before seen; whose seeds continue to quietly germinate in the sweet soil all around us in our daily lives. Like a deadly pandemic that seems to have died away, the insanity is waiting to unleash its next horrific wave to sweep across our world...

Ray Bradbury has sent a fan letter to John T. Cullen, praising The Christmas Clock. Arthur Latchloose is a grumpy old banker who feels left behind by the world, though perhaps he unknowingly helped cause his estrangement from his late wife and their children. He hasn't a friend in the world, not even a pet, and has not celebrated a Christmas in years. He does have an unusual hobby to go along with his considerable wealth. He collects antiquities. Not just old antiques, but rare and valuable items from long ago. This year Mr. Latchloose has contrived to buy himself a fabulous and strangely powerful grandfather clock originally made at the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and given to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, where it underwent some remarkable modifications using classic alchemy and other arcane arts. After the fall of the Ottomans during World War I, the clock ended up in possession of an Arab prince near Baghdad, where it acquired its own resident djinni. Now the clock is in the hands of Arthur Latchloose, courtesy a mysterious old Army major, and the djinni offers Arthur a single great wish. This is the story of how Arthur Latchloose pursues the quest of his ultimate wish in life, nearly drives a powerful djinni out of his mind, and manages to turn half the world upside down. You see, Arthur Latchloose starts out with one thing in mind--immortality--but when he can't have that (according to the arcane rules of the Agency bureaucracy with whom his djinni constantly consults on his cell phone) then Arthur strikes out on a remarkable quest of his own. The Christmas Clock is just the right story to get you in the mood for a Merry Christmas, offering lovers of SF and dark fantasy just the right mix of holiday wonder, mystery, humor, human drama, and a sentimental payoff worthy of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's a suspenseful roller-coaster ride, not for the faint of heart, spirit, or imagination. It is definitely not a kid story, but it's good clean fun for any grownup willing to suspend disbelief for a while, and let the imagination go for a wild ride in time and space. Written especially for a holiday audience by John T. Cullen, an author whose works include A Walk in Ancient Rome, Revised 2nd Edition (Nonfiction/Ancient History) and nearly two dozen novels.

Exogravitation - John T Cullen's innovative theory for a new cosmology now has a name, based on his view that Dark Energy is nothing more than old fashioned gravity, but with a stunning twist. This is a challenging nonfiction work, a Gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) designed to tickle the imagination of cosmology professors and serious students.Exograv theory explains how it's possible that the universe is not only expanding, but doing so ever faster. Where is that energy coming from? The best that cosmologists (scientists who study the nature of the cosmos) have been able to devise is what engineers call a 'black box' approach. We know the inputs, we know the outputs, but we have no idea what goes on during the transformation or throughput. Dark energy cannot be created out of nothing - such an idea would violate the laws of thermodynamics. If there is Dark Energy in the system, where has it been hiding all these eons?John T. Cullen offers a radically new answer: exogravitation. We don't need to imagine hidden energy and impossible solutions. Instead, think about this: falling objects accelerate naturally and at easily predictable rates. Exogravitation (literally, 'gravitation from beyond') posits that our universe is one of infinitely many in a limitless Motherverse. The ambient gravitation of all those universes is pulling our universe apart in all directions, so our universe is falling (and falling apart) ever faster in all directions... The universe attenuates, meaning its particles grow ever father apart, until it reaches the Cosmopause. That is a spherical size at which our universe no longer has the gravitational strength to hold itself together. It vanishes like a soap bubble, and its dark gravitational matter (yes, that's the other component: Dark Matter) rejoins all the other fundamental dark matter of beyond... until random Brownian Motion (simple turbulence, as in pond water) starts gathering more and more matter to build the next universe.This book is filled with history as well as science. Among other things, we learn how the geocentric and heliocentric theories competed as long ago as ancient Greece in the age of Aristotle and Plato. We learn how an established theory is contantly being patched and stretched, until it can no longer compete with a sleek new theory. That's how we arrived at this wild new vision of Exogravitation in the 21st Century.

In 1950, a hungry, frightened little girl of four stands on a desolate beach in remote, icy Siberia, looking east across the vast Pacific Ocean. Holding her tiny hand is her young European mother, who tells her stories about her handsome but vanished young father (U.S. Naval Intelligence officer Tim Nordhall) and a wondrous land called America. Her mother dies tragically, leaving the child alone in the world, but for her Russian caretaker, a kind but rough woman running a tavern in Anadyr. With luck, she is adopted by a rich French couple. They take her to Paris, name her Marianne, and raise her as their only child in a chateau amid wealth and privilege. She grows up to marry and have children, while living a rather giddy, dissipated life. Her children grow up successful. Marianne, Countess Didier as she is now styled, harbors dark, turbulent memories of love and war that leave her no peace. When her dashing playboy husband dies in a race car wreck, Marianne's quest for truth begins. Now early 40s, she begins a global search for answers to the mystery of who she is, who her father was, and who her mother had been. She visits places and meets persons that crossed paths with Tim Nordhall. We learn that she and her mother were kidnapped by Soviet agents and taken to Siberia as hostages. Stalin's police hoped to lure Tim Nordhall to find his wife and daughter so they could exact a cruel revenge because Tim foiled a plot by Stalin to steal an atomic bomb off a San Francisco dock in 1945-one of the weapons destined for Tinian, to be dropped on Japan. Told in parallel (framed by Marianne's story) Tim Nordhall's danger-filled, heroic career as a young Naval Intelligence officer begins in 1942 aboard a British destroyer that is torpedoed off the South Atlantic coast near Africa. As lone survivor, he washes onto a beach amid hungry lions, is rescued by Mauritanian slavers, and sold to a wealthy man in Timbuktou, Mali. He escapes with a pair of renegade Luftwaffe deserters, who fly him in a stolen JU-52 to the Belgian Congo. Allies recruit him as one the first U.S. atomic counterspies. His spy adventures take him to London during the Blitz, then to wartime San Francisco where he will foil Stalin's plan. Starting in London, Tim spars with a Soviet master spy code-named Jaguar, who decades later helps Marianne in her quest to find her father-the man Jaguar had been assigned by Stalin to murder. Framed by Marianne's search, the interior story is about Tim and his adventures in war and love. The final phases take place in rainy, mysterious, jazzy San Francisco during the last months of World War II. While pursuing his secret atomic mission, he gets romantically involved with three intriguing, attractive women. Corie is a dashing U.S. WASP (Women's Airforce Service Pilots). Corie's roommate, a sultry Turkish Jewish agent named Meg, works at the newly founded UN to aid Hitler's holocaust victims in a future free nation called Israel. And a beautiful Polish army nurse Tim courted in London reappears mysteriously in San Francisco as a U.S. Navy nurse, oddly interested in all things atomic. In 1991, as the Soviet Union collapses, it's as if a sea of time recedes, exposing the secrets of a lost century. Marianne's search frames our story, which closely follows Tim Nordhall's wartime adventures as a spy, and his women. The novel's subtitle (The World is Round) captures a key motif: the trembling little child looking east across that icy sea on a 1950s Siberian beach might one day somehow lock gazes with her future self, a wealthy, driven woman on a 1990s San Francisco beach, looking west across that same endlessly rolling dark ocean, to lock eyes with herself as a tiny child long ago. For Marianne, the world is indeed round, filled with memories of love and war. NOTE: Same exact novel, alternate edition available as Airport Novel by John T. Cullen.

Jack Gray-handsome premier 21st Century agent of last resort--is a complex, moody, but engaging and humorous hero. From his home base at a ranch near San Diego, California, the missions take him around the world in a dangerous, corporate-ruled near future.He is a PhD in History, reserve Army officer, master of his own martial arts style, and a professional killer when needed, on government service.He is, as well, a ladies' man, but none of his ladies are the bubble heads of last century's fiction (usually back then simply called 'the girl'). His friends and lovers are strong women with PhDs, accomplished careers of their own, and looks that could melt glass. The passion is steamy and mutual.And yet, Jack Gray operates from a psychic dark spot, a wound deep in his soul, and a ghost that will not leave him alone. He is a widower, whose late wife Catherine meets him in airports, in remote deserts, on volcanic islands, and in busy places like Times Square--murdered years ago by a hidden killer Jack has yet to track down.Molly Grace is a new, wonderful woman in Jack's life--the widow of an assassinated fellow agent. Stunning Molly Grace, of mixed Hawaiian-Caucasian heritage, will help him build a new family if he lets her--but time is running out. Nobody since Catherine has affected Jack as Molly does--but does he dare risk involving her in his deadly and dangerous work?Molly is willing to wait for Jack, but only for a time. She must get on with her life--and Jack must recover his own--while fighting the world's most terrifying master criminals... and finally laying to rest the ghosts of his own dark past.Stealthy global terror master Doctor Night has hijacked an orbital sniper satellite designed to assassinate world leaders. Now his world terrorism brokerage, Black Umbrella, is using the stolen Orbital Sniper Technology (OST) for global blackmail. Langley sends in their best man--Jack Gray. Backing him are the brilliant Claire Lightfield (CIA/Langley) and Johannes Rector (Compass News spy brokerage) as he begins a far-flung investigation that takes him to a mysterious, foggy castle off the coast of a remote Scottish island, then to a former ancient Roman outpost off the coast of Sicily, and finally to a historic castle in the heart of Washington, D.C.Along the way, he tangles with imported martial artists, ghostly killers, German crocodiles, and Black Umbrella's shadowy army of female assassins headed by a modern-day Gorgon named Sombra (Shade).Jack Gray is a worthy successor of Leslie Charteris' Saint and Ian Fleming's Bond, while Doctor Night copies some terrifying pages from the playbook of Doctor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' crime lord and spider who pulses at the center of a crime web.The classic stuff is all there--updated for a new millennium and its unthinkable new dangers. We catch hints of Fleming's SPECTRE in the Black Umbrella terror brokerage, even as Jack Gray tracks down two ancient Cold War technologies for orbital spying (USAF's Corona and CIA's Keyhole satellites).In the 21st Century, Doctor Night's rogue satellite is a sophisticated drone killer that shoots bullets instead of photos. World leaders are dying one by one, as a prelude to a greater dying from the radioactive cargo on board OST--unless Jack Gray can save the day.As his elegant, gorgeous friend and lover Dr. Minica Albrisi explains while helping him select a cool suit: Anything goes with gray.And anything goes with Jack Gray.Passion may slow him down at moments, but nothing can stop him when he's on a mission

Imagine meeting the guy of your dreams. He takes you to his mansion (or so he says) and it's fireworks all evening. You awaken after midnight, alone in bed. Everything is very still and rather strange. On the lawn outside, under starlight overlooking the Pacific Ocean, you hear a faint, steady chock-chock-chock sound. You pad to the window on bare feet and look out over the estate. There you see his shadowy figure below on the grass, digging your grave as he has done to other women before you. Time to run, because it's oh-dark-thirty and half past late. Get out if you still can. This terror train has only one terminal stop: a dead end. Sylvie Bancroft is a beautiful, hot-shot software engineer in her mid-twenties, with an expired license in her man-hunting credentials. Rob Turlock is handsome, charming, and flashy. Is he the man of her dreams, or a creature out of her nightmares...?The three most common statements by John T. Cullen's readers are (1) I couldn't stop reading and (2) I could see the movie in my head the whole time very vividly as I was reading and (3) do you have any more stories like this one? Terror in My Arms is a perfect example of white-knuckled, romantic terror in a suspense thriller. As a bonus, this terrifying romantic crime thriller takes place in beautiful San Diego with its beaches, balmy sunshine, and fragrant (faintly terrifying) breezes that make palm trees rustle ever so gently...Sylvie has just finished a major gig for a well-paying customer. As she banks her large check and strides out of the bank, ready for a week of rest and relaxation in her San Diego paradise, she meets Mr. Turlock, who presents himself as if he had been reading her mind. Except in Sylvie's tightly controlled universe of computer programming, nothing ever turns out exactly as we plan. For one thing, at just this moment, San Diego's sunny weather chooses to be dark, rainy, and stormy - but El Nino is not the only terror on the loose. The handsome and talented Mr. Turlock pops up out of nowhere, smiling and irresistible. He invites Sylvie to visit his mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and a whole lot of other wonders that seem too true to be good.If Sylvie just said no and kept walking past Rob, you would not be reading this story. As it turns out, after some feeble resistance, Sylvie cannot say no to his charms. Her first mistake is listening to him at all. Her second mistake is needing someone in her life, and trusting this particular guy. That's the moment she boards the nightmare express into a blur of fast-moving terror. Can she escape before it's too late? What comes next is what we call - in the lingo of programmers, which Sylvie knows all too well - ABEND. That's the final dump code for an ABnormal ENDing, also known as a crash - or, even more precisely, a fatal error. Call it what you will, there is no chance of recovery - unless you run for your life and hope you are faster than Mr. Turlock - who is very, very fast and very clever in so many fascinating ways. And he never stops smiling. At least, until the system goes down and everything goes dark.Terror in My Arms is a nonstop ride through hell and back. Hell is guaranteed. Back not so much. Hang on tight. Scream if you must. White knuckles all the way... It's a thriller as only John T. Cullen (Active Member, International Thriller Writers) can make it happen.

John T. Cullen's novel Lethal Journey - Victorian gaslight noir - is closely based on the 1892 true crime at the Hotel Del Coronado near San Diego. This fast, atmospheric thriller combines the best elements of legend and true history about the tragic young beauty who died mysteriously at the hotel in November 1892. The Beautiful Stranger left behind a famous ghost legend in addition to the true crime story that caused a nationwide sensation. For granular detail, read the author's painstaking, scholarly analysis in the nonfiction book Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado. His careful analysis ties all loose ends together, in the first-ever plausible explanation of this San Diego legend. He solves an old, brittle cold case, dispelling 1890s cover-up legends planted to protect John Spreckels - owner of the hotel, one of the nation's wealthiest men during the 1890s. The Beautiful Stranger - as the young mystery woman is officially remembered - was poised, striking, and doomed. She died violently and mysteriously at Spreckels' new Hotel del Coronado, a resort by the Pacific Ocean. The true crime mystery instantly became a national sensation, leading to a famous ghost who allegedly haunts the U.S. National Landmark hotel to this day. Cullen's three books are not based on ghosts or the supernatural - but only on true history, hidden in plain sight until now under a successful cover-up. The Yellow Press fanned flames and rumors of her alleged dalliances with men in high places - none of it true. She was part accomplice, part victim, in an ill-conceived blackmail attempt that went horribly wrong. The target was resort owner John Spreckels, a son of Sugar Baron Claus Spreckels of San Francisco. Iowa grifter Kate Morgan tried to use the young woman's out-of-wedlock pregnancy as a threat on Spreckel's public image at a critical moment. Spreckels had nothing to do with the pregnancy. He was in the White House, desperately conferring with family friend President Benjamin Harrison to save the Hawai'ian monarchy and Spreckels sugar plantations in Hawai'i. Under a false name ('Lottie A. Bernard'), the Beautiful Stranger checked into the Hotel del Coronado on Thanksgiving Day 1892. She carried herself like a young stage star. Five days later, she lay dead on a stairwell from a gunshot to the head, a large revolver by her side. Despite Spreckels' and Harrison's efforts, the Hawai'ian monarchy was overthrown six weeks later (January 1893). The Spreckels dynasty lost their sugar plantations, but established a new sugar beet empire in the town of Spreckels, near Monterey, California. Poor Lizzie Wyllie, the dead beauty - swallowed up in falsehoods, forgotten - was tossed into an unmarked grave outside San Diego. Lethal Journey (novel) dramatizes her true, tragic path. She was the victim of a repressive Victorian society, in which women were not allowed to vote, travel alone, or own property. She was young, pregnant, alone, and desperate. She broke the rules to survive, but fell into the clutches of an unscrupulous, fatally false friend (Kate Morgan) who also stole her lover. Lizzie ended up used, broken, and hopeless. On a dark and stormy night (literally) in November 1892, she shot herself while weakened and depressed on drugs Kate gave her to induce a spectacular miscarriage in the lobby of Spreckels' hotel - unless the tycoon paid up. Lizzie, a beautiful young run-away shop girl from Detroit, had pretensions of becoming a great stage actress, but fell victim to her own frailties and cruel Victorian morays. In death, she was embalmed, dolled up like a princess, and morbidly displayed in a store window for thousands to admire. She embodied of that morbid, powerful Victorian fantasy, the Fallen Angel. The Beautiful Stranger remains today an object lesson for women's rights, and the tragic story of a naive soul. More info at www.coronadomystery.com.

1892 gaslamp noir - true crime mystery and ghost legend - two fabulous books in one volume - new double (4th) edition 2016-17 on the 125th anniversary of San Diego's famous legend - remembering the tragic Beautiful Stranger's violent and mysterious death at the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego. First Book: Dead Move - Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado (nonfiction; true crime cold case analysis). Based entirely on known, true history, with over 100 end notes and scholarly references-highly detailed, but entertaining for readers who love a puzzle. This is one of the most challenging you will ever encounter. Also available as a stand-alone.Second Book: Lethal Journey - a noir gaslight period novel closely based on Dead Move. Fast-paced, thriller material with that 19th century patina that takes you to California's own cobblestone streets, dimly glowing gaslights, and shadowy figures moving in the kind of marine layer fog for which the West Coast is notorious. Also available as a stand-alone.Publisher recommends: read Lethal Journey (the novel) first - it's a fast-paced, atmospheric thriller closely based on history, with powerful characters (Kate Morgan, Lizzie Wyllie, John Longfield, John Spreckels - all true people alive in 1892). Then read Dead Move, which is crammed with fascinating, deeply researched evidence solving the case for the first time ever.On Thanksgiving Day, 24 November 1892, a young woman (the legendary 'Beautiful Stranger') checked into the fabulous Hotel del Coronado, near San Diego, under a false name. Dazzling and elegant, she was thought by staff and guests to be a new and upcoming stage actress or socialite. She was actually a poor factory girl from Detroit with stars in her eyes. She was also a 'ruined woman' (pregnant out of wedlock, condemned by Victorian society). Five days later-in a mysterious plot at the hotel that is now explained for the first time by John T. Cullen--she died violently and inexplicably of a gunshot to the head, on the back or beach stairs of the hotel, during one of the century's most violent ocean storms. Was it murder or suicide, and why? Instantly, her story became a national sensation in the Yellow Press, fueled by rumors of scandal with men in the highest circles. For the first time ever, penetrate the fog of myth, deception, and cover-up to learn the true story of the Beautiful Stranger. It is a story with not only local, but also national and global implications. Ultimately, it is a tragic and timeless woman's story, of a 'ruined woman' driven to unbearable ends after her betrayal by those she loved and trusted. In death, she was laid out like a fallen princess-a true Victorian Fallen Angel, in the best tradition of the age, as exemplified in Thomas Hardy's famous tragedy Tess of the D'Urbervilles.This is a historical and scientific investigation that avoids speculative or paranormal considerations. While neutral on the supernatural, this book gives ghost believers a historical baseline for understanding how the ghost legend came to be.

What is a Progressive Thriller? Here's the world's first in a new 21st Century type of thriller. The action will remind you of classics like Ludlum's The Bourne Identity (see surprising Thrillerology info inside). The ideas rise to G. K. Chesterton, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, and Margaret Atwood, among other philosophical writers. More timely than ever in the US national nightmare of 2017. If you are a Progressive, democratic thinker - you'll find this novel relevant, exciting, and refreshing - new ideas instead of tired old thriller cliches. Two young ex-pats from California--Rick Buchan and Hannah Smith, both 25--are on the run for their lives in Europe. They don't know each other until their paths intersect in an alley behind a bar called The 39th Step in Bagnolet, Paris. They witness a cold-blooded murder executed by killers working for a Chinese billionaire named Wan. The object of the chase (or McGuffin, as Alfred Hitchcock used to put it) is a data package for a radical new technology called Intelligent Fuselage Skin (IFS), Hannah, a BAN (contract slave in the new world odor), stole from Wan while escaping from his private luxury jet in Paris. In all John T. Cullen novels, you enjoy a strong female lead and a strong male lead, brought together under dire circumstances, who fall deeply and movingly in love. The rousing love story, the breathless thriller, and the story of ideas are parallel and entwined elements of a well-told tale you will long not forget. This novel includes some of the hottest and most passionate love scenes ever written--integral to the story. Rick Buchan is a U.S. Army deserter, on the run after being unjustly accused of a serious crime he did not commit. He is a combat veteran suffering from PTSD and half out of it, when Hannah rescues him and they take off north by north east toward Luxembourg. Hannah has mailed the IFS to herself in Luxembourg, and plans to deliver it to Professor Hilaire Sander--whose son Pierre was murdered by Wan's hit men in London to steal the IFS data, which Pierre had developed for peaceful uses. Wan plans to run for president of the global Chief Executive Officers' Confederacy (CEOC), an organization of the world's wealthiest 1,000 families, who own most global wealth. He wants IFS to show that CEOC militaries can defeat any national force in the world. Professor Sander promotes the Progressive Alliance for Peace (PAX). He will challenge Wan for presidency of the CEOC parliament at their annual conference, at Chateau Ansembourg in Luxembourg's Valley of the Seven Castles. This Progressive Thriller hits hard on the story front - while advocating for Progressive causes as the only hope for democracy, freedom, human rights, and the global ecology. News stories tell us that today, 63 billionaires own over half of the world's wealth--most of these from former 3rd World Countries and the new Capitalist China. Our world is becoming a new medieval network of warring, feudal baronies called corporations - linked by their allegiance to a universal church of Greed, whose only god is Profit, whose theology is: might makes right. Professor Sander (the journey's Wise Elder) seeks a peaceful, Constitutional revolution at the ballot box. He is a Resistance hero - for peace and balance. He seeks not to destroy corporations but to fulfill them (so to speak) by creating a balance of workers, owners, and society at large. Corporations own 99% of the media and lie to us constantly--we do not have a free, honest, impartial press. Whatever happened to objective journalism? So many politicians are bribed and owned by corporate interests, constantly shutting the government down to weaken it for their corporate owners--to kill unions, health care, workplace safety, minimum wages, distort the Constitution... Anything good for working families is evil socialism and must be destroyed in favor of limitless tyranny by a tiny, powerful investor class. More info at the Clocktower