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Time Train: Dystopia USA 2049 is a new edition of a 2008 novel that was eerily prophetic about future conditions in the USA and the world; too much of it seems to be coming true already as in classic dystopian Blade Runner series of Ridley Scott. The author in 2008 predicted the following: 1) An Amerika run by a ruthless and amoral tyrant called the Great Shepherd2) An Amerika surrounded by a high wall called the Magnum Line3) A chapter titled "Take Down This Wall" that mocks Reagan's Berlin Wall quote4) And (are you ready?) a sinister cat prowling in high places named *Donald*DEA Special Agent Joe 'Mack' Mackinson's nightmare adventure starts on a lone stakeout one nigh, in the desert outside San Diego. He hopes to snare a Baja drug lord. Instead, he stumbles onto a battle between rival UFO gangs from the distant future. He is kidnapped, and drafted into service on a perilous mission in Future Amerika. Time travelers from far uptime are constantly working to undo the damage from a vast and deadly Time War eons from now that has left Earth and its great City of En metropolis at the edge of extinction. By carefully, gently tweaking myriad small events in the past, agents from the future hope to save their world by hours and minutes at a clip as Earth slips into the deadly embrace of the Cosmopause at the edge of time. Mack's mission is to escort a dissident senator and his family out of the Great Shepherd's nightmare Amerika, across the deadly Magnum Line (or National Defense Barrier), and into the free world beyond (Canada, Europe, everywhere except a nation trapped in its own exceptionalism myth). The Magnum Line is manned by two million terrified, jumpy troops ready to shoot at any phantom that may invade their prison nation at any moment. But that wall of paranoia, like the Berlin Wall during the Cold War, is not about keeping enemies out. It's about keeping the truth out, and the serfs on the inside ignorant of how cruel and tragic their lives in a totalitarian state have become, founded on fake noise from Big Brother about everything: economics, religion, science, politics. No trace of U.S. democracy remains - only a Big Brother media circus that rewrites history every morning news program to suit the ruling korporate oligarchy's latest lies of the day.It's a rich dystopia in the best traditions of SF's literature of ideas, filled with action and thrills, as well as the sentimental love story of Mack and his beautiful young wife Carly - who may be the next victim of time travel and slaughter that knows no boundaries. Can Mack save Carly, get the senator and his family of out dangerous new Medieval Amerika, and help save the far future City of En? Mack will have plenty of help (or hate) from rival future time travel agents who talk rough and play for keeps.

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.

25 light years from dying Earth, a fresh, earth-like planet broadcasts radio invitations to come to a thriving alien starport. Paul and Licia Menard (lovers) are among 6 last surviving humans who journey 1,000 years to join an advanced star-faring civilization. What the pioneers find is a world of jungles and plains, with no sign of advanced civilization, but ancient ruins everywhere. They discover blue-skinned, stone age village people with dim cultural memories of star flight, and-as they excavate an ancient, purposely sealed chamber in the village of Akha--answers to questions nobody ever thought to ask.Already, one of the pioneers is dead-from a lander crash upon leaving the mothership. Dead is engineer Tynan's spouse, Nancy-meaning one of three breeding pairs is gone. Another couple, the Wengs, are lost somewhere-it's not clear if their life craft burned up in orbit, or crashed and burned, or if the two scientists are struggling alone and lost someplace far away. Paul and Licia's lander burned up on crashing, though the two just barely escaped unhurt. With each of the three life craft/landers that is lost, an entire library of dead Earth's civilization is gone forever. At present, the only remaining hope is that the Wengs and their ship survived its landing. The mothership itself, loaded with records and tools, entered the atmosphere, unplanned, and burned up.There are just three pioneers accounted for in Akha: the dangerously explosive trio of Licia and Menard--plus the odd man in: handsome, rugged Tynan, who soon starts eye contact with Licia. Sparks fly, and one of the men must leave, forever, on his own in a vast wilderness haunted by roaring beasts. Will it be Menard or Tynan? Ancient laws of evolution, survival, rivalry, and conquest kick in. It's the Human Condition, at its last gasp, far from lost Earth. Is there any hope for mankind?.The three pioneers who landed together-Licia, Menard, and Tyan--receive limited and conditional hospitality from a puzzling, human-like blue people in a prairie village. They are barbarians amid the ancient ruins of a fabulous star port.Shadowing their every move is an enticing, mysterious BLUE PRINCESS named Auska, whom Menard and his fellow surviving colonists befriend. This beautiful, exotic blue princess is integral to the upcoming STORYBOOK FESTIVAL. Auska's father is a local stone age shaman who, like all his people, is illiterate-and yet, he wears a metal disk that carries with it telepathic images of a fabulous, long ago starport named Avamish. To make matters more complicated, Auska becomes part of the pioneer love polygon...with special affections for the lead character, Paul Menard. Is Auska clever and deadly, or a brave pioneer in her own right?.Every year, the shamans and people from around the blue world gather in eerie, crumbling, empty Avamish for the annual Storybook Festival. Out of desperation, the three pioneers and Auska join her father and shamans from Akha on a long journey to the ruined starport-which contains far more secrets than anyone had imagined. Avamish calls the pioneers into its muted and haunting embrace.

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.

Eight thousand years in the future, and many parsecs across the galaxy, humankind has entered a fabulous age known as the Renaissance of Mankind. Two attractive, smart young persons meet at a remote university world, and fall in love: a young commoner and a beautiful princess. Their future looks bright -- until a sudden, catastrophic attack by a blood-thirsty, merciless alien race known as the Kaarrk Swarm darkens everyone's life and calls for the utmost heroism and sacrifice.Zara is the Crown Princess Upholder, of the ruling clan on the Tellerine world in the Corduwaine system. Ranay is a gifted commoner who gives up a promising future in his home system to marry her and live his life out with her on her far away home world. Humans and aliens have lived in peace for centuries after many bitter wars long ago. The humans live under the spiritual rule of a female pope known as the Holy Mother, who is attended by battalions of fearless, devoted military priestesses. The Kaarrk Swarm are about to shatter that peace in a holocaust of blood, violence, terror, and death.At first arrival on peaceful, lovely Tellerine, everything looks wonderful and promising for the young couple, despite her gruff father the mighty Lord Trask, Upholder of Corduwaine and Tellerine. We meet Zara's sisters and other members of a strong, resilient frontier world.Just when life seems perfect for Ranay and Zara, the Kaarrk Swarm attack in force, including a behemoth mothership that almost literally eats planets. Tragedy and horror rip through the peaceful Corduwaine System. Suddenly, it's all about life and death, demanding courage and duty. Fighting alongside military priestesses, mystical abbesses, time-traveling HM Sacred Agents, and other denizens of this future galaxy, Ranay and Zara confront their ultimate fates--and surprises beyond imagination.After thousands of years of suffering and near annihilation, the human race is stronger and wiser, living in peace with other races. But a terror lurks beyond the dust clouds and dim light years of far space, threatening to destroy civilization and humankind. The enemy is so powerful, so implacable, so filled with hate, that its very name inspires chills: The Kaarrk Swarm are a militant hive culture whose only emotion is a relentless hunger to be vicious. A dying hive scorpion's only emotion is rage because it will no longer live to hate and kill.This gripping new novel in John Argo's Empire of Time series joins a sweeping cosmic history spanning eons of time and light years of space. Its lyrical, at times poetic language reminds us of the atmosphere, epic story telling, larger than life characters, and lyric poetry of science fiction classics - think of Frank Herbert's Dune, James Tiptree Jr.'s 20,000 Light Years from Home, Cordwainer Smith's The Planet Buyer, and A. E. Van Vogt's Weapon Shops of Isher.Read Far Wars, and then explore the other novels so far in the Empire of Time Series, starting with Summer Planets written by John Argo as a teenager, finished at age 19, which has become the series corner stone. In Later Novels: You'll meet the Holy Mother and her military priestesses in Mars the Divine, and you'll see the Kaarrk Swarm in action in John Argo's Escape Prison World Or Die, another novel of far future distant wars in the galaxy. Details on the series can be found at www empireoftime com.Far Wars is a far future science fiction novel - a symphony of love, war, loss, and rebirth in a distant future time place in the galaxy. It's a powerful love story set against a sweeping background - an SF Doctor Zhivago more than 7000 years from now. Stunning and poetic far-future history by John Argo in the tradition of Cordwainer Smith's Classic Norstrilia and other tales of the Instrumentality.

Rob and Hannah Wilson (twins, 30) return home to Oregon from Europe for their father's funeral. Dan Wilson, 70, rests in a green cemetery of twittering birds and sun-dappled shade, beside his second wife (or was she?) Nancy, who died in 2018 after 30 happy years together.Unnoticed among two dozen mourners stands a beautiful, stylish angel named Claire from a parallel reality, wearing designer sunglasses and a Parisian outfit. Claire is the ghost of the twins' baby sister Klara, who died as an infant in 1979 while Dan Wilson served as a young U. S. Army soldier in Heidelberg, West Germany. Claire is invisible, but has a faint glow behind her, untouched by raindrops. Moving unseen through this world, Claire plants Dan's journals and drops clues to send Rob and Hannah on a mission: tying together loose ends, family secrets, and lost souls.Claire's other gift to our world is to reveal the pagan goddess behind Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, Mona Lisa (which would have seen Leonardo burned at the stake by the Inquisition, had the truth come out). Dan and Nancy Wilson's twin children carry this story to its amazing resolution. Hannah works for a Paris insurance firm, while dating young music producer Yves Cartier. Rob is a doctoral student at Frankfurt's Goethe University, dating Elise Gillen of Luxembourg.Back in 1978, young Dan Wilson made a tragic decision on a bridge in Paris (Pont des Arts, by the Louvre), to abandon the true love of his life (Paris student Claudette Vervain). Dan returned to his duty station in Heidelberg, where he married a Croatian-German girl named Stana Chetko based on Stana's lies that she was pregnant by Dan.Their daughter Klara (Claire) was conceived soon after. In a dark, forbidding mountain village near Heidelberg, Dan Wilson's emotional nightmare included a loveless marriage; infant Klara's death from a heart defect caused by Stana's drinking, depression, and not wanting a child; sociopathic bullying by Stana's father (an escaped Croatian Nazi war criminal who raped Stana as a child); and Dan's unsympathetic, ignorant, at times cruel U.S. Army superiors. After his Army years, Dan returned to Oregon. He started a wonderful new life, marrying Nancy, and having the twins Rob and Hannah. But dark shadows of our past lie long upon the afternoon of a person's life.In 1970s Paris, Claudette's doctoral thesis revealed stunning info on Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa in the Louvre, credited to notebooks of Dr. Benjamin Wandrous, a Jewish scholar murdered by the Nazis in occupied 1940s France. After Dan left her, heart-broken Claudette dated a young alcoholic, with whom she died in a car crash in 1979. Her revelations were lost.Rob and Hannah journey to Paris, to learn the truth about their father's life, and why Leonardo da Vinci obsessed over his unpaid portrait of that soulful woman of 1500s Florence, Lisa Gherardini.In the Shakespeare & Company bookstore on the Left Bank, Hannah brushes by her lost sister's ghost under a famous sign: "Be not unkind to strangers, lest they turn out to be angels."Fate does work with angels to fix unbearable situations. On the windy, weepy, rainy 1979 night as Klara died in the German medical center at Heidelberg, a miracle came to the remote village. Broken-hearted Dan slept exhaustedly, but woke in darkness knowing it was the moment of her death. A calm, self-assured adult woman's voice spoke in his head; his baby daughter, as a mature woman (somehow, somewhere in time...).Klara (Claire)'s voice said not to worry; all will be fine. Dan Wilson heard her in his head, did not understand her message, and grieved for his baby's death all of his life. Klara promised that, on a future day, at the moment of his death, her daddy would receive a wonderful gift: a new life, back on that bridge at that moment in 1978. Now that promise is set in motion at Dan's funeral in Oregon...

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

FROM KIRKUS REVIEWS: "An entertaining, kinetic supernatural tale with surprises and a genial hero."- Kirkus ReviewsIt's the next fun romp and cult classic in the spirit of famous dark comedies like After Hours (Martin Scorsese), From Dusk Till Dawn (Quentin Tarentino), and National Lampoon's Vacation (Chevy Chase, 1983). This little novel rivals any of them, and then some! A UC Berkeley senior's journey to see his romantic interest sends him on a terrifying, otherworldly detour in this dark comedy-fantasy. San Diegan Martin Brown, home for summer, dreams of a career as a film industry writer. After losing his job shoveling mulch at a garden store near home in San Diego, he visits Los Angeles production companies two hours' drive north. In L.A., Martin meets attractive and personable Chloë Setreal at Alienopolis, producer of fantasy books, games, and movies. Martin and Chloë instantly fall in love. Chloë soon calls him for a job interview-a chance to meet again. Martin hops in his car for a quick two-hour drive up the coast, but a huge Pacific Ocean rain storm crashes with thunder and lightning, and car trouble strands Martin near Solana Beach. Drenched, he walks to the nearest house for help (or hell?) in a scene Alfred Hitchcock might have written in sequel to his thriller Psycho. And that's only the start of Martin's misadventures. A leisurely two-hour drive becomes a 36 hour nightmare that gets crazier by the hour. Martin flees from one ramble to the next, eastward to the Salton Sea, to Bombay Beach, to a fundamentalist camp where kidnap victims harvest marijuana, to a resort used by fake evangelists, corporate republicans, and other crooks serving the deep oligarchy. Martin makes his escape on water skis towed by fellow escapee (petty crook) in a motorboat. Along the way, Martin has brief, cryptic cell contacts with Chloë, who is laid up in L.A. with a broken leg and begs him to hurry. She longs for him. Martin pledges to see her at any cost, flying into the snowy mountains east of L.A. for deepening terrors involving zombies, aliens, and other unusual persons... and ultimately back to L.A. tattered and half-dead to reach Chloë, who had a scare of her own. As in famous dark comedies like After Hours (Martin Scorsese), From Dusk Till Dawn (Quentin Tarentino), Chloë remains a beautiful, loving, delightfully aloof sort of goddess figure to whom Martin must journey through fantastic adventures, like Ulysses in Homer's Odyssey. Read full Kirkus Review inside cover: "...Argo excels at pacing, as his story begins leisurely and becomes increasingly frantic and unpredictable... Martin traverses a hellish underworld so startling that reaching Chloë is a goal worth cheering for."

Never before has a ship so far from home been in so much trouble. Hurtling through space and time like a blur, the starship Nebula Express gives truth to a darkly bright motto out of a nightmare: "Nothing seems right...near the speed of light..." Not the ship, not the mission, nor its people--especially not Ridge and Brenna, who are drawn to each other in a deep passion that defies the deadly madness all around--yet their love, too, is a symptom of all that's wrong aboard the Nebula Express. In the tradition of Ridley Scott's Alien-scarier, yet more thoughtful, with a love story amid the terror, chaos, and horror of a ship gone insane.The six-person engineering crew aboard a cargo ship awaken to a normal morning in the crew quarters aboard a solar system cargo ship named Neptune Express, on a two-year mission to the blue gas giant that will allow each to retire wealthy. They enjoy breakfast, banter, and email home across the vast emptiness of space. But Earth isn't answering. And the captain is nowhere to be found.When Ridge, Brenna, and the other four specialists open the hatch to enter the huge ship, they discover to their horror that nothing is what they thought it would be. Nothing is what it should be--not the ship, not the mission, not the engineers themselves--in a heart-rending ultimate discovery for each man and woman that is sure to send cold chills through the reader. You will *not* want to miss this unique twist that takes horror to its ultimate, personal peak. It's a plot twist no writer has ever done before. Be prepared to keep the lights on all night. Take a deep breath, take a long walk around the house late at night, check the doors and windows, and look in the mirror to see who or what is looking back at you.Our apocalyptic odyssey is not just through ruined cities--all of that is gone forever. Six technicians aboard a broken, ruined, apocalyptic starship from hell must learn the tragic truth about themselves, their journey, and their destination (nowhere).Mystery upon mystery compound the terror as the crew find themselves inside an ancient, wrecked starship that is far beyond anyone's ability to repair. Then bodies begin turning up, along with zombie-like Mudmen or Cleaners who hunt both the living and the dead, seeking body parts and food. But that's the least of the crew's problems.Then the dying begins. One by one, the engineers fall prey to a strange illness. Not only is everything frighteningly wrong, but one by one, each realizes the most horrific truth of all about him or herself.Ridge, a strong, handsome Lead Engineer, and lovely red-headed Brenna, Senior Engineer, have families back on Earth whom they love very much. And yet, they find themselves drawn into a passionate, overwhelming love that neither sought, but they cannot resist or understand.Soon, pursued by the zombie Cleaners, Ridge and Brenna are on a desperate search for truth, for help, for survival, for salvation where there can be none. Or can there? Somewhere in the rusting, dripping, hollow, ghost-ridden bowels of this enormous city flying through the distant galaxy is a magical place called Largo, where answers and help can be found.Ridge and Brenna must find Largo before it's too late, as the clock ticks...Largo itself is only a keyhole leading to either human extinction...or a New Earth that is humankind's only shred of hope. If the two lovers cannot defeat the ship and its monsters (both external and internal to themselves) they will never know as a ghastly array of long-dead, mummified officers on the bridge sails the Nebula Express to her ultimate destiny amid distant stars. Visit the author's webplex online at www.darksf.com for more info.

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.

KIRKUS REVIEWS: A poor university student in Paris starts an affair with a sophisticated married woman over the course of one tumultuous year...Marc and Emma begin a deep and intense affair, spending long hours getting to know each other in and out of bed. They gallivant through parks, restaurants, and the attractions of Paris, falling deeply in love. ...As they luxuriate in their mutual feelings, they are ... troubled by their own worries about protecting the happiness of the other. Told in the third person, the narrative is broken into four sections based on the temporal seasons and interspersed with short poems and ... artwork. There is a heavy emphasis on monologues and dialogue, both internal and external, throughout Cullen's sentimental story... The plot does move more quickly as the novel approaches its conclusion, and if readers can hang on, the tale becomes increasingly engrossing... The story features lovely descriptions of French foods, locations, and landmarks. There are also several beautifully rendered moments of human connection and self-sacrifice.A sweet but slow-moving tale of a love affair in Paris... -Kirkus ReviewsParis Affaire is a love story with an unforeseeable ending that will knock you out of your chaussettes.... about a young Parisian poet and his Angel in the City of Lights. They are both Parisian, but from opposite sides of the Métro tracks, so to speak.Marc, 23, is a handsome, sensitive young poet and rebel struggling to survive (taxi driver, bar tender, lawn mower, bookstore clerk) while writing vignettes and cascades of lyric verse.Emma, 30, is a wealthy, beautiful, classy faculty wife and former fashion model. Her husband has abandoned her emotionally, is a paleontologist on a long term assignment in Australia, is playing around with not only ancient bones but also fresh young ones in the clubs and on the beaches of Sydney or Melbourne. Lately, he has called from thousands of miles away to tell her he has found another girl, and is making long-distance noises about divorcing Emma.Emma, who looks ten years younger, an ageless beauty, has been alone too long. She has been faithful, living in her family's expensive and rambling, empty apartments in the City. When Marc happens into her life, they both click instantly. They run to each other's arms with passion, joy, and hunger.Together, Marc and Emma live in a bubble without time, where the clocks have no numbers but the seconds and minutes are sweeping toward some inevitable encounter with fate. In the meantime, they pursue love with all the joy and faith in their youthful hearts. But there is always a shadow of trepidation that their happiness in Paris may not last.He is her artist and she is his angel. Together, they make music along the same boulevards and streets that still bear haunting strains of Ravel or Debussy and verses of Verlaine or Apollinaire. Countless great artists have come here for centuries to walk in the covered passages and drink from fountains of inspiration. Can Marc and Emma overcome the differences that fate has thrown between them? Will their love last forever or just the one year told in this story?This is a young people's story - quirky, happy, poetic, literary, sad, reckless, joyful. It's a roller coaster ride of emotions leading to an ending you will not see coming in a million years. Nothing lasts forever - not in Paris, not in this life. As the French say: C'est la vie. That's life. Enjoy every minute, every hour to the fullest, while other trains are on their way to this station, other eyes and faces linger thoughtfully in rainy windows, looking wistfully forward to... the surprise of your life. And it was there all along. If we could just read the telegrams along the way. But we can't, and that's part of our destiny, and why life is so filled with surprises. Édith Piaf sang, "je ne regrette rien....I reg

A young poet offers 93 of his favorite works of poetry jotted at random moments during his teenage and early twenties years. The poems capture realtime snapshots like: sitting in a restaurant, on a windowsill, hitching across the USA in a driving rain, hiking in New England forests on an autumn day, or remembering time spent in a European village. He writes of love, loss, life, philosophy, a dying leaf whose perfume is like a woman's breath of life -- and many other kinetics of life in this strange beautiful universe.

Remember a time when you enjoyed playing board games around the kitchen table, and you rolled the dice and moved your piece around the train tracks on the board? You could buy and sell real estate in some virtual city that left much to the imagination. Maybe you fantasized what it might be like to shrink down to atomic size. You'd become a tiny person in an virtual game world with life-sized trains and cities all around you. Most excitingly, you'd meet all those fascinating people-spies, lovers, runners, shooters, or a million ordinary men and women going about their lives in a divided Gotha (think Berlin) right out of the Cold War. Interested? That metro has now arrived at your imagination station with this DarkSF novel by John Argo. Take a rocket ride on the author's inventive and original idea express. Enjoy a romantic story in a setting so far out that only John Argo could get us there and back. Best of all, the underlying concept takes us to the far edge of science. In a pocket universe of danger and intrigue, Tedda lives in a rainy metropolis right out of Brazil or Dark City. In a dark and glistening dystopia, East Gotha and West Gotha are eternal rivals trying to destroy each other in a war whose reasons nobody can fathom (aren't all wars like that?). You're about to meet a young West Gotha woman mathematician named Tedda, who commits the ultimate crime of treason - she has an affair with the dashing Captain Alton Hedrock, a spy for enemy East Gotha. Tedda becomes a prisoner in a strange West Gotha university, where she joins other programmers in the eternal military effort against East Gotha. For amusement, West Gotha's data miners invent a subatomic board game where you can actually descend to a tiny universe (that game board) and interact with people - and dark, dangerous forces that challenge your own reality. In the pocket universe of Meta 4 City, or Metaphor City, Tedda meets and falls in love with Edgar, a Rule like all things and all people in that miniature world. But Tedda's world is in danger of imminent destruction, and only Metaphor City offers a means of escape before it is too late. The spies of East and West are everywhere, and you always looks over your shoulder. The game is on, the stakes are sky-high, deadly spies move in the night, and the eternal war between East and West Gotha continues unrelentingly. Think East and West Berlin at war, complete with strutting officers in jackboots, alluring women with secrets and perfume, soft jazz on rainy street corners, droning bombers, sweeping search lights, and howling sirens. In the midst of all battle and terror, men and women manage to still fall secretly in love--that, too, is the oldest game in town. Except the entire world is about to change. This novel will remind you of DarkSF movie classics like The Matrix, Inception, Blade Runner, and Dark City, but Meta 4 City stands tall in a world of its own fresh, unique imagining. What is DarkSF? John Argo proposes that most literary, topnotch science fiction is DarkSF. That's not horror or gruesome, but "the dark chocolate of science fiction." We've already mentioned a few classics. Add to that Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Nobel Laureate William Golding's Lord of the Flies or The Inheritors, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein-the list is endless, and surprising. DarkSF is the Dark Chocolate of Science Fiction in particular, and literature in general. Clocktower Books will soon launch a website to offer more info and insight about DarkSF, so please stay tuned.

Doom Spore (a DarkSF Series novel) is a 'summer movie in a book' - dark, chilling, and hugely creepy science-horror fiction in the tradition of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Walked Like Men, and The Thing. As it turns out (the author didn't know this when writing it in 2003-5) Doom Spore reflects a true phenomenon - the entomopathogen fungus family, which turns ants and other insects into suicidal robots (zombies) to help the fungus thrive while the helpless victim (e.g., a carpenter ant) suffers a prolonged and terrifying death right out of your worst nightmares. More on that true science in a moment.Lt. Linsey Simon, San Diego Harbor Police, and her husband, hard-hitting reporter Jack Simon, are thrust headlong into the gripping case of a dangerous scientific experiment gone horribly wrong for corporate profit.This scary and entertaining story begins quietly and ominously in little homes in ordinary neighborhoods around San Diego. A boy named Jimmy Mendez, 9, and his cousin Maribel Walesky, 10, await the return of their dads (merchant sailors) from the sea.But the things that come home are not men. They look like sailors, but they are silent and empty-eyed, and are not the same dads who went to sea. At first, only the children can see this -not their mothers, nor any other adults--and nobody will believe them.Soon, people begin dying all over town, turning into alien spore carriers seeking their next victim to infect. The inhuman forces behind this are well organized by a corporation whose desperate and risky effort to develop a forbidden jungle-derived drug has gone horribly wrong. From a secret airstrip, in the Volcan Mountains east of San Diego, crop-dusting missions fly over the city to spread their spores more efficiently.By the time human authorities realize what confronts them, it's all but too late. Now it's up to Linsey and Jack, along with two brave children and a few hardy citizens, to save the world. San Diego, beautiful tourist capital of blue skies and balmy sea breezes, becomes a colony of the fungal or Fifth Kingdom of life on Earth.John Argo has written an entirely new and fresh premise here, using not the alien pods found in Jack Finney's 1955 classic The Body Snatchers, but a fungus horror from right here on Earth in the jungles of Peru. Amazingly, after publishing this book, the author learned that there are actually zombie fungus life forms in those very jungles. This is no joke. They are called entomopathogens, right out of the worst nightmares of science horror. That's science fiction gone dark and creepy (like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, and similar stories). Doom Spore is fiction (so far) but entomopathogens are real. For example, the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (discovered in 1859 in a tropical rainforest) attacks insects including carpenter ants. The fungus seats itself on the ant's head, drills into the brain, and builds a kind of living console on top of the head. The ant's entire nervous system is now controlled by the fungus, making the ant into a zombie (literally). The fungus then controls the ant, forcing it to abandon its life and venture into areas where the temperature and humidity are best suited for fungal reproduction. There, the ant is then forced to attach itself to a leaf or similar perch until it dies from starvation and dehydration, overgrown with fungus as in the worst horror movie you can imagine. Even Doom Spore isn't quite as cruel, although Doom Spore is both terrifying and rewarding as a modern classic soon to be. Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers has been made and remade into movies at least three times. That's a sure sign a story is not just great, but an archetype that spawns endless homages. Doom Spore is an homage but not an imitation. Read it and you'll agree that Doom Spore is wildly fresh and original, and deserves to be made into a very scary, addictive movie.

Rosemary Evening (28, her dream name) crosses nightly from a wakeful, daytime life gone tragically wrong (we thankfully never learn how or why; everything wakeful stays on that side as well). Welcome to the exciting, dreamy, creamy new world of The Talented Ms Rosemary Evening, heroine of the upcoming Snow Globing series of literary erotica fiction in the Venti Blush line of Clocktower Venti Books. For the price of a coffee, you can Read-a-Latte and get your bang for the buck. We promise. Rosemary Evening's unknown anguish will be fixed and healed as she becomes a fledgling superhero in our dream world. We follow Rosemary's first steps--by turns comical, sexy, out of control. There's HEA yet to come during the climax (yes; pun) with her irresistible, charming dream world boss. Dr. Joe Street is a brilliant, handsome Mafioso-looking smoothie and Bad Boy, who will be her director on future Snow Globing missions (in later novels). Rosemary's guide is a senior (30ish) female Talent. Fanna is a tall, elegant, wise blonde who becomes a good buddy and advisor on Rosemary's first wild romp, as she's suddenly free of terror, grief, guilt, inhibition, and other wakeful world demons that plague most of us. One day soon, she'll tire of grabbing men's buns at train stations, biting their wieners at picnics, running off with their balls, and blowing their flute at jazz clubs. Rosemary will start to help others--in the dream world, where we all meet when we are sleeping, but we have no clue. Only rare Talents like Rosemary, Fanna, and Joe Street know the score--look for future Snow Globing novels. The series never takes itself more serious than it needs to--light-hearted, sexy, and elegant with a redeeming swatch of humor at every dark turn. Search Cindy Night's website for more info. We spend a third of our lives asleep and much of that dreaming, but we recall nothing--leave it to Talent like Rosemary to save the world in our dreams while we sleep. *What Happens in Your Dreams Stays in Your Dreams* is the motto of a planned new fiction series (Snow Globing) that will blow your socks off. Newly minted dream guide (Talent) Rosemary Evening conducts missions into our cities of sleep, working for one or more secret agencies.

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.

If you liked cozying up with Stieg Larssen's Lisbeth Salander, you'll love Laurel 'Blue' Humboldt - except Blue was on the scene 25 years earlier. In this steamy, intriguing suspense novel from the very dawn of Internet publishing, attractive young punk DEA agent, martial artist, and grunge musician Laurel 'Blue' Humboldt must unravel not only the deadly secrets of an international drug cartel, but also the unusual love triangle in which she finds herself. Not only was Neon Blue a radically innovative digital novel in 1996, but the heroine is a young bisexual woman (DEA agent) struggling with her love life amid murder, mayhem, and desperate detective work. Young DEA Special Agent Blue's first case becomes intensely personal not just with the assassination of a key witness she is transporting in Manhattan, but the cartel-related murder of her dear friend, a married detective named Eddie Stosik in a small Connecticut town. Propelled by fury, she pursues the killers to San Diego, where two different showdowns must occur. One is her final, deadly confrontation with a creepy European slasher who is out-badding the Colombians. The other showdown is inside her heart, and love waits for no killer, agent, or detective. As the case takes her from coast to coast, with a climax in sunny San Diego, does her heart yearn more for beautiful Chinese American detective Martha Yee, or handsome millionaire importer and ex-model John Connor? She can't think too long, because the cartel's ruthless assassin is closing in. Skilled in karate - a statement in punk, rock, tattoos, and art - new 23-year-old college grad and training academy sprout Blue is tricked out with a 9 mm Glock, waving a DEA badge, as she tracks down a trail of corruption involving church officials, Colombian drug mobsters, and other crooks. Things go from personal, when the slasher who is on her trail starts brutally murdering her friends - to desperate when both John Connor and Martha Yee are targets on a murderous path that leads directly to Blue. Neon Blue by John Argo was the world's first true online e-book at first publication in 1996. This novel attracted world-wide attention in the 1990s, and was a bestseller on line during the early days of Web publishing and e-commerce. Publishing note about this book and Clocktower Books (publisher): Neon Blue by John Argo was the world's first true online e-book. Originally published in 1996, this was history's first novel ever published online for reading in HTML - proprietary, not public domain (Gutenberg-type programs not applicable). Full criteria listed in the interior text of the book and at the Clocktower Books website and museum pages. Neon Blue was a bestseller on line in the original Rocket eBook and Barnes & Noble e-book markets 1999-2001. Our publishing program branched into print on demand while our primary e-book platform in the early 2000s was Fictionwise (2001-2012). We continue to publish titles in POD and e-book formats, with our vision for a synthesized, digital-first future where content is all the meaning, not the container, and especially not obsolete, desperately struggling delivery systems.

Written by a young soldier in 1976 Cold War West Germany and forgotten for forty years, it glows as fresh today as it was when I composed it in Paris and Heidelberg and other European cities where I traveled in my old orange VW as a single, adventuresome young man. Like many soldiers far from home, I was having the time of my life but idn't know it. I was homesick, and spent many evenings going back to our headquarters in an old Hitler-era kaserne or barracks to lose myself in writing poetry and fiction. This novel was a nostalgic, melancholy, but passionate retrospection to the New England college town where I grew up. It's fiction - but who knows what tendrils of truth, remembrance, and long ago loves sprang up in the soil of imagination. This romantic coming of age novel tells of the passionate love affair etween a 23-year-old idealistic, talented poet and a beautiful, neglected young married woman in a New England college town set in 1973. The story has waited forty years, and is taking a little time to blossom, like a fine wine uncorked after decades. The companion volume of poetry is Cymbalist Poems, and the two novels have been reunited (twins separated at birth) in the book titled 27duet.

This romantic coming of age novel - bold and sensual, honest and raw - tells of the passionate love affair between a 23-year-old idealistic, talented poet and a beautiful, neglected young married woman in a New England college town set in 1973. Written by a young soldier in 1976 Cold War West Germany and forgotten for forty years, it glows as fresh today as it was when I composed it in Paris and Heidelberg and other European cities where I traveled in my old orange VW as a single, adventuresome young man. Like many soldiers far from home, I was having the time of my life but didn't know it. I was homesick, and spent many evenings going back to our headquarters in an old Hitler-era Kaserne or barracks to lose myself in writing poetry and fiction. This novel was a nostalgic, melancholy, but passionate retrospection to the New England college town where I grew up. It's fiction - but who knows what tendrils of truth, remembrance, and long ago loves sprang up in the soil of imagination. The story has waited forty years, gathering dust, and is finally in print along with its companion volume. It is bursting into blossom, a fine wine uncorked after decades. The companion volume of poetry is Cymbalist Poems, and the two books have been reunited (twins separated at birth) in the book titled 27duet. The poems compiled by 1976 represent the natural ending of my lyrical phase. I was a professional author and summer interne newspaper reporter at 17, and a published poet by 18. This is New Adult (20s) long before today's marketing category--fresh, artful, and emotionally honest.

Now for the first time in one volume, read the stunning cozy mystery trilogy by Renée B. Horowitz, Ph.D., also the author of Bitter Moon over Brooklyn and The Write Way to Murder. If you have not met Ruthie Kantor Morris, R.Ph. (RKM), you are in for a treat. She may well be the only pharmacist turned sleuth in the history of mystery, a maven of pills and thrills. RKM is smart, attractive, and determined - in the face of family tragedies, deceptions, and outright murder. What makes Renée's Rx Pharmacy Sleuth novels extra special is the fact that her husband worked as a professional in the field (Registered Pharmacist, R.Ph.) and both their dads were Registered Pharmacists (R.Ph.) as well. Renée, a semi-retired professor of applied sciences and technology, brings her own brilliant career to the task, as well as the retail pharmacy background as nobody else in the mystery business knows it, plus a native talent for writing characters who come alive on the page and struggle through dark and dangerous situations. Rx for Murder (#1 of a Trilogy) is a cozy mystery that offers an authentic, behind-the-scenes look at the pharmacy world from a knowledgeable author. Clever and charming heroine Ruthie Morris Cantor makes this first novel in the Rx Series a fascinating mystery of manners. What did his prescription records reveal to convince Ruthie that Harry Stokes's death was murder? As family members demand those records from Ruthie, suspicion shifts from the victim's young wife to the Scottsdale, Arizona pharmacist herself. Soon Ruthie finds she must unmask the murderer or become the next victim. Deadly Rx (#2 of a Trilogy) once again introduces cozy mystery sleuth and Arizona pharmacist Ruthie Cantor Morris. Did she make a fatal mistake in filling a teenage girl's prescription? Or did someone else substitute the fatal, blood-thinning medication? Convinced she made no error, Ruthie must discover what really happened to Amy Brookman. Ruthie's professional reputation is at stake. As the pharmacist uncovers myriad Brookman family secrets, she begins to realize her own life is in terrible danger. Rx Alibi (#3 of a Trilogy) brings back charming and persistent Arizona pharmacist Ruthie Cantor Morris in a cozy but life-and-death mystery. When Andrea Felder is murdered, Ruthie discovers a prescription drug the police have overlooked. Does it pinpoint the killer-or is it a false lead? Suspects include the Arizona pharmacist's best friend, Denise, and the mysterious Tony-Denise's abusive former boyfriend. Ruthie and her staff pharmacist also face a hostage confrontation at the supermarket pharmacy, and other non-stopk, terrifying situations. Dr. Renée Horowitz, Ph.D., semi-retired professor of technology and applied sciences at Arizona State University, is a member of Sisters in Crime and other professional author organizations. She is also the author of Bitter Moon over Brooklyn (a novel and wrenching retrospective) and The Write Way to Murder (a mystery novel set in the technology world).

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.

Reading is believing: The star of this duet is the author's "27" coming of age novel, written nights among moths and ghosts in an old Hitler-era army barracks to strains of Mozart. He was a young U.S. Army soldier, stationed in 1970s West Germany during the Cold War. Captured together after forty years gathering dust - twins separated at birth and reunited nearly a half century later - these two books will amaze you with their magic, beauty, melancholy, and passion. The author wrote poetry with talent and discipline through his teens and twenties, a published poet at 18 who flared out at 27 and left the select poetry of a finished career eclipsed in obscurity. He became a professional writer at 17 as a summer interne newspaper reporter in New Haven, and a starving novelist in his early 20s before hitching and driving across the USA (among many adventures) and settling in San Diego, from where he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Stationed in West Germany, he owned an orange VW van and traveled extensively with many adventures. At the same time, like all G.I.s, he was lonely and missed *the World* as troops far from home call the USA. He would return to the barracks alone at night - when all was still, under the lantern of Lili Marlene - and play Mozart while reimagining lives and loves of a past half memory and half myth. The poems and the novel he wrote among moths and ghosts are still fresh and readable today - presented here, for the first time, in a single volume together. The novel On Saint Ronan Street is a nostalgic retrospective on his lost past in New Haven - wellspring of his poetic art; and its women, his first loves. Titled cryptically Jon+Merile in manuscript, and left to gather dust for 40 years, it is the story of a 23 year old poet's wild love affair with the beautiful, neglected young professor's wife in a New England college town. The poems: The second book in this volume (Cymbalist Poems) contains the author's collected favorite poems from among hundreds written in over a decade, before his lyric flare-out at 27. He was a published poet and professional journalist at 18; a serious writer through his teens and twenties. Like the mythological "27" when rock stars crash and burn, other creative souls undergo a life change in their late twenties as well. In this author's life, he turned his passion and talent to writing prose. In these two books, the poetry resonates in the narrative, while each poem offers an intriguing glimpse of myth and story. In the novel, talented, passionate, and handsome 23 year old poet Jon Harney graduated from a small college, and is now mowing lawns and doing other odd jobs around Yale University while showing his verse portfolio to New York City publishers. He meets a lonely young woman, Merile Doherty (pronounced like 'Merrill' for reasons revealed). She beautiful, intriguing, and fun. Merile's husband Bill is an archeologist at Yale University. Bill is older and colder, vacant at affection, always gone, never quite there for her. He is Absent Without Emotional Leave (AWEL). When Merile and Jon meet, she's been alone again for too long. Bill is far off in Australia digging for bones - and also digging chicks in Sydney. He phones to tell her he has fallen in love with an Australian woman, and is going to leave Merile. That's before he calls to tell her he isn't. That's how it goes. Merile is vulnerable and Jon Harney is smitten. Their chemistry is incendiary. Like hungry young wolves, they can't get enough of each other. Their mad, passionate love affair is as glorious as it is doomed. In this 27duet, the author's twin books - separated at birth - are finally united after forty years gathering dust. The light that shines half as long shines twice as bright, to paraphrase Roy in Blade Runner. The author's light continues to shine, in another century and another life (see the Amazon author pages for Jean-Thomas Cullen, John T. Cullen, and John Argo).

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