Enemies

By Richard Whitten Barnes
Historical, 324 pages
Cover art by Trisha FitzGerald
Paperback ISBN 978-1-61309-822-6  $12.95 available from Amazon or CreateSpace
Ebooks available from Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, or Amazon

Review:
Jürgen Stern has come to Ottawa to negotiate a trade deal between Canada and Germany. He is in the hotel restaurant for breakfast and sees another man of his age. After a waiter draws his attention, he looks back to see the gentleman is gone, but has left behind a folder. Inside are drawings from a close up view of World War I. Recognition strikes Jürgen, also a veteran of the war. His determination to meet the artist leads to a momentous change for a total stranger.

Brian MacLennan knew he could not become a farmer, so he left his home on St. Joseph Island in 1916 to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force going to Europe to fight the Germans. Now, in 1968, as a successful business man, he doesn't believe his drawings of what he saw in France during the war have value, but his daughter wants him to give them to his son as a wedding gift. Only, he has left them behind.
   
Enemies exposes the viewpoints of two young men, boys really, who become soldiers, one German and one Canadian. The story gives the reader a unique view of the bravery, blood, devastation, fear and death of opposing sides. Jürgen and Brian meet again many years later, their meeting draws parallels between their differences during the appalling war, and exposes how much they were alike. As a December release, this story will certainly give readers the wish for peace.

A Soul Forsaken

By Kev Richardson
Mainstream/Historical, 299 pages
Cover art by Trisha FitzGerald
 
A true tale of how an Egyptian born son can be educated to achieve honours in his chosen university studies, yet denied the right to turn them into a career.

Every Egyptian child adopts at birth its father’s nationality, so many find themselves a foreigner in his land of birth. Another law denies foreigners in Egypt, the right to work. With neighbouring Sudan in an ongoing civil war, this young man risks assassination if even visiting his father’s country, let alone wanting to reside and work there.

What can he do when even visas are denied Sudan’s citizens to any western country, simply fearing being ‘smothered’ by countless Sudanese wanting to flee the mayhem?

In this case, a visiting westerner takes up the challenge of finding a way around this poor fellow’s political dilemma.

Excerpt:
Zamalec, Cairo…

“This, Mama?”

She nodded. “Yes, son. For the sunroom.”

Ali and his mother were going through the house, attaching coloured Post-It tabs to every item of furniture.

Yellow designated leave-in-the-house, green meant deliver to her father’s home, pink designated being sold at auction.

They were under no time limit to quit the Sudan government property, yet the hint had been ‘within a month or two.’ They were moving only a few streets away to her parents’ home, where tradesmen were currently closing this door and opening a new one in other walls, that the el-Haq duo had their own apartment of four rooms plus a kitchen and shared bathroom.

Madame el-Haq was now agitating even more strongly that Ali began thinking seriously of marriage.

“There is garden space enough that the new apartment can be extended another room, son.”

“Yes, Mother, but again I must insist that I do not yet marry. Any son born to me in Egypt will grow up with my dreadful impediment to life’s happiness. I simply cannot cast such a slur on any child.”

“The Sudanese problem will one day be over, Ali, when you could take your family to Khartoum or El Fasher. We have talked on this so many times.”
“Yes, Mother, and every time finish realising that the ‘when’ of it can never be gauged. Only when I can see myself safely welcomed into Sudan will I marry. If you do not want me living with you, I can take my own apartment somewhere, or go back to university and further my education.”

“I should miss you dreadfully if you moved away, Ali, but a man of your age continuing to live with his mother is not Allah’s way. It must attract suspicion of homosexuality to cast doubt on my father’s entire family. A bachelor son in his twenties should be marrying.”

“Well, until accepted in the Sudan, I cannot. But if you fear slurs, Mama, I shall take the University course. However, I would prefer time to see what happens in the Sudan, also to keep appealing to the British Embassy.”

Ali was silent a long time. We have been through this so many times, every time ending up deciding nothing. I could enter the monkhood, yet I cannot devote my entire life and spirit to that. I envy Evan the freedom he has, yet whilst I could be self-employed like that, I must depend on what money I could earn from outside Egypt. And changing foreign money has a limit, one too small to grant me a livelihood.

Every which-way he looked, there were barriers.

How long can a man keep sponging on his family and maintain pride? Suffer the ignominy of having no career or even purpose in life? Man was not made to live so. Life here can only continue demeaning.

He realised that family money, while continuing to give him a comfortable life, did nothing towards giving him personal satisfaction.

My studies in physics have me qualified to be earning good money, even one day to receiving some notoriety. Surely such is every man’s dream—every man but one born in Egypt of a Sudanese father!

The Sound And The Silence

By JoEllen Conger
Historical, 208 pages
Cover art by Richard Stroud
 
Excerpt:
Let me introduce myself. I’m Nick A. Nickell, and in my late teens, I was just a simple country boy raised on a farm. It changed my life after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I wasn’t ready for what came next, and this living hell became my story.
~ * ~
The old Marine Corps bus jolted me when it swayed, turning off the main road onto the graveled area at the base railhead. I had almost fallen asleep. It was four A.M. and I felt cold and disgruntled. At three A.M., the company commander had ordered us out of our warm beds and told us to pack up; we were leaving for a train ride. This was life in the Marine Corps.

I was cold because we had turned in our overcoats. Since troop movements were never discussed with enlisted men, we could only guess what that meant; they would be unnecessary where we were going. I listened to the crunch of tires on the gravel as we crossed the huge loading area. This was where equipment and personnel arrived and left Camp Lejeune Marine Base in North Carolina. At least I was happy they weren’t taking us off base to some city railroad station. I hated railroad stations; there was something lonely about them. My mind wandered back to the first time I could remember ever being in one.

The station was in Oakland, California. It had been alive with activity; wagon loads of luggage were being pulled here and there and people were standing in line to buy tickets to board trains. I watched a mother struggle to carry her luggage and still try to keep control of her flock of unruly children. Groups of servicemen moved in all directions. Girls were saying tearful goodbyes to their military sweethearts. One couple stood in a corner talking in low, serious tones. A girl stood alone, leaning against a column crying silent tears. The shoeshine man had business standing by, waiting.

The loudspeaker was blaring information about a train that was either arriving or departing; I couldn’t tell which. The words were almost lost against the background noise.

It was 1943… I was eighteen years old. The whole nation was involved with the war. Everywhere, there were posters and signs encouraging enlistment, extolling the virtues and advantages of buying war bonds, or warning against loose talk— “A slip of the lip can sink a ship.” Everywhere there were signs of the military presence. Army trucks moved along the highways, and uniformed men lounged around street corners in towns and cities. Flags flew from front yard poles, from porches, from the tops of buildings and from ropes tied across streets. Small flags began showing up in parents’ windows, with a star in the center, testament to the young men lost at war. It was a flag that reflected my own sense of sadness and grief for their loss.

I was used to being on my own to make my own decisions, to go where I wanted. But this was different. I had to remind myself that all I had to do was follow the instructions of the chief petty officer in charge of our group. I was standing with about a hundred other young men, who all wore arm bands reading “U.S. Navy.” We were inductees, and we were waiting to board a train that would carry us away from our homes and families, to a new and strange world; to the Navy Boot Camp at Farregat, Idaho. I had been living alone for some time, but for the first time, I felt disconnected, confused and a little lonely.

Opal's Faith

By Agnes Alexander
Historical Western Romance 364 pages
Cover art by Trisha FitzGerald

Nineteen-year-old Opal Barnett never dreamed that leaving her home in Memphis, Tennessee to settle on a ranch that her father had inherited near the little town of Wildweed, Arizona would bring such an unsettling change in life. Not only did she find a half-breed cousin, but she found she had to give up dreams of wearing beautiful gowns and dress in britches, ride a horse, round up cattle, and do many jobs required of a rancher. She never dreamed that the hired hand who was such a help to would become the object of her secret dreams. She knew she had to fight the impulse she had to touch him every time they were together because she didn't have time in her life for anything except helping her family.

Jace Renwick had one goal, to find the man who had murdered his father in a Colorado gold field ten years earlier. The fact that he was pushing thirty, time most men who wanted a family had settled down, didn't tempt him to give up the pursuit. Informed the culprit was in Arizona, he set out to track  him down and landed up at the Barnette ranch. Knowing this would be a good place to keep a low profile in his search, he volunteers to help George Barnett get the place up and running. But the auburn haired Opal was harder to ignore than he ever dreamed a woman would be.

Excerpt:

"Who is that man, Opal?" Her mother asked as soon as she was in the door.

"He said his name was Jace Renwick, not that that means anything to us. He wanted to water his horse and get a drink for himself."

Her mother frowned. "Is he going to leave as soon as he waters his horse?"

"He said he wanted to talk to Papa."

"Papa's in town," Pearl butted in.

"I know. Mr. Renwick said he'd wait for him at the barn. I didn't tell him that it would be a while before Papa came home."

Gloria glanced out the door. "It kind of makes me nervous with a strange man being here and your father gone."

"Maybe he'll get tired of waiting and leave, Mama." Opal hoped those words would waylay her mother's fears, but she didn't believe them as she said them. From her first impression of the man, she got the feeling that once Mr. Renwick set his mind to something, he'd see it through. She wasn't sure how she got this feeling. It was just there.
~ * ~

Though neither he nor his horse needed water, Jace had a drink, then led China to the trough for a few sips. Afterward he moved him to the corral and looped the reins over one of the standing posts. He removed the saddle and hung it over the fence where the rails weren't broken. He couldn't help noticing how rundown the place looked. He'd learned in town this morning that the owner had recently died and his greenhorn brother and his family had not only inherited the place, but had moved in the day before. He wasn't sure the family's trip from the east was worth the trouble to claim the inheritance. It would take a lot of backbreaking work to make this ranch turn a profit. Work he was sure a tenderfoot wasn't able to put in, even if he were willing.

But the people on this ranch weren't his problem. He had his own objective and these naïve people were unwittingly going to help him achieve it, though they didn't or wouldn't realize they were doing it.
Stepping inside the barn, not only to escape the extra warm spring day, but to look around, he was pleased to find the structure solid, with no signs of leakage from the roof or the walls. There were four stalls and the back doors would give access from both directions. He climbed the attached ladder to the loft and walked around. The boards were fine with the exception of one or two that needed nailing down.

Returning to the main floor, he went to the room which interested him the most. It was built on the right side of the barn before the stalls began. He pushed the door open and entered. He was surprised to find the room larger than he'd thought it would be.

As he did in other areas of the barn, he tested the walls for stability. They were as strong as the rest of the building. He walked to the window and looked out. There was an unobstructed view of the house and the approaching road.

Finding this to his liking, he muttered, "With a little cleaning and a bed built in the back wall, this will be ideal. Yep, for the next few months this will be my bedroom."

Beresford at Bay

By Kev Richardson
Beresford Branson Series Book Four
Historical, 327 pages
Cover art by Trisha FitzGerald
Link

At the end of World war II, the Allied Control Council is given leave to decide on the rebuilding of Germany. Political infighting however, makes headway difficult as the Big 3 trip and stumble over each others’ feet.

Democracy and Communism cannot find a common path in leading Germany out of Nazism into a more meaningful nation in terms of international unity.

Can Beresford’s Red Cross influence help save what seems an inevitable failure of the Zoning system?

Excerpt:
We left as the early sunset began plunging Düsseldorf into darkness, arriving at our stake-out house and half groped our way into the room with its roof mostly intact, even though two of the brick walls had gaping rents. Even the door had been quite shattered. Scattered rat-shit was the only evidence of the room having been, at some time, inhabited by squatters. A sole blown-out window alone gave clear sight of the Ubahn entrance.

Already we were shivering.

“You guys were on the roof last night?”

“On the bit that remains, yes,” they said as if in chorus.

I shivered at the thought.

Wow, I was beginning to feel a real sleuth—my first such opportunity to help discover a covert operation, one of the very purposes Force 8673 was founded.

We were lucky. Five fellows drove an ancient pick-up to the station entrance. All alighted, proceeding to haul stuff out of the back. One item was all we needed to see and there it was, one end showing through a rent in its wrapping, a brass banner, its apex the circle encasing what was today’s illegal emblem, the Nazi Swastika.

Oh! In our first few minutes of watching? Already here is proof enough to call in MI5’s muscle-men!

Tremors were coursing through me.

“Come on fellows, that’s all we need. Let’s get to safety. I’ll buy wine for celebrating!”

But had Ego been right, again?

~ * ~

I couldn’t help but feel it had all been so easy.

The very first arrival?

Yet an ominous sound reached all our ears, for we looked at each other in surprise. From the empty doorway came lights of several torches.

Too many, was my instant fear!

Much German swearing and guttural oaths broke the night’s quiet.

All at once, we realised the portent, fearful to say the least.

Philip had been on duty with the binoculars, Daniel and I crouched on the floor side-by-side close by. Daniel grabbed my arm.

“Quickly, Berry,” he whispered loudly enough for Philip to also hear. “Out the window.”

Philip, already on his feet, despite being near twice Daniel’s and my ages, was first out. I ushered Daniel out after him, and as I followed, I saw out of the corner of an eye, Philip drop the binoculars. In the dark he couldn’t see them.

“Forget them,” I called as I loped off after Daniel, expecting Philip would follow.

Daniel had dashed into the ruins of an adjoining building.

“They might think we ran down the laneway,” he whispered back at me.

I couldn’t hear noises close behind me, but could only wonder what might still be happening back in the room we had just abandoned.

But oh? Where is Philip?

Even Ego couldn’t answer.

Daniel kept running across the room we arrived in, to disappear through a half collapsed doorway. I had a snatch view of Philip struggling with two other dark forms.

I saw no option but to follow Ego’s advice.

“Run,” he was now urging me. “Follow Daniel. You can do nothing to help Philip. More of the critters are already coming through that window.”

Maidens in the Night

By Mark Morey
Historical, 569 pages
Cover art by Richard Stroud
ISBN 978-1-61309-201-9 $4.99
ISBN 978-1-61309-807-3 $11.95

Blurb:
It is Whitechapel in London, November 1888. Young, attractive prostitute Mary Kelly is stalked by someone, but who? Former client Joe Flemming, the serial killer Jack the Ripper who has murdered four or five prostitutes already, or someone else? She knows any man she meets could kill her, but she has no choice other than to work the streets.

Excerpt:
Sixty-six 
A beautiful Sunday for the walk to Saint Peters in Eaton Square. A lovely, sunny autumn morning. Michelle, Brett and Julia headed to Belgravia’s church, surrounded by nobility, aristocrats and ladies. Hypocrites, every last one of them, Michelle thought. It was the one thing about living in Belgravia she didn’t like. They closed on neighbours from the same terraced block, but not surprised they were heading in the same direction at the same time of day. Mr. and Mrs. Thurland and Mr. and Mrs. Folkes were walking rather slowly as was the way with many women. Michelle overheard Mrs. Folkes say “it’s quite inappropriate for a woman in her position to go outside dressed like that.” Mrs. Thurland responded, “she looks like a servant dressed in black with a white apron; barely a hat and no gloves.” Mrs. Folkes said, “If she wants to be a servant she cannot wear gloves.”

“Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Thurland; Mr. and Mrs. Folkes,” Michelle said firmly but nicely.

“Ah, Mrs. Finlay,” Mrs. Folkes said. “It’s good to see you. How is Mr. Finlay these days? It’s been a while since we have seen him.”

Michelle smiled. “I don’t know about Mr. Finlay but Mr. Price here is feeling particularly fine. Are you not Brett?”

“Indeed I am,” Brett replied.

Michelle glanced at her now walking companions having slowed to their pace. She smiled sweetly at them.

“How are you this morning, Mrs. Finlay?” Mr. Folkes asked.

“I am well although I have been very busy these past weeks and months,” Michelle replied. “You may have seen me dressed for work at our charity refuge.”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“I wear East End attire: a black dress with a white apron, a simple white bonnet and no gloves of course. I find such an outfit works well in Whitechapel.”

“Is that right?” Mrs. Thurland asked.

“Indeed it is,” Michelle said. “East-enders don’t trust us; they see us as wealthy hypocrites. To go there dressed as we are now would be a waste of time.”

“But surely they can see that we’re all the same regardless of the clothes we choose to wear?”

“I don’t truly know.” Michelle pondered a retort. “We could show by example. I could arrange several dozen former prostitutes and other inhabitants of the slums to attend our lovely church next Sunday. There’s room for them and they would add colour, I feel. Then they would see that we’re all the same, more or less.”

Michelle glanced at Mrs. Thurland who was bright red with either embarrassment or rage. “Do you think we ought to invite several dozen to share the Lord’s Day with us Mr. Price?” Michelle asked innocently.

“I’m sure the inhabitants of Whitechapel would find sharing our church to be most uplifting, Mrs. Finlay,” Brett replied.

“Then it’s settled.” Michelle smiled at Mrs. Folkes and Mrs. Thurland. “I am so glad we had this little chat this morning and I am sure that next Sunday will be interesting indeed.” They reached the steps. “Well, here we are, Mr. Price. If you shall excuse us, Mr. and Mrs. Thurland; Mr. and Mrs. Folkes.”

They paused just inside and allowed their upper-crust neighbours to seek out similarly upper-crust friends.

“That was rather cruel, Michelle,” Brett whispered.

“They started it,” Michelle said. “Let’s sit at the back where we belong.” They took a pew at the rear of the church.

“Will they come from Whitechapel?” Julia asked.

“No, never,” Michelle said. “The working-class labour twelve hours a day, five-and-a-half days a week, and Sunday’s the only time they have to themselves. Church is their last priority.”

The vicars appeared way off in the distance.

“We should pray,” Michelle whispered, changing her mood to reverence as best she could. She dressed like an East-ender at times but she was still middle-class. The service was uplifting while the organ and choir were magnificent. It was one thing about living in Belgravia that Michelle adored. Few churches brought their congregation closer to God than Saint Peters.

The reverend climbed the steps to the pulpit and looked down on the congregation. “Let us pray,” he said. Michelle closed her eyes and bowed her head.

“Dear God, bless the souls of the two women tragically murdered in Whitechapel this very morning. Show them Your mercy when judgement time comes, and remember the opportunities denied to them in this life. Amen.”

Michelle raised her head and looked at the reverend way off in the distance. One part of her cried ‘no’ but she bit her lip to keep it inside. No, not again. Not two! For three years Whitechapel had been part of her and she had been part of Whitechapel. The people of Whitechapel suffered every day and they didn’t deserve it. Nobody deserved it but least of all those people. When would it end? Michelle sat through the sermon in a daze; not a single word registered. She had to get out of church, get home, get changed and get to the people she truly cared for.

Michelle strode to her home with Julia while Brett went to buy a newspaper. They met at the front door and went inside.

“The reverend was right,” Brett said. “At one this morning the body of the first victim was discovered in Dutfield’s Yard in Berner Street. This victim had her throat cut but was not mutilated. Forty-five minutes later the body of the second victim was discovered in Mitre Square behind Mitre Street. This victim had her throat cut and was badly mutilated. Both were middle-aged and of the unfortunate class.”

“Do you wish to go to Whitechapel, Mother?” Julia asked.

“Yes, of course. You should come.”

“I will.”