Hagen Patterson, trained as a chemist, has a secret: he is also an alchemist, seeking the key to understanding the human mind and body. Hagen is obsessed with brewing potions, quite aware that his obsession results from the fact that he feels he has to live up to his name. Hagen: the antagonist from Richard Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" operas. Hagen has never met his father and his mother Emma refuses to tell him anything. What Hagen does not know is that his father has been watching over him all his life. He is a demon possessing Emma. When Juliana, Hagen's unrequited love, teases him beyond endurance, Hagen decides to make her his. He asks his teacher for more powerful potions, and, after he has proven himself worthy, receives several, among them a love potion for Juliana...
They met in the rebellious campus of Columbia University during the 1960s, the days of the Civil Rights, women’s movement and the anti-Vietnam war protests. Jenny was a post-grad aspiring to transform her activism into a journalistic crusade; Siegfried a young and handsome German law student charismatic and unyielding haunted by his family’s past. Random encounters soon turned into sleepless nights; a passionate love story was born! In 1968 Siegfried arrived in Rhodesia (current day Zimbabwe) a break-away British colony in Southern Africa, as a member of a legal U.N. team to investigate human rights violations and a few weeks later Jenny flies there to meet him with her wedding gown in her suitcase. Here in this exotic but racially segregated paradise, the couple witnessed in the impoverished African townships and the countryside, what oblivious white settlers refuse to accept, and what the hardline white regime’s propaganda machine systematically conceals: a fast-approaching African revolution. When Jenny crossed paths with an unconventional and scientific warfare contractor, an immense figure of unparallel political influence, wealth and charms and repressive colonial military background, she will -unintentionally- find herself in the shadowy corridors of Southern Africa’s deep state operating behind the mainstream political smokescreen. She will also discover a dark side she never imagined existed: her own. Placed against a historical backdrop that spans from the hedonistic Cabaret Berlin of 1920s, wartime Germany and Nazi occupied Greece to the 1960s America, and the apartheid era in South Africa; And from Southern Africa’s killing fields to the 108th floor of World Trade Center’s north tower on September 11, 2001, Ms. Y is a cross-genre psychological drama, epic in scope, that deconstructs rather than glorifies power, examines the depths of human controversy, delivers provocative social messages and blends history, mythical allegory and fictional narrative in a fast-pacing plot dominated by three bigger than controversial protagonists tested by love and promiscuity, moral conflicts and momentous circumstances.
Siegfried Sassoon is mostly remembered for the devastating poetry he wrote during World War One as a result of leading his troops "over the top" to certain death. This episode in his life--when he was sent to military hospital suffering from shell-shock and his heroic return to the Front--is covered extensively in his own writing, and has overshadowed his later literary output. But his more mature poetry is resuscitated in this sensitive, exhaustively researched biography. As well as recounting the friendships "Siggy" famously had with fellow poets Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen, Roberts delves into the more private arena of Sassoon's covert homosexuality and his ill-fated marriage. We learn about Sassoon the passionate golfer and bloodthirsty fox-hunter, all of which adds greater depth to this complex man. Roberts also digs deep into his subject's psyche to reveal a fixation with father figures which started during the War when he was under analysis (and arose from the early death of his father); and uncovers new sources of information concerning Sassoon's conversion to Catholicism. This fresh material means that the earlier life is somewhat neglected, but, then, as Sassoon himself said "My real biography is my poetry."
Can they find love in the darkest days of war? It's 1944, and Florence is a talented engineer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, patching up planes to make sure that the brave Spitfire pilots of Cottisbourne airbase return safely day after day. When she befriends the new squadron leader - shy, handsome Siegfried - it seems that romance might blossom under the war-torn skies. But Florence is nursing a broken heart and a terrible secret, which might destroy her one chance of happiness... Meanwhile, a new plane is being developed that could turn the tide of the war, but Florence fears there is traitor is in their midst, putting Siegfried - and the whole country - in terrible danger. Can Florence save her Spitfire boys, and her own heart? This romantic, exciting World War II saga is perfect for fans of Kate Hewitt, Jenny Holmes and Annie Murray
A vivid grasp of the story and the characters in "The Ring of Niebelung" brings Richard Wagner's mythic four-opera cycle to life. The Ring Cycle has a hold on our imagination like no other operatic work because it is archetypal and has the power of myth as well as music to reverberate in the psyche. Bolen shows how myth illuminates psychology, and more - Ring of Power goes beyond the psychology of the individual, revealing dysfunctional families and patriarchal institutions.
'If I Should Die is a page turner thriller with great characters and literally heart-stopping suspense - I loved it!' Mary Higgins Clark In cities all over the USA people whose lives have just been saved by a medical miracle are dying mysterious and violent deaths. Chicago policeman Joe Duvall realises his sister's life may be at risk, and a desperate race against time begins. 'An exciting and compelling piece of storytelling. Fast moving and full of suspense' Publishing News
