Kahn & Engelmann

A bestseller in Germany and Austria, the English translation of Kahn & Engelmann was published to great critical acclaim. The novel tells the story of a Jewish family from rural Hungary, their immigration to Vienna in the great days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, their loves, business ventures and failings, and their eventual tragic destruction. Narrated by one of the characters, Peter Engelmann, who wishes only to forget his past, this highly original novel recreates a vanished Vienna with salty humour and humanity. In a voice which is appealing without being sentimental, Peter describes his escape from the Nazis through snowy woods, his attempts to start a new life in England and Canada, and his decision to immigrate to Israel. Written by an eminent scholar, himself a survivor of Nazism, Kahn & Engelmann is both an entertaining novel and a major work of Holocaust literature.

One O’Clock Jump

Halfway around the world, war has begun, but for Dorie Lennox, a newly-minted private eye on her first tail, danger is more immediate. The dark streets of Kansas City of 1939 offer swing music, fast cars, gangsters, and the chance to forget about the Depression and her own murky past. But first she must conquer her fears and save a woman on a bridge high above the muddy Missouri. Dorie is thrown into a quickly unraveling scam that offers salvation to few — and misery to plenty — in the high stakes world of machine politics and desperation deals.

With vivid prose and sharp dialogue, the world of Dorie Lennox comes alive, behind the wheel of her Packard in jazz-age Kansas City. The landscape of America and the homefront of World War II are evoked in a thoughtful mystery that lingers for the force of characters and keen sharpness of a slice of history seen through the perceptive, compassionate eyes of Dorie Lennox.

Cover background image from shog9 – flickr CC-BY-SA

Sweet and Lowdown

Sweet and Lowdown is the second book of the Doris Lennox Mysteries.

Europe is at War. Nazi bombers are hammering London. Wendell Willkie is giving Roosevelt a run for his money. In Kansas City, Dorie Lennox and her partner Amos Haddam are trying to keep the blond and beautiful Thalia Hines from destroying herself. It’s not easy. The girl has every reason to escape the cold stone mansion where her mother lies dying. Eveline Hines is a decorated war hero during the First World War. Now she’s struggling to protect her only daughter from men who lust over her inheritance even more than her curves. In the rich milieu of a bygone time, an America preparing for war provides color for the intimate portrait of a powerful woman bearing witness to the destruction of all she loves. For the Hines family, nothing will ever be the same in this powerful story of maternal love and family secrets, and the disastrous attempts to mingle them.

Sweet and Lowdown is a historical mystery full of darkness and peculiar heartache of the wayward child, a story that will stay with the reader long after the book is closed.

Cover background image: Alejandra Mavroski – Flickr – CC-BY

Wrath of the Lemming-Men

Wrath of the Lemming-Men is the third book of the Chronicles of Isambard Smith.

From the depths of Space a new foe rises to do battle with mankind: the British Space Empire is threatened by the lemming-people of Yull, ruthless enemies who attack without mercy, fear or any concept of self preservation. At the call of their war god, the Yull have turned on the Empire, hell bent on conquest and destruction in their rush towards the cliffs of destiny.

When the Yullian army is forced to retreat at the battle of the River Tam, the disgraced Colonel Vock swears revenge on the clan of Suruk the Slayer, Isambard Smith’s homicidal alien friend. Now Smith and his crew must defend the Empire and civilise the stuffing out of a horde of bloodthirsty lemming-men- which would be easy were it not for a sinister robotics company, a Ghast general with a fondness for genetic engineering and an ancient brotherhood of Morris Dancers- who may yet hold the key to victory…