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Find out what happens when the legends from the ancient world collide with the chaos of eighteenth century India?...

For some war is an inspiring, uplifting, and a liberating occurrence.  Such is the case of Emil Dorfmeister.  Abandon without a name to the St. Katherine Order in Posen, Dorfmeister received an excellent education but, because he was an orphan, no employment opportunities.  He left the sisters' care at an early age to wander from one job to the next picking up experiences and, when working in the coal mines of Silesia, Russian as a second language.  When the Great War started, he volunteered and fought for three years in the trenches of France gaining a new talent as a machine gun sharpshooter.  But his real asset was in knowing Russian.  He was culled from a pillbox crew and sent to Ukraine as part of an occupation force which had transcended its original purpose as a restorer of the Ukrainian government to a pillaging horde that indiscriminately seized Ukrainian food to ship back to Germany.  Into his life came Tatianna Brendt, the daughter of German parents living along the Volga.  Before the Revolution, Brendt had received an education at the Women's Institute in Kiev and found work with a legal firm in Kharkov.  The Revolution destroyed the Tsarist legal system putting her out of a job but Brendt took an active part in furthering women's rights in the Bolshevik party.  She was zealous and soon drew the envy and ridicule of those who were not comfortable with a woman having so much influence.  She was forced out of her apartment due to rumors of promiscuous behaviors, fired from her job as an influencer, and relegated to living on the Kharkov streets with only the clothes on her back in February.  Then an opportunity came her way.  Because she could read and write Russian and German, the new secret police, the CHEKA, recruited her to spy for them in Ukraine.  She was dressed up and left to find someone she could attach herself to among the German occupation force.  She found that someone in Emil Dorfmeister.

     Warm, well-clothed, well fed, and safe, Brendt began her spying career with the help of Dorfmeister who had become fed-up with the ruthlessness of his superiors in looting Ukrainian resources.  It soon came to pass that efforts to collect grain and other food supplies in his area of administration to send back to Germany came to naught and armed resistance to collection caravans increased.  Before Dorfmeister's superiors could launch an investigation, the war ended and the Germans were forced to evacuate Ukraine.  Dorfmeister's last acts as an administrator were to send Brendt north while he boarded a train to Germany.  Brendt succeeded in gaining Bolshevik Russia but the part of the train that Dorfmeister was in was blown up by inept Bolshevik partisans.  The train, relatively unharmed, continued its journey leaving Dorfmeister behind to either walk out of Russia or join the partisans to stay alive.  He chose to use his skill as a machine gunner with the partisans.  Brendt went on to spy on Leon Trotsky and the antirevolutionary General Wrangel for the CHEKA.  Dorfmeister, in his turn, joined Wrangel's army after being captured and given a choice of join or be executed.

     Brendt and Dorfmeister came within a hair's breathe of meeting again and again.  Brendt secretly contributed to Dorfmeister's recovery from wounds in Simferopol and nearly came to a reunion in Constantinople after the evacuation of Wrangel's army from the Crimea.  Dorfmeister was never aware of who his benefactor was and as a result fled Constantinople to take a job of training the pan-Moslem army of Enver Pasha in Turkestan.

     The final acts of the story play out in Afghanistan and the new kingdom of Yugoslavia.  Both paths are tainted by the past.    

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Angel of Aleppo is a story of the Armenian Genocide, including the little-known link between the Genocide and the WW1 Anzac experience. It highlights the cruelty of the Ottoman Young Turks towards their Armenian citizens, but it is ultimately about faith and love and the redemptive power of forgiveness.

Angel of Aleppo is set from 1915 – 1919 in Anatolia (southern modern-day Turkey), Aleppo and the Mesopotamian desert, then to Beirut in 1923, and plays out in Adelaide, South Australia, from 1927 - 1966.

In May 1915, Anoush, a sixteen-year-old Armenian girl, and fellow villagers are evicted from their Anatolian village by Ottoman soldiers commanded by Ibrahim bey, a young local warlord who is obsessed by her beauty. Anoush survives, but can her heart survive, after her mother is shot before her eyes?

A massive column of evictees - women, children and old men - endure monstrous cruelties on the infamous Death Marches as they are driven south via Aleppo to the Mesopotamian desert.

Anoush meets elderly priest Apraham, and with sister Covinar, friends and Krikor, her first love, she escapes the caravan and heads west to the mountain near the Mediterranean called Musa Ler. But Ibrahim's reward offer leads to her capture and detention in Aleppo.

Aided by German medical orderly Armin Wegner*, she escapes again, learns to nurse and begins helping diseased, starving Armenians. Determined to be the woman her mother raised her to be, Anoush becomes known as the Angel of Aleppo, her courage and resolution an inspiration.

She is forced to take her chances in the Mesopotamian desert, she loses Krikor, and is captured by Ibrahim bey, but is rescued by Trooper Tom Mills of the Australian Light Horse.

By 1923, Anoush is nursing at the Australasian Orphanage at Antilyas, Beirut. She meets the eminent South Australian humanitarian Reverend James Cresswell*, who helps her find and ultimately marry Tom Mills. Over the years she remains close to Reverend Cresswell but feels cut off from her past.

Years pass; Anoush is widowed and alone. She visits the Adelaide War Memorial on the Genocide's 50^th anniversary and meets former Ottoman soldier, Mehmet. Can she forgive oppressors of the innocent?

Angel of Aleppo is an expose of injustice, a thriller, a snapshot of a dark moment in history, but it is ultimately a story about the truth and the healing power of love.

*Wegner and Cresswell are actual historical figures. US Ottoman ambassador Henry Morgenthau Jr and 28^th US President Woodrow Wilson make cameo appearances as well.

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Do you want to know a secret?

Beneath the very ground on which you walk and beyond the stars above your head, are more worlds than you could ever dream of. There are monsters. Be afraid. Magic, wielded by witches and sorcerers. Epic adventures in worlds far across the ocean. And fearsome weapons which threaten to destroy everything.

Jimmy Crikey is a brave soul who faces some pretty scary challenges. Solving mysteries and averting mayhem, his incredible courage allows him to free up his abilities to shine and rise above every challenge in his path, on his way to discovering why he looks so very strange.

With a bright red mop of unruly hair, big blue eyes, a small snub nose, pointed ears and enormous feet, poor Jimmy is ridiculed by the neighbourhood children and runs away in search of a world where he fits in. Following a midnight flight through the forest, he stumbles into a lost, underground world called Roombelow and magic, adventure, danger and excitement await.

From the little lady who lives at the bottom of a well, a starship that wants to take him home, trolls, little people, traders and diamonite stealers to water sprites, witches, helpful dolphins, and interplanetary warfare, Jimmy learns the biggest lessons of his life.

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Thirteen-year-old Lynne watched her parents wrestle with the fact that their newborn baby Bruce, her new brother, had been born with Down syndrome. Over the years, Lynne struggled to ensure that Bruce would be included as part of the family and vowed to protect him from a young age, while also making sure that her nine-year-old brother, David, was not also left behind amidst the chaos. As time passed and Lynne went off to college, she learned that her baby brother was still not safe from being given away.

 

This is the story of Bruce, and the love he inspired in Lynne to fight for the unity of her family. Lynne, David, and Bruce maneuvered the trials of life together, thus cementing their unwavering commitment to each other as siblings. By turns funny and heartbreaking, Listen to Me is a story about being brave, finding your voice, and becoming not who you thought you were, but who you were meant to be all along.

 

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The mother/daughter relationship is one of the strongest bonds between two people. This book offers some insight into the complicated and dynamic relationship of adult daughters and their aging mothers. Advice, solutions, comments and humor surrounding this relationship are offered by friends as well as strangers. "The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational way."~~ Joyce Carol Oates...

Explore the answers to relationship questions no matter what stage of the love game you are in.

My Dog Is My Relationship Coach is a guide to relationships that takes its lead from the pets in our lives and the unconditional love they offer. In our search for love, companionship, and "the one"-as well as during our maintenance of a romantic relationship-we often lose sight of our true selves and what we deeply desire in a life partner.

This book will help you to see clearly what it takes to heal yourself, enhance your marriage or romantic relationships, and realize the whole person you were meant to be while in a relationship or searching for that perfect mate. With tips, examples, and anecdotes, this guide shares the meaning, clarity, and deep connections that enhance the journey of finding or loving "our person."

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As identical twins Annie and Amanda celebrate their fourteenth birthday, their father Harry is involved in a fiery three-car crash that leaves all occupants dead.

Four years after the accident, Amanda suddenly vanishes, and her boyfriend is found murdered. Getting little assistance from the police, Amanda's mother seeks the help of William Snow, a local man with a reputation for finding missing persons.

Snow begins an investigation and soon uncovers an inexplicable link between Amanda's disappearance and her father's deadly accident. As Snow digs further into this bizarre connection, more people start to disappear. The case eventually leads him to an uninhabited island, a madman known as The Driver, and the twisted truth behind the death of Harry Crow.

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Join me on a 60-year adventure from medical school to re-retirement. There will be many funny stories and some sad ones that influenced my approach to treating patients, and I will give you a glimpse of the grueling life of a medical student, an intern, and an orthopedic resident in the 1960s plus my Navy career, how I established my private practice, and my contributions to orthopedic surgery. Also, I express my feelings about how medicine has changed from then to now and why.
I don't think there is comparable work on the market, and your trip with me will be well worth the read....