Mystery Shelf Intrigue & Thriller Adventure & Quest Westerns Children's Books Spirituality & Poetry Adventure & Quest ADVENTURE - (n) any undertaking that requires risk. ODYSSEY - (n) an adventure or quest that takes a long time and great effort. Also a journey to the limits of one's intellect and to the depths of one's soul. QUEST - (n) the act of setting out to find something one desires or a journey taken to seek something of great value. Paul Radford's Private War A Tragic Romance The year is 1941 and America is on the brink of war. Yet, Paul Radford has found a perfect life. He's a geologist paid to do what he loves best, searching the wilds of Peru for rare minerals. He's also fallen in love with a native woman and is expecting his first child. Through her, he's found unexpected friends in a band of outcasts. Among these are the local padre, a former Mexican revolutionary, and the town drunk, who is a master spy. As happy as he may be, the world is at war and Paul finds himself the unwitting target of others after the same vital minerals. When Pearl Harbor is attacked, he is summoned to active duty and Radford finds himself torn between his love for the woman he considers his wife and duty to his country. Nor is it clear who poses the greatest threat to him and his Peruvian family, the US Navy or the Nazis who are trying to kill him. By Joel B. Reed $12.00 Paul Radford's Alaskan Exile Paul Radford does not belong in Alaska. He is fluent in Spanish, Portugese, and Quecha, the native language of Peru, and he knows the Andes. He has friends there and a wife and child, and he knows the native people well. Then war breaks out and the US Navy calls Paul to active duty. He is assigned to a clandestine operation and when he is forced to flee the country, he must leave his family behind. Nor is he allowed to tell them where he is or even that he is alive. Doing so would put them in danger. Not knowing what else to do with him, the Navy assigns Paul to the Construction Corps working out of Kodiak, Alaska. There he does well and when the Japanese attack Dutch Harbor, he earns a Purple Heart and a Navy Cross. Then the war claims the life of Paul's best friend and soon after he learns it has taken his wife and child, too. Not caring whether he lives or dies, he accepts assignment to a tough combat intelligence unit known as the Alaksa Scouts. Quickly earning the respect of the men in the platoon, Paul is chosen to lead the reconnaissance of Attu, a worthless mix of ice, volcanic rock and the worst storms in the world. Yet Attu is American soil and the Japanese captured it early in the war. Now the Republic wants it back at any cost, and for Paul Radford, Attu becomes the foundry that forges his rage into a weapon and tempers his soul to use it. By Joel B. Reed $14.95 Ravenwolf An American Odyssey Burned out with law, Martin Lundgren sets out to find a simpler life. He buys an abandoned homestead in northern New Mexico, planning to stretch his savings until he can support himself as a writer. What he doesn't plan is falling in love, not only with the land itself and the chicanos who live there, but with his neighbor's niece. When she breaks their engagement, Martin is shattered. To make ends meet, Martin signs on with a small newspaper. This interim job turns into a career that leads him from the Detroit race riots to the Six Day War, and writing under the byline of Martin Quinn,he wins a Pulitzer. The celebration ends when Quinn awakes in jail with no memory how he got there. Nor is the first time this has occurred, and it becomes painfully clear that Martin must find a different way to live or he will surely die.(Original title, The Journal of Martin Quinn) By Joel B. Reed. $20.00 Lakota Spring An American Tragedy April 1, 1973. It is a good day for dying. That's what the elder told us at the barricade in Pine Ridge. I don't know. He is old, at least forty. His children have children. He has lived his life. What is left for him? Mine is just beginning. I have not fathered a child. Or was the elder teasing? Was he trying to scare us? April Fools! Yet I helped one of the men there load his rifle. I handed him the bullets. I know what they can do. I used a bullet like it when I shot my first deer. It tore his insides apart. So this is no joke. It would do the same to me. It would tear my guts apart. Is this a good way to die? (Excerpt from Johnny K's journal) By Joel B. Reed. $12.00 Abbas Barabbas A Sexual History Where is the line between sanity and mental chaos? Andrew Barrabbas hears voices. Are they figments of his imagination, or the voices angels? Or are they his personal demons? And the mystic visions he has, are they messages from God or evidence of psychosis? Or is the answer simpler? Are these things due to his alcoholism? Andy Barrabbas doesnÕt know. To find out, he takes a remarkable journey into his past to discover what is tearing him apart. On the brink of suicide, Andy admits himself to a mental hospital. There he is put through detox, and once his mental fog begins to clear, he is asked to write his personal history. The doctor in charge quickly realizes Andy is suffering from more than simple alcoholsim. He shows all the symptoms of a combat veteran. The diagnosis is PTSD and the doctor suspects the traumatic stress is from childhood abuse. So he asks Barabbas to write a sexual history. Yet the doctor is unprepared for the results. Andy's search becomes a spiritual quest and a psychological odyssey, and the good doctor is faced with an unsettling question. Who is the healer and who is in need of healing? By Samuel S. Abinitio. $12.00