Justine Saracen

Norwegian Kirsten Brun, a Nazi resister, has one mission: destroy the installation that produces the chemicals Germany needs for an atomic weapon. Unfortunately, her first attempt fails, leaving her injured and unconscious in the Arctic snow.

The Indigenous Sami people have tried to remain outside the conflict, but when Marrit Ragnar and the reindeer she herds discover Kristen and save her life, joining the battle is inevitable. A misfit in her own culture, Marrit participates in the second destruction attempt in order to avenge the killing of her family.

Kirsten’s and Marrit’s feelings for each other grow deeper, but each attack they join is costly in blood and conscience and nearly tears them apart. Should they carry on with the carnage for a questionable cause, or retreat north with the gentle reindeer?

In the years after World War II, the alliance that saved Europe is breaking down as the Soviet Union and the West compete for control of Germany. When Russia blockades Berlin, everyone, it seems, is hungry: Russian soldiers for German women, the Soviet leaders for territory, the Berliners themselves for food. But the hardest hunger of all is between a Royal Air Force woman and the wife of a Luftwaffe pilot who helped set fire to half of London.

It is 1944, and vast armies drive each other back and forth over blood-drenched Europe. 

In the midst of it, two radically different women meet, one a Russian speaking American on a failed diplomatic mission and the other a Soviet sniper. The American, fleeing a sordid past worthy of Dostoyevsky, has murder in her heart but has injured no man. The other, a once-saintly believer, has killed a hundred of them for Stalin. Their politics are worlds apart, but a reckless drunken kiss has tied them together, through church and trench, incense and the smoke of battle. If they survive the war, can they survive the peace?

Dana Norland shoots two men in cold blood and flees the US for the mountains of Rwanda. Posing as a biologist, she finds herself caring for gorillas with Kristen, Dian Fossey’s successor at the Karisoke research center. She has plenty of time to think about what she’s done, but can she find peace? Apparently not, for the mountain is haunted both by the ghost of Dian Fossey, and by the men who murdered her. Personal vendetta joins with genocide, and to flee the marauding butchers, the women hide in the rainforest. Among the mountain gorillas they once protected, they learn what justice is. And what it is not.

Antonia Forrester, an English nurse, is nearly killed while trying to save soldiers fleeing at Dunkirk. Embittered, she returns to occupied Brussels as a British spy to foment resistance to the Nazis. She works with urban partisans who sabotage deportation efforts and execute collaborators, before résistante leader Sandrine Toussaint accepts her into the Comet Line, an operation to rescue downed Allied pilots. After capture and then escape from a deportation train headed for Auschwitz, the women join the Maquis fighting in the Ardenne Forests. Passion is the glowing ember that warms them amidst the winter carnage until London radio transmits the news they've waited for. Huddled in the darkness, they hear the coded message, "the long sobs of the violins" signaling that the Allied Invasion is about to begin.

What if Sodom and Gomorrah, those synonyms for debauchery, were in fact perfect societies? What if the avenging angels were genocidal terrorists, and the "one righteous man" who escaped the annihilation was a murderous fanatic and the rapist of his own daughters? Justice is a long time coming, but finally the serene waters of the Red Sea give up the secret of a millennia-old lie. While surrendering to biblical wantonness with a film actress, sculptor Joanna Boleyn, discovers that righteousness can conceal its own depravity, that art tells more truth than scripture, and that challenging authority can be mortally dangerous.

Twelve years of terror end with a world in flames. Behind filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl's stirring footage of a million joyous patriots, the horror of Nazi Germany unfolds. It engulfs Katja Sommer, a "good German" who discovers honor in treason; Frederica Brandt, active in the highest circles of power; Rudi Lamm, homosexual camp survivor and forced SS killer; and Peter Arnhelm, a half-Jewish terrorist. Under the scrutiny of the familiar monsters of the Third Reich, these four struggle for life, decency, and each other. Love does not conquer all, but it's better than going to hell alone.

What happens when a mask becomes the deepest truth, when a lie reveals the greatest love that was ever given?

Renaissance historian Joanna Valois and transgendered beauty Sara Falier take us spiraling into the past, from New York City during the Stonewall riots, to Venice under the Inquisition, and finally to Nero's Rome. In Venice, they find a sixteenth century heretical book and learn about the woman condemned to death for printing it. The book, a translation of an ancient codex describing the Crucifixion, shattered the lives of nearly everyone who touched it, and 400 years later, could still bring half the world to its knees.

Is the history of a dangerous love affair destined to be repeated?

At the height of her career, opera singer Katherina Marow is brought crashing down by her father's suicide. Among his effects, she finds his wartime journal and reads the heart-wrenching entries of a soldier in Russia and in war-torn Berlin. She learns the crimes and secrets her father harbored, but cannot condemn him, for while she discovers his demons, she is facing her own. The stage-world she lives in draws her into a lawless ecstatic realm, and she is tempted, as he was, by forces which could destroy her. Has she too made a devil's pact? And if so, will she pay for it, as her father did, with her life?

Eros, art, and gorgeous blasphemy...

Adrianna Borgia, survivor of the Borgia court, presents Michelangelo with the greatest temptations of his life while struggling herself with soul-threatening desires and heresies. Her growing passion for the painter Raphaela Bramante mirrors the sculptor's damnable interest in a castrato in the Sistine choir and in the ideas of secular humanism. Claimed as the epitome of Christian inspiration, Michelangelo's ceiling is revealed as a coup of Eros upon religion, a gorgeous blasphemy and a paean to forbidden love in the very heart of the Church.

Valerie Foret—archeologist and heir to a terrifying task—returns in a powerful desert adventure set in Egypt and Jerusalem, in both modern and medieval times.

On the eve of the release of Valerie Foret's great chronicle, Valerie learns that hers is not the 100th generation of the prophecy at all. In grappling with a mysterious and lethal opponent, Valerie witnesses the horrors of the first Crusade in which her ancestors, both innocent and malevolent, have carried out a drama identical to her own. The weapon that succeeded then and now threatens once again is the terrible power of faith. Will the outcome be the same?

In the course of fleeing the forces of violent fundamentalism, Valerie, a westerner, and Najya Khoury, an Arab-Israeli, fall in love and find out just how dangerous it is to challenge accepted "truth."