Bert's Book List

Genre: Historical Mystery/Suspense

What do missing Romanov children, supposedly executed in 1918 in Russia, have to do with Russian Imperial treasures mysteriously found and sold on the black market by corrupt Nazi officials in 1943?

• Russia, 1917: The Fabergé Easter Eggs had not been presented at Livadia that year as the Romanov family was being held prisoner at Tsarskoe Selo at that time. In September, a train loaded with boxes of treasures confiscated from Imperial palaces made its way into Moscow.


• Russia, 1918: While detained, the women of the Imperial Romanov family secretly sewed a fortune in precious gemstones into their clothes. What happened to these jewels and the last Fabergé Easter Eggs, those meant to be presented at Livadia in 1917?


• Russia, 1941: Officers of the Nazi blitzkrieg occupied Livadia, a Romanov palace on the Black Sea. There, they found a secret wall safe kept hidden from the Bolsheviks for decades. When the Soviets recaptured the palace, the wall safe had been found and opened without force but was empty, with no clue as to what had been inside.

Lena Schillers’s mother escaped their homeland, fleeing the Russian Revolution when Lena was very young. They settled in Rostock, Germany, but her mother disappeared soon after, leaving Lena in the care of a kind woman and a rich stepfather who barely acknowledged her existence then. Lena has grown up, and her stepfather notices her now. But she has bigger problems: Hitler has sent his enforcers to Rostock to find someone to blame for the theft of his looted treasures, which somehow seem to have gone missing. Repeatedly. But only those stolen from Russian Imperial palaces.

Lena must give them a scapegoat before the Gestapo starts hauling people away, including herself:
"Remember my name, my daughter, my dear one, but speak of me only in whispers...."

Memory of Azov Egg, taken August 2003. Photo by Stan Shebs

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Genre: Mystery/Suspense

Corporate espionage bleeds into international intrigue when a few cookie-cutter corpses in Armani suits are found floating in the lakes around Seattle.

Twenty years ago, her parents were killed in a political plot called an accident. Natalya was hidden away or held prisoner, she was never quite sure either way. But with such a brilliant mind, she was inducted into the KGB at 15. When the Soviet Union fell, Natalya made her way back to her father's family in Seattle. She now runs a corporate security agency that is doing very well. But a body is dumped at her front door, only one of many recently killed. Is it a threat from old enemies that have now found her here or an offering on the altar of revenge?

When the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s, a feeding frenzy for oil rights and development between the former Soviet bloc countries in the region and neighboring Islamic regimes sent oil corporations and western governments into an insatiable competition called by those in the international intelligence community the "Great Game."

• The stakes: national security, international influence, individual wealth.


• The players: global powers, religious regimes, multi-national corporations.


• Estimated worth: approaching US$5 trillion, and rising with the price of oil. . . and blood.

Seattle Waterfront at dusk. Author: Jeff Wilcox from Seattle, WA, USA

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Genre: Historical Mystery/Suspense

New York Colony, Spring, 1774

When Katie was born, a wise woman from an Abenaki clan gave her a spirit-bracelet that would let her call up the wind. At six years old, Katie heard the white owl cry one night, and it was still perched outside her window the next morning. The natives believe in the power of omens, but she didn’t need the owl to tell her, she had felt it in her bones for days: Someone would die this day.

Her father is gone to sea much of the time, he’s a captain on a merchant vessel. Her mother, a gifted healer, manages alone in the crossroads settlement with friends and family, including Katie’s four older brothers. But there are rumors of unrest that come and go here—American colonists are not happy with the yoke of British rule. Others are still loyal to distant country and king, and distrust has settled in.

Katie saw the tragedy the same day she saw the white owl. She was sheltered safely up in her favorite tree, but the same fate was meant for her too. Was she hidden by spirits, luck or magic? No one ever knew, not even Katie, because she couldn’t speak for months after that nor remember that day at all.

Her father took her to see with him after that: She grew up all over the world. Kate learned about people and customs, and she has her mother's way with herbal healing—almost. But put her in a High Society Tea, and she doesn't know quite what to do.

Europe, 1795

• French Republicans are locked in a bloody counter-revolution with a persistent, but unorganized, Royalist resistance in a time there called the White Terror.


• The French Revolutionaries have declared war on England as well, and the powerful British Royal Navy is now blockading Europe.


• To replenish their war-torn navy, the British are known to stop merchant vessels of any flag, forcibly conscripting anyone born in Britain, even if they call themselves American now.
  
• Pirates from North Africa and the Middle East are ravaging trade vessels in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
  
• In response to the growing threats to their merchants and even their sovereignty, the USA has formed a small, but impressive, navy. American frigates are said to be so formidable, a standing order has been issued: Do not engage a US frigate alone.
  

After her father’s death, Kate slips into southern France to meet with her mother’s cousin, Louis, but French Republicans take her for a spy. Together, they are tossed into prison with a rap on her head for spite. Now she has terrible headaches, but she’s dreaming of that fateful day when she was only a child. But what does her mother’s death have to do with the international troubles now?

Cousin Louis was tortured to death as a Royalist traitor with supposed-secrets. But Kate made a promise before he died. Released or escaped—she doesn’t remember that either—she’s now on a quest to a remote shrine in the Pyrenees, where isolated religious fanatics are still fond of the Spanish Inquisition. (They don’t still burn witches, do they?)

Then there’s the British, who also find her movements quite suspicious. Kate is caught between countries and accusations, but all she wants now is to get home. She takes to the sea once again, but it’s a race of time and memory: She is not out here alone. But can she remember why her mother was murdered before she ends up the same way?

True courage is like a kite; a contrary wind raises it higher.
    - John Petit-Senn (1792-1870)

Ships on a rough sea. Johannes Christiaan Schotel, 1827

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