Showing results by author "John Oehler" in All Categories

In 1559, 49 Spaniards exploring a tributary of the Orinoco River reached a sheer-sided, cloud-capped mountain called Tepui Zupay. When they tried to climb it, all but six were slaughtered by Amazons. Or so claimed Friar Sylvestre, the expedition's chronicler. But Sylvestre made many bizarre claims: rivers of blood, plants that lead to gold. Jerry Pace, a burn-scarred botanist struggling for tenure at UCLA, thinks the friar was delusional. Jerry's best friend, the historian who just acquired Sylvestre's journal, disagrees.

Ex Libris tells the story of Dan Lovel, an ex-diplomatic security agent, and Martine Desmarais, a young antiquities expert, who undertake a mission aimed at identifying art looted by Napoleon and now housed in the Louvre. They have been asked to snatch several books hidden in Prague that catalogue those artworks. But they discover that one of the books holds a secret so fundamental it could ignite global war. Now facing lethal danger, Dan and Martine must question every truth they once believed.

Eric Foster had a dream - to become a master perfumer. While a student at the world's top perfume school, he creates an aphrodisiac fragrance of astonishing potency, the holy grail of the perfumer's art. His future seems assured. But when his creation is tied to an outbreak of passion-driven homicides, he becomes the NYPD's prime suspect, facing a charge of serial murder. Desperate to prove his innocence, Eric reluctantly teams up with Tanya Cole, a forensic chemist who seems born to exasperate him.

Rika Teferi, a young woman who formerly led midnight raids in Eritrea's war for independence from Ethiopia, is working on her doctorate in the Cairo museum when catastrophe strikes. An accidental tea spill damages the royal papyrus she has been struggling to interpret, the papyrus purported to be Queen Tiye's last message to her son, Tutankhamun. But the spill also exposes hidden writing below the surface hieroglyphs.