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Uncle Norm
Thomas McCollum's novels have created controversy from radio and television appearances, reviewers, booksellers, and readers from around the world. Now, after a five- year hiatus, McCollum is back with UNCLE NORM, a novel written in a different direction from his past work.
The fascinating story based on fact, but fictionalized, begins with U.S. Army volunteer and baker, thirty-seven year old Norman Rose, being shot down in a cargo plane during World War II in the Belgian Congo and taken in by a pygmy tribe.
Norman Rose was one of the world's great losers; however, events and circumstances surrounding his six-year stay in the impenetrable jungles of Africa changed his life. The pygmies thought him a God sent from heaven, and Norman in time came to believe he was one. The tribe has him breed his God-like genes into the entire populace; Norman fathers twenty-nine girls and one boy. In 1949, British troops liberating the Congo, along with missionaries, discover the presence of Norman, who during his stay has discovered treasures beyond man's wildest imagination. He conjures up a way to remove them and get the funds to Switzerland.
As the story moves from the 1940s through the 1950s and Norman becomes one of the world's richest men, he also falls in love with a seven-foot Norwegian named Hilda. The reader is taken from the civil rights movement of the 1960s through the 1970s as Uncle Norm becomes a leader of civil rights causes. Norman brings his son, Norman Rose III, back to the States and England to educate him and teach him the world of high finance. His son takes the reader from the 1980s up to the present century. As the intrigue of love, family, greed, gold and diamonds, and social pressures pull the reader from one issue to another, one will find the novel difficult to put down.
Look for UNCLE NORM at your local bookstores in the fall of 2008.
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Palmer Lake
An irresistible story that begins with the suicide of the world's richest man, forty-two year old, multi billionaire, O. William Chase.
Will Chase was the world's largest benefactor for the science of cryonics and he had chosen to be suspended in the event of this death. After his sudden and unexpected death, he is frozen and placed in a dewar at the Life Extension Foundation in Mankato, Minnesota. But Chase's wife, Nina, and the chief of police of Palmer Lake believe he was murdered. Who could possibly want him dead? And why? Nina sets out on a thirteen year marathon to convince the authorities of what she suspects: her husband did not commit suicide-he was murdered. She also believes that one day science will bring her husband back to her.
As the story moves from entrepreneurial beginnings of Will Chase and Jackson Palmer in the small town of Palmer Lake, South Dakota to the medical nuances of cryogenics in the IMB research facilities in Zurich, Switzerland, the reader finds just how close science is to the revival of the first human being.
As relentless as the drop of a body's temperature toward the frozen state of ice, Palmer Lake pulls the reader into a thrilling story of wealth, medical marvels, greed, power , the Mafia, and ultimate improbability-with a chilling new twist on the possibility of afterlife.
Buy the book - amazon.com
| barnesandnoble.com |
booksamillion.com
Also available at your local bookstores.
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Tainted Blood -
A Frightening Possibility
Millionaire medical entrepreneur Scott Reid believes that
his aches, chills, rashes and debilitating fatigue are caused by cytomegalovirus
-- a nonlethal cousin of HIV. But when his lab tests indicate otherwise,
he learns that he may have been deliberately injected with HIV-2 tainted
blood. Who could possibly want him dead? And why? He sets out on a
desperate marathon to convince his colleagues and friends of what
he suspects-that he has been murdered.
Although most of his friends rally around him, only his close friend
and the head of his immunodiognostics lab Dr. Milton Schwartz, believes
there has been a murder and risks his life to prove it.
As the story moves from the steamy jungles of Africa to the money
smog of the L.A. lifestyle to Washington, D.C. the Netherlands Antilles,
and beyond, Reid discovers HIV is now more than a deadly virus-it's
big business-and for some, an extremely profitable one.
The lethal retrovirus originates in the Maryland laboratory of
a malevolent virologist who deliberately infects native people in
Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire. As his madness festers, he induces
a trusting and status-hungry colleague to inject the virus, carried
in a Hepatitis B vaccine, into homosexual populations in New York,
San Francisco and Los Angeles.
An impenetrable curtain of silence-termed National Security Risk
is whisked around the vaccine data by the Justice Department. But
the infection has already made its deadly inroads into the population.
Like sharks circling the faintest smell of blood, the Mafia, the
government, and shady dealers in medical technology soon surround
the AIDS conspiracy --and the massive profits that seep from it.
The infection coils gradually into high-stakes gamble that affects
the guilty, the innocent, the corrupt, and the mega-rich.
Like the relentless, icy drip of fluid into the IV line, Tainted
Blood pulls the reader into a terminally-thrilling story of seductive
wealth, medical mayhem, political conspiracy and ultimate madness
-- with a chilling new twist on AIDS.
Buy the book - amazon.com
| barnesandnoble.com |
booksamillion.com
Also available at your local bookstores.
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Whipsocket
Whipsocket is a dark drama revolving around a young man's life
after his wife's suicide at age 34. The protagonist, Erik Power's,
seeks meaning to life after the tragedy, only to find life not worth
living without her. He recounts his life, and hers, before taking
his own.
Whipsocket can be ordered from Shoji Books, 2123 Ivy Rd., C-ville, VA 22903
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