Amazon The Schoonover Collection FCPub BookMasters Category:  Historical Fiction Publisher: Fountain City Publishing ISBN-10:  0976086735 Pages: 400 Copyright: February 2009 ISBN-13: 9780976086734 The challenges, emotional and physical of a Turkish Janissary during the fall of Constantinople Gentle Infidel   “Ignorant of his noble Venetian birth...he met and loved a beautiful Italian girl… midst the flames of fallen Constantinople and the crash of history’s first cannonade” - The New York Times In a turbulent and changing world where old orders are threatened by a new strength rising from the desert, a young warrior discovers a history he had long forgotten and must choose between two worlds. Publication: February 2009 The second of nine in the author's collection. Excerpt Training and discipline had strengthened his body and taught him self-control. He drew a hundred-pound bow now. If his black eyes ever grew soft, no one saw it. Once an archery master had set up a corpse in full armor such as Christian knights wore, for target practice on the range. The eye that aimed the arrow glinted obsidian-cold. The string snapped out of his powerful right thumb, which years of practice had so developed that it was larger than his left. The arrow penetrated the armor and the body of the dead man. As they took their turn at this realistic target, all the other men shot with equal calm and lack of emotion. This was the training that won wars. Later, all the arrows were snapped off flush with the mail, the corpse was carefully removed from its casing of armor, and a precise Arabian surgeon dissected it, lecturing learnedly and at length, teach­ing the janissaries: it is established, gentlemen, that an arrow through the eye kills quickly, an arrow through the bowels kills surely but slowly, slowly; whereas an arrow through the limbs does not kill. One does not, therefore, waste arrows on the limbs. Michael had no name. That is, he and the other men of his age were still called by the names they had had as Christians and would be forced to retain until they won new names by distinguishing them­selves in war. --------------------------------------- Bernardi mused aloud, "Perhaps he is still half human, though I doubt it. I doubt also whether he'll have pleasant dreams tonight." "Poor Michael!" Angelica whispered in reply. "Why didn't you tell him everything, Father? Why didn't you save him, instead of asking me to make that sherbet? I'd have refused you, Father, if I had known whom it was for." "Save him? How can I save him? Far better to save ourselves, daughter. The sherbet won't hurt him." "But Father, you must tell him who he is!"

Kirkus Book Reviews
“Sheer adventure, fully panoplied and highly colored...”

Booklist
“A rip-roaring historical novel...a much better drawn background than usual for this kind of book...”

New York Herald Tribune
“...a contest of character—a Christian boy mistakenly inducted into the Janissary corps...His story smiles.”