Category: Action/Thriller Type: Fiction
Pages: 315
Copyright: March 22, 2013
A romantic historical thriller that goes back and forth through time from the present to Elizabethan England.
Teacher by day playwright by night, Alice Petrovka is pushed to her limits. But something is conspiring to push her further...possibly over the edge. The past begins to impose itself on the present as a famous Renaissance playwright demands to be heard. And seen. Alice's psychologist husband is convinced she is losing her sanity when she tells him of these strange occurrences.
As Alice desperately tries to balance the toxic cocktail of the past mixing with the present, she is thrown backward in time to Elizabethan England where she delves into a world of spies and playmakers. A world where theatre and espionage blend together in an impenetrable mix of plots and counterplots.
As Alice tries to understand the complicated romance she finds herself in, she learns that history is not what she once thought it was.
Once propelled back into the present she struggles to find evidence to support the truth of what she knows and finds herself in deep peril. Someone is guarding the past from investigation and will stop at nothing to thwart her efforts. Including murder.
Excerpt
His pen was sharp-pointed like a poignard. No leaf he wrote on, but was like a burning-glass to set on fire all his readers.
Thomas Nashe – playwright
When a man's verses cannot be understood...it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.
As You Like It - Shakespeare
Chapter 1
It was dark, except for a single soft spotlight in the middle of the stage. Contained in the spotlight was a woman curled in a fetal position. She was quiet and unmoving, simply dreaming of how everything had developed. She had been a woman with child.
The experience had left her drained, as birthing a new dream would. She stirred, yawned, and stretched her arms and legs; unfolding in spread eagle fashion like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Alice had written the play at night, after teaching. When it was done she had put her pencil down and cried. It had been that much a part of her. Now it had to live without her.
She thought of how they had bonded like a family during the course of this production. It had been closing night, and the theatre was still packed after a continuous eight week run. They had all gotten standing ovations, and holding hands onstage; bowing deeply, laughing, the audience finally had let them go. Backstage Derrin had brought the champagne out, opened it, and promptly dumped it over Sonia’s head. Alice was to say that her theatre family was more real than her family of origin – certainly more genuine.
If someone were to open the door to the theatre, they would see this image. They would see Alice on the stage, as a sacrifice to her art. They would wonder about this writer, director, actor – what was she thinking? Or perhaps, given to the whims and eccentricities attributed to the artist, they would think that this woman was giving herself over to some artistic method – some sort of meditative muse.
The door creaked open and a small sliver of light appeared on the dark red carpet. Alice waited, expecting to hear the voice of Sonia or Derrin. Nothing. Her irritation began to grow, and she felt the red flush of blood rise from her neck to her face.
“Yes?” She sat up.
Alice peered through the dimness to the crack of light and waited for her eyes to adjust. The light illuminated a shadow of a man with dark, shoulder length hair. Alice shielded her eyes with her hand. He had on a doublet covered with little red slash marks. A costume, she thought, something from the Renaissance. She worked her memory, running through the plays that would be coming up, certainly nothing of that period, nothing Shakespearean.
“Can I help you?” she said.
For a moment, she thought he was going to come through the door and down to her on the stage, and she was afraid. He had hated the play – it was to feminist, too radical…her mind trailed into the possibilities of what someone could do with a knife and she scrambled to her knees.
After gazing at her a moment, he silently turned and shut the door quietly behind him. Alice sat back on her haunches, perplexed. Who was that? Somebody playing a trick on me.
“Wait!” She ran up the aisle, passing the hundreds of seats that just a few hours before had been filled with people.
Grabbing the door handle she flung it open. Passing into the hall she looked both ways but noticed nothing. It was completely quiet. No one. She went to the main doors and opened the door to the street, looking up and down for the man in the doublet.
He was gone.
Crowley County Series, Novels 4-6
An uplifting series with romance, mystery and suspense.
Join the people of Crowleyville as they face the challenges of small town life while struggling to welcome an influx of newcomers.
Assistant County Attorney Ken Anderson spends his weekends drinking and running around. After waking up with another hangover, Ken decides not to drink so much anymore. Ken and his buddy, Tony, go out to eat and see Mia Correa and Faye Kincaid at the
