ABOUT THE BOOK
The Allies and the Nazis are in a deadly race to develop the ultimate weapon while supersonic V-2 rockets rain down on London. Madeleine Toche and Berthold Hartmann, the German super assassin who taught her to kill, search for the secret factory where Werner von Braun and his Gestapos masters use slave labor to build the weapons as the bodies of the innocent pile up. The Allied ground forces push towards Berlin while the German SS fight savagely for each inch of ground.
Finding the factory hidden beneath Mount Kohnstein, Hartmann contacts his old enemy, Winston Churchill and summons Madeleine to his side. While she moves to bring the mountain down on her enemies, Hartmann leads a daring escape from the dreaded Dora concentration camp to continue his revenge against the monsters who ruined his beloved Germany.
Together with the Russian Nachtlexen, the Night Witches, fearsome female pilots the race tightens as the United States and the Germans successfully carry out an atomic bomb test.
Germany installs an atom bomb in a V-2 pointed towards London, while the US delivers one to a forward base in the Pacific. The fate of the Second World War and the future of mankind hangs in the balance.
Read the first chapter at Booksie and don’t forget to give it a like!
Author: Soren Paul Petrek
Genre: Historical/Action/Adventure
Publisher: Editions Encre Rouge/Hachette Livre (May 2, 2019)
Print Length: 319 pages
On tour with: Pump Up Your Book
LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT WITH SOREN PAUL PETREK
A few of your favorite things: I like good food, time spent with family and friends, movies and of course reading books!
Things you need to throw out: a storage facility full of everything, junk, bikes, old papers . . .
Things you need in order to write: laptop for clicking away and doing research.
Things that hamper your writing: getting too busy with my day job. I’m a trial attorney.
Things you love about writing: the joy that I bring to my readers as reflected by their thoughtful reviews.
Things you hate about writing: bad reviews, but you can’t please everyone. All writers get them.
Things you love about where you live: It’s a small bungalow, in a quiet neighborhood near restaurants and entertainment .
Things that make you want to move: Our sons grew up and have moved on. This is my last move. If I ever move again, it will be in an urn.
Favorite foods: I do the cooking at home. Anything with fresh ingredients, really good BBQ is hard to beat.
Things that make you want to throw up: Coconut is the ONLY thing I can’t stand. I tell my friends and family who love it, coconut is not a food… it’s bark.
Favorite music or song: classic rock.
Music that make your ears bleed: death metal.
Favorite beverage: Coca-Cola it’s not good for you, but sometimes only a coke will do it.
Something that gives you a pickle face: coconut water: AKA ‘Bark Juice.’
Favorite smell: Baking bread.
Something that makes you hold your nose: All things associated with waste treatment plants. Somebody light a match!
Something you’re really good at: cooking and writing.
Something you’re really bad at: everything mechanical or that involves directions. #1 If it can’t be fixed with a sledgehammer, it can’t be fixed, #2 Never give Soren the map.
Something you like to do: zipline.
Something you wish you’d never done: Ridden any ride at a county fair.
People you consider as heroes: Winston Churchill, FDR, my parents.
People with a big L on their foreheads: Hitler, Stalin, all celebrities who came to fame through “leaked sex tapes.”
Last best thing you ate: steak.
Last thing you regret eating: coconut hidden in a cookie. Sometimes the sneaky so-and-so’s try to hide it in frosting. You can’t hide chunks of bark.
Things you always put in your books: some humor and a humanitarian reminder.
Things you never put in your books: my personal opinions. Who cares, I write fiction. However, none of my characters like coconut . . .
Things to say to an author: don’t over-describe me, let the reader use their imagination.
Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: You’re a hack!
Favorite places you’ve been: Provence, South of France, London. I’ve lived in both.
Places you never want to go to again: Milan (Italy).
Favorite books: All Quiet on the Western Front. The author was there fighting.
Books you would ban: None, although Mein Kompf could have a sub-title Rantings of a Lunatic.
People you’d like to invite to dinner: Steven King and his wife.
People you’d cancel dinner on: Kim Jong un.
Things that make you happy: dinner with family.
Things that drive you crazy: most government agencies.
Most daring thing you’ve ever done: write a book and send it out into the world for all to read and criticize.
Something you chickened out from doing: I kept dodging my colonoscopy, but they finally cornered me and . . .
EXCERPT FROM WOLVES AT OUR DOOR
Helga Miller
shut the door to her small flat in Saint-Omer. With seagulls reeling and crying
in the sunny morning sky above, she felt as though she were on vacation. She
loved the quaint architecture of the homes, the small shops, and the produce
market. Things were scarce, but it was late summer, and the local produce was
in. Fish was always available, and she had developed a fondness for it. She
could smell the sea and loved the warm sand and relaxed atmosphere at the
beach. It was as if there wasn’t even a war.
I’m not on
holiday, she told
herself, but it’s my first time out of Germany, and I’m not going to waste
it. She’d wanted to help with the war effort, and now she had her chance.
Even after the invasion, everyone back home still thought Germany would
win—Hitler told them so, and the propaganda films left no doubt. Why wouldn’t
she believe it as well?
Smaller than
some of the other women she worked with, Helga prided herself on being athletic
and trim. She went for long walks and did calisthenics daily. Her long hair,
which she kept tucked under her hat while on duty, was dark, as was the hair of
many people from Bohemia in southern Germany. She wasn’t much interested in the
men she worked with. Older and serious, they paid little attention to her
except to bark orders. They bored her. She liked the young soldiers stationed
in the town and at her worksite. They were exciting and fun-loving, and girls
like her from home were scarce.
Helga had been
recruited right out of university, and while she knew that as a non-soldier,
she would never be much of a threat to anyone, she was eager to work on such an
important program. The big projects had political or military applications. The
project she was working on combined mining and construction. It was unique.
She was on her
way to La Couple, where she worked as a mining engineer. Helga knew the
fighting was close, but the enemy army was still many miles away. She didn’t
think about it much, but when she did, she had to admit it was a bit thrilling.
Neither did she think often of the intended use of the facility once complete.
At work she concentrated, paying no attention to the fact that rockets launched
from there would fall on major cities—and their civilian populations. Allied
bombs were falling on German cities, targeting military installations and
civilians alike. She hoped the completion of the facility would stop those
raids and help Germany win the war.
Helga walked toward the train station where
she would catch the short ride to her worksite. She disliked the frumpy white
coveralls she wore, but they, like everything else, were mandatory. She felt as
though she were dressed in a sack. How would she ever catch a man’s eye while
wearing a tent?
She turned a
corner and crossed over the car park toward the train station. It was a squat
wooden building consisting of dirty windows, a ticket booth, toilets, and a
kiosk that sold newspapers, cigarettes, and whatever sweets were available at a
given time. Helga made her way over to the short line to buy a ticket for the
next train. She noticed a young woman ahead of her with a mane of curly black
hair cascading down the middle of her back. She didn’t have to see the woman’s
face to know that she was beautiful; the way she held herself left no doubt.
Oh, to have curls like hers . . . Helga fingered the correct change in her
pocket and had it ready when she got to the window. She smiled at the man
behind the glass. He gave her the same indifferent look he gave all the
passengers, French and German alike. She was sure he’d been there before the
war and would be there when it was over. His job was simple and didn’t require
any conversation.
A rush of wind
announced the arrival of the train. Helga moved forward onto the platform and
waited for it to come to a stop. It was a tired old commuter train that had
covered the same miles of track for years. With petrol scarce, people got
around on foot, bicycle, or, for longer distances, train.
After waiting
her turn to board, she found an empty seat in the middle of the car. Among the
passengers who brushed past her was the young woman with the beautiful hair.
Helga snuck a peek at her dark and angular, almost Gypsy-like, face; the lovely
girl was almost certainly from the south. She watched men steal glances as she
passed. She felt a twinge of jealousy. No man had ever looked at her that way;
it wasn’t fair.
The
train
pulled out of the station and picked up speed. The windows were down,
and the
warm breeze carried a hint of salt from the ocean. The smell of seaweed
and
surf wafted through the car, carrying out cigarette smoke and lingering
smells.
Helga could stay in a place like this forever. With the weekend coming,
she was
planning to go down to the beach with another girl from work. Two days
in the
sun, a chance to chat with some young men, drink some local wine, have
some
fun. There were always young German soldiers about, on leave.
Excerpt by Soren Paul Petrek. Copyright © 2018 by Soren Paul Petrek. Reproduced with permission from the author. All rights reserved.
Excerpt by Soren Paul Petrek. Copyright © 2018 by Soren Paul Petrek. Reproduced with permission from the author. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Educated in the U.S., England and France, Soren sat his O-level examinations at the Heathland School in Hounslow, London in 1981. His undergraduate degree in Forestry is from the University of Minnesota, 1986. His law degree is from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota (1991).
Soren’s novel, Cold Lonely Courage won Fade In Magazine’s 2009 Award for Fiction. Fade In was voted the nation’s favorite movie magazine by the Washington Post and the L.A. Times in 2011 and 2012.
The French edition of Cold Lonely Courage (titled simply, Courage) was published January 2019, by Encre Rouge Editions, distributed by Hachette Livre in 60 countries. Soren’s contemporary novel, Tim will be released along with the rest of the books in the Madeleine Toche series of historical thrillers.
Tuck Magazine has published several of Soren’s poems, some of which have been included in Soren’s book of poetry, A Search for Solid Ground.
Connect with Soren:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram
Buy the book:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | ebook.com
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