The Swetky Agency - Meet Our Authors: D. J. Herda

HERDA, D. J.

HEMINGWAY'S WAR Hemingway says goodbye to his third wife at the Finca Vigia as she leaves him to cover the war in Europe. She is giving up on the marriage because of his drinking and philandering.

Fourteen years later, Hemingway is newly remarried to the love of his life. But he is a mere ghost of the man he was during the war. Now he faces his own war. With Castro marching on Havana and Batista on the run, Hemingway learns that Hoover is closing in on him—out to settle an old score that goes back to the author's WWII sub-hunting days, a particular embarrassment to Hoover.

When Hemingway welcomes the new Cuban liberator to power, he gets word that Hoover is furious and plans to brand the writer a subversive. Hemingway's mounting paranoia and his fear of being labeled anti-American frighten him into undertaking the overthrow of the infant Castro regime. As intrigue and betrayal line the streets of Havana, the author finally implements his very own plan--a plan deviously spawned in Washington, D.C., and placed in the author's increasingly delusional mind by Hoover, himself--that backfires on both Hemingway and Hoover and nearly leads to war.

FICTION SERIES

EASTERN STAR TRILOGY

THE MYNAH'S CALL Paula was young, sensuous, beautiful--a woman of strong will and unbreakable spirit. Restless and eager for adventure, she and her husband struck out for the Middle East. She wanted a different life for the two of them: a renewed love for her husband and a renewed sense of self.

But what she found were turmoil and upheaval. As the countryside around her erupted in guerrilla warfare, her devotion to her husband was challenged by her growing fascination with a passionate Afghan rebel.

MISTRESS AND THE ROGUE This fascinating and frightening account of a young American woman and her Afghan-born lover takes on new and ominous overtones when Paula suddenly finds herself attacked in her American home by two Iraqi thugs. When she learns that Shadar has disappeared on his way back to her from Hong Kong, she sets out to find him. Along the way, she uncovers a sordid trail of human bondage, gun smuggling, and Al Qaeda terrorists. All nearly ends in a deadly fire-fight with Islamic terrorists. But what about Paula ... and where is Shadar?

NIGHT AT THE OPERA A cozy night at the opera turns deadly as Paula and Shadar stand by helplessly. Their investigation into the death of Shadar's closest friend soon leads them to Kabul, where Shadar is charged with the task of helping to set up the underground Iraqi Resistance Movement to ferret out and destroy opponents of Coalition Forces and the newly elected Iraqi Free Parliament.

From there, they wend their way to the Tigris, when Shadar suddenly disappears. Fearing the worst, Paula tries desperately to contact the underground and finally manages to reach the head of the movement ... on the wrong side! As the Republican Guard and the dreaded Iraqi secret police close in, she faces the dilemma of her life: should she flee ... or stay and fight against all odds to find Shadar?

CARLOTTA TRILOGY

DIAL M FOR CARLOTTA When Dean Janus stumbles across an Internet promotion for a professional Domme, his curiosity is piqued. By the time he decides to check it out, he is already ensnared in an ever-widening web of drugs, money laundering, BDSM, and murder. Only the tenacious love of a woman nearly ten years younger can save him. But is that love strong enough to go head-to-head with Mistress Carlotta? And can Dean overcome the prejudice he has against his young, headstrong lover? His very life may depend on it!

BOUND FOR CARLOTTA When Dean Janus stumbles across an Internet promotion for a professional Domme, his curiosity is piqued. By the time he decides to check it out, he is already ensnared in an ever-widening web of drugs, money laundering, BDSM, and murder. Only the tenacious love of a woman nearly ten years younger can save him. But is that love strong enough to go head-to-head with the cold cruel Mistress Carlotta? And can Dean overcome the prejudice he has against his young, headstrong lover? His very life may depend on it!

CARLOTTA'S REVENGE When Domme Mistress Carlotta escapes from prison, Dean Janus bears the brunt of her revenge. Taken into bondage to a small adobe outside Ensenada, he is broken of his will and forced to do her bidding. He returns to the states, drugs and kidnaps his own fiance, and returns with her to Carlotta's adobe, where she too is eventually turned into a devoted slave. But when M.C. introduces a young peasant girl to become Lynn's charge, Dean turns the tables on the Domme and sets the stage for a supercharged ending.

HYMIE STIEHL QUARTET

CRAZY AS A LOON When Yiddish Bulldog Hymie Stiehl learns that his friend, center fielder Jungle Jim Rivera of the Chicago White Sox, has disappeared, he knows he has to act fast. Realizing that Rivera is still alive but in great danger, Stiehl and his young, rakish professor sidekick seek to locate him before the Mob does. But when bodies began dropping like flies at a bad delicatessen, Stiehl calls upon the local D.A. and the members of the venerable Twelfth Precinct to step in to help clear the water while Stiehl very nearly ends up a statistic, himself.

STIEHL STALKINGS A Caribbean cruise goes sour when a wealthy German industrialist turns up dead during an attempted robbery--murdered with his own hand gun. The plot thickens when Yiddish Bulldog Hymie Stiehl learns that the man's stepson had lost more than $20 thousand at the tables the night before. The man's wife, too, stands to gain financially from her husband's death, although she voluntarily takes a polygraph test and passes with ease.

When links to a Belizean swinging group emerge, Hymie grows restless. The deceased industrialist had been having an affair, and his wife found out. What better peg to the murder than a spurned wife? But when the wife's own son is killed, all eyes fall elsewhere, and it's up to Hymie to unravel the most bizarre and twisted tale of murder and chicanery ever.

MURDER IN THE COURTS As Hymie Stiehl and sidekick D. J. Tartanian arrive in Trinidad, Colorado, to ensnare whoever sent Stiehl's close contractor friend to prison, Stiehl has a revelation. "I'll set you up as a contractor!" But when the "kid" gets charged with passing bad checks, contractor fraud, and finally murder, things get ugly.

Stiehl goes underground while the kid bails out, and the two of them meet to uncover the worst in human society--from a dirty District Court Judge right on down to the local cops on the beat. Things look bleak for D.J.'s upcoming trial when suddenly Stiehl has a revelation. Halfway through the preliminary hearing to bind the kid over for prosecution, Stiehl shows up with three Federal officers--and the kid gets a change of venue ... much to the chagrin of the judge. When the judge goes to step down and the FBI clasps him in cuffs, all hell breaks loose. In a dynamite final scene, the judge is hauled away kicking and screaming, and Stiehl reveals the real savior behind the scenes.

MURDER BY DEFAULT Ronald Deus has an ax to grind. In fact, he has several. The sharpest is reserved for his beloved mother—the only person standing between Deus and a fortune in family stocks and bonds. But when he takes aim at committing the perfect crime, little does he realize that it's he, himself, who is standing in his own crosshairs.

NICK AND NORA CAVENDER TRILOGY

BACKSIDE BLUES Meet Nick Cavender, grandson of the famed detective, Nick Charles, The Thin Man. When Nick and Nora set out to invest in a racehorse destined for the Kentucky Derby and the horse's jockey turns up dead—and his jockey friend, and the track steward—they know they're in it but good. The two break into the dead jockey's home only to become the prime suspects in his murder. After narrowly escaping apprehension by the police, social stigmatization by the neighborhood busybody, and a crime-family whacking, Nicky unveils the most preposterous conclusion Nora has ever heard while she prepares for the crime of their lives.

CHAMELEON When Nora's Chicago Daily Tribune editor sends her to the U.K. to cover the Irish Darby, she soon learns that derby day is not without its inherent risks. Within hours of landing, she finds herself the target of a mysterious stalker. Nick lays plans and apprehends the stalker, who turns out to be anything but! When Nora disappears, Nicky faces a blank slate for the first time in his life--why was she kidnapped? Is she unharmed? Where is she being held? What clues can their new Welsh Corgi puppy provide? And are the locals right when they claim that only the Irish moors hold the answer ... and the answer is death!

STAKEOUT When one-time private eye Nicky Cavender and his reporter wife Nora take a busman's holiday skiing in Banff National Park, they soon find themselves searching for a missing Canadian heiress ... and her jewelry ... and her hotel room suite! All vanished into thin air. As hotel officials struggle to learn what happened to room 432, Nicky devises an ingenious plan for a reverse stakeout of the grottos outside Banff's hot springs to uncork the truth. But before long, he discovers it is he who is being stalked in one of the most creative story lines ever.

FICTION SINGLE TITLES

RABIT ON THE RUN When David Lord Rabit decides to make a change in his life, it's bound to be a beauty. And not particularly well grounded in reality.

But he is secure enough emotionally to know how to get from Point A to Point B, with a few minor detours along the way. With one murdered classmate, a brutal police grilling, and a lost love behind him, Rabit reaches out to the one person he feels can help set him on the path to personal salvation. Along the way, he finds a second person solidly in his corner—an unanticipated bonus—who for Rabit will make all the difference in the world.

Until he learns that she believes she is a demon possessed.

And proves to him that she's right.

REUNITED IN MURDER When Mark's father, who had abandoned the family upon his son's birth, learns of his ex-wife's death, he shows up with Mark's estranged sister on the exotic isle of St. Lucia, masquerading as a stranger to help Mark find the murderer. A former private investigator in California, the father soon puts together a package of suspects that leaves Mark reeling.

Mark's mother had been a beloved marine environmentalist working to save the local dolphin population from decimation. When Mark's father finally fingers the closest friend his son has in the world, the boy explodes...before learning who this mystery investigator really is and how he knows what he knows. Now all Mark has to do is to come to grips with a nineteen-year-old sister who keeps coming on to him, a father who abandoned the family twenty years ago, the Institute's director who seems to know more than he's saying, a police department strangely removed from the investigation, and a group of foreign developers who aren't developers at all. All this while trying to learn who really murdered his mother—and why—while somehow managing to steer clear of the rifle sights, himself!

SEASON OF DREAMS Denise finishes high school and flies down to Miami Beach for a break. When she fails to return, her mother suspects foul play. But for Denise, her play is anything but foul as she finds herself mistaken for a glamorous model and hobnobbing with Miami society. When she auditions for a bit part in a local movie financed by the mob and wakes up a week later with track marks on her arm and a guard outside her door, she knows she's not in Kansas anymore. Slowly she succumbs to indoctrination as a hooker who quickly becomes a top-earning call girl and, eventually, a Hollywood madam. Along the way, she learns that falling in love can be a dangerous pastime when your boyfriend just happens to be the connected murderer of your own sister.

THE DEVIL WITHIN When a man makes a pact with the devil, he does so not in exchange for untold wealth, health, love, or longevity, but in order to stimulate his mind (he loathes boredom and despises boring people). The devil agrees to grant him the intelligence to survive in a hostile world, and soon the man stands in the very shadow of God, presiding over decisions that spell life and death for virtually every human being on earth.

But “mother” soon turns to “muthah” as Markinson fails to anticipate his still human weaknesses and soon falls in lust bordering on love. The only problem: the woman of his dreams is a Central European Command (CEC) operative who has been assigned to paranormal investigations into terrorist links. When she learns from her lover who he really is and where he gets his power—and, worse, that he knows who she really is--she sets out to do the only thing her conscience will allow her to do. She must destroy him, even if it means making her own pact with the devil to do so!

THE GARDENER'S LEFT HAND When young widowed socialite Mimi Fairbanks hires a mysterious stranger to take the place of her recently fired head gardener, she slowly uncovers a hauntingly inexplicable past. As bodies begin turning up all around the estate—bodies of young women, the same age as her own daughter--she is drawn more closely to the man's dark, and possibly even sinister, past.

THE MANN ACT AFFAIR When Thomas Mann goes to the clinic complaining of inability to sleep, a computerized analysis reveals that his neuro-receptors have apparently picked up some illegal information, and his mind is having difficulty coping with it. He can't process the information because it's encoded and he doesn't have the code programmed into him. He will have to undergo a brain sweep to erase his memory.

When Mann balks at having his memory erased, the doctors laugh and tell him that only the tiny part of his brain containing the illegal information will be erased and nothing else will be touched. But when he meets neurobiologist Celeste Cole, he learns that not all is as it seems. Can he escape being turned into a zombie before discovering the truth about the conversion of the populace into pre-programmed drones? And is Cole working with him--or against him?

THE SECRET ARROYO As an Army scout, Wade Hawkins learned his job well—he is the best tracker west of the Missouri. It is a skill that comes in handy, for he'll need all of his wiles to overtake the murderous flesh-traders who abducted his Choctaw wife from their home several days before. As he closes in on her captors, he finds more than he bargained for: a troop of ruthless, bloodthirsty ex-rangers with plenty of fire power and 16 Indian women—captive squaws—on their hands. But was Tantien one of them?

THE UNFAMILIAR In the mountains of northern Colorado, a young couple live life to the fullest, sharing their good fortune, drugs, and mates with their New Age friends. Shortly after they erect a party tee-pee several hundred yards from their log home, they take in a tenant who has just suffered a painful divorce. When his golden retriever trots down through the woods to an all-night Bachanalian tee-pee fest, Donnelly sets out to retrieve him. But his hosts insist that he stay and join in the fun.
When the next morning a Wiccan witch disappears, the dog locates her face-down in a mountain stream just behind the tee-pee—her throat ripped open. Before long, other guests suffer similarly gruesome fates, and Gregg and DeeAnne begin to wonder if their decision to take in a renter was such a good idea after all. When they approach Donnelly to suggest that he move, they find him gone and only his dog left behind. Or, did they?

Adopting the hound as their own, they set off on a group excursion down the Yampa River. When the following morning three of their friends fail to appear, they hide their stash in the woods and call 911. Later that morning, after investigating, two officers return to their car to head back to Steamboat Springs but never arrive.

Continuing on their down-river journey, the remaining campers are engulfed by a massive funnel that overturns one of the rafts, and all but Greg, DeeAnne, and Dante disappear downstream. That evening, an Indian in traditional regalia appears to them and, after sharing an offering of blessed mushrooms, kills DeeAnne with Gregg passed out next to the fire.

The following morning, with only the dog to help him back to civilization, Gregg returns to the pickup point where he takes the car back toward town. He notices someone following him and panics, steering the auto off the road and down a steep rocky precipice, where it crashes among the boulders and towering pines. Seconds before the car explodes, Dante manages to crawl out the broken back window and climb up the hill toward the road…and his new master.

THREE DAYS OF THE COVENANT When an investigative reporter falls head-over-heels in love, it's a good thing. When the target of his affections is a classy/sassy blonde charged with protecting the world's most valuable book, it's a bad thing. Or, at least, it is if the reporter is determined to steal the book from under her nose.

When Lainie Davis finally rounds up enough evidence to put the guy away for life, he neatly sidesteps her attempts by proving that he couldn't have stolen The Lost Covenant because it was never really stolen in the first place. As the undercover insurance cop digs deeper into Daryl Dartanian's background, she learns that he works for Central Intelligence…but not ours. He's dirt poor but owns a mansion in Puerto Vallarta and a seaside villa in Carmel. He's a college dropout who enjoys playing with radioactive isotopes. He bicycles around town but he owns a stable of the most exotic collectible cars in the world.

By the time she falls under the growing scrutiny of the police for being an accomplice to the Covenant's mysterious “theft,” Dartanian is laying plans for a future of unbridled debauchery in yet another new estate by the sea. This time, he plans on bringing a friend.

She just doesn't know it yet.

TWO MULES FOR McCANDLESS Harry Block is just an average P.I. except for one thing. He craves adventure. And he gets that and more in this true story of murder, lust, torture, and resolution. When at last he uncovers the truth about the son of the California mobster who hired him to clear his son's name, he finds himself running for his life.

NONFICTION SINGLE TITLES

BIG BANG BABY BOOMER ELECTRIC SHOCK SEX MACHINE Three of the world's greatest—and most unlikely—authors struggle for their inalienable right to write.

France's Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette fights the Battle for Sexual Rights as New York's Dorothy Parker confronts her own emerging sexuality during her quest for truth, justice, and a new American Way of life.

Along the way, Anais Nin, resting in the wings with her recently acquired sexual gauntlet, batters literature into a new Sexual Revelation—each remarkable woman influenced by the successes and the failures, the joys and the heartbreaks of the others.

GHOSTS AT THE ROUNDTABLE: A TELLING ALLIANCE Dorothy Parker is the most unlikely of radicals. But the author who pens "Men seldom make passes / at girls who wear glasses" has much more on her mind than clever witticisms when she lobbies fellow Round Tablers to the defense of accused killers Sacco and Vanzetti. For more than six years, she carries the banner against America's paranoia and disgrace. In the end, it is Parker--and not two Italian-born anarchist immigrants--who pays the greatest price of all for her integrity.