Amanda Newly is a rather unique college student. Bright and intelligent, she manages to maintain a GPA of 4.0 in a discipline where most of her fellow students are simply happy to survive. At the Irish Pub where she works on the weekends her proficiency and personality yield her tips that are all but unrivaled. Socially she is the glue that holds a diverse group of friends together. To the casual observer Amanda presents the very image of a young woman on the verge of making all her dreams come true.

 The only thing holding Amanda back from achieving this is a past that is totally out of sync with her image as a vibrant young coed, for the girl everyone knows as Amanda started life as Andrew Justine Newly. In many ways she still is very male, an inconvenient truth Amanda must hide behind a vale of lies from all but a select circle of friends as she struggles to reconcile her past with her future.

 One aspect of Amanda’s past that threatens to destroy her chances achieving this is not of her own making. Tina Anderson, the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur and one of Amanda’s dearest friends lives under a constant threat of kidnapping, a danger that Amanda once foiled and as a result leaves her vulnerable to retribution from those seeking to harm the Andersons.

 The journey Amanda Newly makes as she treads her way toward a new beginning is one that is as difficult as it is contentious, for Amanda must step outside the accepted norms used to define who and what we are in order to discover not only what is right for her, but to build a new life for herself.

What starts as a comedy of errors turns into something deadly serious when a young veteran struggling to overcome a quirk of nature that puts him at odds with his gender is drawn into a world of shadows and lies.

At age twenty-six, Jordan Allen Wallace is anything but your typical NYU sophomore. In addition to being a decorated veteran with a tour of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Jordan is cursed with a physical appearance that often cause people who do not know him to often mistake him as a female. With the exception of his sister Emma, he has no friends to speak of and little in the way of a social life. That begins to change on a Fall Sunday when Emma’s boyfriend Conner MacMasters, an agent assigned to the FBI’s New York City office, imposes upon her hospitality by bringing along an friend to enjoy an afternoon at Emma’s watching football.

Conner seizes upon Jordan’s unique qualities and status as an NYU student to help him solve a problem that has the Bureau stymied. While Jordan understands the need to cooperate with the FBI by informing on a noted professor at NYU, the role he is required to play presents him with both opportunities and problems that are unusual and demanding.

The man the FBI wishes Jordan to inform on is Dr. Wahab Khalje, the son of a former Afghani tribal chief. Khalje, who fought the Soviets with the mujahideen, came to America to study in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal from his country. After earning his doctorate at NYU, Khalje took up teaching there. While Khalje’s strident criticism of American policy in the Middle East caused the Department of Homeland Security to list him as a person of interest, his habit of associating with men suspected of having connections to al Qaeda and the Taliban leads the FBI to fear that he is interested in doing more than simply protesting. Repeated failures to infiltrate Khalje’s tight circle of friends in an effort to discover what, exactly, he is up to leaves the head of New York City’s FBI Counterterrorism Division little choice but resort to methods that are progressively more desperate and unconventional. In Jordan, Conner believes he has found a perfect, if somewhat novel solution.

That solution involves an ancient tradition practiced among some of Northern Afghanistan’s ruling elite. Known as bacchá, adolescent Afghani males dress and behave as females in order to entertain their host and master. Like his father, Khalje is fond of the old ways, in particular bacchá. It is this weakness that the FBI hopes to exploit using Jordan.

In agreeing to work with the FBI, Jordan finds he must come to terms with his own issues of sexuality and gender. Doing so is difficult as he discovers time and again that he has entered into a ruthless struggle without rules, one in which neither friend nor lover can be trusted.

Dance of the Bacchá is available from Lulu.com & amazon.com

In the late summer of 1939, as France once more drifted into war a mother, anxious to spare her youngest son from it starts him on a journey that does everything but.

Sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Normandy, young John-Paul Tesseraud avoids both conscription and French authorities by assuming the identity of his cousin, Pauline Valery. The same attributes that caused his mother to fear for his safety, even at the hands of John-Paul’s fellow soldiers allows him to assume his new role with shocking ease. By the time France is forced to sue for peace, any thoughts of returning home and his former life are forgotten as John-Paul settles into a new life as Pauline, one that he finds to be a better fit for him than the one he left behind.

This new life is not without it complications when Pauline finds that she has caught the attention of Erich Gerhart, a German soldier who has found something in Pauline that he has not felt for a long time; hope, the hope that even with the specter of defeat looming over Germany, he just might be able to emerge from this war with more than just his life. To this end, he pursues Pauline with the determination and single mindedness that had, until then, been reserved only for his duties as a section sergeant assigned to the signal battalion of a panzer division.

Erich’s interest in Pauline does not go unnoticed by Henri Fabre, a member of the Resistance. Keenly aware of the value of having someone able to gain access to the information Erich handles on a daily basis, Henri encourages Pauline to cultivate a relationship with Erich. Fearful of being branded as a collaborator and the discovery of her failure to answer her call to the colors in 1939 that would surely follow, Pauline gives into Henri’s demands. What starts as an effort to avoid those problems turns into something quite unexpected as Pauline finds herself becoming infatuated with someone who is not only the enemy of her country, but ignorant of her past.

As Pauline attempts to carefully tread her way between the competing demands placed upon her by her duty to her country, her affections for Erich and the need to keep her true nature a secret, the coming Allied invasion of France brings the very war her mother hoped to spare her from to Pauline’s very doorstep.

No Greater Love is available from Lulu.com & amazon.com

After surviving the massacre of his unit during the long retreat to Dunkirk in 1940, a young British officer finds sanctuary from the Germans and escape from his responsibilities by assuming the identity of a female teacher. The same physical attributes that had been a handicap to Ian Wylie while serving King and Country allow him to carry out this subterfuge with shocking ease.

This new life is not without its hazards as Ian, now living under the name Diane Lambert, is drawn back into a war he barely escaped. A charismatic Resistance leader, together with a handful of young school girls enlist Diane’s assistance in gathering, processing and passing on intelligence on German activities onto the British.

The Germans are not the only danger Diane faces, as the naïveté of her students and the dedication of other girls at the school to the Vichy government threaten to compromise their efforts. Not even the Allied invasion in 1944 frees Diane from the hazards of war as the former British officer is once more called upon to use long dormant skills to protect both the young girls he had come to cherish as well as an identity that is a far better fit than the one he left behind.

A Lion in Waiting is available from Lulu.com & amazon.com