Philippines Historical Fiction

Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white—for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of eighteen hundred starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called the Arisan Maru, his survival doubtful.

Theodore Rex is the story—never fully told before—of Theodore Roosevelt’s two world-changing terms as President of the United States. A hundred years before the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, “TR” succeeded to power in the aftermath of an act of terrorism.

The Karangalan family and their neighbors huddle for survival in the cellar of a house a few miles from Manila. Outside the safety of their little refuge the war rages on—fiery bombs torch the beautiful Filipino countryside, Japanese soldiers round up and interrogate innocent people, and from the hills guerillas wage a desperate campaign against the enemy. Inside the cellar, these men, women, and children put their hopes and dreams on hold as they wait out the war, only emerging to look for food, water, and medicine.

Die bekannte deutsche Schriftstellerin Brigitte Riebe skizziert in diesem historischen Kriminalroman die bewegende und tragische Lebensgeschichte von Philippine Welser. Als bürgerliche Tochter eines Kaufmanns aus Augsburg vermählt sich die junge Frau im 16. Jahrhundert heimlich mit dem Sohn des Kaisers Erzherzog Ferdinand II. von Habsburg. Das Paar behauptet lange seine Liebe ge­gen alle gesellschaftlichen Widerstände zu jener Zeit, doch dann stirbt Philippine unter damals rätselhaften Umständen.