Ciphered Hearts Chronicles

Winter 1943. Under the Kulturbund's eye, violinist Felix Hartmann plays for party elites while quietly encoding what he overhears-rail schedules, whispered tests, names-into harmless-looking études. At the Swedish legation, Janos Lindgren, Third Secretary, moves those pages through an inviolable diplomatic pouch to Stockholm. As Sturmbannführer Vogel's suspicions harden from "watching" to "hunting," Allied raids shatter the city and the legation relocates to Dahlem. When a Wehrmacht insider is arrested and the Gestapo finally produces proof of Felix's cipher, the lovers execute a narrow escape across Denmark to neutral Sweden. From Stockholm's safe harbor to a war-ravaged homecoming in 1945, Shadow Waltz in Berlin is LGBTQ+ historical fiction about art used as resistance, tradecraft that feels real, and a romance that chooses courage over silence.

In a POW camp, two men forge a loyalty more daring than escape.Stalag Luft III, 1944. A mass escape is brewing. Forgery chief Mick O'Sullivan, an RAF mapmaker, can reproduce any German pass-but his supplies are gone. The camp's newest prisoner, taciturn Czech partisan Jan Vlach, has access to the guarded stores, but his silence is a wall of ice. Forced into a wary partnership, they must trust each other to steal the ink and paper needed for two hundred and fifty men to break free. As their collaboration deepens into a forbidden, protective bond, an escape committee ultimatum and a Gestapo interrogation threaten to tear them apart. A work of LGBTQ+ historical fiction, Barbed Hearts is set against the backdrop of the real-life Great Escape, telling a story of defiance, resilience, and a love that becomes the ultimate act of treason.

In the shadow of a looming invasion, a schoolteacher and a spy find a love worth fighting for.It is the summer of 1940. The German army is waiting across the Channel, and the whole of Britain is holding its breath. In the quiet village of Little Brambleford, the war feels distant-until the night the lights go out.Lieutenant Edmund Blake is a man trying to do his duty. A grammar school teacher by trade, he commands the local Home Guard-a ragtag platoon of farmers, butchers, and retirees armed with little more than broomsticks and patriotism. Edmund fears they are hopelessly unprepared for a real war, and he fears he is an inadequate leader for the men who look up to him. He needs help. What he gets is a mystery.Hal Pierce is the village's new bicycle mechanic, a quiet man who claims to be a conscientious objector. To the village gossips, he is a coward; to Edmund, he is an enigma. Hal possesses a steady hand, a medical orderly's skills, and a knowledge of mechanics that seems far too sophisticated for repairing punctures. In reality, Hal is an operative for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), sent to the countryside not to hide from the war, but to hunt for the enemy within .When Edmund spots a signal flashing from the church tower in the dead of night, he stumbles into Hal's shadow war. Dismissed by the arrogant regular army captain who sees only "civilian paranoia," Edmund and Hal are forced into a clandestine alliance.As they spend their nights patrolling railway lines and their days hiding in plain sight, a fragile trust blooms into a desperate, undeniable attraction. But the threat is closer than they imagined. A professional saboteur is active in Little Brambleford, targeting the vital railway bridge that feeds the coastal defenses.With a military-grade bomb ticking down and the regular army looking the other way, Edmund and Hal must execute a "schoolmaster's gambit"-using a herd of sheep, bureaucratic red tape, and local knowledge to trap a killer. In a world of blackouts and secrets, they must trust in the light they have found in each other to save their village-and their future.