ROCAMORA
By
Donald Michael Platt

Poet, swordsman, and master of disguise, Vicente de Rocamora, the epitome of a young renaissance man in 17th century Spain, questions the goals of the Inquisition and the brutal means used by King Philip IV and the Roman Church to achieve them. Spain vows to eliminate the heretical influences attributed to Jews, Moors, or recent converts to Catholicism, who would taint the limpieza de sangre, purity of Spanish blood.

At the insistence of his family, the handsome and charismatic Vicente enters the Dominican Order and is soon thrust into the scheming political and clerical hierarchies that rule Spain.

At court, Vicente becomes Confessor to King Philip’s sister, Infanta Doña María, and an invaluable assistant to the King’s chief minister, the Count-Duke de Olivares, who wants to abolish the limpieza statutes. Rising within the clergy, he is poised to attain not only the ambitious dreams of the de Rocamora family but also—if named Spain’s Inquisitor General—to bring about an end to the atrocities committed in the name of the blood purity laws.

Vicente needs all his skills and cunning to survive assassination attempts from a growing list of ruthless foes in both Church and court, solve a centuries-old riddle to quell rumors of his own impurity of blood, and above all, suppress his love for the seemingly unattainable Infanta.

You can also visit Donald’s author page at: www.donaldmichaelplatt.com.

THE GENTLING BOX
By
Lisa Mannetti

The philosophies of the Age of
Enlightenment create sweeping changes throughout 19th Century Europe, but to Hungary’s despised nomads, the gypsies, the world is still a dark and very dangerous landscape. Adversaries both mortal and supernatural lurk in the shadows, waiting to strike without mercy.

Imre, a half-gypsy horse trader, understands the danger to his small family all too well. Cursed with a hideously-disfiguring and fatal disease by the vengeful sorceress Anyeta, he watches those around him suffer and fall. Mimi, his wife, who is tricked into cutting off her own arm to create a powerful talisman. His friend Constantin, struck mute by Anyeta’s wrath. And Lenore, his and Mimi’s young daughter, who has been placed in the greatest jeopardy of all.

With his health deteriorating and death imminent, his wife possessed by the witch’s ghost and Lenore being groomed for a fate far worse than death, Imre turns to desperate measures—and a hellish memory from his childhood—to still the sorceress and end her reign of bloodshed. A presence even more powerful and terrifying to him than Anyeta: the gentling box.

THE GENTLING BOX is the terrifying debut novel of horror writer, Lisa Mannetti.

You can also visit Lisa’s author page at: www.lisamannetti.com.