THE SONG OF ANTOINE. NAPOLEON’S BEES. Book Two.
In Napoleon’s Bees, the sequel to The Song of Antoine, the story of the brothers Antoine and Sebastién continues five years after the brutal end of the French Revolution. It is the fall of 1799. Napoleon is First Consul, and France is a very different world from the one in which the brothers grew up. Through these times of change, Antoine’s and Sebastien’s fates continue on divergent paths, however their deep emotional wounds remain unresolved, and festering. And, in a France where it has become expedient to discard the very idea of the Revolution, their mother, who is now one of the luminaries of Parisian high-society, raises impenetrable walls of lies and deceit between them to conceal deadly secrets that, if revealed, threaten to destroy them all.
They are the secrets of the violin Antoine had played at the foot of the guillotine on the fateful day his father and sister were executed.
But one person knows all the secrets and the treachery behind them—the famous Parisian virtuoso violinist and the violin’s self-appointed guardian, Guntrid von Elbert.
The violin kills, Guntrid warns. It kills for Antoine, and only he can remove its curse.
But Antoine is dead, is he not?
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THE SONG OF ANTOINE. ROBESPIERRE’S NOSEGAY. Book One.
The two brothers join at the foot of the guillotine with their parents and the people of their neighborhood for the day’s executions. There are three carts of condemned and Sanson, the executioner, is renowned for his skill and speed. There is excitement and anticipation in the air. In the richly depicted revolutionary France of Adriana Renescu’s latest novel, this is a routine occurrence in Paris. Death sentences are mundane and there is no appeal.
The story begins on a cold autumn morning in 1793. While fourteen-year-old Antoine Jardout is inexplicably apprehensive on this day, his ten-year-old brother, Sebastién, is excited to see who will be killed at the Place de la Revolution.
Whose turn is it now?
This day does not seem to be different from any other for the two brothers, but the brutal events they experience will set them on separate, irreconcilable paths. Under the control of a tyrannical father and a cold mother, the two will find themselves in conflict with each other. As the Reign of Terror unfolds and the chaos continues, both will have to decide what is worth sacrificing for their survival and happiness.
Can Antoine and Sebastién ever return to the life they shared that fateful morning, or will secrets and betrayals tear them apart forever?
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THE WOLVES OF PAVLAVA
Murder, intrigue, and the fall of Romanian Communism erupt in the thrilling new novel The Wolves of Pavlava. When mystic and visionary Mother Ierusalima of Pavlava is murdered, the Communists are in control of Romania. She’s forgotten until thirty years later, when, as the balance of power in Romania is becoming dangerously unstable, two very different groups want her considered for sainthood. The secrets and ambitions of two men, two natural enemies, converge to make them unlikely allies. Filled with plot twists and turns on every page, The Wolves of Pavlava explores the dark heart of tyranny and the unquenchable human thirst to break its shackles. Powerful and thought-provoking, filled with larger than size characters, The Wolves of Pavlava is a thinking person’s thriller.
Read an excerpt of The Wolves of Pavlava here.
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THE DEATH OF RAFAEL
On a cold and rainy spring day in 1944, Giselle Haussman gives birth to a son in the back of a truck taking her through war-torn Central Europe to a Nazi forced labor camp. She names the newborn Rafael, and in a hopeless bid to save him from certain death, she leaves the two-day-old infant in a forest outside an unknown town. Her desperate act is witnessed by three local women, but also by a German officer and the town’s priest.
Almost half a century later, Rafael’s younger sister, Daniela, now a lawyer in San Francisco, is obsessed by her brother’s fate. She embarks on a long journey to find what had really happened to Rafael. But Giselle’s strange hostility and fears oppose Daniela. The three local women may have never existed. The German officer is dead and the priest seems to have slipped into madness. Fantasist memories, trickery and mendacious silence obscure and derail the truth. It all points to Rafael’s death.
In this dramatic page turner built around powerful, morally complex characters, Adriana Renescu takes the reader across continents, from the Carpathians to the Andes, from Berlin to San Francisco, from Buenos Aires to Rome. THE DEATH OF RAFAEL tells the story of opposing destinies caught in a web of guilt and secrets. This is a tale of loss and heartbreak, fear and despair, and ultimately hope and redemption.
Read an excerpt of The Death of Rafael here.