NOVELS
Downward Spirals and Counterfeit: novels of war and rebellion, novels of love and disillusionment, novels of hope and despair.
Downward Spirals tracks the lives of students drawn into the social unrest of the events of May 1968 in Paris.
Counterfeit records the plight of men and women retreating towards the beaches of Dunkirk in May 1940.
Downward Spirals by George Ithaka
Counterfeit by Michael Scriven
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by
George Ithaka
Daniel Harte, a social science student at the LSE, had from an early age been fascinated by tales of revolutionary violence. So he didn’t have a moment’s hesitation in accepting the invitation of his best friend, Andre Rivette, to join him in Paris in May 1968 to witness at first 
hand the nascent student uprising.
What happened in Paris, however, proved to be more complicated and disturbing than the revolutionary scenarios that he’d studied in books. Politics and emotions become fused in a revenge-motivated kidnapping that occurs against a backdrop of violent social rebellion.
After falling in love with Sandrine Parmentier, a trainee doctor who comes to his assistance when he is injured in the street fighting, Daniel is forced to confront the visceral antagonism of Pierre Fougere, Sandrine’s sociopathic boyfriend.
Downward Spirals records Daniel’s increasingly hostile relationship with Fougere, a relationship that degenerates into hostage-taking and spine-chilling threats on Sandrine’s life. This terrifying personal dimension ultimately overshadows the significance in Daniel’s mind of the May events themselves.
On his return to London he reflects on the lessons to be learned from a Parisian drama that begins amidst the radical euphoria of May and ends in a landslide victory of the established order in June.
`Don’t get sucked into downward spirals’
Imagination wide open in Paris May 1968 – Downward Spirals
Paris May 1968: rebellion, love, kidnapping, ransom – Downward Spirals
Downward Spirals by George Ithaka is on sale at Amazon.com
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Listen to a spoken extract of Downward Spirals at Podcasts
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FICTITIOUS BOOKS NOVELS
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by
Michael Scriven
Paul Chandler had thought that being a newspaper reporter would make his life more interesting. And it did. But not in the way he’d expected.
Unwittingly involved in a murder and an international counterfeiting operation, he and his best friend Joe, a freelance photographer, soon realise that their lives are in imminent danger as they are drawn relentlessly into an escalating criminal conspiracy that coincides with the outbreak of the Second World War.
Paul’s burgeoning love affair with Catherine, a young French woman, complicates his life even further. As Paul, Joe and Catherine struggle to come to terms with the brutalities of war and organised crime, their relationships are tested to the limit.
Violently separated from one another during a murderous German military attack on the Chateau de Cocove where they had taken refuge with remnants of the British Expeditionary Force, all three of them attempt against the odds to re-establish contact.
Counterfeit is a novel of love, friendship, deception, loss, survival and deliverance that begins on a tranquil beach in Sussex in southern England in August 1939 and ends amidst the destruction and carnage of the beaches of Dunkirk in May 1940.
`Fictions spin a reassuring counterfeit web around our lives’ – Counterfeit
`The menacing sounds of Heinkel and Messerschmitt warplanes over Dunkirk’ – Counterfeit
`Paul could see no light at the end of the tunnel that was Dunkirk’ – Counterfeit
Counterfeit by Michael Scriven is on sale at Amazon.com
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Listen to a spoken extract of Counterfeit at Podcasts
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FICTITIOUS BOOKS NOVELS