Books by Glenn Starkey

BLACK SUN

“Gold Medal 2016 Historical Fiction Award”

—Military Writers Society of America

“…It was Glenn Starkey’s ability to capture humanity at its worst and at its very best that touched me so deeply… Where some authors write a great story you can’t put down, Glenn Starkey weaves a richly coloured tapestry and breathes life into every thread of the story. Every sentence, every paragraph, every description, and every character matters...”

“2016 Readers Favorite 5 Star Review”

—Readers Favorite.com

SOLOMON’S MEN

“… genuinely suspenseful… a cascade of power struggles… Exciting and unpredictable, Solomon’s Men is highly recommended as an original action/adventure thriller.”

—The Midwest Book Review

“Silver Medal 2012 Mystery/Thriller Award”

—Military Writers Society of America

“... one thing I can say with certainty is that if Glenn Starkey’s name is on a book, I’m reading it!” —“2017 Readers Favorite 5 Star Review”

—Readers Favorite.Com

THE HONJO

Sequel to SOLOMON’S MEN. New Release!

THE COUNCILMAN

“Bronze Medal 2019 Mystery/Thriller Award”

— Joint Conference of MWSA and Southwestern Writers

THE DAGGERMAN

“Glenn Starkey has a way of writing that immediately engages, keeps you riveted to the end with drama, mystery and suspense...”

– Amazon.com - Five Star Review

“There is more truth in this book than in many of the churches today. The author does an amazing job of painting the landscape of Israel and Jerusalem to set the scene with the Sanhedrin, Pharisees and a zealous sect known as the Sicarii, all under Roman occupation...”

– Amazon.com - Five Star Review

AMAZON MOON

“Notable Indie Book of 2013 Award”

—Shelf Unbound Magazine

“Bronze Medal 2014 Thriller/Mystery Award”

—Military Writers Society of America

“… This would be one incredible action movie for sure! ‘Amazon Moon’ is deeply layered in emotions and themes of both revenge and redemption. The human elements of his characters are sharply focused but layered as well…”

—W. H. McDonald Jr., American Authors Association

“Amazon Moon is the sort of novel that grabs you by the throat on the first page and doesn’t let go until the last. It is an exciting story and, at the same time, something more. It is a fable about one man’s redemption, his rediscovery of innocence.”

—Nicholas Guild – New York Times Best Selling Author
The Spartan Dagger, The Ironsmith, Blood Ties,
The Assyrian, Blood Star…and more.

MR. CHARON

“One of the evident appeals of Mr. Charon is Starkey’s descriptive prose. It gives vivid pictures of the surroundings and moves the story flawlessly, which also contributes to the plot’s deft execution. The classic good versus evil theme mixed with love, hate, and redemption makes Mr. Charon a great read.”

“2016 Readers Favorite 5 Star Review” —Readers Favorite.Com

YEAR OF THE RAM

“… it felt as if a hand had made its way out of the novel, gently grabbed me around the neck and pulled me into its story until such time as what was being told had come to an end. After accomplishing what it set out to do, the hand would then draw me out of the world I was in, pat my cheek, and disappear leaving me sitting there in wonder…”

—Sandra Valente, Novel Review Café

THE COBRA AND SCARAB: A NOVEL OF ANCIENT EGYPT

“… Rich, vibrant, descriptive language. Characters with depth, imbued with loyalty, courage and strength or touched with madness for power and evincing raw brutality. Treachery, betrayal, intrigue at every turn…”

– Amazon.com - Five Star Review

STEEL JUNGLE

“…Terrific read. Talented writer. Recommending it to my friends. So easy to understand how this could happen. Scary…”

—Amazon.com – Five Star Review

Non-Fiction:

THROUGH THE STORMS: THE JOHN G. SLOVER DIARY

Edited by Glenn Starkey for the Alvin Museum Society

“…An important and valuable work…genuinely impressed with the completeness of the manuscript, as well as its organization…a work that, in my view, combines both the best of first-person observations and conventional historical narrative to understand Slover’s experiences as part of the larger sweep of American history during that period.”

—Andrew W. Hall, author, historian, DeadConfederates.com -
Civil War Blog, and regional Marine Archaeological
Steward for the Texas Historical Commission

Dedicated to

Kim, Jamie, and Jeannie

“Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.’—Frankenstein”

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

ONE

In The Firelight

July 9, 1948, 11:00 p.m.

Central Ural Mountains

Sverdlovsk Oblast

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

He stood in the dark forest, motionless beyond the reaches of light cast from the camper’s raging fire. For thirty minutes he had watched the haggard looking, bearded man in a tattered Red Army uniform sit on a log and do little more than stare at the ground. The man’s left hand held a short, bent-necked pipe to his mouth while his right rested on the stock of the Mosin-Nagant rifle across his lap.

Thin wisps of tobacco smoke rose from the man’s lips, curled over the short visor of his frayed ‘Lenin’ hat and blended with the campfire’s grayish smoke. Within the fire moisture from greener logs sizzled and popped, shooting glowing embers skyward that burned out and floated away on the night’s chilled breeze. The visor shadowed the man’s eyes, but he listened to the silence of the woods and kept his right hand on the rifle.

Gaze drifting across the camp, dark amber eyes focused on the man’s pack mule that grazed and pawed the ground with a hoof. Ears perked, the mule raised his head, looked about the forest then returned to the plush grass. The mule was upwind and couldn’t smell the predator yet sensed one was near.

Wide nostrils flared, the forest giant inhaled deeply and caught the scents in the air; the lowlander’s pungent mahorka tobacco, his stale body odor mixed with the campfire’s smoke, and the mule’s fresh manure. Raising his head, the creature watched the tops of the lofty trees, saw little movement in them from the wind, and seeing no moon in the star-filled sky, lowered his gaze once more to the camp.

The man’s right hand barely moved but the sliding release of the rifle’s safety was distinct. His left hand lowered the pipe from his mouth, set it aside, then wrapped about the rifle’s upper hand guard. He stood, eased the rifle to his shoulder, and aimed in the direction where he believed something waited out in the dark.

“Whoever you are, if you came to rob me there’s nothing in this camp worth dying for,” the man from the lowlands boldly called out. His gray eyes narrowed as he studied the varying blends of forest shadows.

A deep, sharp grunt carried from the woods. Seconds later, another grunt came.

Rifle lowered to waist level, the man stared at the towering, massive shadow that moved out from behind a tree. Within the shadow, golden amber eyes shined in the firelight like polished jewels. The man tried to imitate the giant’s guttural grunt but couldn’t make it as deep and forceful.

“Micah? Come into camp. No one is here except me and Josephine.” He swung his right hand back, motioned to the mule, but gripped the rifle again in readiness of the unknown.

Underbrush rustled then slender trees and branches swayed and parted as the forest giant walked forward into the firelight. The creature halted at the edge of the camp’s clearing to take a last glance about the woods before proceeding. The mule snorted loudly, tossed its head, and brayed at the creature’s approach.

“You’ve grown since I last saw you,” the man said, eyes widening in admiration. A gentle smile formed. He lowered the rifle to let it hang in his left hand by his side. He cautiously stepped forward but stopped. First touching his beard, he removed his soft-cloth hat to let the fur-draped creature better see him. “Micah... it’s me, Yuri, beneath this beard. My hair is grayer, but it’s me.” He waited a moment longer before putting his hat back on.

The amber eyes below the protruding brow scrutinized Yuri with a piercing stare. A light grunt came, and the great ape-like head slowly nodded in acceptance of the man.

Micah stood seven feet tall with thick muscles sloping from his head downward across broad shoulders, leaving him with almost no neck. The firelight gave a deep blueish shine to the black fur covering his head, body, immense arms and downward to his manhood and onto thick legs and the tops of his feet. Yet no fur covered his darkly tanned face, bulging chest, rippled stomach and navel. Within him lay the strength of six men and his massive bulk easily surpassed 400 pounds. At first glance he resembled a gorilla with his slightly conical head, heavy brow, and blunt, flattened nose with wide nostrils. Yet the longer one gazed at his face, the harsh features faded. He became more human with a mouth of firm lips and intelligence in the eyes that changed from dark to golden amber in the light. But when the beast in Micha raged and his lips parted wide, two large canine teeth emerged for battle.

Yuri laid his rifle against the log and walked to the forest giant. He wrapped his arms about Micah as best he could and pressed his head against the giant’s chest.

“I tried to return, son, but couldn’t,” he said, voice breaking with emotion. “I’m sorry.”

At first Micah didn’t move then eased his thick muscled arms around Yuri.

“We have missed you, Father,” the creature whispered. He lowered his head to rest it atop Yuri’s hat, closed his eyes, and squeezed the lowlander to him, careful not to crush him.

TWO

Lord Of The Congo

Twenty-two years ago...

March 5, 1926, 9:30 a.m.

Conakry, French Guinea, West Africa

Doctor Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov removed his wire-rimmed spectacles, massaged his weary eyes and put the glasses back on. He glanced at his son, Ilya, then raised a clipboard to review several pages of research notes. When finished, he let his gaze drift the length of the filthy chimpanzee cages against the laboratory’s dingy walls. He lightly sighed and shook his head. What else can go wrong? Test results remain negative; the staff is hostile and fear I will report the appalling conditions here—and my funding from the Academy of Sciences will soon run out.

The research station was only three years old and more than half of the seven hundred chimpanzees bought from native hunters had died because of the staff’s incompetent treatment. The stench of feces and sick, uncleaned animals hung so heavily in the air that Ivanov had violently gagged the first day he walked through the building’s door months ago. A majority of the chimpanzees were still juveniles, too young for his experiments, but he found three mature females and inseminated them with human sperm. Still, no signs of fertilizations showed, and Ivanov knew Great Leader Stalin frowned upon failures. The scientific community—the intelligentsia—among other academics, were already in Stalin’s disfavor. The peasant-born revolutionary detested their bourgeoisie, upper cultural attitude of supremacy. Agents of the OGPU—the Joint State Political Directorate under the Council of People’s Commissars—Stalin’s secret police, chekists as the people called all secret police, equally disliked the educated class, so further disapproval could prove fatal.

While some of Ivanov’s colleagues within the intelligentsia believed Stalin wanted a superhuman-ape hybrid to man the ranks of his Red Army, others said it was his atheistic beliefs that fueled his resolve for the project to prove religion wrong about the creation of man. Either way, Ivanov didn’t care.

His life’s work had been toward this goal. Since the day Ivanov stood as a young biologist before the World Congress of Zoologists in Austria lecturing on the creation of human-ape hybrids through artificial insemination, his concern wasn’t with why or should the experiments be performed, only if he could accomplish it. Now, his quest bordered on being an obsession.

“This will work, Ilya. But I must have better laboratory conditions. I proved how a single stallion can fertilize 500 mares through artificial insemination. I’ve studied the phylogenetic relationships between humans and apes for years. It will work, but not in this filth. No chimp will ever become pregnant here,” he said, turning his head to look at his son. The doctor’s eyebrows rose. “Our time at this facility has ended, though. The director has asked us to leave. He believes I inseminated several African women against their will with chimpanzee sperm while they were in the hospital.”

Ilya had been his father’s assistant since graduating from Kharkov University three years ago. No one better than him understood the passion for success burning so wildly in his father’s soul.

“And what would give Mister Nikombo such an idea?” Ilya wryly grinned.

A droll smile formed on Ivanov’s lips. “Nikombo is a fool. He has no comprehension of how we must push the limits of science if we are ever to make significant breakthroughs for mankind. The women came to no harm. Anesthesia kept them asleep throughout the procedures, but someone on the hospital’s staff complained to Nikombo and—it doesn’t matter. The women never displayed signs of fertilization. But I believe I understand why and can improve future procedures.”

“If we must leave, you won’t have another opportunity,” Ilya said, helping his father gather papers and medical equipment for shipment home.

Ivanov paused, glanced about the laboratory for anyone within hearing range then gazed at his son. “For weeks I’ve had hunters searching for the biggest mountain gorilla in the region. They found one they call Mwene Kongo, the Lord of the Congo, because of his superior size and the large troop he keeps. Tomorrow the hunters will take me to him. If we can tranquilize this brute, I’ll extract sufficient vials of his sperm to take back with us to the Soviet Union. With a slight modification to his spermatozoa, I’m confident Mwene Kongo could fertilize a woman.”

Ilya’s brow lowered as he leaned close to his father. “A Russian woman?” His words came in a hushed voice.

A shrug of the shoulders came. “Why not? There are more than enough volunteers to choose from in the labor camps. It’s only a matter of selecting the proper ones.”

THREE

The Great Patriotic War

July 9, 1948, 11:45 p.m.

Ural Mountains

Sverdlovsk Oblast

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Yuri waved a hand at the log he had been sitting on earlier. “Please, have a seat. We have much to talk about.”

The mule snorted and backed to the end of its rope when the forest giant walked around the campfire. Yuri moved to the mule, rubbed her neck and talked soothingly to calm her.

“It will take Josephine a few days to get used to you.” Yuri spoke in a reassuring tone. As he turned, he saw the silverback saddle of hair covering Micah’s back. “When did your hair change colors?” He stared at the grayish swathe realizing it meant Micah’s body had attained maturity, and possibly greater ferocity.

“Three, maybe four years ago,” Micah answered, but offered nothing more.

Sitting beside Micah, Yuri felt dwarfed by the forest giant’s immense size. He reached into a canvas pack and withdrew a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka, opened it and offered Micah the first drink. The forest giant sniffed it and shook his head. Yuri grinned, lifted the bottle high and drank several deep gulps. He lowered it, exhaled in a hard blast and swiped the back of his right hand across his mouth.

“That’s good stuff. Better than the rot-gut we used to make in the field,” he said, setting the bottle on the ground beside his left boot. “Tell me, how is your mother and Anna?”

“Both died five years ago,” Micah faintly replied as he stared out into the forest. “Anna came down with a fever and a coughing sickness. She died and later, mother too.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for them. You know I loved your mother and Anna.” Yuri gazed at the wavering flames of the campfire. “Sonia always loved you from the day you were born.” He drew a deep breath, sighed and lightly shook his head. “Poor Anna was never right in the head, though, after she gave birth to Alexsa. She couldn’t accept what had occurred, but Sonia loved you both and raised you like brother and sister.”

“Accept what had occurred?” Micah paused and grunted. He looked at Yuri. “You mean Anna couldn’t accept giving birth to an animal—a monster. Until the day she died, every time she looked at us, you could see the revulsion in her eyes.”

“I’ll not have any more talk like that. No one ever called you or Alexsa an animal. Never! I taught you both how to read and write, and to think. You have more education than most lowlanders.” Yuri’s anger hung in the air. He grabbed a nearby piece of wood and tossed it into the fire. Embers shot in the air like swirling fireflies then died away. “Do you remember what you always asked me when you were young?”

Micah glanced at the ground and nodded.

“Tell me,” Yuri demanded, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the forest giant.

“What will God say when I must stand before Him?”

Yuri gently nodded. “Yes, and I would answer, ‘He will say Welcome, my child.’”

Vodka bottle in hand, Yuri opened it and drank deep. He lowered the bottle to rest on his leg and gazed at the campfire. “You’re a child of God, Micah, like every other person who walks this earth—and far better than most.”

“That’s difficult to believe when Alexsa and I must stay hidden away on the Urals because people shoot at us and scream and run at the sight of us. The only ones that don’t run are the Mansi tribal shamans when they come up here on their spirit journeys.”

“Trust me, son, life is far better atop these mountains than down in the lowlands.” Yuri’s voice trailed off to silence. He let his somber gaze drift about the surrounding woodland before returning it to Micah.

“After the Bolsheviks murdered the Tsar and his family, they ran about the country like rabid dogs killing innocent people by the thousands for the least reasons. First Lenin, then Trotsky and Stalin, poisoned our country with glorious words of socialism and communism. They talked of greatness all while starving, torturing and executing their own countrymen. It was Lenin with his secret police, the Cheka, who started the penal camps. When he died, Stalin took control of the Soviet Union. Penal camps became labor camps, then he increased their numbers. The worst are in the far northern region of Siberia. The man is insane. Anyone who disagrees with him is killed or imprisoned in forced-labor camps to be worked to death. The years of the Great Purge was an open slaughter of the people. He despises religion, burns churches, and executes priests. It’s why I’ve had to hide my faith like others all these years, especially when I worked with the state police. They force people to convert to atheism or die.”

He shook his head and glanced at the ground. “Stalin has ordered entire families thrown into the labor camps because one of them admitted to laughing at a joke about our illustrious Communist leaders. People are starving across the motherland, but the outside world believes we are happy—all while living under the tyranny of Great Leader Stalin and his new vicious secret police, the NKVD.”

“Did my mother and Anna come from a camp?” Micah asked, gazing at the man he knew as his father. “They never talked about them.”

Yuri nodded. “What was there to tell when you were a young boy? Of the rapes, mass starvation, and atrocities that you would never have understood? No, such things were better left unsaid.” He gulped a long swallow of vodka. “In 1927, I was a soldier, barely twenty-five when pulled from the army to be a chekist. My new superiors ordered me to be a military aide for a doctor working on a special program for Stalin. They had selected five young women from a Perm region labor camp south of the Urals. They were new arrivals, so new that they were still in good health and untouched by the guards...”

The vodka bottle rose, and Yuri drank in loud gulps. “For the doctor my job was to watch over the women, keep them safe and healthy. My superiors were nothing more than Stalin’s henchmen. I reported the doctor’s progress to them. In those days the OGPU was the secret police. They change their names every few years, but they’re the same merciless bastards. Now they are the NKVD. I fell in love with your mother the first day I saw her. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

His voice tapered off to silence. A fragment of a smile crossed his lips and his eyes glistened in the firelight at her memory. He sat spellbound for several minutes before taking a drink of vodka then tossed another chunk of wood into the fire to keep it burning wildly.

Micah made a deep guttural grunt and leaned away from the roaring blaze. “Are you trying to roast us?”

Light laughter came. “I’m sorry... It’s the chill in my bones. Since the war I can never get rid of it.”

“What war?” Micah asked.

A stunned look filled Yuri’s eyes as he turned to Micah. “You don’t know, do you? It was a cruel war...” He paused and shook his head. “I worried about all of you being found by the army during that time. Thank God, you were all safe on these mountains, spared from the horrors.”

Micah tilted his head in confusion. “Men came and dug holes into parts of the mountain, but they left. Some I scared off when they came within a few days of our cave.”

“No, I’m not talking about them. Those were miners. They dig minerals and precious stones out of the mountain then leave when the mines play out—no longer produce. I’m talking about Stalin’s Red Army during what our country called the Great Patriotic War. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin moved hundreds of his factories from Moscow to the eastside of the Urals to keep them safe from German capture and bombings. That Communist bastard forced the people from the labor camps to do anything he needed to keep the factories going for his war machine. To Stalin, the zeks as he calls camp prisoners, are worthless. He doesn’t care whether they live or die. I don’t know who killed more Soviets—that son-of-a-bitch or the damn Nazis—but the war lasted years and was ruthless.”

“Is that why you’ve been gone seven years?” Micah asked. His gaze drifted over the small insignia of a red star bearing a sickle and hammer worn above the short visor of Yuri’s ‘Lenin’ hat.

Yuri nodded. “When I left, I intended to go to the lowlands and buy winter supplies for us. I wasn’t worried about being recognized. After deserting from the secret police to bring your mother and Anna up into these mountains, I changed my name from Yuri Grechiko to Yuri Kasonovich. Unfortunately, the Army was in the first town I entered. They were conscripting men into the military, and next thing I know Comrade Yuri Kasonovich was being shipped to the Front to fight Germans.” Yuri shuddered and reached for another log to throw onto the fire but stopped when he saw Micah shaking his head. He laid the wood aside and drank more vodka.

“You couldn’t return during those years? Not even long enough to let us know you were alive?” Micah gazed at Yuri’s rough face. In the firelight his father appeared to have aged far beyond his forty-seven years. The gray eyes that once shined now seemed drained of life. The war had etched deep wrinkles into his face, and gray streaks daubed his wild brown beard and hair that hung from the sides of his hat. The thumb of his right hand slowly rubbed his fingers as if cleaning dirt from them.

“No. There was never an opportunity. I went from battlefield to battlefield—Kiev, Smolensk, Stalingrad, Moscow, Leningrad—I’ve forgotten many of the names where we fought because we came out of one battle and into another. I was shot three times, and each time, as soon as I healed enough, the army sent me back to fight. The Nazis slaughtered whole villages, and we were desperately trying to stop them to save our country. The harsh winters, the deep snow, and the rasputitsa—the muddy weeks—spared us many times from the Germans because their vehicles bogged down and couldn’t move. They couldn’t receive food or winter clothes and were hurting. During those days myself and other snipers were very busy.” Yuri looked at his right hand and rubbed it with his left.

“Busy?”

Yuri’s gray eyes grew cold. “Killing Nazis, especially Nazi officers.”

“Is the war over?”

Yuri nodded. “What Russians called the Great Patriotic War ended several years ago, but Stalin still wages his private war against our people, murdering everyone he believes is a threat to him and his communist regime. The labor camps are nothing more than death camps and his police keep them filled.”

“If the war ended years ago, why didn’t you return sooner?”

“I needed time to heal. My body was in bad shape, but...” Yuri drew silent and stared at the campfire.

“What?” Micah pressed him for an answer.

“In my mind I was still fighting the war. If you wish to talk about a true monster, I can tell you what I had become. No, I couldn’t let my family see that person.”

Neither Yuri nor Micah spoke for several minutes allowing the former soldier to be alone with his dark memories while the forest giant weighed what they had said.