The Wind Merchant

Beren is a city in constant unrest: ruled by a ruthless upper clazz and harried by a band of rebels who want change. Its one certainty is that the two sides do not, and will not, meet.

But children know little of sides or politics, and Anna and Kyara—a princess and a peasant girl—let their chance meeting grow into a deep friendship. Until the day Kyara’s family is slaughtered by Anna’s people, and the friendship comes to an abrupt end.

Years later, Kyara is a rebel—bitter, hard, and violent. Anna’s efforts to fight the political system she belongs to avail little but to win her enemies at court. Neither is a child anymore—but neither has ever forgotten the power of their long-ago friendship. When a secret plot brings the rebellion to a fiery head, both young women know it is too late to save the land they love.

But is it too late to save each other?

Reap the Whirlwind is an early work by Rachel Starr Thomson, the author of The Seventh World Trilogy (Worlds Unseen, Burning Light, and Coming Day), Taerith, and other novels and short stories.

History has repeated itself and the Dark Ages of man are upon us once again.

With hope and sanity rapidly dwindling, at her most vulnerable state, a dark and magical being from her past has offered her the key to her success, at a price that may be too steep. The temptation will change everything. Will Luna be prepared to sell her soul for revenge, or will she continue on her bloodthirsty path of destruction alone, blind, and in the dark.

Blake Stanley is the owner of a large cattle station in the remote centre of Australia. Struggling to run the large property while also raising his young son alone, he decides to enlist the help of a housekeeper.
From the first moment he saw Terry Johnson and her young son, he knew they would not last long in the outback and had serious doubts she had ever worked on a cattle station before. Against his better judgement, he agrees to give her a chance.
While out mustering cattle he receives a desperate plea for help over the helicopter radio, but the call is cut short; it was from Terry’s young son Dale. On arriving back at the homestead he finds Terry lying face down in a pool of blood and Dale is nowhere to be found; sparking a Nation Wide search for not only the young boy, but a mystery shooter.
As the search continues all hope of finding the boy alive begin to fade; but also disturbing facts begin to unfold about Terry.
Late one night Blake receives a strange phone call, setting him off on his own search for answers. “Who is Terry Johnson and what part did the young boy play?”
He soon discovers a sinister plot; one which raises the stakes even higher, in the race to find the young boy alive!

It’s Christmas Eve in New York and some men in hooded monks’ robes and plastic masks of the face of Jesus Christ have just pulled off a spectacular robbery of the historic church downtown where George Washington worshipped, getting away with tens of millions of dollars in jewelry and cash and also killing fifteen of the congregation.

The first detective on the scene, quite by accident, is Lieutenant Mary Freeman, on her way home to Brooklyn after buying presents for the husband she no longer loves, and after stopping by her favorite haunt, Big Dot’s Jungle Bar, for a few drinks (or as Big Dot often says, “a few too many”).

With a half bottle of George Dickel under her belt, Freeman stumbles onto the scene at Broadway and Wall, but always a pro, she snaps into high gear, quickly assuming command of a chaotic situation, and in the process, making a big impression on a furious Mayor Frederick Lindstadt, who had been mocked and humiliated by the robbers for being not only short and bald, but helpless while among the well-heeled social elite in the Trinity congregation.

When the TV crews bear down and police brass arrive to take charge, Mary Freeman, not a big fan of police department politics, melts into the background.

But the next morning, on Christmas Day, Freeman is surprised to get a call from a mayor’s aide telling her to be at Gracie Mansion at 2 p.m.

Lindstadt has the top political and police honchos at Gracie Mansion to organize the investigation. But he surprises them (as well as Freeman) when he plucks Freeman out of NYPD obscurity, appointing her as his personal liaison officer to Operation Trinity.

As she delves into the investigation, deeper and deeper, Mary’s life is pulled apart by different forces: her dead-end marriage, the tension on the job, and now by an assignment the mayor will not let her turn down – a job that tosses her into the unsavory stew of conflicting (and hidden) agendas among the power elite of New York City’s political leaders, police department bosses, Episcopal Church hierarchy and Wall Street financiers.

Then, of course, there’s her personal life, and it’s about as pretty as the mangled corpses she encounters in the narthex of Trinity Church after the robbery.

When the media expose Mary Freeman as the unlikely hero uncovering clues revealing who the robbers are, Mary suddenly finds that, as in a bad nightmare, instead of running from her, the killers are instead coming after her, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

It’s only near the end of her long, anguished journey to catch up with the robbers that she realizes just how much her personal life has had to do with the trail of blood that brings this riveting story to its sudden, shattering climax.