Set in the picturesque hills of Topanga Canyon, within hailing distance of the glitter and hype of modern-day Los Angeles, The Ashram gives us a fictional look at Southern California's colorful esoteric community, where the forces of Western commercialism and the mystic traditions of the East meld to form the beginnings of a new spiritual culture. Against this backdrop, we follow the journey of a young yogi in his search for enlightenment, from his childhood initiation by a mysterious sage to his romantic encounter with the woman who is destined to open his heart to the suffering in the world...

Fresh from a painful divorce, Rodrigo Arroyo boards a plane for India where he plans to spend his one-year sabbatical writing his long-dreamed-of first novel, a work of historical fiction set in India that he hopes will finally launch his quest for artistic immortality. He finds the perfect place to write: a clean, quiet ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas where no one will bother him as he sends his thoughts into the clear mountain air. He soon finds out, however, that the goddess has other plans for him. A chance encounter with an Indian holy woman and the unsought-for company of...

For many centuries the islands of Haiti and Boriken had been home to the Taino people, the peace-loving inhabitants of the Greater Antilles whose carefree society led Columbus to believe that he had stumbled across the earthly paradise that stirred the imagination of most fifteenth-century Europeans - until he and the Spanish conquistadors initiated the most terrible genocide our planet has ever witnessed. This is the story of the epic encounter between two alien civilizations in the lands that the Spanish renamed Espanola and Puerto Rico, between a unique culture that would soon vanish from...