A cave adventure turns perilous as history raises a mystery. Guy Toulouse is an unmotivated high school student obsessed with his self-image and a girl out of his reach. When he flees to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State to escape his troubles in Seattle, he doesn't expect to encounter a dangerous gangster, a mystery surrounding 16th-century European buccaneers, and a hidden cave with a grisly history. Nor does he expect to discover a connection between the historical mystery and a recent unexplained death. Or to become trapped underground with a too-smart girl he dislikes. In order...

A young woman and her tiny Sudetenland German community grapple with survival in the period encompassing the world wars but find the apocalyptic peace that follows the Nazi defeat even more ruinous.

In this history-infused narrative, overwhelming events sweep up young Maria Hajek and her beleaguered ethnic German village, climaxing in the annexation of the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany. As Adolf Hitler's motorcade passes Maria's home in 1938, she believes her life will improve under the new political arrangement that cleaved her homeland from oppressive Czechoslovakia.

However,...