Reading is believing: The star of this duet is the author's "27" coming of age novel, written nights among moths and ghosts in an old Hitler-era army barracks to strains of Mozart. He was a young U.S. Army soldier, stationed in 1970s West Germany during the Cold War. Captured together after forty years gathering dust - twins separated at birth and reunited nearly a half century later - these two books will amaze you with their magic, beauty, melancholy, and passion. The author wrote poetry with talent and discipline through his teens and twenties, a published poet at 18 who flared out at 27...

Cymbalist Poems is a collection of the author's favorite 64 poems from among hundreds he wrote during a youthful career of great passion, technical skill, and esthetic taste. He was a published poet by 18, began summarizing his life's poetry in his mid-20s while living, working, and traveling in Europe (1975-1980), and reached his "27" in 1976. That is the age when rock stars famously flame out. It is no different with lyrical poets (e.g., Arthur Rimbaud, Rainer Maria Rilke, and many others). In a remarkable twist, the author also wrote a passionate, exciting novel around age 27--his first...

This romantic coming of age novel - bold and sensual, honest and raw - tells of the passionate love affair between a 23-year-old idealistic, talented poet and a beautiful, neglected young married woman in a New England college town set in 1973. Written by a young soldier in 1976 Cold War West Germany and forgotten for forty years, it glows as fresh today as it was when I composed it in Paris and Heidelberg and other European cities where I traveled in my old orange VW as a single, adventuresome young man. Like many soldiers far from home, I was having the time of my life but didn't know it. I...