Europe in the Cold War years was a dangerous place for Harold Bronson and his buddies, draftees commandeered into espionage and counterintelligence. Their low echelon escapades take them to Berlin, Ulm, the South of France, and Zurich. Bronson chooses this time of his life to explore a personal coming out, creating secrets within secrets in a disapproving military. In his off-time, Bronson paints portraits of the other denizens of Schloss Issel, earning money for trips and adventures to Paris and Nice. Always on the edge of life, he taunts the higher-ups with a light-hearted acceptance of...

Graham Obermann is an established biographer of the Post-Impressionists. He is married to Celia Prosper, a modernist painter well-regarded by critics and collectors. As Obermann organizes a birthday party for Celia, looking after all the details, he describes in a single day the odd Prosper family and his attraction to his novelist brother-in-law Karl. Several significant events test all the characters in this family saga with subplots of many generations, and a new generation making its mark. * * * *

Other books by Douglas Atwill, all from Sunstone Press, are "Why I Wont Be Going to Lunch...