Based on a true story, this is not the enlightened Rome of myth. This is a city choking on fear, where blood flows on both the battlefield and altar, and where generals and politicians alike are desperate to appease rageful gods.
When 50,000 Romans fall in a single day at the Battle of Cannae, priests claim there can be only one reason the gods abandoned Rome: a Vestal Virgin has broken her vow of chastity. And they accuse Opimia (Mia), the strongest, most defiant of the six sacred Vestal priestesses.
Forced as a child into serving Vesta, the goddess of fire, Mia has always chafed against Rome’s control of her every move—especially after being separated from her childhood love, Attius. Now, accused of a crime she did not commit, she must defend herself in a hostile court to avoid being buried alive for her “crime.”
Betrayed by the high priestess, hunted by Rome’s political and religious elite, Mia must either accept her fate — or join with the Sybil of Cumae to expose the truth behind a world built on superstition, fear, and lies.
A story of personal awakening amid public catastrophe, The Cleansing is a haunting journey through a city at war with itself — and a woman who risks everything to survive it.
Praise for The Cleansing:
"Original, deftly crafted...[and a] historical thriller with an impressive level of literary excellence."
Victoria Alvear has written multiple books and novels set in the ancient world, including A Day of Fire: A Novel of Pompeii, A Song of War: A Novel of Troy, Cleopatra’s Moon, and others.
She is known as Vicky Alvear Shecter for her children’s books, which include Warrior Queens, Anubis Speaks!, Hades Speaks!, and Thor Speaks!.
Victoria has served as a docent at the museum of antiquities at Emory University for nearly twenty years.
Voices on the Wind (A Novel of Malta in WWII, Part I — Assault) By Helena P. Schrader
Publication Date: 11th June 2026
Publisher: Cross Seas Press
Pages: 448
Genre: Historical Fiction
Early 1942: the fate of the Suez Canal and access to Middle East oil hangs on the fate of an island just 17 miles long by 9 miles wide: Malta.
Determined to destroy the British forces threatening Rommel’s supply lines, the Axis powers drop more bombs on Malta than London endured throughout the Blitz. The population is forced underground, while the RAF struggles with inadequate resources to fend off defeat. Meanwhile, Britain’s Atlantic lifeline is fraying....
Voices on the Wind follows the fate of four of Malta’s defenders: Senior Intelligence Officer and former Battle of Britain ace, W/Cdr “Robin” Priestman; WAAF SigInt Officer Candice Weld, sent out from Bletchley Park to “man” the only X-machine outside the UK; F/O “Ned” Nettleton, a Beaufort torpedo bomber pilot engaged in suicidal attacks against enemy shipping; and Chief Officer Stevie Mackay of the British Merchant Navy, fighting to keep Britain’s own lines of supply open.
Praise
What emerges from these pages is more than a story of military operations. It is a portrait of service, endurance, and sacrifice viewed through multiple perspectives, each contributing to a richer understanding of a critical moment in history.
Yarde Book Promotions
Through a collective of narrators working in different areas of the war effort, mainly in and around Malta, "Voices on the Wind" by Helena P. Schrader explores a frequently overlooked aspect of history, delving into the defence of Malta during the Second World War.
The Coffee Pot Book Club
Excerpt
Flying Officer Ned Nettleton, Flight to Malta
Context: Flying Officer Ned Nettleton, RAF, is the pilot and commander of a Beaufort torpedo bomber en route to the Middle East with a refuelling stop in Malta. The crew is straight out of training and deploying to an active squadron for the first time. They are carrying a passenger, a WAAF officer assigned to Malta, Flight Officer Candice Weld. After a pleasant five and a half hour trip, they are approaching Malta when things get difficult.
“Huns!” Tim’s voice crackled over the intercom at a higher octave than normal.
“Give me a proper report, Gunner,” Ned replied, keeping his tone as calm and routine as possible.
“Passing overhead, swinging around and preparing to attack from the rear!”
“Can you identify them?”
“Me109s.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Damn the effing Frogs! They passed our position to the Hun!” Matt bitched.
“Stan, contact Malta and report we are under attack. Maybe they can scramble some fighters to help us out, then take your action station.” There was no need to order Matt and Tim to action stations; they were already in them.
Ned turned to look at Flight Officer Weld. Her frightened yet trusting eyes met his. She seemed to have complete confidence in him, and that shook him because he knew it was misplaced. Ned had never been in a situation like this before. Assigned to Coastal Command straight out of flying training, he had flown reconnaissance aircraft over the Western Approaches for eighteen months without once encountering enemy fighters. Boredom had driven him to volunteer for torpedo bombers eight months ago. He’d finished training three days ago and was on his way to his first operational torpedo squadron. The same was true of his entire crew. This would be their baptism of fire.
Ned would have liked to reassure Flight Officer Weld that everything would be fine, but he couldn’t lie. Instead, he told her as calmly as possible, “Go to the radio compartment, strap yourself in and keep your head down. I may have to throw this crate around a bit.”
She nodded, released the straps, and climbed quickly out of her seat to go to the radio compartment. Ned drew a deep breath and then checked his watch. It was now just after 15.30, and they were no more than twenty minutes away from Malta.
“Coming in now!” Tim reported. “Five o’clock high.”
Ned started evasive manoeuvres, weaving and swooping up and down to disrupt the aim of the fighters. Shortly afterwards, Tim and Stan opened fire, filling the interior of the cockpit with the smell of cordite. Abruptly, two loud bangs made Ned wince; the Germans had made hits before sweeping past on either side of them. Ned watched them as together they banked and climbed to come in for a second bash.
“Tell me when to take evasive action,” Ned called over the intercom to Tim and Stan, conscious that he was sweating badly. He strained to look as far ahead as possible. They couldn’t be more than sixty miles from Malta. He must see it soon.
“Here they come! Wait! Wait! Now!”
Ned threw the Beaufort into a sudden skidding turn, and a second later the aircraft shuddered violently as Stan and Tim opened fire almost simultaneously. Yet, as he lifted a wing to change course, enemy shells tore into it, piercing the fuel tanks.
Ned corrected the attitude of the aircraft, twisting the other way. Instantly, the other German fighter punched a hole in the Perspex directly over his head. Shards flew everywhere, shattering some of the instrument dials, and then the shadow of the Messerschmitt flying low overhead blocked out the sun. As it shot past them, Matt fired furiously without any visible effect. The German fighter wheeled away on a wing, chasing after its leader.
Ned watched them as they soared up the sky and then, one after the other, flopped over to roll off the top of the loop to position themselves for a new attack. Ned tested the controls. The Beaufort was still responding normally, although he didn’t like the sight of petrol running off the trailing edge of the starboard wing. He shifted his attention to the fuel gauge to see how rapidly they were losing green stuff, but the face of the dial was shattered.
Tim and Stan’s machine guns started chattering again, and the aircraft shuddered from the recoil. Ned saw more bits and pieces of his precious new Beaufort breaking off. Suddenly, it staggered and the starboard propeller stopped. Ned cursed; the Beaufort was notoriously difficult to control on one engine. Their speed dropped instantly, and Ned pushed for more power from the port engine. This increased the torque, forcing Ned to apply full right rudder just to hold the Beau on course. The only good news was that Malta was now in sight.
Ned stared transfixed at their destination—until he registered scores of bombers escorted by twice as many fighters approaching the island from the north. Bursts of anti-aircraft guns started to soil the sky with dirty puffs of smoke. Then the first bombs started to fall. Where the hell was the RAF? Ned couldn’t see a single friendly fighter.
“Corkscrew!” Tim shouted, and Ned again tried to dodge the attack with abrupt movements. With only one operable engine, however, it was like fighting on one leg. Within seconds, the Beaufort was again shaken by cannon shells hitting home. Perspex and metal fragments flew around his face as something smashed into the airframe nearby.
Ned observed the damage dispassionately. He had left his terror behind and no longer felt any fear. He cared only about saving the lives of his passenger and crew. To shake off the Messerschmitts, he dived for the deck and fishtailed over the long rollers coming out of the southwest at an altitude so low that the wash from his remaining propeller blew spume from the wave tops. The manoeuvre appeared to have done the trick. Tim reported the Messerschmitts had broken off their attacks and soared upwards instead.
A second later Ned realised why: he’d been so busy concentrating on not putting a wing into the water that he’d failed to notice he was fast approaching cliffs that rose straight up for what looked like 1,000 feet. Frantically, Ned yanked the control column back and put on full flaps to gain altitude. Just when he thought they were going to crash into the limestone, they scraped over the top of the grassy edge and were suddenly scudding at less than twenty feet above brilliant green fields littered with bright yellow flowers.
Ahead of him, the horizon was blotted with smoke, dust and debris from the bombs raining down on the far side of the island. Nearer at hand, a hill rose up, topped by a walled city built of white stone. Bathed in bright sunlight and dominated by the dome and towers of a great church, it looked surreal in its timeless peace. To his left, another city of white stone stretched on a wide plain, equally serene and dominated by a single, even larger red dome. Between these apparently sleeping monuments from an earlier civilisation, giant flames leapt and danced amidst clouds of oily smoke.
Ned banked slightly and headed for the flames on the assumption that they marked a fuel or ammo dump near an airfield. He registered with detachment that he had received no instructions from Control. He was on his own.
They skimmed over the surface of the island. Trees and scrub-brush, stone walls and stone churches, houses and pastures with frantic goats—all raced by just feet below the belly of the Beaufort. Through the soles of his flying boots, Ned felt his rudder flinch and flutter as a control wire stretched or frayed. If it broke, they were doomed. Oil or hydraulic fluid glistened on the cockpit floor. The Beaufort had had enough. She was mortally wounded and wanted only to surrender in exhaustion. Sweat soaked the inside of his flight jacket as Ned fought to keep her airborne. He held her aloft by sheer willpower, forcing her to fly straight and level just a little bit longer, a little bit farther.
He could not risk taking a hand off the controls to click on the intercom. All he could do was shout at the top of his voice, “Crash positions! I’m putting her down.”
The others must have been waiting for the order. Matt scrambled back into the cockpit. Tim dropped down to take his position behind the main spar. Ned sensed rather than saw Stan pull Flight Officer Weld out of the radio station and push her down behind the main spar, too. Good lad, he thought, as an airfield came into view in front of him.
Ned knew it was an airfield because of the number of wrecked Hurricanes dispersed around an expanse of flat dirt pock-marked with filled-in bomb craters. The ruins of a three-storey, brick house with silly, mismatched towers and turrets loomed off to the left and a charred and collapsed hangar lay broken to the right. Tents flapped in the wind behind another ruined building. Ned could not identify anything that looked like a tower, but a red light was flashing at him from a broken-down caravan. Red?
Ned had never disobeyed flying instructions before, but he could not make a new approach. The Beaufort could neither gain altitude nor manoeuvre. He eased back on the throttle and lifted the nose so that she stalled out and flopped belly down on the rocky earth.
Then all hell broke loose as the Beaufort careened across the runway, hitting one bomb crater after another. Just a few feet overhead, four Messerschmitts strafed the field from one end to the other.
Helena P. Schrader is the author of 21 historical novels and six non-fiction history books. She earned a PhD in History from the University of Hamburg and served as a U.S. diplomat in Europe and Africa. She has won numerous literary awards, and two of her titles—Cold Peace, the first book in the Bridge to Tomorrow series on the Berlin Airlift, and her Battle of Britain novel, Where Eagles Never Flew—achieved Amazon #1 Bestseller status in aviation and military historical fiction.
Schrader masterfully blends meticulous historical research with compelling storytelling. Her success can best be measured not by the many awards or positive reviews, but by the fact that witnesses of the history she describes praise the authenticity of her works. Battle of Britain ace, W/Cdr Bob Doe enthusiastically declared that Where Eagles Never Flew got it “smack on the way it was for us fighter pilots.” Traitors for the Sake of Humanity: A Novel of the German Resistance won recognition for its extraordinary sensitivity to a complex topic from the survivors of the military conspiracy against Hitler and the widows of some of those executed.
The dramatic siege of Malta in WWII attracted Schrader’s attention years ago, and she has visited the island several times to conduct research, visit the important sites, and gain a greater understanding of the people. As she became drawn deeper into the material, the temptation to combine a novel about the siege of Malta with another of her lifelong loves, the British Merchant Navy, became irresistible. Schrader has been an avid sailor all her life and served as a petty officer in the British Merchant Navy on sail training ships in her youth.
New York City, 1937. Seventeen-year-old Marigold McGrath is coming undone.
Her mother is dead. Her father is drawn to dangerous politics. The only place she feels joy is behind a camera — where she can frame the world on her own terms.
After a series of her own missteps, she reinvents herself in London: mentored by a celebrated émigré photographer, photographing Kindertransport children, working alongside Edward R. Murrow. She falls in love with Joop, a charming Dutch student, and shrugs off the war gathering around her.
Then the Blitz begins.
Joop vanishes into the Dutch Resistance. And Marigold — who has always preferred to photograph the world as she wishes it were — must finally decide what kind of woman, and what kind of witness, she is willing to become.
A sweeping WWII coming-of-age novel set in wartime London.
For readers of Kristin Hannah, Kate Quinn, and SL Beaumont's The War Photographers
Praise for The Making of Marigold McGrath:
I read a lot ofhistorical novels... this one wasone of my favorites. From the characters to the setting to the actions depicted Ithoroughly enjoyedthe journey—I reallydidn’t want it to end! ~ Netgalley Review, 5*
"The Making of Marigold McGrathby Carrie Hayes is the tale of a well to do American seventeen year old sent to Europe just prior toWorld War II. The book isexquisitely writtenwith a well paced dialogue. The characters are well formed and interesting. Sprinkled throughout the book are bits from news outlets that help set the larger context for the reader - they are well timed and helpful.Great read,well worth it!" ~ Goodreads Review, 5*
"The Making of Marigold McGrathexplores a rarely examined aspect of WWII: the complex journeys to maturity ofyoung adults in war-torn Europeas they seek human connection and meaning. Marigold finds both, using her skills as a photographer to document the stories of refugee children. With gobs ofhistorical referencesandvivid imagery, interlaced withintrigueandromance,The Making of Marigold McGrathis agreat read!" ~ Goodreads Review, 5*
This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Carrie Hayes
Carrie’s first two novels, Naked Truth or Equality and Well Dressed Lies, follow the lives of the iconoclastic suffragist sisters, Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin.
Carrie lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in a rambling Victorian house just outside of New York City.
