The Schoonover Collection: Gentle Infidel
Schoonover’s works have been favorites of lovers of adventure, romance, and history since they were first released in the 1940s. Renowned author Lawrence Schoonover’s well-researched novels have been translated into eight languages and millions have sold worldwide. New redesigned unabridged editions are available at local bookstores as well as online.
The Schoonover Collection: Gentle Infidel tells the story of a Venetian boy impressed into military service in the elite Janissary corps of the Grand Turk in the time leading up to the overthrow of the last capital of the Roman Empire. During the fall of Constantinople the young warrior, hardened by years of training and trials of heartache, learns his own history hidden from him for a decade and must use his skills and conscience to find his own path.
Publisher George Scott is Schoonover’s great-nephew, and was so inspired by these books he was determined to see them back in print. “There’s a whole new audience for these wonderful stories. Anyone who likes adventure, romance, and political and religious history will love these books.”
The Schoonover Collection: Queen’s Cross was released in September of 2008. This is the story of Isabella of Castile, Spain’s greatest monarch, whose dedication to her people and her religion led to establishing Christian Europe as a powerful political force in the medieval world. The epic re-conquest of Grenada from the Moors in 1492 is one of the most important events of European history and even today is referenced by Islamic leaders in their struggles against the West.
Schoonover was born in Iowa, graduated from the University of Wisconsin and moved to New York City to work for a large advertising agency in the 1940s. After his wartime service he spent his free days in the New York Public Library’s Central Manhattan Branch researching what became his first big seller, The Burnished Blade. “That library is a wonderful place,” commented Schoonover. “If the atom bomb came down, there would be the real loss.”
Scott plans to release nine historical novels by Schoonover, together for the first time in a newly designed collection.
“Ignorant of his noble Venetian birth...he met and loved a beautiful Italian girl...midst the flames of fallen Constantinople and the crash of history’s first cannonade”
“Sheer adventure, fully panoplied and highly colored...”
-Kirkus book review
“A rip-roaring historical novel...a much better drawn background than usual for this kind of book...”
-Booklist
“...a contest of character—a Christian boy mistakenly inducted into the Janissary corps...His story smiles.”
-New York Herald Tribune
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Distributor: Atlas Books
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Publisher: Fountain City Publishing
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Excerpt:
"What was your Christian name?"
"Michael," said Michael, but he did not say it alone, for Angelica also cried, "Michael!"
Bernardi half rose from his chair, gasped and fell back again, suddenly very pale.
"Da Montelupo! Oh, Blessed Lord Jesus!"
Michael blushed crimson. The insult was double. His past was violated and he had admitted that he had no name. It enraged him suddenly to be on the defensive.
"It's no more Christian than Moslem. Or Jewish either, for that matter."
Angelica impulsively burst out, "It's the name of an angel!"
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Excerpt:
Amid the smoke and the horror and the noise, Hassan found himself shouting fatuously, "I'd hate to have been down on the ground with those poor devils!" The sight of the leaping, flaming bodies of his friends was the most sickening thing Hassan had seen in war.
Michael shouted back, "We're lucky!" He knew very well, however, that of all the sultan's troops the men in the tower would be the first to be shot at when they came out from behind their armor and tried to cross over the drawbridge that would soon be lowered.
Someone at the breach with an amazingly accurate little handgun continued to pick off the Turkish engineers, especially the men delegated to work the levers that moved the wheels of the tower.
As the Turks neared the walls, the Turkish cannon elevated their fire so as not to hit their own men and rained projectiles into the streets of the city.
The drawbridge at the top of the tower was ten feet long, but twenty feet from the breach the wheels of the tower encountered the mass of rubble and stone at the foot of the demolished wall. The tower could go no farther. Hassan lowered the bridge. It was short by ten feet. Below him, crawling up the debris, he saw the janissaries of his regiment beating their captain-pasha to the goal.
"God's name!" he shouted, "the artillerymen shot too well!"
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