Bella Gioconda by Richard Cheney [historic fiction]

For five hundred years, it was just a chalk drawing of a young woman, the daughter of Chianti vintner, Antonmaria Gherardini. Leonardo da Vinci consented to be Maria's tutor. Her powers of observation and skill in translating that sight to paper were more expressive than even he, the most intelligent and talented man in the world, could imagine. At the culmination of four years of tutoring in the 1490's, Leonardo is captivated by the girl whom he calls La Gioconda, one who smiles. She literally stole his mind if not his heart. While appreciating her finished portrait on the eve of her wedding, Leonardo grasped the paper by the upper corner, leaving his fingerprint in the chalk, innocently setting history on fire that he was the artist of the portrait. But five hundred years can confuse identity of both subject and artist. A Swiss art collector, Claude Beauvin, owner of a modest collection, heard a rumor and sought to confirm it. In the process, his wife, Ghiselle, and a New York art dealer, an art history professor and a man from INTERPOL become entangled in the drawing's history. A reclusive young widow, Andrea Garibaldi-Chase, current owner of the drawing, seeks to sell it at auction. The bidding surpasses Beauvin's funds, but a note delivered to him along with a substantial roll of dollars allows Beauvin to outlast all other bidders. Betrayed and abandoned by his calculating wife, Beauvin discovers who made the drawing, but also that the drawing's subject is more than a random girl. She is the ancestor of the alluring widow, Mrs. Chase, and is not just Maria, but a woman who is known by her true given name in honor of her father's mother.

Circle of the Sky by Richard Cheney [historic fiction]

A lonely, unknown and unseasoned sculptor, struggling for recognition, even from his own father, goes to live in the household of a generous and cultured patron. In the course of elevating his art, he struggles against the opportunity to develop a relationship with a young woman who competes for his favor while he pursues the favor of his art. She, though coincidentally in the same household, lives echelons above his station, a true debutante coming of age. The young woman, barely three years his junior, radiant beyond her age and the daughter of a duke, chanced a glimpse at the artist at work, covered in marble dust, working the marble that was submissive to his every stroke even though he is but a teenager of sixteen. She is thrilled. He, turning to her interruption, is smitten by her radiance. So begins an unlikely but often repeated tale of crossed stars. Those stars would, in time, turn full circle for them. The reluctant lovers, likewise, complete a circle of such circumference, it will occupy lifetimes to achieve. She was the lovely Contessina de' Medici and he was Michelangelo.

The Road Taken by Richard Cheney [non-fiction]

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..." wrote the poet, Robert Frost. Drawn from the bitter experiences of his life, yet these words offer a sublime caution to urge our understanding of the road each of us travels. The character we develop, the choices we make and the course we follow are essential to be understood fully and with clear intent to run life's course with purpose. We either let the road lead us without purpose and we stagnate, or we make plans only to abandon them and take tributary paths that may not reach the conclusion we expected, or we plan carefully, remain devoted to the plan and follow the course we have charted to reach the goals we had set. They are our choices to make and the choices made must follow to their natural conclusions. An analysis of Frost's watershed poem helps to understand how planning and choice make the road the pleasure and reward it should be for all who travel divergent roads on the road taken.

Peacemaker by Richard Cheney [non-fiction]

As a manual for peacemakers, the Holy Bible has a relevant, single chapter. There are other worthy principles to learn, but the peacemaker's craft is contained in a sermon offered on a mountain to which had gathered a multitude to hear what Jesus had to say. What he said has been heard over great distances around the globe for thousands of years without our yet taking full advantage of the advice that would cure every single social ill that plagues our modern society. It is known today as the Sermon on the Mount, and its original offering was followed by a multitude saying: "this is an hard word; who can hear it?" We say the same today. But no other path, no other attitude will lead us to the peace as only he could offer: the words of a peacemaker, the words of eternal life. If we would be a peacemaker, we must employ the principles of mercy, purity of heart, hunger for righteousness, poverty of spirit, and, yes, the suffering of persecution while declaring love for those who persecute. These are the character traits of a peacemaker. These are the attitudes that will calm the seas of our discontent.

Irreantum by Richard Cheney [historic fiction]

It was a ship built by the desire of one man: Nephi. Its story is told in a book reckoned as true by less than one percent of the world's population, as interesting by some, a fantasy by many and an absurdity by just as many. Two thirds of the world's population may have never heard of Nephi nor the voyage of his family six hundred years before Christ. One man, Dr. Alma Carlisle, a marine acheologist, is determined to find the ship of legend that so many consider as little more than legend. To do so, he is challenged by a group of archeology graduate students to attempt to build and sail a similar ship, just to see if the legenday voyage was possible. From the shores of a protected natural harbor in Oman, they and an Omani crew collect the materials, build the ship and sail off into a maritime miracle and an assurance by all that on some voyages of discovery, more hands on deck than mortal may be at hand in the affairs of men. Irreantum, translated to mean "many waters" is her christened name. The ship sails the Indian and Pacific oceans and into its own legend of faith-promoting discovery.

The Eyes of God by Richard Cheney [historic fiction]

Once one has known the perfection and beauty, the light and eternity of immortality, he would like to have gone mad for the memory of it. By comparison, though there are beauties of near perfection in the earth that seem to have existed from before time, there is naught to compare with celestial perfection. One such as Emile Cezanne, a simple college professor of lingusitics and amateur archeologist, should expect to be counted fortunate to have had a glimpse at perfection, but the glimpse is at once a blessing and a curse. To have the brief encounter is to be returned to the ordinary and profane. If the tools used to see such vistas are not meant for ordninary men, then men like Emile ought not to find them. Better to have known only that such tools are possible, and, in the meantime, depend upon the tools of the heart to understand eternity.

The Broken String of Pearls by Richard Cheney [historic fiction]

As God is witness to all words and deeds, the pages of this book may burn in your hands. Such is the result of a history that becomes lost in its own telling. It wanders into areas that it ought not to travel, blinded as it is and blinded by it as we are, no one is watching the path as it suddenly ignites. Aldus Cezanne is a rare books dealer with a secret: an envelope containing old newspaper clippings, a photograph and a skeleton key, clues to the discovery of a treasure so misunderstood, no one even knows what it may be and what perils exist by unauthorized use of its power. Cezanne's grandfather, Emile, left the envelope hidden in the bookstacks when Cezanne's father owned the store. Cezanne's accidental discovery of the envelope sends him on a quest of ancient papyri thought lost in the great Chicago fire of 1871. As he unravels the clues, the story leads to understanding that Cezanne's grandfather had ancient tools in his possession to understand the mysteries of God, and that a modern nemesis is after them for an evil purpose. Discovery of the box containing the miraculous tools will threaten Cezanne's life, take others, and leave him with the sure knowledge that some knowledge is too dangerous to know.

The Shroud Chronicle by Richard Cheney [historic fiction]

Once in a blue moon, it turns red. Red, like the stain of old water on cold iron. Red, as if that dust, rusted corrosion, like blood let loose, stains whatever shroud surrounds the wound. Red, like a bad metaphor of the end of the world, comes not on a cry, but a whisper. There is a season for red, as there is for blue, and all of it, after all, is stained like glass; the stain of God.
What is the shroud? Does the answer really matter if there is no faith in miracles? And if there is, does it matter that it was left behind when new life was risen? Its history is clouded in fact and myth. Some of it is known and inspiring; some information is entirely mythical in proportions to amze and dismay. For Dr. Vladimir Jones, world renowned blood chemist, the mystery will become life-threatening when asked by the Vatican to open a new investigation into the linen cloth revered as the burial shroud of Jesus. He has been warned: the next time someone comes out of the mountain, offering a journey, and he tells a tale that he is seeking God, he may be wearing the devil's own clothes and claim they are the shroud of holy Jesus, crucified, but it is just linen cloth...

Hieroglyphs by Richard Cheney [historic fiction]

Only an Egyptologist would mumble in his sleep in transliterated hieroglyphs: "dpt ntr.... as-k em dpt ntr" [behold, thou art in the sacred bark].
In the waning years of the twentieth century, an audience has gathered to hear the annual Christmas lecture to be given by Professor Emeritus "Salt" Harris of the University of Chicago. The old professor, thirty minutes overdue, is sleeping in his cramped office in the Oriental Institute. An enterprising graduate student, Alma Carlisle, is astonished to find the professor ready to forego the lecture in favor of honoring Carlisle with his life story, including one tantilizing bit of information: professor Harris, great-great grand nephew of Martin Harris, one of three witnesses of the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, is the possessor of one hundred sixteen pages of handwritten manuscript, pages which Martin Harris begged to show to members of his family and then lost. The loss of the manuscript is historic fact. Salt Harris reveals a tragedy resulting from his possession, and a fateful decision to make of a mystery a matter of faith.

The Penalty by Richard Cheney [fiction]

"Womb. Tomb. Womb.
Tomb." Noah Scott whispered the words as a mantra reduced to the simplicity of single syllables. They share more in common as places of close darkness than even the three-quarters of their shared letters. Questions riddle his mind.  Does the public favor or oppose the death penalty for the punishment of captial crimes? Does the public favor or oppose abortion to end unwanted pregnancies? Of those who favor abortion, how many favor or oppose the death penalty? Does a man have the right to prevent a woman from seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy? These questions set a courtroom thriller piggyback on a previous, flawed murder trial that convicted innocent Noah of murder.  He is now on death row awaiting execution in ninety days. He is the plaintiff in the abortion trial against his ex-wife, Lisa, but he is not the father. All are thrown into a maelstrom of guilt, innocence, love, betrayal, life and death. Noah's friend and attorney, Sam Reynolds, sees the chance mutation of black feathers on the necks of two seagulls and triggers an urgent re-investigation of the DNA evidence that originally convicted Noah. The reluctant participation of his ex-wife helps identify the mysterious stranger who has complicated her life, but will it correct a wrong conviction, will it have any influence on the expected results of the current trial and will it come in time?

Deamwalker by Richard Cheney [fiction]

Icarus Huxley limits his psychiatric practice to leave him time to manage another: he is a ghost shrink, treating the lost and homeless of the dead who do not know how to go where they are going. He has mentors, spirits that have been his guides, teachers and companions since he has had memory of a memory. Once their reality became a matter of fact, fear of them has become as inconsequencial as the traditional fear of the dark. But all creatures know fear. All realms of existence know fear. Now, he must find a woman still living, but her whereabouts are not as urgently hidden as her whenabouts. An FBI agent turns to Huxley to help find the wife of a hollywood producer who has just encountered a fantasy he has never conceived in film: the transport of her body through time. The nature of his wife's disappearance introduces him to a fact known to Huxley: his is a household name only among the dead, for whom time is merely a memory.

The Kindness of Ravens by Richard Cheney [fiction]

"Everybody got to watch the sky turn gray."*
This is a feather, fallen from a heaven where you cannot yet be, a dream-place of shadow inhabited only by deep sleep. Deep. Hollow. It is a sleep from which one does not usually awaken.
Once, as a child, Icarus Huxley thought he feared heaven. Its winter sky hung, cleaved by an unkindness of ravens, a cloud of hundreds of wings, thinking and flying as one hunting. As a child, he must learn to face fear, to embrace it, and only then learn the special skills he must develop to be what he was meant to be: a door of calm and guiding assurance for spirits of the dead.  Once, then, he had a dream of a place he did not know; not his canyon home of childhood. The house was a gothic-gabled, dark gray-green mass, already ancient when he first saw it as he came out from a cornfield. The path around it martks the dangers he must face to master his fate. The corn had long since been harvested. It was November, before Thanksgiving. Walking through the stalks, some fallen over, some still upright, and some uprooted and carried away, all were hay-colored and hard. To bend the stalk was to hear the snap of broken bone...




*James Taylor, "Everybody Has the Blues"

The Blue Lady by Richard Cheney [fiction]

In the winter of 1929 on the California coast, Frank's Roadhouse and the beach below is the scene of untimely love, desperate moments, betrayal, crime and the death of nine people, murdered for reasons Icarus Huxley, paranormal therapist, and his assistant, Sarah McDonald, are hired to discover. The roadhouse, now a seaside restaurant, is haunted by the spirits of the dead from that night, still anxious, still seeking their deserved rest and still bitter to have lost their mortality by the avarice of a sinlge man. The Blue Lady was that man's wife. Johnny Fagan, the piano player, fell hopelessly in love with her. Paddy Reed, the brutal husband, is the west coast purveyor of illicit liquor and brutal crime boss of an empire that comes apart at the seams of a desperate triange in competition for the Blue Lady. Unknown to Huxley, and only by the utter psychological shock to Sarah, she withdraws into a coma in which she begins to understand her personal ties to the Blue Lady. Huxley follows the clues to discover Sarah's family background and how it relates to the desperate struggle of nine people whose violent end reaches out to Sarah from the distant past on the darkest evening of the year.

Before I Sleep by Richard Cheney [fiction]

Who is the tormented Dr. Icarus Huxley, paranormal psychiatrist? Why did Alice Rhule, the intelligent, irreverent, lovely and loney mistress of a thousand-acre island estate fall in love with him? Who murdered Alice? Haunting visions surround Huxley, the prime suspect: a cloister of white marble on a hilltop in the island forest; a terrifying horned beast, both bull and man which inhabits a labyrinth of unholy creation; the spirit of Alice with new-found powers to delight, seduce and destroy. The captivating and ultimately captured spectre of Alice struggles with her fascination with Huxley and the bitterness of his apparent betrayal. The living and dead conspire to overcome Huxley's tenuous preternatural control. There will be no washing of this stain. Let the rain wash it. Let the wind blow it away. Let the earth take it to itself by its own means. And if it is never taken, never washed clean, let it be there to meet the quick and the dead at God's pleasing bar to plead for its innocence.