Two gay men with a lifetime of secrets face their insular, homophobic island’s rancour.Growing up in neighbouring villages on the tiny island nation of St Vincent, teenage best friends Gordon and Allen are secret lovers until they are forced apart their community’s traditional expectations and their fear of how others will react. They each complete their university studies abroad, encountering worlds where there is less hostility toward LGBTQ+ people. Tempted to st...

Around three decades ago, I attended West Country rodeos, which were held in the months of July and August, in the capacity of an RSPCA Inspector. I had acquired a love of horses in my youth, and had spent all available free time at my local riding school. Therefore, this proclivity towards horses, made me an eager candidate for a position in the Society. I was accepted as an RSPCA Inspector in the year 1979. During my seventeen years employment with said Society, I excelled particularly w...

Millington and Jay, two very discreet, middle-aged men living in Montreal, are in the fourth year of a marriage that seems idyllic to their friends. But the marriage is hidden from their parents, who live in St Vincent, and it is fraught with Millington's problems from untreated trauma and his former career as a Methodist minister. And Then Again Begin (volume 4 of The No Safeguards Quartet) reveals their surprising discoveries as they attempt to resolve these problems.

Surely nobody who had suffered the ferocity of the Nazi invasion could consider switching sides and joining the Germans? Yet that is exactly what up to 400,000 Soviet citizens did in World War II.These included not only the 'legions' recruited from non-Russian ethnic groups eager for freedom from Stalin's dictatorship, but also some 100,000 Russians and Cossacks. What began as small local security units of 'Ostruppen', enrolled for the ongoing campaigns against Sov...

Less than an hour after Millington receives his permanent resident visa, he wonders if his husband Jay would now end their marriage. And Jay has multiple reasons to. Millington is an ex-Methodist minister, who once believed he could be celibate. When he fled Caribbean Methodism and came to Montreal, he thought he'd resolved the issues that made him leave, but he comes to understand that psychological trauma, childhood conditioning, parental and community expectations and his own need for c...

No Safeguards, the first book in a trilogy, follows Jay's life from age six to twenty-six - and to a lesser extent that of his brother Paul. We witness the destructive impact of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on his mother and father, opposition to those beliefs by the boys' grandmother and each boy's very different response to their parents' religiosity. This is especially poignant after they leave their grandmother's comfortable home in St Vincent to join their mother in Montreal. The ...

This book is a detailed analysis of the Soviet Army at the outbreak of World War II, including the Red Army's campaigns against Japan on the Manchurian plains as well as in Finland.It covers the Red Army's first operations during Operation Barbarossa when the Red Army was forced to defend Mother Russia against the German onslaught. It offers a breakdown of all the armed forces including the army, air force, paratroopers, navy and NKVD troops. In particular it cover...

Though the 'Wehrmachtsgefolge' (Armed Forces Auxiliaries) were generally inferior to their armed forces equivalents, their contribution to the German war-effort was far from negligible.Auxiliaries including the NSKK, Transportkorps Speer, Reichsarbeitsdienst and Organization Todt supported the Wehrmacht in their duties. In 1944, the strength of these organizations peaked at 3,800,000-40% of the size of the armed forces. As they became increasingly aware of their im...

A coming-of-age novel set in a Montreal in which immigrant youth totter on the edge of self-destruction and oblivion, in the face of brutal and racist police, an insensitive education system, and few prospects for the future. Thomas’s language is spare, and his crackling dialogue and use of patois can compare with the best in Caribbean literature.“. . . a hard story, sometimes despairingly bleak, but it is also undeniably beautiful . . . worth reading—and rereading . . .”—Qu...

The past sits uneasily on the characters of these stories, whether on their native Isabella Island or in Montreal, where some of them now live. Life is ultimately lived according to the choices that were made, and retribution does not always go where it belongs. Thus, Robertson, taking action against his wife and her lover, creates a situation he’s not quite prepared for. The wealthy and proper Higginsons have lived a lie that eventually must come out. Jen and Edwin are passionately in lov...

In this second volume of a three-part series on the Soviet Armed Forces in World War II, author Nigel Thomas turns his attention to the mid-war period.Focusing on the uniforms and organization of Soviet troops during the campaigns of the Caucasus, Stalingrad and Kursk, this book offers a detailed breakdown of all the armed forces which conducted the valiant defensive campaigns, including the army, air force, paratroopers, navy and NKVD troops. It also covers equipm...

The years 1915–17 saw the Imperial German Army forced to adapt to the new realities of static trench warfare.Prewar uniforms and equipment had to be modified, for both utility and economy; on battlefields ruled by machine guns and artillery the steel helmet reappeared, as well as masks to protect against poison gas. Fashionable cavalry regiments soon proved irrelevant on the Western Front; many were dismounted to join the infantry, while new units usurped their pre...