Book excerpt: A Thriller with a Heart... A group of inner city delinquent boys is engaging in a horrible crime of violence, when suddenly a strange man appears. He is immediately attacked, but he defeats their aggression. He subdues them and makes them listen to scary ghost stories, throughout the night until help arrives. The unwilling audience becomes enthralled by the excitement and thrills, and the mystery, as slowly the stranger captures their hearts and minds. Finally a tale of Islamic Jihad in 12th Century Spain directly relates back to their own conflicts in the modern urban so-called “ghetto”. The tales all touch on art, and the stranger is an artist, a tortured soul whose gifts and skills transform their lives, but at a terrible cost. The characters are very real and believable, as is the harshness of their reality that is motivating their behavior. As the plot builds from crisis to crisis, the changes that occur become clear and understandable, as logical results of the driving action. The ghost stories, embedded in the plot, can stand on their own and are exciting and entertaining in their own right, but their significance is slowly revealed as the book nears its conclusion, when the meaning of all the action begins to dawn on the boys, and the reader. Readers say my book makes them cry, a lot, quite unusual for a violent thriller, which this book certainly is. It does show some insight into the mentoring process taking boys from violent, macho 15 year olds to civilized adult men. Author: The author had formal training in the Fine Arts, had been a painter, and had mentored inner city delinquent boys. The author also amassed a vast collection of antiquities from the world’s ancient cultures, each piece having its own story. These factors in the author’s life were the direct inspiration for this fearful tale of mystery and harsh reality, yet touches the heart with love.