New Releases by Howard Fast

A pair of imaginative science fiction story collections from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Spartacus, Freedom Road, and the Immigrants saga. Over his long and illustrious career, New York Times–bestselling author and prolific novelist Howard Fast proved himself a master of any literary genre, from historical fiction in Spartacus to family generational drama in his bestselling Immigrants saga. Although his output in fantasy and science fiction is relatively modest, these two short story collections, reminiscent of classic Twilight Zone episodes, demonstrate that Fast’s imagination knew no boundaries. The General Zapped an Angel: Nearly forty years after the publication of his first story, “Wrath of Purple,” in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, Fast returned to the genre with a set of nine supremely entertaining tales. In this collection, a Vietnam general shoots down what appears to be an angel, a man sells his soul to the devil for a copy of the next day’s Wall Street Journal, and a group of alien beings bestow a mouse with human thought and emotion. “These stories amply display Fast’s considerable gifts as a writer—his clear, concise, often elegant prose, his sense of humor, his gift of sympathetic imagination, and sheer talent as a storyteller.” —Tangent A Touch of Infinity: This follow-up to The General Zapped an Angel offers thirteen brisk and engrossing science fiction stories. In “The Hoop,” a scientist builds a portal to an unknown destination, which the mayor of New York City hijacks to use as a garbage dump until the location’s surprising—and hilarious—revelation. And in “The Egg,” set three thousand years in the future, a research team discovers an egg, something they have never seen before, cryogenically frozen in a nuclear bunker. “Fast, a master of economy . . . spins his stories quickly and most effectively.” —Associated Press

The #1 New York Times–bestselling author’s firsthand account of the civil rights benefit concert attacked by a violent mob in upstate New York. In 1949, author Howard Fast found himself in the middle of a violent and terrifying anticommunist riot in Peekskill, New York. Fast was the master of ceremonies at a civil rights benefit concert featuring Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and others. But local newspapers stoked anticommunist anger, and the event was besieged by a mob armed with rocks, clubs, fence posts, and knives. Fast’s Peekskill, USA is a blow-by-blow account of the bloody riots, which led to the beating of the first black combat pilot in the US Air Force, Eugene Bullard. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

The fifth installment of Fast’s bestselling Immigrants series, continuing the story of one of his most beloved characters, Barbara Lavette. Howard Fast’s immensely popular Immigrants saga spanned six novels and more than a century of the Lavette family history. The series was considered one of the crowning achievements of his long career. This New York Times bestseller is the fifth entry in the series and focuses on one of his most beloved characters, Barbara Lavette, whom Fast based on his first wife. At sixty, Barbara is living a quiet life in San Francisco, grieving after the death of a longtime male friend. However, her spirits revive when she mounts an unexpectedly competitive congressional campaign. After narrowly losing the election, Barbara begins to reconnect with her past as a journalist and human rights activist, two passions that reignite the spark of adventure in her life. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

DIVA foreign correspondent is targeted by the US government after aligning with the Communist Party for a controversial story /div DIVIn what many consider his most autobiographical novel, bestselling author Howard Fast revisits the McCarthy-era anticommunist witch hunts he endured during his years as a member of the Communist Party. In The Pledge, Bruce Bacon, a war correspondent stationed in Bengal near the end of World War II, investigates a terrible famine that has left millions in India starving to death, despite ample food supplies stored—and allegedly withheld—by the British. Seeking to tell his story back in New York, Bacon meets members of a communist organization, including a Daily Worker reporter named Molly Maguire. But the America he returns to is not the same one he left behind, and soon Bacon discovers that associating with communists has put him squarely in the crosshairs of the House Un-American Activities Committee./divDIV /divDIVThis suspenseful and powerful novel revisits the guilt-by-association fear and suspicion that gripped America during the second Red Scare, which had harrowing consequences for those unfortunate enough to be accused./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

A novel about George Washington’s trip across the Delaware River and the Battle of Trenton by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Spartacus. Immortalized on canvas by Emanuel Leutze, Washington’s journey across the Delaware River is one of the most celebrated moments in American history. But the true story of the crossing, and of what came after, is often lost in the legend. In The Crossing, Howard Fast, author of The Immigrants and April Morning, writes with striking historical detail and relentless narrative drive about Washington’s surprise attack, leading the Continental Army to its Revolutionary War victory against the one thousand Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey—a momentous occasion in American history. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

DIVFast’s powerful denunciation of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, and a remarkable historical document of Spain’s fight for freedom from governmental oppression/div DIVHoward Fast was a longtime proponent of the antifascist movement in Spain. During the Spanish Civil War, Fast supported a hospital for Popular Front forces, and in 1950 he was sentenced to three months in jail for refusing to give the names of other supporters of that hospital to the House Un-American Activities Committee. In this pamphlet, published in 1951, Fast gives an overview of Spain under the rule of General Francisco Franco, including the mass strikes that were organized to weaken him. Fast’s fervent appeals to readers to reject American military agreements with Spain demonstrate his passionate opposition to fascism. As Fast writes, “Spain fights on, and in those three words there is a miracle. . . . There is no Spanish worker, professional, intellectual or peasant who strikes a blow for freedom without our being intimately concerned.”/divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIV“The General Zapped an Angel was written for fun, and offers me a chance to smile at the absurdity of human existence. Therefore, these stories of fantasy and science fiction are among the most serious writing I have done.” —Howard Fast/div DIVNearly forty years after the publication of his first story, “The Wrath of Purple,” in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, Howard Fast returned to the genre with a set of nine supremely entertaining tales. In this collection, a Vietnam general shoots down what appears to be an angel, a man sells his soul to the devil for a copy of the next day’s Wall Street Journal, and a group of alien beings bestow a mouse with human thought and emotion. Fast, one of the bestselling authors of the twentieth century, skewers war hawks, oil speculators, and profit-at-all-costs capitalism, issues that are still relevant today./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVA collection of thirteen stunning stories by one of the most celebrated American writers of the twentieth century/div DIVA follow-up to his 1970 science fiction collection, The General Zapped an Angel, Fast’s book of thirteen new science fiction stories is brisk and engrossing. In “The Hoop,” a scientist builds a portal to an unknown destination, which the mayor of New York City hijacks to use as a garbage dump until the location’s surprising, and hilarious, revelation. And in “The Egg,” set three thousand years in the future, a research team discovers an egg, something they have never seen before, cryogenically frozen in a nuclear bunker. These thirteen stories are bizarre, hilarious, poignant, and sure to entertain./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVHoward Fast’s 1987 New York Times bestseller, a tight political drama that remains just as relevant today as when it was first written/div DIVFast’s 1987 novel The Dinner Party confronts issues including American intervention in Latin America and the AIDS epidemic. Often compared to a play, The Dinner Party takes place during a single day, culminating in a party hosted by Richard Cromwell, a US Senator whose wealthy entrepreneur father-in-law is building a controversial highway across Central America, though powerful government interests want the highway stopped stopped. International politics become deeply personal in this novel, and unfailingly serve as a commentary on contemporary politics./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVA New York detective’s investigation of a Catholic priest’s murder leads him to a shocking drug plot that reaches the highest seats of American power /div DIVDetective Mel Freedman’s life changes forever the day Joe Cullen walks into his New York City office to confess to murder. Cullen, a pilot and Vietnam veteran, has come to admit his guilt in the murder of an American priest, thrown from a helicopter to his death in the jungles of El Salvador 800 feet below. But when a prostitute to whom Cullen also confessed turns up dead, Freedman quickly realizes that there is much more to Cullen’s story than meets the eye. As he digs deeper into the mystery, Freedman unravels a tangled web of conspiracy stretching from the cocaine fields of Central America all the way to CIA headquarters. /divDIV /divDIVTense and thought-provoking, The Confession of Joe Cullen is a powerful thriller about government corruption and the individuals who try to combat it, by one of the most masterful American writers of the twentieth century./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVA collection of Fast’s best short fiction, from science fiction and fantasy to philosophy and suspense/div DIVThis collection of short stories encompasses twenty years of work by Howard Fast, including some of his best-known and most treasured tales. Not merely fantasy or science fiction, these “Zen stories” explore the world’s mysterious and unanswerable questions, big and small, and the results are at once bizarre, humorous, chilling, and poignant. An American general shoots down what appears to be an angel during a Vietnam War battle, a celebrated author becomes a hunted man, and a mouse is granted human thought and emotion by a group of alien beings. The thirty-one stories in Time and the Riddle showcase Fast’s range and supreme talent as a storyteller./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVFast’s book on his break with the Communist Party, and a riveting tribute to the importance of justice and beauty over dogma and rigidity/div DIVThe Naked God is Howard Fast’s public repudiation of the Communist Party, of which he was a devoted member for thirteen years until reading about the full scope of atrocities committed by the Soviet Union under Stalin. The bestselling author of Spartacus and Citizen Tom Paine, Howard Fast lent his writing talents and celebrity to the communist cause as a steadfast advocate and public figure. However, he felt increasingly ill at ease with the superior manner Party leaders took with rank-and-file members and with rumors of Soviet anti-Semitism. In his first book after officially leaving the Party in 1956, Howard Fast explores the reasons he joined and his long inner struggle with a political movement in which he never felt he truly belonged./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVDIVFast’s epic novel, about one man’s family tree stretching through history from the Revolutionary War, portrays the best and worst of the American experiment/divDIV /divDIVBroken and sick, a young Revolutionary War soldier from New York is taken in by an innkeeper’s family and nursed to health. The soldier, John Preswick, falls in love with the innkeeper’s daughter, even as his wife Inez waits back home. Through five generations, the two families he starts share an intertwined fate. The Preswicks take part in some of the country’s most significant episodes, from the Civil War to the California Gold Rush, with fortunes discovered, lost, and made on the backs of others./divDIV /divDIVA tenacious chronicler of American history, Howard Fast was one of the most prolific historical novelists of the twentieth century. Strange Yesterday is perhaps his most sweeping, ambitious novel./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div/div

DIVBestselling author Howard Fast’s straightforward introduction to Zen meditation/div DIVHoward Fast began to formally practice Zen meditation after turning away from communism in 1956. The Art of Zen Meditation, originally published by the antiwar political collective Peace Press in 1977, is the fruit of Fast’s study: a brief and instructive history of Zen Buddhism and its tenets, written with a simplicity that is emblematic of the philosophy itself. Fast’s study of Zen also inspired his popular Masao Masuto mystery series about a Zen Buddhist detective in Beverly Hills, which he published under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham./divDIV /divDIVThe Art of Zen Meditation is illustrated with twenty-three beautiful photographs./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVTwo tales of speculative fiction from bestselling author Howard Fast/div DIVThe Hunter and The Trap presents two thrilling and suspenseful stories by Howard Fast, one of the most prolific authors of the twentieth century. In “The Hunter,” celebrated but down-on-his-luck novelist Andrew Bell returns to New York from an African safari only to find himself the prey in someone else’s big game hunt. Bell must seek the help of an old friend in order to escape with his life./divDIV /divDIVIn “The Trap,” an ex-soldier is tasked with traveling the world to find children for a daring social and scientific experiment. In a secret compound in California, a group of government-funded US scientists are attempting to win the Cold War by developing a race of super-humans. Isolated from the shortcomings of human society and nurtured to their full potential, these brilliant children begin to develop powers, including telekinesis and telepathy, which represent the next leap in human development./divDIV /divDIVThese two engrossing stories are at once horrifying, thrilling, tragic, and uplifting, demonstrating Fast’s range and versatility./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVHoward Fast’s controversial essay on the proper role of literature, offering insight into his life and works/div DIVIn this 1950 essay, Howard Fast argues that all writers have a duty to reflect the truth of the world in their works, particularly regarding social justice. Fast’s treatise on literary criticism allows for a fuller understanding of his early novels, in which his political beliefs remain inseparable from his writing./divDIV /divDIVLiterature and Reality, which Fast wrote around the time of the 1949 Peekskill riots, offers a unique window into his worldview during the mid-twentieth century./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVA hard-boiled insurance investigator upends New York in search of a perfect diamond necklace/div DIVDeath follows the Sarbine necklace. Its eleven diamonds are flawless, and all cut from the same stone—one of the largest ever unearthed from the mines of South Africa. But lately this most elegant piece of jewelry has become a bad luck charm. Its original owner killed himself, and his daughter, who was meant to inherit the piece at eighteen, died shortly after. When the necklace itself goes missing, it becomes Harvey Krim’s problem—and his chance to make a fortune./divDIV /divDIVAn insurance investigator with a porous moral code, Krim will collaborate with thieves if it means recovering the necklace. The answer could lie with a Texan maid named Lydia Harvey, but she seems too inept to be a skilled jewel thief. Those who possess the Sarbine necklace have a short lifespan, and with so many others looking for it, if Krim isn’t careful, his neck could be next./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVWhen a starry-eyed model walks off with a powerful woman’s mink coat and diamond bracelet, New York City’s police race to find her—before gangsters get her first/div DIVMargie Beck has always been a magnet for calamity. When she accidentally walks off with a $17,000 mink coat and the $90,000 bracelet contained within it, she finds herself again at the center of an exciting—and possibly deadly—criminal plot./divDIV /divDIVAs the city’s police search for Margie, its criminal class joins the hunt. With only the help of her boyfriend and a clever dress designer, Margie must outsmart her pursuers before it’s too late. This will be a thrilling day, but it could be Margie’s last./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVA freak subway accident traps a New York architect in a deadly conspiracy that will threaten what he loves most /divDIVJohn T. Camber is waiting on an uptown subway platform the moment his life changes forever. It happens quickly, when a haggard elderly man utters a sudden plea for help before falling on the tracks in front of an oncoming train. Reeling from the accident, Camber flees the station, only to be accosted by a brass-knuckled thug who believes Camber knows more than he’s letting on. And just like that, the suburban commuter finds himself inextricably trapped in a deadly conspiracy beyond his understanding. Dangerous people are after Camber, and if they can’t get to him, they’ll target his daughter instead. . . ./divDIV /divDIVTense and action-packed, Alice is a stunning thriller about a man caught in events beyond his control, who will stop at nothing to protect his family./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./divDIV/div

DIVA lawyer scrambles to save a judge-killing hooker from the gallows /div DIVNo women have been hanged in San Verdo since 1921, but after four decades it looks like that’s about to change. Helen Pilasky is far from a sympathetic defendant. She’s a known prostitute, and there is strong evidence that she murdered Judge Alexander Knowton, a supreme court justice beloved statewide. More than one hundred thousand people live in San Verdo, and nearly all of them want Helen Pilasky’s neck. It is Blake Eddyman’s job to save her./divDIV /divDIVA well-off lawyer whose once promising career has stalled, Blake is caught between his ambition and his fear of failure. Saving Helen seems impossible, but he can’t refuse the job. She faces a charge of murder in the first degree. If convicted, the sentence is automatic. Only Blake stands between this enigmatic young woman and the hangman./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVDissatisfied with life on the Upper East Side, a socialite finds a new favorite pastime: robbing banks/div DIVWhen James R. Hastings, president of the City Federal Bank, began construction of a new branch on Madison Avenue, he vowed to make it burglar proof. Vaults set forty feet below ground, an array of cameras, and a quartet of burly guards were intended to deter any bandit. But James Hastings did not count on being robbed by his wife./divDIV /divDIVThree weeks after the bank opens, a demure old woman removes a Luger from her handbag and asks a clerk to empty her register, then disappears into the bathroom with a haul of over $50,000. When the guards arrive, a scared young woman flees the bathroom and points them to the stalls. Inside, they find nothing but a discarded disguise, while the young woman walks calmly out the front door. This is Penelope Hastings—a bored banker’s wife who, now that she has taken up crime, will never be bored again./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

DIVDetective Masuto reopens an investigation into a murderous film star—with deadly consequences/div DIVOn the day that Eve Mackenzie murders her husband, Masao Masuto is on a plane to Japan. For years he and his wife, both American-born Japanese, have dreamed of visiting their homeland, and though the trip is a delight, the Zen Buddhist detective cannot help but check the international papers for news of murder on his home turf of Beverly Hills. Part of him regrets missing the sensational Mackenzie killing. Once a high-profile film star, Eve faded from the public eye after wedding a wealthy Scotsman—an unhappy marriage that ended in bloodshed. When Masuto returns home, Eve is headed toward an inevitable conviction. Why, then, does he reopen the case?/divDIV /divDIVThe evidence against the Hollywood starlet is so airtight that Masuto suspects a frame-up. As he pries into the closed case, more blood spills. Eve Mackenzie may not have murdered her husband, but she is far from innocent./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

Howard Fast’s bestselling coming-of-age novel about one boy’s introduction to the horrors of war amid the brutal first battle of the American Revolution On April 19, 1775, musket shots ring out over Lexington, Massachusetts. As the sun rises over the battlefield, fifteen-year-old Adam Cooper stands among the outmatched patriots, facing a line of British troops. Determined to defend his home and prove his worth to his disapproving father, Cooper is about to embark on the most significant day of his life. The Battle of Lexington and Concord will be the starting point of the American Revolution—and when Cooper becomes a man. Sweeping in scope and masterful in execution, April Morning is a classic of American literature and an unforgettable story of one community’s fateful struggle for freedom. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

A stunning novel of American revolutionaries battling the brutal winter at Valley Forge—from the “literary phenomenon” and author of Spartacus (The Guardian). General George Washington’s twelve thousand soldiers march into Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, under-fed and under-clothed, their frozen feet leaving bloody tracks in the snow. Shortly after the soldiers establish quarters for the cold months ahead, disease begins to rip through the camp. The men, helpless against sickness and despair, are facing the longest winter of their lives—and their survival will determine the fate of their young nation. Passionate and unforgettable, Conceived in Liberty is one of Fast’s rawest accounts of the brutality of the Revolutionary War, and of the heroism of its soldiers. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

A novel based on the controversial case of two immigrants executed for murder in 1927, from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Spartacus. Seven years, two trials, and three appeals after their arrest for robbery and murder in 1920, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti await execution in their prison cells. Supporters around the world have passionately argued their innocence, particularly when Celestino Madeiros, a young mobster, confesses to the murders along with other members of his gang. But no retrial is ordered; on August 23, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti are executed. Howard Fast’s heartrending fictional account offers a window into the thoughts and feelings of a presumed-innocent Sacco and Vanzetti, and is a withering indictment of the American justice system. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

DIVDIVA soldier in the American Revolution must struggle for his country’s existence and its most precious ideals—even though it means fighting against his commanding officers /divDIVIn 1781, Jamie Stuart is a twenty-three-year-old soldier serving amongst Jews, free slaves, Catholics, Native Americans, and others grouped together in a “Foreign Brigade.” They are part of a larger Pennsylvania Line that is forced to fight without pay, re-enlist without end, and survive without basic provisions. Enslaved and abused, Stuart and his friends join the mutiny of the entire Pennsylvania Line against its officers, holding their superiors accountable to the principles promised by their developing nation./divDIV /divDIVIn The Proud and the Free, Fast brilliantly imagines a forgotten moment in American history that marked one of the nation’s earliest struggles for freedom against tyranny./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div/div

A “profoundly shocking” tale of immigrant children growing up in New York tenements from the New York Times–bestselling author of Spartacus (Kirkus Reviews). Ishky is Jewish; Marie and Shomake are Irish; Ollie is Italian. All children of immigrants, they are confronted daily by the prejudice that rules in one of the world’s greatest urban centers: New York City. Living in slums, they must rely on each other to overcome hunger, disease, violence, and the bigotry of those who arrived before them. Fighting for a better life against the tide of poverty, the children must overcome their own city’s barbarism, or be consumed by it. Heartrending in its scope and harrowing in its realism, The Children is an elegy of the ghettoes and a moving cri de coeur against bigotry and oppression in all its forms. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

Science fiction stories from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Spartacus. From one of the most prolific and versatile writers of the twentieth century, The Edge of Tomorrow is a collection of tales that journey outside everyday boundaries to offer insight into our own universe. Featuring big bugs, cloned cats, and feral star-children, these unconventional, thought-provoking stories reveal much about the America of their time, when the Cold War and the nascent civil rights movement stoked unconscious fears and desires. From “The First Men,” about scientists tampering with genetic engineering, to “The Large Ant,” about a man’s thoughtless violence against nature, these stories by the author of April Morning and The Immigrants—described by the Los Angeles Times as “one of our very best”—are as relevant today as when they were first written. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

DIVDIVAs the Red Scare grips America, a midwestern literature professor becomes an unlikely hero in the struggle for freedom /divDIVProfessor Silas Timberman has never been one for theatrics. A quiet American literature professor at a mid-sized college, Timberman decides to build a semester’s course around the democratic ideals of Mark Twain—a subject that under normal circumstances would not arouse the suspicions of the university administration. But as the Korean War rages on and congressional investigations of potential Communists gain traction, no amount of ideological nuance is safe. When Timberman is asked to renounce his work or face the repercussions, he finds that not only his tenure but also his very freedom is at stake./divDIV /divDIVInspired by Fast’s own persecution at the hands of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Silas Timberman is a gripping record of the injustices of McCarthyism and a rousing ode to those who fought against it./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div/div

"Fast is at his best as a storyteller"— Christian Science Monitor The strength of five brothers will define a nation. My Glorious Brothers is the epic story of perhaps the most breathtaking chapter in the history of Israel, a stirring tale of courage for those who like to find meaning for today''s world in the great events of history. After witnessing a ransacked and desecrated Jerusalem, Simon and his four brothers — soon to be known and revered as the Maccabees — rise to lead an earthshaking rebellion. Their tale has almost no parallel in human history. Theirs was the will, fire, and unbending spirit that inspired the timeless rite of Hanukkah, transforming a society of farmers and scholars into an unconquerable army that would wage the first modern fight for freedom and the first victory for religious freedom. Master storyteller Howard Fast recounts the story of great battles, brutal atrocities, and undying love and loyalty. But it is also a sensitive and sure picture of a people and an age, in which the mood of a small but spirited segment of humanity two thousand years ago is recreated with gripping authenticity. PRAISE FOR HOWARD FAST: "Emotional, exciting, and entertaining."— Philadelphia Inquirer "Relentless pace of events...real experience leaping full-bodied from Fast''s imagination!"— New York Times