The White Phantom City Series
Genre: Magic Realism
Available at Amazon at:
And at: The list of platforms below on the following dates.
December 12th 2025: Book 1. The Breath of the Zephyr:
December 14th 2025: Books 2. and 3. White Phantom City and Sorrow for the Lost:
Smashwords/ Books2read/ Apple/ Kobo/ Barnes & Noble/ Gardners/ Fable/ Odilo/ Tolino/ Vivlio/ BorrowBox/ Everand/ cloudLibrary/ OverDrive/ Hoopla.
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A historical/metaphysical trilogy with a wisp of the supernatural. Set partly in England between 1936 and 1966, and in the Venice of the seventeen hundreds, the story centres around a young evacuee, Eleanor White and her enigmatic uncle Arthur, (a master carpenter, known as "The White Soldier") and the wickedness that surrounds them. There is intrigue and deceit, love and loss, and murder. Not only depicting rural life during WW11 and the ''swinging sixties'', it contains a wealth of information about eighteenth-century Venice that may surprise (and possibly appal) many readers. A lot of research has gone into creating the sights, sounds and smells of the "Serenissima" as well as introducing some of the characters who actually lived there at the time. Plenty of atmosphere and suspense, with some blood and tears along the way – plus some surprises and a little laughter to lighten the darker moments.
If you enjoy a good murder mystery with a twist of the paranormal such as Don’t Look Now and Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier, The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Time after Time (and the film adaptation) by Karl Alexander, you will want to read The Breath of the Zephyr and its sequels, White Phantom City and Sorrow for the Lost. Also, films such as The Uninvited, A Haunting in Venice, A Matter of Life and Death, It's a Wonderful Life and The Bishop's Wife.
The Breath of the Zephyr:
•Venice: The first half of the Settecento. (The Eighteenth Century.) Leonardo Grimaldi, a former member of the Maggior Consiglio and now Missier Grande: the so-called chief of police is an embittered man with a less than illustrious career. Longing for something more rewarding than the tediousness of malicious gossip and street brawl killings, he secretly wishes that something more challenging would present itself. What he craves more than anything else is the chance to investigate just one good murder.‘Be careful what you wish for in this world Leo,’ the words of a wise friend rang in his ears. ‘Lest it come true.’
•England: The first half of the Twentieth Century. In nineteen forty, Eleanor White, who is fascinated by all things Venetian is evacuated to her uncle Arthur’s country cottage where at night, she hears an unearthly voice in the wind calling her name. She is also disturbed by a sinister wall mask, which Arthur calls “Lenore” and a ghostly face that peers out from the belfry in a Canaletto print hanging in her bedroom. Ellie is enthralled when Arthur shows her an eighteenth century canvas that may or may not be genuine and is doubly excited to learn that its origin is shrouded in mystery surrounding a series of unsolved murders.
The mask. The face. The painting. The murders. All part of an enigma spanning more than two hundred years. Unless they can unlock the terrible secret that links them, a cataclysm will take place, which will affect the destinies of people many miles – and many years away.
White Phantom City is the concluding part of the first book.
Sorrow for the Lost picks up the story eight years later when inexplicable and impossible occurrences begin to take place.