Jack Gladney, a professor of Nazi history at a Middle American liberal arts school, and his family try to handle normal family life as a black cloud of lethal gaseous fumes threatens their town.

In this thriller set in the Middle East of 1914, Somerville, a British archaeologist, and his team are excavating a long-buried Assyrian palace when an American geologist from an oil company posing as an archaeologist arrives one day and insinuates himself into Somerville's group. But he's not the only one working undercover to stake a claim on Iraq's rich oil fields.

"The astonishing story of twenty-four British prisoners who used tunnels to break out of a highly fortified Italian castle-turned-prison during World War II. In March 1943, at Vincigliata Castle, a menacing medieval fortress set in the beautiful Tuscan hills of Italy, an extraordinary assemblage of middle-aged British POWs were finally ready to execute an escape. The castle, which became a special prisoner of war camp on Benito Mussolini's personal...