Books - In Development (Connor Caine Series)

It's spring, 1962. Two years after the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro has reneged on his promises of democracy and free elections. Like the dictator before him, Castro orders the imprisonment and execution of thousands upon thousands of dissidents and revolution loyalists. 

Che Guevara, a hero of the revolution, has turned into the "Butcher of La Cabana". Hundreds will die by his order, many by his own hand. Included in those executed is William Alexander Morgan, an American, the Yanqui Comandante. Morgan--a true believer, friend of Connor Caine, faithful revolution loyalist, and hero of the successful Second Front Movement in the Escambray Mountains--embodies all that is decent and good and that is destroyed in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. At La Pared Sangre inside La Cabana prison, the Bloody Wall where Morgan and others are executed, lie in a bloody pool the innocent, the Divine Carrion, of the revolution. 

Following the senseless execution of Billy Morgan and the failed CIA-backed coup attempt at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, Goyo Garcia shows up unexpectedly on Connor Caine's doorstep in Cartagena, Colombia asking one simple question: Will he kill Fidel Castro?

Expected Publication: May 1, 2026

Set between 1962 and 1963 in Northern Colombia. After a year looking for "lost cities" in Colombia's vast jungles (which will later be discovered by treasure hunters in 1972), Connor sets out to discover lost Spanish treasure lying just off the coast near Cartagena. In the warm, salty waters of Colombia's Caribbean coast, Connor struggles to find peace with the loss of love and friendship he has experienced in the last decade of his life.  

Along with the understanding of life's more difficult emotional hardships, that of betrayal and loss, Connor discovers a treasure worth killing for. So, of course, a few try. 

If Connor can make it to Colon, Panama, where he is meeting, Jaime--a trusted friend and antiquities dealer--he just might survive.

Will Connor get there in time?

Expected Publication: TBD

Set in 1964. The Civil Rights Movement is at its height. After a tumultuously violent year previously, where three little black girls die in a Birmingham church bombing, President Johnson signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act. If only the strike of a pen had the power to actually change things. If the pen was actually mightier than the sword--or the noose or the bomb or a Klansman's bat--then the resulting violence would never have occurred.

Connor Caine, no longer working as Carlos Solis, is in the middle of it all. During this chapter of his life he meets a charismatic young black man in Atlanta, GA, named Marcus Little. Marcus helps guide Connor through the cultural and political mayhem that is the Civil Rights Movement in America. He also introduces Connor to another extremely charismatic leader of the Movement: Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Let's see what transpires from that fortuitous meeting. 

Expected Publication: TBD

Set in 1966, follow Connor Caine and Trout Martin as they get caught up in a classic British-inspired caper during the World Cup.

Expected Publication: TBD

It's 1968, Mexico City. The "Dirty War", La Guerra Sucia, in its fourth year ramps up as  Mexico prepares to host the 1968 Olympics. Unarmed student groups protesting the Olympic games are annihilated by heavily armed military forces during the Tlatelolco Massacre. Like the prior massacres in Cienaga and Tiquisate and Buenos Aires, the injustice of yet another US-backed slaughter of innocents spurs Connor Caine back into the revolutionary political fray.   

Will the madness of US intervention into Latin American affairs ever end? Will the senseless slaughter of innocents ever stop? 

Expected Publication: TBD

It's 1970. Four students are shot at Kent State University in Ohio. The Vietnam War is at its thirty-year height. Protests rage at home and abroad. The American populace is waking up to the fact that they are merely pawns in a global scheme.  They've been lied to. So has the rest of the world.

A seemingly unimportant Civil War 3,000 miles away from the US rages in the mountains and valleys and lowlands and beaches of Colombia. Another holocaust to live through for Connor Caine; another nightmare to wake from. 

Can the understanding of one war raging so far away in South Asia make sense of another so close in Latin America?

Expected Publication: TBD

It's 1973, Chile. Following an economic war led by US President Richard Nixon, Augusto Pinochet arrests control of Chile from Salvador Allende. Just another Latin American country destabilized for its resources, just another pawn in the game.

Boots on the ground, Connor Caine is yet again in the right place at the right time. 

It's almost twenty years since he started shooting images for National Geographic in the jungles of Guatemala. Now in his mid-40s, Connor wrestles with feelings of meaninglessness , insensibility, and despair. He can no longer find purpose or relevance in what he once believed in so strongly--himself, those he loved, freedom, and the indelible human experience. His comfortable melancholy sets in. Can he overcome his depression in the light of current world affairs? Or, will he decide to finally end it all as he has thought he would do so many times before?   

Expected Publication: TBD

It's 1976, Argentina. Isabel Peron, President of Argentina, the first woman president in the world, is overthrown by US-supported military coup d'etat. What they now call "regime change."

Working through outline. Book will focus on US-Argentine history, concluding with the overthrow of Peron.

Expected Publication: TBD

It's 1979. As a member of OPEC, vast oil resources has given Venezuela democracy, economic stability, and a strong middle and upper class. It's "average" people drive Cadillacs and eat in nice restaurants. When these people go to Miami on buying sprees, they often say, "Dame dos". Gimme two. The people, even the poor, are prosperous. 

Once again, following US-backed economic destabilization and a military coup d'etat,  a puppet-dictator is placed into office. The people suffer, the oligarchy and leaders prosper. It makes no sense to any reasonable person, religious or not. 

As Abigail Hernandez Caine said in, Ten Years of Spring, only a King or a fool would think this is okay. 

So, Connor asks one simple question: Since there are so few kings, is the world filled with fools as we often tolerate such things?

Expected Publication: TBD

Set between 1985 and 1987. Nicaragua/Costa Rica. Iran/Contra. Drugs. 

**Still working on outline and story ideas. Book will focus on Central America--Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama--and its destructive alliance with the United States. Narcotics shipping networks and cartels will be enabled by US support and dollars in order to ship highly profitable cocaine into America's inner-cities--supported by the CIA--"drugs for guns". 

The same networks enabled by the US will later be the target of the intolerable and inept "War on Drugs". It's no different than supplying and training in the 1980s of the Taliban to fight the Soviet  Union only to later fight these same people at a tremendous economic and political cost. 

What we learn is that this cost is not only desired, but expected. Chaos creates opportunity. War creates wealth. The system is designed by those in power to continue, to perpetuate itself.

Ronald Reagan and "Reaganomics" dominate the Western Hemisphere's social consciousness. Instead of pumping vast amounts of dollars to the poor and allowing the rich to "suck up" profits, the best brains in the land think its best to give the wealthiest people in the country the money so it can eventually "trickle down" to the poor. But it doesn't. Only an idiot or a pocket-politician would think it ever could.

Expected Publication: TBD

It's now 1993. Pablo Escobar has been killed. Mexican Cartels with exacting distribution networks, secured by the CIA, rise. A young, articulate, saxophone-playing American President from Arkansas gives the world promise. Castro is aging in Cuba, but still a political threat. A thirty-six year Civil War in Guatemala nears its end. 

Once again Connor Caine is trapped beneath the banana groves and avocado-green hills of Guatemala. Pappy is there. Abigail, too. But where is Goyo?

Expected Publication: TBD

1998 to 2001. Connor Caine, a blue-blood with many secrets, is riddled with cancer. Lung Cancer, stage four. Writing his memoir, he contemplates his end. Are there secrets long buried that Connor now reveals?

Expected Publication: TBD