A KINGDOM OF DUST
Tehran, 1953.
The desert simmers beneath foreign boots. In backrooms and bazaars, whispers of revolution crackle like kindling.
Marcus Belford was born American—but Persia raised him. The son of a diplomat and fluent in the language of poets and spies, Marcus has spent his life threading the tightrope between two worlds. Now a CIA officer assigned to Tehran, he finds himself caught in the shadow of Operation Ajax—a joint U.S.–British coup designed to overthrow Iran’s elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstall the Shah.
But loyalty is no simple thing in the kingdom of dust.
Haunted by the land he loves and the country that made him, Marcus begins to work against his own orders—leaking secrets, protecting allies, and risking everything to preserve a nation’s sovereignty. To Langley, he is a traitor. To Persia, a ghost in the wind. To himself… he is still searching.
A Kingdom of Dust is a sweeping literary espionage novel set at the dawn of the Cold War—where history hinges on a single man, and betrayal is the last refuge of the loyal.
An Ocean Black
Their father walked beside Martin Luther King Jr. in marches. He believed in peace, in purpose, in the power of Black men to rise. But a single gunshot on a Georgia sidewalk shattered that dream—and two young boys were left to choose their own path through the wreckage.
Luther chose vengeance. Martin chose faith.
One went to prison. The other went to the pulpit. But neither could outrun the tide that swallowed their community whole—drugs, poverty, abandonment. Set in Atlanta’s Adamsville neighborhood, An Ocean Black follows the journey of two brothers raised in the shadow of Civil Rights promises, only to find themselves drowning in the quiet war that came after.
Threaded through decades of loss and love, prison gates and front porch prayers, this is a story of fathers and sons, of a home lost and reclaimed, of a people fractured and still rising. As one brother returns from prison and the other stands at the threshold of national recognition, they must decide: How do you rebuild a world that’s tried to break you?
Told with lyrical grace and unflinching truth, An Ocean Black is a tribute to resilience, rooted in Southern soil and soaked in generational memory. From the grief of the 1960s to the hope of election night 2008, this is a hymn to all who stayed. And survived.