Ed Protzel wins not one but TWO awards in the Missouri Writers Guild 2017 Fall Fiction Contest: The Antiquities Dealer won 2nd place under Mystery and Honor Among Outcasts won 3rd place under Historical Fiction!
Honor Among Outcasts is book two in the Dark Horse Trilogy. After their harrowing escape from Mississippi, abolitionist Durksen Hurst, his fiancée Antoinette DuVallier, and their friends — a group of undocumented slaves — land in guerrilla-infested Civil War Missouri, the most savage whirlwind of destruction, cruelty, and death in American history.
Trapped in a terrifying cycle of murder and revenge, scarred by Quantrill’s cold-blooded Lawrence massacre and the Union army’s ruthless Order Eleven, Durk and everyone he cares for soon find themselves entangled in a struggle for their very survival.
Honor Among Outcasts takes readers on a pulse-pounding journey of desperate men and women caught up in the merciless forces of hatred and fear that tear worlds apart, and the healing power of friendship to bring them together.
What led to this unlikely, and risky, friendship? Read The Lies That Bind, Book 1 of Ed Protzel’s DarkHorse Trilogy. Watch for Book 3, Something in Madness, to be released in 2019.
Praise for The Lies That Bind: DarkHorse Trilogy, Book 1
“The action and drama are compelling from the first page to the exciting conclusion…I am anxious to read the next installment.”
– Historical Novel Society
“…a deftly crafted and consistently compelling read from beginning to end.”
– Midwest Book Review
The Antiquities Dealer, due for release in 2018, is a mystery/thriller depicting a death-defying quest for the last of the nails used to crucify Jesus.
Jerusalem
When Miriam Solomon, the love of David Greenberg’s life, phones him at his antiquities gallery in St. Louis, the black hole at the center of his heart shudders. Twenty years earlier, Miriam had inexplicably run off to Israel with his best friend, Solly, a brilliant, but nerdy young scientist. Now she tells David that Solly has committed suicide; that she needs David’s aid on a secret research project Solly left unfinished: to acquire the one remaining nail from the crucifixion of Jesus. Is she telling the truth? And why does that nail have such significance? Everyone has their own agenda…each with its own mortal consequences.
The Lies That Bind is the first novel in Ed Protzel’s “Dark Horse” trilogy. Book two, Honor Among Outcasts, takes us to Civil War Missouri, and book three, Something in Madness, Reconstruction, is due to release in 2019. Ed has written five screenplays for feature film and developed projects for Hollywood. He has a Master’s in English from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Ed lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where he teaches college English. All four novels are published by TouchPoint Press. Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency