ROBERT LOCKWOOD Books

Disgraced members of Congress seek pardons, which the president denies. They join a Swiss consortium offering investment and jobs in the US, hoping to bargain for pardons. The Swiss use the congressionals as unwitting tools in their strategy to buy out and liquidate US competition. Congress is lobbied to provide federal funding and suspend commodity trading regulations as the Swiss acquire the US companies and corner the coca bean market. Greed feeding their strategy, the Swiss engage in stock market fraud with the consent of the Swiss Government, a co-conspirator. President Earl Eastwood, the African-American West Point graduate, combines his incorruptible character with the power of his office in defying the Swiss maneuver.

Democratic President Earl Eastwood seeks re-election against the formidable Connecticut Governor Sophia Kallias, a Republican moderate with winning appeal to the critical independent vote. A unifi ed Third World infl uenced by China offers him the "global presidency" at the United Nations, if he loses the US race. Eastwood's dependency on China curdles his loyalties. He needs China's endorsement for the UN job. And Chinese foreign investment is the only viable source of job growth in a badly recessed US economy. The Chinese recruit the fi nancial wizardry of Swiss-based Nikos Rallis to fashion a Swiss-Brazilian network of equity funds. The network launders US investments of Chinese-owned Brazilian companies. They covertly acquire control of Canadian and US shale oil and gas stakes and their pipeline conduits. The network then infi ltrates critical US defense technology sources. Eastwood, a brilliant political tactician and the fi rst African-American president, must act forcefully as he learns of the Chinese scheme. His rigid, West Point ethics are challenged by ambition, and his complicated romantic life.

August 8, 1944, the war in Europe is bleeding to a close. The scion of a prominent New York family, US Army Lt. Col. Jacob "Jay" Rosenthal discovers six paintings, the works of great masters, in the bunker of a battle-battered mansion of a Nazi colonel in Fürth, Germany. Deftly, he smuggles two of them to a Swiss bank vault, the others to New York City as he's deployed home. Three generations of Rosenthals commit themselves to finding the rightful owners, victims or heirs. Prophetically, Jay shunned restitution by governments, knowing that legitimate claimants would face the deceptions and ineptness of sputtering bureaucracies. The Rosenthals encounter illicit trading networks of ex-Nazis, tax-evading free-trade zone systems, and legal barriers and technicalities lobbied into place by a few great American and European museums. The Rosenthal weltanschaung never curdles, even as Jay's daughter-in-law is murdered by hired German gangsters. Another family member dies mysteriously as her small plane hits a mountain near Nice, France, each having come close to finding the rightful owners. As Jacob's legacy seems a lost cause, his grandson's swampy deal to sell the billion-dollar collection suddenly disintegrates and for the right reasons. Set in New York City, the Hamptons, Monte Carlo, and Paris, the realities of illicit trade in Nazi-confiscated art coagulate into a corroborated denial of justice.

Two-hundred long-forgotten French impressionist masterpieces, stashed away in the attic of a New York City brownstone, and valued at $1.6 billion in the festering Asian art markets. Zach ben Meier, the globally prominent art dealer, learns of their existence after reading the deceased painter's memoirs in the musty archives of Paris' Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Ben Meier ostentatiously implants himself in the Hamptons; what better "blind" to steal this quarry of art works. The tendrils of Zach's pursuits become complicated. "Obstacles" emerge everywhere: on Long Island, in New York City, in Monte Carlo; even on the streets of Paris. He forms a bizarre relationship with Adrielle, a former assassin forced into early retirement by the Mossad because of her cloying savagery. Together they fashion and execute a scheme that degenerates into mutual self-entrapment.

Nikos Rallis is the definitive high-risk investor, whose avarice entraps even the most savvy members of the international business community. He fluidly skirts legal barriers in Monaco, Switzerland, and the United States. His roguish pixie dust suffocates astute targets with outrageous promises of reward. Savvy women front his schemes, captivated only slightly by his charms but much more by the opportunity to share his gains. Perched in his Alpine headquarters, the obsessive secrecy of Switzerland and strategic purpose of Chinese foreign investment become veiled money-laundering tools for his exploitation of a defense contract in Washington's easy-money climate. Ultimately, his chilling gallery of plundered emotions produces a fatal result that even his legendary diligence never anticipated.

Discusses the qualities of the Siberian husky and examines how to find and treat it as a pet.