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Here's an extract from Bud Bradshaw's "RIVERWALKER".  Find it at: www.amazon.com/kindle 

Chapter 7: ADLER

     A large black bird silhouetted against a field of yellow dominated the image of the unfurled, flapping flag, hand-painted on the storefront window of The Phoenix.  Inside the main shop, a dozen glass display cases of varying size contained an assortment of collectibles, including antique guns, knives, swords, uniforms, and miscellaneous military memorabilia. 

     In a corner display case, several Meerschaum pipes lay scattered throughout an otherwise neatly organized collection of rare books with Germanic titles and peculiar runic cover designs, several marked Not For Sale. Overhead, also marked NFS, an oil painting by Karl Hoppner, a.k.a. Fidus: nude boy and girl walking, bodies bathed in sunlight, surrounded by lush green plants.

     Across the room hung another Fidus, this a lithographed image depicting a nude young man poised on a cliff, back-lighted by the sun.  In its day the work had become the prototypical Aryan image, perhaps the most popular icon of the German Youth Movement.  The soul of the German Volk, former dwellers of dark, mist-enshrouded forests, had become Lichtmenschen, people of light, historical beings come to the present from a distant past, striving toward the sun, fusing with their native landscape. 

On a shelf below the canvas of glowing youth on sundrenched cliffs, an exotic collection of ancient Nordic masks stared out with terrible eyes, wooden and dead.

  Karl Wolff Adler, of impressive height and bulk in his oversized sweatshirt, stood behind a long, deep, decorative oak case, glassed on top and front.  With a pencil and note pad, Adler doodled to slow his racing mind, carefully inscribing clusters of dots and dashes in varying combination.    

  From beneath blonde, crew-cut hair, Adler peered out at the world through two distinct, glacially blue marbles.  “Eyes like a movie star” were words he heard often, intended as compliments, and usually coming from people trying to curry favor.  But the eyes ranged too close together to be attractive and the nose was hooked at the end and bent to one side, like the crooked beak of a prize fighter.  Angular and steep, zygomatic arches spread like bony wings over severely pockmarked cheeks, while a dimpled lantern chin preceded the rest of Adler’s face in a coarse jut, lending a look of authority and defiance. 

                         END OF EXCERPT          

To find "RIVERWALKER", go to www.amazon.com/kindle ... then enter "riverwalker" (one word only) , followed by "Bud Bradshaw".  This will differentiate my book from another with a very similar title ("River Walker" - two words), but by another author.

Smiles to all,

Bud