Books

The good people at Baen Books are selling Lars Walker's e-books at a great price. Buy them here, and consider giving them as gifts to your discerning family and friends for whatever holiday is just around the corner. Late Christmas presents are always welcome.

Coming soon in ebook: Troll Valley: The Fairy Tale Your Grandparents Never Told You
     In 1900 southeastern Minnesota, young Chris Anderson is a unusual farmer's son. For one thing, he has a deformed arm. For another, he has a fairy godmother (not the Disney kind). He's also bedeviled by apparitions--red, pointed Norwegian caps which dance around him on the ground when he allows himself to get angry (for which reason he always stuffs his feelings. Sort of the perfect Norwegian).
       Read previews at Brandywine Books

• West Oversea: A Norse Saga of Mystery, Adventure and Faith--In the year 1001, King Olaf Trygvesson is dead, but his sister’s husband, Erling Skjalgsson, carries on his dream of a Christian Norway that preserves its traditional freedoms. Rather than do a dishonorable deed, Erling relinquishes his power and lands. He and his household board ships and sail west to find a new life with Leif Eriksson in Greenland. This voyage, though, will be longer and more dangerous than they ever imagined. It will take them to an unexplored country few Europeans had seen. Demonic forces will pursue them, but the greatest danger of all may be in a dark secret carried by Father Aillil, Erling’s Irish priest.
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• The Year of the Warrior--GOD WILLS IT!
      It all started with a Viking raid:  When he is captured and forced into slavery, Aillil the Irishman must pretend to be a priest or die.  Better to be a high-value priest than a low-value corpse, he thinks, and so it happens that a failed novitiate (he loved women too well) is taken up by Norway's first Christian lord, Erling Skjalgsson to bring the Word to his people.

       Ironically, though "Father" Aillil is as phony as a three-dollar psalm, he and he alone must convert a fiercely pagan people to the gentle teachings of Christ - and they don't want to hear about it.  Nor do their "gods," who are all too real, and all too liable to do something horrible to those disturbing their divine peace.

       It's going to take a miracle for Aillil to succeed, or even survive, but fortunately God (the one true God, not those pagan demon creatures) is on his side....
         Publisher's Note:  Part of this novel was previously published as Earling's Word.
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• Blood and Judgement--All Will Sverdrup wanted was to play Hamlet in an amateur production. He never counted on getting sucked back in time, into the body of the original, historical Hamlet in 6th Century Denmark.
      His fellow actors (along with the real Hamlet) never expected to be transported to an alternate universe where Shakespeare's play was real -- with them perfectly placed to live (and die) their parts.
      But that's what happened. Now they have to decide -- do they play their roles out, all the way to the bloodbath at the end, or do they try to break the play and save their lives?
      The play may be stronger than they are. And if it's not, there's always the giant, tentacled monster that hitched a ride with them, a complication Shakespeare never foresaw....
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• Visit Lar's author page on Amazon to see what other readers are saying about his novels.
  
  
  
  
• Wolf Time--A DRAFT FROM THE PAST
            There's something unnerving about the October north wind.  It makes a wolf in the wilderness turn southward, in search of dangerous prey.  It gets inside people's ears, opening their minds to bizarre ideas.  It gets under their skin, inclining them to violence.
       Of course there's the comet too, a spectacular one, tracked by ordinary people in back yards, and not-so-ordinary cult members at the top of a makeshift observatory.
       Something's gushing into Epsom, Minnesota.  A witch in her quiet house feels it with dread.  A young disc jockey feels it with confusion.  A world-famous Norwegian peot greets it with triumph.  And Professor Carl Martell listens to its song with worry - because Martell cannot tell a lie, but he knows one when he hears it.
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• Erling's Word-- "Many are the years and uncounted the miles since the White Northerners took us from our home in Connaught... And I, against all hope, have stood before kings.  I have seen a saint made and had for a friend the greatest hero since Cu Chulainn..." His name is Ailill - liar, failed monk, impostor priest.  Brought to Norway to serve the chieftain Erling Skjalgsson, he must wrestle with the old gods and his own God; with mortal men and the mysterious underground folk, in the turmoil of a nation being born.  But the greatest enemy of all may be himself....
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