Richard S Hartmetz

Murry Peterson: Spy Game Richard S Hartmetz

Publisher Marketing: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of one of the greatest battles in history; now home to a sinister conspiracy dating back to the founding of the United States itself and reaching into the deepest and most secretive levels of the government; a conspiracy that threatens to plunge the world into a chasm of domination and nuclear devastation. Muriel Peterson's grandfather is killed in 1976. Four years later, the guidance counselor at her new junior high school asks if she is a good American and offers to free her from the boredom of being a preteen in her small Pennsylvania town. He asks her to spy on a family of Russian immigrants suspected of stealing secrets for the KGB. She reluctantly accepts and begins to infiltrate the life of that fellow student and his family. Murry slowly uncovers a conspiracy by a rogue Soviet general and someone inside the CIA to place sleeper agents throughout the country in an effort to start a war with the Soviet Union and replace the US government. Along the way, she discovers dark secrets long hidden by her handler, a mysterious FBI agent and even her deceased grandfather leading to a much larger conspiracy that threatens to pull a dark veil across the face of the entire world. All this while she attempts to deal with the pressures of growing up in a dysfunctional family, social isolation and young love. Contributor Bio:  Hartmetz, Richard S Alexandre Dumas was born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie on July 24, 1802 in Villers-Cotterets, Aisne, France, the youngest of two children. His father was the son of a French nobleman and a Black slave and took the name Dumas from his mother, fighting as a general under Napoleon himself. He died of cancer when Alexandre was four, leaving the family very poor. Working at the Palais Royal, under the Duke of Orleans, Dumas began writing articles and plays under the name Dumas, as his father had done. His plays became popular, and he took to writing full time. In 1830, however, he became embroiled in the French Revolution, which placed the Duke of Orleans on the throne. After peace was restored, Dumas began writing novels which were translated into many other languages, earning him a great deal of money, which he spent as fast as he made. Living the high-life and having as many as forty mistresses, he wrote more than 100,000 pages in his lifetime. When Napoleon became president, ousting the Duke of Orleans, Dumas fled to Belgium, then to Russia and Italy. In 1840, he married Ida Ferrier and had at least seven illegitimate children. He died on December 5, 1870, in Seine-Maritime, France, at the age of 68. In 2002, his ashes were reinterred in the Pantheon de Paris, a great honor.