Brian Kenneth Swain

“Sistina is a terrific book. If you like well-crafted mysteries with unanticipated twists and turns, you will love this deft, imaginative novel. Disquieting events immediately following the crucifixion trigger a plot that toggles mostly between Michelangelo’s Rome and modern Italy. Other than saying people die, things are stolen, and philosophies are shaken, I’ll add nothing—I hate spoilers—except that as a bonus you will learn a lot of fascinating church history and may be able to paint a fresco when you are finished. Don’t miss this book.” — Michael Lieberman, author of Never Surrender—Never Retreat and The Lobsterman’s Daughter “Brian Kenneth Swain sets forth a tantalizing conspiracy plot that has preserved a ...

Sistina, Brian Kenneth Swain’s gripping and thought-provoking new novel, is a story two thousand years in the making. The events set in motion following Christ’s crucifixion build to a crescendo during the Italian High Renaissance and will test the faith of the story’s historical and modern-day characters, as well as that of readers. When a violent earthquake damages Michelangelo’s magnificent frescoes, a team of experts undertakes the Vatican’s most important restoration in centuries, only to discover a perplexing secret hidden for five hundred years beneath the chapel’s plaster ceiling. The message, both cryptic and incomplete due to the rash actions of a tourist at the time of the quake, baffles the team and awakens ...

Seville – May 14, 1483 By his own authority,[1] To the distinguished, respectable, noble, magnificent councilors and all our beloved; and to the deputies, generals, viceroys, spokesmen of our central government, general justices, royal officials, bailiffs, justices, judges, municipal councilors, town magistrates, justices of the peace, prison wardens, and any other of our officials and subjects who exercise any office and jurisdiction, presently and henceforth, in any of our kingdoms and lands now and henceforth so constituted, and the deputies of those officials, and any other person to whom these letters shall come: greetings and affection. Inasmuch as the Holy Father has been informed that there are many people in our kingdoms who ...

“It’s not really a conjecture, is it?” Sophie said, leaning forward from the back seat. “Conjecture means you’re hypothesizing about something that you don’t have any real data to support. You’ve got an ocean of data. Hell, just look around.” Something that, in fact, everyone in the car was in the midst of doing—looking around, that is. “Well, I’m not sure it exactly rises to the level of a theorem,” Clay replied. “I’m no mathematician or anything, but it feels more like a conjecture to me.” He was in the front passenger seat of the Audi 5000, a car that belonged to Trent’s father, who had agreed, with his special grudging brand of acceptance, to allow the four grad students to take the car into the city for ...

The flight from Heathrow departed at 7:35 a.m., on time surprisingly enough, and arrived in Monrovia just after six p.m. Peering out the right side of the plane as we made our final approach, there lay beneath us the usual tropical scenery—verdant mahogany trees and low growth shrubbery, poorly-kept dirt roads, low cinder-block houses with corrugated metal roofs, and, in the distance, beneath a deepening blue sky, anvil clouds that looked to be within an hour of delivering heavy rain. It could have been any third-world destination. No sign of anything unusual, save perhaps for the notable lack of people milling about. Plenty of dogs and cattle, but very few people. I had made trips to this part of the continent several times in the past ...

The light blue convertible Mustang with the bondo on the left rear fender speeds through the stop sign at the corner of Elm and Baker and nothing much happens as a result.   There comes no shriek of rubber on asphalt. No exploding bicycle parts or flailing bloodied bodies. Nothing at all but Mrs. Dickey clicking her tongue disapprovingly as she sits and rocks on her porch.   The sales executive takes a long lunch to go and buy spaghetti sauce and Milk Bones at the Kroger a few blocks from his office. He forgets the coupons his wife gave him and has to pay full price.   This causes a wry look later tonight, but nothing either of them feels is worth fighting over. So he gives the dog a Milk Bone, she cooks the spaghetti, and ...

“Why the hell are gas prices so high in this state? Christ, we’ve got more refineries up and down this highway than the whole damn Gulf coast. Gas should be dirt cheap here, shouldn’t it?” The countless brilliant white lights of the ConocoPhillips plant reflect like galaxies off the windshield, as the dark grey Suburban rolls up the New Jersey Turnpike, drifts into the right lane, and slows slightly to take Exit 13 into Elizabeth. It’s just passing through dusk and the refinery lights gleam like eternal Christmas in the deepening purple of the Jersey evening, punctuated periodically by the hellish outrage of a gas flare hurling three-story flames into the air. Bill Preston stares out the passenger-side window and says nothing ...

  In the latest of hours, once the moon has set and all is stars and velvet, I lie alone and turn the radio dial to see who’s still up.   Between the static murmurs come the all night talk shows with their ghosts and aliens, or the basso jazz DJ spinning Miles of Coltrane.   But sometimes everyone is asleep but me, and I just lie still with the radio tuned to nothing at all, letting the hisses and crackles of far off galaxies carry me away, beyond the cusp of the hemisphere, all the way back to the start of ...

Wendy Sutter stood alone at the hors d’oeuvre table, slowly, methodically, arranging small bits of raw carrot and celery on a clear plastic plate and contemplating the funeral she had just come from along with the thirty or so others at the house. Henry Abercrombie had died two days earlier from massive pulmonary failure, and had done so while working his regular late afternoon shift at the Home Depot in Peterborough, two towns over. Notwithstanding his advancing age and what was reputed to be a solid retirement income, he had worked there in the store’s plumbing department for more than four years. And despite his generally slow work pace and not-infrequent, occasionally charming, tendency to steer customer queries in eccentric ...

“He just fell over dead in mid-sentence, not two feet in front of me. And this on a day that had actually been relatively uneventful to that point, as least as these days go. Couple of inconsequential skirmishes. No casualties at all, in fact, aside from Flanders there spraining his ankle dodging a mortar round. We were all sitting around over by the depot, winding down a bit, but taking the usual precautions, you know—sand bags, trip wires, couple of lads on watch up top. Preston and I were just having a sit off to one side, drinking a bit of that awful coffee he made, him telling me about this boat he bought just before signing on, and how he’s going to go home and fix it up once we’re done sacking the regime. And he’s just ...