Author Description

Little Anton is a "historical thriller... a gripping war story" (Kirkus Reviews) series that discloses covert technological inventions and the prominent leaders who exploited them during the turbulent years leading up to WWII and the Battle of Norway in 1940. Part love story and part dark satire, the book masterfully interweaves a fictional adventure within factual reportage, revealing in greater detail why Adolf Hitler tasked his personal hero Professor Ferdinand Porsche and his brilliant engineering mind to build the world's fastest, almost invincible race cars and potent military machines. The book tracks the life of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche while Hitler rises to power. Porsche and his family are pacifists, but like many industrialist families, they get caught up in Germany's "economic miracle" during the Great Depression and its aftermath. With Hitler's patronage, Porsche becomes Germany's heralded "Reich Designer," creating the Volkswagen Beetle and Auto Union's futuristic Grand Prix racing cars, which later evolved into the Audi car brand after WWII. Along with Dr. Porsche, the central characters are the fictional Lady Beatrice Sunderland (Bea), an irreverent and naughty British aristocrat, and Lutz Becker, a dashing young Bavarian racecar driver from quite humble origins. These two madcap star-crossed opposites eventually intertwine by the time war breaks out, the attraction as inevitable as the fearsome conflict itself. Lady Bea, a cynical, freewheeling, cold-hearted daredevil pilot who emulates feminist aviatrices Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, and Beryl Markham, is the daughter of Lord Briggs Sunderland, a tortured veteran of The Great War and close friend and confidant of Winston Churchill, Bea's maternal granduncle. Bea undergoes harsh SIS training to become a British spy and is sent to Germany to gain intelligence on clandestine German rearmament. Lutz Becker, a young member of the National Socialist Motorcorps (N