The Assassin Lotus

"...hits all the genre highlights--action, suspense, mystery" --Kirkus Reviews

"...a five-star feast for readers!" --thriller author Peter Prasad

Jack Duran, a down-and-out American travel guide mending a broken heart in Rome, seduces a beautiful Indian tourist in hopes of a one-night stand. But when she discovers an exotic lotus growing in his rooftop garden, suddenly men with knives arrive wreaking bloody havoc. The lotus, it turns out, is the long-lost source of soma--the ancient elixir that led to the birth of Hinduism and Buddhism--and fostered the first Islamic cult of terrorism.

Pursued by a mysterious band of Islamist assassins, Jack flees Rome in search of the man who sent the lotus seed, the ethnobotanist Daniel J. Duran, a notorious and shadowy researcher who happens to be Jack's brother. Together with Jack's lost love, the alluring Dutch archaeologist Phoebe Auerbach, Dan has vanished into the sands of Central Asia.

Following their trail along the legendary Silk Road, Jack eludes a fatal web of ruthless spies and killers to uncover a long-lost secret of enlightenment--and battle the resurgence of an age-old terror.