Yilan

Whereas Yellow Dancer took Laura West to the Caribbean, Yilan makes her go East, to the Greek Aegean, where both she and her indomitable sister Solitaire follow the tracks of Süleyman the Silent who kidnaped Laura´s adopted son Ignace. It´s a desperate race against time and a hallucinating dance around a much-coveted legendary icon of the Virgin Mary that proudly carries the scars of revolutionary turmoil both in fledgeling modern Greece and a chaotic Soviet Union in the making. As always, Laura, a staunch agnostic herself, is firmly wedged between all fronts, Orthodox and otherwise. Undaunted, the unlikely twin sisters accept the challenge of a showdown in a giant long-abandoned and half decrepit wooden orphanage. Situated on the largest of the Princes´ Islands in the Marmara Sea just beyond the pale of Istanbul, the solitary orphanage is said to be resounding with the laughter and cries of kids occasionally, on calm and quiet nights...

German-born author Paul Werner is a widely travelled, retired simultaneous interpreter working in a dozen or so foreign languages. What spare time he was accorded between high-level conference sessions used to be taken up with skippering sailing yachts of any size and description, both as a passionate offshore racer and an indefatigable island cruiser. His favourite haunts used to be the West Indies on one side of the Atlantic and the Greek and Turkish Aegean on the other. Once retired, Paul made writing his third or fourth professional career. True to some ancient mariner´s advice, he now praises the sea aloud while snugly staying on land in romantic old Heidelberg.