“IT GIVES YOU STRENGTH and HARVESTING EARTHLINGS FOR FUN AND PROFIT are the first two books in the STReNGTH trilogy. The series follows Major Mike Kelly and alien anthropologist Tashan Zho through three of the most tumultuous decades in American history. Book One “It Gives You Strength” is set in 1926 during the height of Prohibition. Zho is sent from the technologically advanced planet Dagan to the primitive planet Earth on a rescue mission. While searching for an alien child he encounters Kelly, a war hero now leading a gang of bootleggers. Zho is thrust in the middle of a gang war between rival gangsters for control of the New York/ Canada rum smuggling market. All novels in the series are told the same way, through fictional characters interacting with actual historical figures and events. In Book One, the fictional characters interact with Heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey, gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond and WWI heroine Edith Cavell.
In Book Two, “Harvesting Earthlings For Fun and Profit” it is 1934 in America, the height of the Great Depression. Dr. Zho is now a refugee from his once idyllic planet Dagan. The planet is now run by a brutal dictator who uses an alien form of the Roman coliseum to distract the mere citizens of Dagan from the deterioration of their basic civil rights, while he consolidates his control over the planet. When the dictator Arixn learns that the Daganians are running low on gladiators, he decides to embark on The Harvest Project. The Daganians intend to capture Earthlings to fight in the New Coliseum. Dr. Zho and Mike Kelly oppose Arixn’s plan and enlist the assistance of historical figures Jack Dempsey, Edith Cavell, and J. Edgar Hoover. In addition, they interact with George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, and gangsters John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson.
The yet untitled Book Three will be set in WWII and will be released in the fall of 2023.”