Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
You Pay:	$6.99				$5.94
Micropay Rebate:	10%				10%
Cost After Rebate:	$6.29				$5.35
You Save:	10.01%				23.46%

eBook Category: Romance
eBook Description: It is 1993 and Raf Frataleon, at the pinnacle of his career, is ready to retire as CEO of the family business, Frataleon, Inc., which his father had started right after the end of WWII. After the onset of his father's terminal illness, in 1975, he unwearyingly gives up his right to live a normal life, as other men do. Gullibly and naively he spends the better part of his adult life developing the business bringing it from a moderate aircraft after parts manufacturing company into the largest, most prestigious, family owned company of its kind in the world. Coincidental to his decision to retire comes the news of his mother's impeding death from a near life long illness. The tragic loss of his father three years before had left his mother as the sole owner of Frataleon, Inc. But that fact had never worried Raf. There had always been a spoken understanding between he and his parents that the fruits of his labor would always be his. After her death, every thing he had preserved and built upon would automatically be his. Unknown to him however, his much younger sister Nicole disagrees with that arrangement. What follows is her plot to disembowel her brother's inheritance and claim it as her own. How is he to save himself from a fate he could never have imagined could have happened? Can he come out of his misfortune intact? He finds that his strength to financially survive his unexpected reversal of fortunes comes from unexpected sources. Throughout the five E-Novels, we follow Raf as he moves from his earliest childhood, into his traumatic years growing up and on through the trials and tribulations of his adult life. We watch as he prospers and approaches his mid-life. From that perspective, we understand the forces that, unknown to him, propel him, step by step, into his final situation.

eBook Publisher: 4 Points Press Publishing Company/4 Points Press Publishing Company, Published: 2001
Fictionwise Release Date: February 2003

Available eBook Formats [Secure Microsoft Reader - What's this?]: SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT (285 KB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, or Microsoft Reader 2.2.2 on Pocket PC 2002 handheld devices. Some older Pocket PCs can be upgraded. Learn More.
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN: 1591180023

"The Oedipus Syndrome is an ambitious series of novels from first time fiction writer Maria Giusto. The novel explores the binds of loyalty, whether for good or for bad, that tie a family together. In her first two novels of the Oedipus Series, Blind Intentions and Betrayed Innocence, the author introduces us to Raf Frataleon, who deftly presents us with the dynamics of his family and what he thinks his extreme loyalty to them might have cost him. It is rare that an author digs as deeply into a man's psyche as this author does almost tearing the main character apart leaving him to put himself back together again. Raf takes us with him on a journey of his life hardly traveled by men of lesser courage and fortitude than he possesses. He privies us to every facet of his life and lets us share in every part of his emotions. With the great intensity of a comic storyteller, you will laugh when he laughs. With the great sorrow of a holy man observing the decline of his followers, you will cry when he cries. With the openness of a bon vivant you will love as he loves, deeply, passionately and obsessively. Benevolent to a fault, you would yet pale at the depth of his hatred when he is crossed. Profound and enormous in its scope, his anger could bring him and his to destruction. Written with the intensity of his need to expose his inner self, the first novel, Blind Intentions let's Raf take a second look at his present life. The second novel, Betrayed Innocence, is in contrast to the first. In a flashback, we travel with him into his childhood where we share, in another time and another place, the events that write the foundation of his life-script. The first novels will keep you spellbound and you will want to meet Raf again in the upcoming third novel, a continuation of his ambitions and setbacks that dictate his life."--Publisher's Review

The fog refused to lift. Instead, it thickened into a heavy grayish-white blanket of mist that covered the coastal area between the airport and Beverly Hills. It was especially thick on the #405 freeway in the Marina Del Rey area. The off ramp leading to the Cedars-Sinai Hospital was only another five miles away but Joseph was suddenly reduced to driving twenty miles per hour through the billows of rolling, gauze-like fog that shrouded the limousine. At that rate, guessed Raf, they would be another fifteen minutes getting there. Where the heavy mist hung on the road blinding him, Joseph cursed profusely at the miserable, thick, blinding miasma God had sent them. He worried deeply about his having to slow down even more and not be able to get Raf to his mother's bedside on time.

"Gnuph! Goddamn fog! Every June it's the same way! Every evening into early morning hours--the same! Gnuph!"

"Is there some way you can exit onto a surface street and get us below this terrible soup?" Raf asked hoping that Joseph had some miracle up his sleeve.

"No, damn it! The Marina is the Marina and heavy fog is part of that this time of the year. Gnuph, you know that."

Least he upset him as well as distract him, Raf elected not to answer Joseph; he wanted him to get them safely through the dense fog and to the hospital without any mishaps. Upset, knowing there was nothing he could do, Raf shrugged, fidgeted and checked his wristwatch at every slowdown. Powerless and mindless in the face of the will of the Chief Chaccan, who brought the dense fogs before he cracked open the rain clouds to release the tormentas, Nicole's expressionless voice and words came to him to torment him leaving him with a callous note.

"Maman is in coma--she won't last 'till morning."

Fearfully he wondered if they were too late already. If Joseph were not careful, the blinding miasma could kill them both. At their present speed, in the thickest part of the fog bank, Raf's original fifteen-minute estimate was premature. It could take them another half hour to reach the hospital. That was precious time to him now. Raf remembered the many times he had to drive the same freeway, through the same kind of thick, dense fog, in the middle of many nights, when he returned from business trips across the country or abroad. An ordinary, uneventful, half hour's drive would become at least a two hour nightmare. Mixed with those same thoughts, a warm glow filled his mind; he also recollected the clearer more beautiful homecomings that had always awaited him.

His mind sped back through the years, to the bright morning at VillaSol when he had rushed home from Europe in answer to Nicole's cable, which bluntly had announced his father's attack of a grave illness. It seemed to him that he was repeating almost the same scenario, rushing to a hospital in answer to his sister's telephone call announcing his mother's impending death. He thought hard on that memory, that day of March 14, 1975, a day that had changed his life forever. His thoughts, all jumbled together now but by some quirk of his brain still amazingly clear, brought back to him the devastation he had felt then at the prospect of losing his father. It seemed to him to be the same devastation he felt now at losing his mother but he couldn't for the life of him understand why that was.