Title: Author: Publisher: RRP:

Dark Heart Elizabeth Ellen Carter Dragonblade Publishing print $16.99, ebook $3.99

Jacqui Carling-Rodgers’ love of history has taken her to some bleak places in researching her latest book, ranging from the perversions of ancient Rome to child abuse in modern times.

Writing under the pen-name Elizabeth Ellen Carter, the Gold Coast author has been known until now for her regency romance novels.

Her new book, Dark Heart, retains the element of romance, but also journeys into the dark hearts of men in Roman times.

In planning her story, though, Carling-Rodgers looked to the present. She had been alarmed by the content of recent child abuse allegations levelled at a longtime British MP after he had died.

“There were high-end politicians, senior bureaucrats – it had me wondering how heinous offences can go undetected or unprosecuted,’’ she said. “It also had me thinking, what happens to whistleblowers?

“I thought it would be safer and more interesting to explore that within the context of another sophisticated society, which is why I chose 3rd century AD Rome.’’

Carling-Rodgers describes her book as historical romantic suspense, with the plot centring on a fictitious cult revolving around a real emperor, Elagabalus. “He makes Caligula look like a choir boy,’’ she said.

Caligula’s infamy has spread well beyond the province of ancient history buffs. The third Roman emperor has a reputation as the empire’s most tyrannical.

Caligula was popular when he became emperor at age 24, happily spending on lavish games to entertain the people. But after falling ill, historians say his character changed as he went out of his way to provoke the senate, wanting to appoint his horse as a consul and demanding to be treated like a god.

By the time he was 29 in 41AD, his enemies had him assassinated.

Elagabalus, whose reign lasted from 218-222AD, was but a slip of a teenage boy when his mother orchestrated his rise.

“He did things like run a brothel in the palace to raise money. He would do things like catapult coins into the crowd, but occasionally to spice things up there would be snakes and scorpions in there as well,’’ she said.

“What intrigued me was the amount of pedophilic crime.’’

In Dark Heart, a magistrate investigates the cult of Elagabalus and discovers it goes to the highest echelons. He also learns his son, who has been under the care of his former father-in-law, is intended as the next victim of paedophiles within the cult involved in ritual murders of boys.

The book’s heroine is a slave who has been trained as a doctor. Her mentor is murdered by the cult, so she is drawn into the investigation.

“I had an archaeologist with expertise in late empire Rome look through the novel to check for historical accuracy,’’ Carling-Rodgers said. “I find that great fun, creating relatable characters in a timeframe that not many people are familiar with. Thank goodness for the internet. It shortens the research span by an order of magnitude.

“There’s been lots of research done on Rome, including university research that is readily available.’’

Carling-Rodgers, whose writing career began as a 17-year-old cadet journalist and has taken her through marketing, advertising and her current stint as a communications coordinator looking after media, websites, newsletters and brochures for a body corporate services company, has a 10-year plan in her aim to become a full-time author.

“I still have to work for a living at the moment,’’ she said.

Carling-Rodgers has now had four books and two novellas published as Elizabeth Ellen Carter.

Her sales have reached around 10,000, but figures for Dark Heart have yet to come in.

Many of her readers live in the US, which helps explain why an American company – Dragonblade Publishing – has just inked a threebook contract with her.

The project involves her passion for the time of the Barbary Coast pirates and the frustrations that finally led the French and the US to go to war in the late 1700s with the North African countries that sponsored the raiders.

“When people think of pirates they think of the swashbuckling types in Pirates of the Caribbean, but these were more like the Somali pirates we see around Aden now – not swashbuckling but very brutal,’’ she said. Title: The Greatest Story Ever Told … So Far Author: Lawrence Krauss Publisher: Simon & Schuster RRP: $32.99

Having been put through the media mincer for saying people are more likely to be killed by a falling refrigerator than terrorism, Lawrence Krauss takes on even more weighty questions in this book about the invisible world around us. It starts this way: “In the beginning there was light. But more than this, there was gravity. After that, all hell broke loose …’’ And away we go but the reader should be warned. This book is promoted as an accessible and illuminating guide to our weird, wild and counterintuitive universe (it’s true – it is, in fact, all of that), but don’t think you can just cruise through, put it down for a few days and then pick up where you left off. You definitely need to be on your game because as simple as Krauss the theoretical physicist has tried to make this history of everything and the scientists who have gone a long way in unlocking many amazing secrets, you might still need a whiteboard to keep track.