The first book in a landmark trilogy, CANDLES UNDER THE CRESCENT is the shockingly dark and gripping tale of Kamram Khan, a twenty-something-year-old Persian Royal attending Oxford University in England, where he is quite the ladies' man living a rather un-Islamic, free and hedonistic lifestyle.
One night, Kamram's father Amin Khan, an oil rich Persian King and prominent Shia Muslim who oppose the right-wing Regime in his homeland of Iran, is assassinated while being chauffeured to a secret meeting in neighboring Afghanistan.
When Kamram receives this news via digital wire in England, he is at once forced to leave university and return home to tend to his family back in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Almost immediately he is marked for death by tyrannical government hardliners.
Kamram and his family resides in a historic castle in the rebellious Southeastern region of the country, where the Khan tribe and anti-government sentiment are very strong. It is from this castle that Kamram, the newly anointed Shah (or King), runs a shadow government outside the official government headquartered in Tehran, using oil money to build communities of resistance and financing armed rebel groups, particularly the ruthless Muh Front, to challenge Iran's brutal military, The Revolutionary Guard.
However, also in the castle, aside from discussions of war, engagements of love that knows no limits. Within the secret folds of soundproof walls covered with clandestine eye-spying paintings worth fortunes, Kamram and his closest confidante.
. . . .Kamram and his closest confidante, Hassein, make and take lovers, creating unspoken relationships of carnality with everyone from grandmother to mother, sisters as well as others, causing internal conflicts and animus between the young king and his uncles. In-house strife soon pits the shah against one husband over the man's wife, which leads to a major fistfight, ultimately resulting in a backyard battle drawing gun against knife.
Out of sight of politics and the public eye, somewhere beneath the ceaseless heat and crossing of sex and swords, Shah Kamram finds love with an ethnic Kurd, a minority people culturally forbidden in Iran to marry Persians, let alone Royals. But Shah Kamram is king now and care little about culture, which ignite whispers among otherwise Southeast society folk of an overthrow.
Will Shah Kamram be overthrown?
Before such question can be answered, the Regime comes storming, launching a military attack on the Castle Of Lords with countless mercenary soldiers, desert tanks, and helicopters called fireflies.
Will Shah Kamram and his newly crowned, controversial princess survive the bombs?