United Nations professor Roberta Seret, Ph.D. wrote a 3-book fictional series set historically in Romania – Transylvanian Trilogy. The novels will be published February-April 2021, with the first novel coming out February 23, 2021.
Roberta Seret is the founder and executive director of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) at United Nations, International Cinema Education Organization and the Director of ESL and Film for the Hospitality Committee of the United Nations. She is an adjunct instructor at New York University in English and has published various articles in film review for the Journal of International Criminal Justice and Oxford University Press. Her work in the United Nations Global Classroom has been praised by various influential Americans, including Michelle Obama, Mike Bloomberg, and Caroline Kennedy. She resides in New York City with her husband, and has two sons.
The Transylvania Trilogy is her first fiction series, with the novels being linked by the long-standing friendship of four teens who call themselves the Four Musketeers. With each book in the Transylvania Trilogy – Gift of Diamonds, Love Odyssey and Treasure Seekers – , readers are transported back and explore each part of Transylvania with a different view: a survival story beginning in 1960s Romania under its first spell of Communism, a love story between two doctors fighting a typhus epidemic, and a mystery set in Istanbul in 2013, where two friends find themselves tangled in an international laundering scheme. While each story has its own sets of political thrills, they set our heroines on a different journey to find the missing, unanswered part of themselves—the parts that which they truly seek.
“As these four teenage friends narrate their lives, their stories interweave fact and fiction to reveal political truths that have never been exposed before,” Dr. Seret recounts. “These books are a kaleidoscope of exotic colors where governmental intrigue is little known and waiting to be discovered.”
The Gift of Diamonds, the first book of the trilogy is to be released on February 23, 2021. The novel is an exciting tale of intrigue featuring seventeen-year-old Mica, a determined aspiring actress living with her parents in Romania during the former communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s rule. As her parents become a target to for the ex-Securitate Secret Police and they are soon arrested, Mica finds herself in the position to flee the country with her father’s rare diamonds.
Taking the reader on a riveting ride from Romania to Hungary to America as she escapes with rare, colored diamonds, Mica takes risks and faces many obstacles until she becomes autonomous in New York at twenty years old. It is then that she is finally able to fulfill her promise of bringing her parents to America. However, in order to complete her journey, she must return to Transylvania where her story begins in the Prologue, twenty-four years later in 1989, to complete her quest and find peace.
The story begins in communist Transylvania in 1965. Mica, an aspiring actress realizes that her covertly political parents have been arrested by the Secret Police. Escaping alone at night in a perilous journey, she crosses the border and seeks political asylum in the American Embassy in Budapest, Hungary.
On her own for the first time, Mica learns to be self-reliant. She translates documents and learns secrets about Fascism, Communism and the beginning stages of terrorism involving Ceausescu and his nuclear business partners. She is torn between revealing these truths or keeping them secret for fear of repercussions. But she is never free of the secret that the diamonds she escapes with were owned by Auschwitz prisoners and may have passed through Dr. Mengele’s hands. She fears they are blood diamonds – cursed.
With help from Embassy officials in Budapest, she applies for a visa to the U.S. Her goal is to use the diamonds as a vehicle to secure her safe passage to America, and then for her parents. But until she gets to her uncle in New York and sells her diamonds at Sotheby’s, she experiences high-risk adventures, spying, rape, and even a medical crisis. It is at the end of her voyage, that Mica finally finds redemption and peace.
The Gift of Diamonds is now available on Amazon.
The second novel of the trilogy, Love Odyssey is due to come out on March 23, this year. It tells the story of doctor and activist Anca Rodescu who, during the communist Romania, is is left pregnant and alone, but she manages to flee to the United States. She stays in America to raise her child alone, but years later she begins to receive messages that draw her back to her past life in Romania. She returns to find the man that left their family and save him from the war-torn world he’s trapped in. Love Odyssey is a tale of love and forgiveness, woven into a deeply moving story where romance is thwarted by politics and evil.
The third part of the series, Treasure Seekers is to be released on April 27, 2021, capturing the adventure of amateur investigators and lifelong friends Marina and Christina who travel across the country from Transylvania to New York, Paris and Istanbul to learn more about a web of crime of today’s political leaders, connecting them back to Ceausescu’s involvement in a gold laundering ploy that may have played a hand in his execution. But as they get closer to their answers, Marina and Christina are taken hostage in Istanbul.