Little Anton is a "historical thriller... a gripping war story" (Kirkus Reviews) series that discloses covert technological inventions and the prominent leaders who exploited them during the turbulent years leading up to WWII and the Battle of Norway in 1940. Part love story and part dark satire, the book masterfully interweaves a fictional adventure within factual reportage, revealing in greater detail why Adolf Hitler tasked his personal hero Professor Ferdinand Porsche and his brilliant engineering mind to build the world's fastest, almost invincible race cars and potent military machines.
The book tracks the life of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche while Hitler rises to power. Porsche and his family are pacifists, but like many industrialist families, they get caught up in Germany's "economic miracle" during the Great Depression and its aftermath. With Hitler's patronage, Porsche becomes Germany's heralded "Reich Designer," creating the Volkswagen Beetle and Auto Union's futuristic Grand Prix racing cars, which later evolved into the Audi car brand after WWII.
Along with Dr. Porsche, the central characters are the fictional Lady Beatrice Sunderland (Bea), an irreverent and naughty British aristocrat, and Lutz Becker, a dashing young Bavarian racecar driver from quite humble origins. These two madcap star-crossed opposites eventually intertwine by the time war breaks out, the attraction as inevitable as the fearsome conflict itself.
Lady Bea, a cynical, freewheeling, cold-hearted daredevil pilot who emulates feminist aviatrices Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, and Beryl Markham, is the daughter of Lord Briggs Sunderland, a tortured veteran of The Great War and close friend and confidant of Winston Churchill, Bea's maternal granduncle. Bea undergoes harsh SIS training to become a British spy and is sent to Germany to gain intelligence on clandestine German rearmament. Lutz Becker, a young member of the National Socialist Motorcorps (NSKK) motorcycle division, gains Porsche's patronage and becomes a pro auto racer in international Grand Prix competitions, Hitler and Goebbels' prized propaganda coup.
The brazen adventures of Lady Bea and Lutz take readers through the grim scope of early wartime destruction, the insanity of Himmler's occult-driven SS, and the secret plotting for material gain by corporate and political leaders around the world.
The Little Anton series will continue with the forthcoming sequel entitled Lion, Tiger, Bear. This mystery thriller is set amid the Desert War of 1942-3, where the hunt is on for a secret Nazi SS mining operation and aircraft base in Iraq directly linked to Germany's multiple atomic bomb programs.
Author Biography:
John W. Warner IV is a writer and gentleman farmer whose passion for history, vintage cars, and the unsung heroes of WWII inspired two large-scale creative ventures: a DVD documentary series on the early bootlegging days of NASCAR, The Golden Era of NASCAR, and a historical novel series, Little Anton. The son of retired Senator John W. Warner III (R-VA), former Secretary of the Navy and Chairman of the Armed Services Committee (KBE), and Catherine Mellon, banking heiress and daughter of philanthropist Paul Mellon (OSS, KBE), Warner says growing up in a family that had a seat at many of the most historically significant tables led to his insatiable quest to research and reveal hidden truths behind world events. A self-described gear head, Warner has spent most of his adult life quenching his thirst for knowledge about race cars, first as a professional Grand Am and American Le Mans Series racing driver (becoming, by his own admission, a middle of the pack man behind the wheel of a Corvette GT1 and a Porsche GT3R), and later researching the history of the sport for his NASCAR DVD series. In 2005, Warner's race car crashed into a wall at 100 MPH and he was medevaced off the course. During an intensive two-year-long recovery, he took a deep dive into researching the relationship between Ferdinand Porsche and the world's fastest, almost invincible war machines built during WWII. His research evolved into the historical novel series Little Anton. John and his wife Teba split their time between their Washington, D.C. area residence and their Virginia farm, where he is finishing the sequel to Little Anton, titled Lion, Tiger, Bear.
