Robert F. Simon

The fashion industry and Paris provide the setting for a comedy surrounding the mistaken impression that Samantha Blake is a high-priced call girl. Steve Sherman is the journalist interviewing her for insights on her profession. Having once played and lost in love, twenty-five year old Samantha Blake has immersed herself in her job as the chief ladies fashions buyer for discount J. Bergner's Fifth Avenue in New York. In other words, she scowls the high end shops at night stealing their designs which Bergner then produces and sells for a fraction of the cost. She has placed as much space between herself and romance by dressing like a man and going by the moniker Sam. Steve Sherman could be a great journalist, but his womanizing always seems to get in the way. Steve and Sam meet on the same New York to Paris flight, Sam who is travelling there with her boss Joe Bergner and her wisecracking colleague Lena O'Connor, who is secretly in love with Joe, to visit the Paris design houses under the guidance of vivacious Felicienne Corbeau, while Steve has been exiled there by his boss, International Press chief Bertram Chalmers, as Steve's iron-clad contract won't allow Chalmers to fire him until the expiry of that contract, Chalmer's hope being that Steve kills himself among the bevy of French beauties in the process. Sam and Steve immediately butt heads being the antithesis of each other when it comes to love and romance. Lena has her own romance problems as she can see that she will have to fight Felicienne for Joe, which is made all the more difficult in Felicienne being a truly nice woman. But being in the city of love opens Sam's eyes to the fact that she really wants love in her life. Making herself over to an extreme, she meets Steve, who out of circumstance doesn't recognize her as Sam and who believes she is a prostitute named Mimi. Steve's initial interest in Mimi is purely as a source for stories, he using her background to equate the French view of love and sex with sport. But as they spend more time together, they begin to fall for each other, the question then being if they can love each other as plain old Steve and Samantha. —Huggo

During World War II, a commander finds himself stuck with a decrepit (and pink) submarine, a con man executive officer, and a group of army nurses. A submarine newly commissioned is damaged in the opening days of WW II. A captain, looking for a command insists he can get it to a dockyard and captain it. Going slowly to this site, they find a stranded group of Army nurses and must take them aboard. How bad can it get? Trying to get a primer coat on the sub, they have to mix white and red in order to have enough. When forced to flee the dock during an air attack, they find themselves with the world's only Pink submarine, still with 5 women in the tight quarters of a submarine. —John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net> The Philippines, December 1941. Lt. Commander Matt Sherman is the captain of USS Sea Tiger, a submarine. While in harbour she is damaged by a Japanese air raid, and is close to being written off as sunk. However the crew manage to refloat her and repair her as best they can. Sherman acquires a supply officer, Lt (j.g.) Nick Holden, a staff officer with no discernible naval experience or talents, except one - he is a master of scavenging parts and supplies. The submarine sets out for Australia for repairs. On the way they stop at a US -held island only to find it deserted, but for five nurses. Things are about to get very complicated. —grantss December, 1941. While docked in The Philippines in preparation for its first wartime order to sink or destroy all enemy fleet, the submarine USS Sea Tiger sustains major damage in a Japanese air raid. Lieutenant Commander Matt Sherman, its first and only captain, in lamenting the fact that the Sea Tiger has never seen active battle in its one year of service, is able to convince Capt. J.B. Henderson, rather than sending it to the junk yard, to let his crew make the minor repairs required for it to become at least seaworthy so that they can make the two thousand mile voyage to Darwin, the closest full service naval yard, where all the necessary repairs can be done properly in order for it to be sent back into commission. One problem is that these minor repairs necessarily need to be accomplished within two weeks. Another problem is by the time the decision is made, many of the crew have been reassigned leaving Sherman with a skeleton crew. And a third seemingly just as big a problem is that Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Nicholas Holden is assigned to the crew, he generally attired in dress whites or non-regulation designer clothes, he whose only role in the war has been to make his own life and that of other senior officers and their wives fun and comfortable far away from any danger. Holden is aware that this assignment is outside his comfort zone, but he still wants to play his part working to his strengths of understanding how to operate outside "regulation" so that he can move onto his next more appropriate assignment once they reach Darwin whatever that comfortable assignment may be. Beyond the issue of the sub's seaworthiness or lack thereof with these band-aid repairs and the perils of the war still raging, they face further issues in the seeming incompatibility of male submarine life with an infusion of the feminine in more ways than one en route to Darwin. —Huggo

During the American Civil War, Confederate spies aim to steal Union gold intended for the peace treaty with the Sioux and thus pit the Indians against the Union Forces. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln sends an emissary with a peace treaty to the Sioux Indians. He also sends a gift of $130,000 in gold. This attracts the attention of Brock Marsh, the secret leader of a Confederate spy ring, who wants to keep the treaty from being signed and to also get his hands on the gold. Ruth Lawrence and Mike Daugherty work together against the machinations of Marsh. —Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>