No Candles for Antiochus

By Barry Ergang

A hardboiled Hanukkah story set in a dystopian future of religious wars, in which Jud McCabe tries to help an endangered rabbi and his daughter while meting out revenge on an old and murderous enemy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Ergang
• Release date: Sep 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452388397

Barry Ergang

Former Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine (www.fmam.biz) and First Senior Editor of Mysterical-E (www.mystericale.com/), Barry Ergang's fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. He is a winner of a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society for the best flash fiction story of 2006.

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NO CANDLES FOR ANTIOCHUS

by Barry Ergang

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Barry Ergang

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Originally published in Apollo's Lyre , 2007.

What follows are works of fiction. All of the people, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real people, places or incidents is strictly coincidental.

After decades of escalating verbal and physical confrontations, the United States plunged into civil wars among religious factions and, in 2039, ceased to be. An impartial negotiator convened meetings with denominational leaders. Three years later the Union of Theocratic States, a conjunction of colonies each governed by the precepts of its ruling sect, phoenixed from the ashes that had been America. Most of the sects had been established centuries ago; some were neo-religions or obscure cults. Agnostics and atheists inhabited one of the regions.