The Mason of New Orleans — Charles Ryan

Life in the Middle Ages can be tough. Nasty, brutish, and short, as they say. War, famine, torture. Plague and intolerance. People getting burned at the stake and all that. And nobody speaks English.

All of which sucks if you're from the 21st Century.

Martin's just a regular guy. A job that's going -- well, not exactly nowhere, but not anyplace fast. A condo in the DC suburbs. A Ford Fusion. A couple of beers on a Friday night. But when Martin finds himself in the 12th Century -- naked, unarmed, without a single friend or possession -- things really take a turn for the worse.

And as if the “medieval” (as in “Ima get medieval on your ass”) isn't bad enough, he's caught between the Holy Roman Emperor and a ruthless local overlord, the plottings of a satanic cult, and the machinations of a self-styled sorcerer bent on dominating the world -- or what's been discovered of it so far.

Half the people he meets think he was sent by God or something to solve all those problems. The other half think he was sent from Hell. And a few don't care -- they just want him out of their way.

And all Martin wants is to get home. If he can just survive the 12th Century long enough to figure out how -- and why -- he got there to begin with.