Even more exciting, each of these stories will spin off into a series of its own. Maggie Shayne’s CHRISTMAS BLUESA true believer returns the music to a lonesome drifter’s soul.Miranda’s Shayne’s FINDING CHRISTMASA small-town coffee shop owner melts a humbug hero’s wounded heart.River Shayne’s A HERO FOR HANNAHCan a woman in grave danger learn to trust one more time?Jessica Lewis’s THE SOLDIER’S CHRISTMAS BABYA lonely serviceman comes home for a holiday he’ll never forget.Grab a cup of eggnog, curl up near the tree, and fall in love with the holidays all over again!

    It draws on extensive interviews with Kissinger, as well as 150 other sources, including Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In addition, it makes use of many of Kissinger's private papers. The result is an intimate narrative, filled with surprising revelations, that takes this century's most colorful statesman from his childhood as a persecuted Jew in Nazi Germany, through his tortured relationship with Richard Nixon, to his twilight years as a globe-trotting business consultant.

    Don't let anyone tell you different.My name is Shyla Crowe, and I'm in hock to a demon I never met. My father started me off early, robbing magical antiquities from rich bastards. Thieving was the family business, and business was humming.Until my father got himself dragged to the pits of Hell. Now the only thing staving off his eternal torment is a monthly cash delivery to my new devil employer.Fortunately, not all hellions are evil, and thanks to an old family grimoire, I have the power to summon them. So I'm flush with enemies, sure, but I also have a few friends, like a furry know-it-all gremlin and my staunch gargoyle familiar.Summoning, like thieving, is about tools, technique, and team, and I've got them in spades. So it's only a matter of time until I work my father free.It's a good plan until the discovery of an ancient relic uncovers a sinister plot, rigged from the start. Turns out, I'm not fighting for my freedom... I'm fighting for my destiny.

    Funny and touching, these monologues from original live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion focus on the summer season.Includes: "The Living Flag," "The Tollefson Boy Goes to College," and "Tomato Butt."

     Attu was the westernmost island in the Aleutian chain, located one thousand miles from Alaska, and subject to brutal weather all year round. Prior to the war it had been home to two Americans and forty-five Aleut hunters and their families, but in June 1942 the Japanese had seized the island and now had over two-thousand troops on the barren island threatening the security of the U.S. mainland. The Battle of the Komandorski Islands in the Bering Sea on March 26, 1943, cleared the way for attempt to retake the island of Attu. Code-named Operation Landgrab, the U.S. military planned for the invasion to take place in May. Army planners had initially thought this would be a quick operation, but instead of being a short invasion it dragged on for over two weeks. The Japanese had realized that their options were limited and so launched a last-ditch banzai charge against the American frontline that was suffering from brutal Arctic conditions, equipment failures and food shortages. Although the U.S. military was able to recapture the island it had cost the lives of over five hundred American soldiers. Robert J. Mitchell, Sewell T. Tyng and Nelson Drummond’s book The Capture of Attu provides fascinating insight into this ferocious conflict. Part One of the book provides an overview of the military campaign while Part Two provides personal narratives of the soldiers who fought. This book attempts to put the reader on the battlefield with the ground soldier. Men who fought on Attu, officers and enlisted men, told their stories to Lieutenant Robert J. Mitchell of the 32d Infantry, one of the regiments engaged. These stories tell of the discomforts and perils, the failures and successes, the fear and courage, the many fights between small groups and the occasional humor, of which battle consists. Robert J. Mitchell served as a lieutenant in the US Army's 7th Infantry Division in World War II, being stationed on Attu Island off of Alaska as well as other areas of the Pacific. He was shot in the chest while on Attu and carried the bullet for the rest of his life. While recuperating, he wrote the stories of the other men in his hospital tent. For this he was made an aide to the general in charge of media for the rest of the war. He passed away in 1992. His co-authors Sewell T. Tyng and Nelson Drummond also served on Attu and passed away in 1946 and 1999 respectively. Their book The Capture of Attu was first published in 1944.

    

    

    The only witness is disabled vet Adam Lee—wounded in a Special Forces mission to Cuba to destroy Fidel Castro's secret Brilliant academy. Though wheelchair-bound and trapped in his seventh-story apartment, Adam Lee has a special skill, his ability as a Brilliant, that allows him to use hints and reflections to see around corners and through the smallest cracks. If he pushes his ability, he may be able to identify the murderer...but that also makes him a target.

    

    The Allies are wildly out maneuvered and sent home in disgrace. Back in the States things are looking rather grim as the ultra-secret Manhattan Project runs into snafus that greatly delay the final production of the atomic bomb. President Roosevelt's approval ratings drop dramatically. Congress is desperate and the country cries out for a hero. That hero might just be Douglas MacArthur, who vowed that he would return to his beloved Philippines. He plans to do so with the backing of the entire US Armed Forces.MacArthur's plan of action is simple: take the war back to the Japanese, island by bloody island, until standing on the shores of Japan, he can proclaim victory. And possibly gain the leadership of the United States as well.

    For Russell, the only thing worse than failing to reach sanctuary is the failure to protect his family in this dangerous post-EMP world.The Final StandPrepare and survive.When an EMP cripples the nation's power grid, lawlessness erupts across the country. Fighting against the chaos, Detective Mike Thorton must rescue his family from the city and bring them to his sister's cabin in the mountains.

    intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the president has been forced to establish his own clandestine group--Covert-One. It's activated only as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out.THE UTOPIA EXPERIMENTWhen Dresner Industries unveils the Merge, a device that is destined to revolutionize the world and make the personal computer and smartphone obsolete, Covert-One operative Colonel Jon Smith is assigned to assess its military potential. He discovers that enhanced vision, real-time battlefield displays, unbreakable security, and near-perfect marksmanship are only the beginning of a technology that will change the face of warfare forever--and one that must be kept out of the hands of America's enemies at all costs.Meanwhile, in the mountains of Afghanistan, CIA operative Randi Russell encounters an entire village of murdered Afghans--all equipped with enhanced Merge technology that even the Agency didn't know existed. As Smith and Russell delve into the circumstances surrounding the Afghans' deaths, they're quickly blocked by someone who seems to have access to the highest levels of the military--a person that even the president knows nothing about.Is the Merge really as secure as its creator claims? And what secrets about its development is the Pentagon so desperate to hide? Smith and Russell are determined to learn the truth. But they may pay for it with their lives . . .

    

    But he soon learns that rats in suits are even worse. What do you do when rats invade your barn? Kill them or negotiate? Mason finds out the hard way that force does not always work! An allegory of war and violence? A statement on the arms race? Neal Asher’s work takes Orwell’s Animal Farm into a grimly humorous future where evolution is outrunning humanity. You may never trust a rat again! “I’ve never read anything like MASON’S RATS before … it’s sharp, funny and highly inventive. There’s more fun in this one slim volume than in many a full-length novel!” – Stephen Gallagher