Book picks similar to
Returning by Pat Whitaker
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V2: A Novel of World War II
Robert Harris - 2020
Kay Connolly, once an actress, now a young English Intelligence officer, ships out for Belgium to locate the launch sites and neutralize the threat. But when rumors of a defector circulate through the German ranks, Graf becomes a suspect. Unknown to each other, Graf and Connolly find themselves on opposite sides of the hunt for the saboteur. Their twin stories play out against the background of the German missile campaign, one of the most epic and modern but least explored episodes of the Second World War. Their destinies are on a collision course.
Last Days of the Concorde: The Crash of Flight 4590 and the End of Supersonic Passenger Travel
Samme Chittum - 2018
An airliner capable of flying at more than twice the speed of sound, the Concorde had completed 25 years of successful flights, whisking wealthy passengers--from diplomats to rock stars to corporate titans--between continents on brief and glamorous flights. Yet on this fateful day, the chartered Concorde jet, en route to America, crashed and killed all 109 passengers and crew onboard and four people on the ground. Urgent questions immediately arose as investigators scrambled to discover what had gone wrong. What caused the fire? Could it have been prevented? And, most urgently, was the Concorde safe to fly? Last Days of the Concorde addresses these issues and many more, offering a fascinating insider's look at the dramatic disaster, the hunt for clues, and the systemic overhauls that followed the crash.
Yours
Angela Christina Archer - 2021
Knowing the Germans could invade their quiet home the resident children of Guernsey are evacuated. Among them are Amelia Ashton, and her older sister Evelyn.The promise to stay safe.Forced onto the boat by her older sister, seventeen-year-old Amelia Ashton arrives in Weymouth with hundreds of other children. Although she is placed with a kind and loving foster family in Derbyshire, her world is torn apart. With all her communication cut off from her family, and the boys at school joining to fight in the war, Amelia struggles with her own desire to help. On a whim, she lies about her age and boards a train headed to volunteer with the Woman’s Land Army. Finding solace in the work of farm life, she reconnects with William, a young man from Derbyshire, and who doesn’t waste any time asking for her hand in marriage. Can Amelia start a new life without looking over her shoulder at what she left behind in Guernsey or will the war change everything?The promise to survive.Fearing for her parents’ lives, nineteen-year-old, Evelyn Ashton stays behind, living through the German occupation plaguing her once beautiful home—the island of Guernsey. Living under German rule, the residents find a new meaning of desperation and despair, trying to survive on rations and evade the threats of being sent off to a death camp. After her parents die in a bombing, Evelyn is left alone to fend for herself against her enemy, and when German soldiers take over her house, she seeks refuge in the only family she believes she has left—Henry—the man once interested in her sister. Can they find comfort in each other or will the occupation claim not only their love but also their lives?Two sisters. Two promises. One bloody war that changes their lives forever.
Halo: Glasslands: Book One of the Kilo-Five Trilogy
Karen Traviss - 2019
The theocratic military alliance known as the Covenant has collapsed after a long, brutal war with humanity that saw billions slaughtered on Earth and its colonies. For the first time in thirty years, however, peace finally seems possible. But though the fighting has stopped, the war is far from over: it’s just gone underground. The United Nations Space Command’s feared and secretive Office of Naval Intelligence recruits Kilo-Five—a clandestine team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, a Spartan super-soldier, and a diabolical AI—to accelerate the insurrection within the Covenant’s warrior species, the Sangheili, even as their notable defector-turned-leader Thel ‘Vadam—the Arbiter—struggles to stave off civil war among his divided people. Across the galaxy, a woman thought to have died in the Covenant attack on the planet Reach is actually very much alive. Chief scientist Dr. Catherine Halsey broke every law in the book to create the Spartan program, and now she’s broken some more rules to save them. Marooned with Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez and a Spartan team in a Forerunner slipspace bubble hidden in the destroyed planet Onyx, Halsey finds that this place has been guarding an ancient secret—a treasure trove of Forerunner technology that will change everything for the UNSC and mankind. As Kilo-Five joins the hunt for Halsey, humanity’s violent past begins to catch up with all of them as the disgruntled colony Venezia has been biding its time to strike at Earth…and its most dangerous terrorist has an old, painful link with both Halsey and Kilo-Five that will test everyone’s loyalty to the limit.
Daughter of the Goddess Lands
Sandra Saidak - 2011
As the sole survivor of the assault, Kalie makes her way home, and warns her people to prepare for the invasion that she knows is coming. But the goddess-worshiping farmers of her home have no concept of battle, and dismiss Kalie's warning.When the marauders strike again, they cut a swath of destruction and death that prove too late the truth of Kalie’s words. Then Haraak, the leader of the invaders, demands a tribute of gold, grain and women in exchange for sparing her village. Yet it is in Harak's cruel show of power that Kalie sees a chance to save her people--and gain revenge for herself.Kalie leads a group of volunteers to infiltrate the horseman's society, and then destroy them from within. Once she is among them, Kalie uses her skill as a storyteller, and her knowledge of healing to penetrate the horsemen’s inner circle and to discover the secrets that could lead to their destruction.But Kalie discovers that price of revenge is high, and that a quest for vengeance can become a journey of healing and redemption.
A Call to Arms
Alan Dean Foster - 1991
Whether it wanted to or not. When the Amplitur and their allies stumbled upon the races called the Weave, the Purpose seemed poised for a great leap forward. But the Weave's surprising unity also gave it the ability to fight the Amplitur and their cause. And fight it did, for thousands of years.Will Dulac was a New Orleans composer who thought the tiny reef off Belize would be the perfect spot to drop anchor and finish his latest symphony in solitude. What he found instead was a group of alien visitors, a scouting party for the Weave, looking for allies among what they believed to be a uniquely warlike race, Humans.Will tried to convince the aliens that Man was fundamentally peaceful, for he understood that Human involvement would destroy the race. But all too soon, it didn't matter. The Amplitur had discovered Earth...
The Forever War
Joe Haldeman - 1974
A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through military ranks. Pvt. Mandella is willing to do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But "home" may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries.
Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science
M.G. Lord - 2005
G. Lord was becoming a teenager in Southern California and her mother was dying of cancer, Lord's father-an archetypal, remote, rocket engineer- disappeared into his work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, building the space probes of the Mariner Mars 69 mission. Thirty years later, Lord found herself reporting on the JPL, triggering childhood memories and a desire to revisit her past as a way of understanding the ethos of rocket science. Astro Turf is the brilliant result of her journey of discovery.Remembering her pain at her father's absence, yet intrigued by what he did, Lord captures him on the page as she recalls her own youthful, eccentric fascination with science and space exploration. Into her family's saga she weaves the story of the legendary JPL- examining the complexities of its cultural history, from its start in 1936 to the triumphant Mars landings in 2004. She illuminates its founder, Frank Malina, whose brilliance in rocketry was shadowed by a flirtation with communism, driving him from the country even as we welcomed Wernher von Braun and his Nazi colleagues. Lord's own love of science fiction becomes a lens through which she views a profound cultural shift in the male-dominated world of space. And in pursuing the cause of her father's absence she stumbles on a hidden guilt, understanding "the anguish his proud silence caused both him and me, and how rooted that silence was in the culture of engineering."As in her acclaimed book Forever Barbie, which demystified an icon of feminine culture, Lord brings her penetrating insight to bear on a bastion of American masculinity, opening our eyes in unexpected and memorable ways.
James Clavell His Three Epic Novels: Shogun, Tai Pan, And King Rat
James Clavell - 1975
The Catcher in the Rye and J.D. Salinger
Jonathan Coupland - 2014
Explore the unique world of The Catcher in the Rye and JD Salinger
Goodbye to Budapest: A Novel of the Hungarian Uprising
Margarita Morris - 2019
When Katalin and her father, Márton, are woken by the ringing of the doorbell in the dead of night, it can mean only one thing. The Secret Police have come to arrest him on charges of subversion. But Katalin knows her father is innocent.Since the end of the war Hungary has been occupied by the conquering Soviets who have imposed Stalinist communism with an iron fist. Ordinary people live in fear of the dreaded Secret Police, the AVO, who employ torture and tyranny in the pursuit of the communist ideal. Suspicion and betrayal are rife.But there is still hope. The death of Stalin is a spark that ignites a fuse. For the first time it seems that change is possible.In October 1956, a student-led demonstration soon turns into a bloody battle to overthrow the hated communist regime. Confronted by Soviet tanks, young and old take to the streets, armed with Molotov cocktails, bravery and cunning.Katalin and those she loves must fight for freedom. They must fight to survive.Packed with authentic historical details, Goodbye to Budapest is a panoramic novel of courage, sacrifice and the indomitable human quest for freedom.
Teardrops In The Night Sky
J.W. Murison - 2013
On hearing a distant signal they follow it to Earth. On Earth young Steven Gordon, a child protegee, is nearly killed in a horrific crash. After being told he will remain in a vegetative state for the rest of his life, his family witness true courage as Steven battles his way back from the brink. Years later he takes up a job with a lifelong friend as a night security guard, but gone is the genius that was the boy. The stage is now set for a miracle and an adventure of a lifetime. Join Steven as he reaches for the sky.
Courage to be Counted
Eleri Grace - 2019
When she wins a coveted overseas post with the Red Cross, she focuses on her war service. Falling hard for a sexy pilot wasn't part of her plan. Jack Nielsen has a mission. Motivated by patriotic duty and desire to avenge the death of his best friend, Jack commands a ten-man B-17 crew. Keeping himself and his men alive in the fire-filled skies over Europe will require Jack's full focus. Romancing a headstrong Red Cross Girl is a distraction he knows he shouldn't indulge. While Vivian's work takes her across France and into the heart of Nazi Germany, mounting casualties drive Jack to confront his dwindling odds of survival. As Allied forces converge on all fronts, can Vivian and Jack's relationship withstand an excruciating battle between love and duty?Courage to be Counted is the first book in the Clubmobile Girls series of thrilling historical romances. If you like brave military heroes, trailblazing heroines, and romance under fire, then you'll love Eleri Grace's page-turning tale.
Buy Courage to be Counted and soar into this historical romance today!
Orphan Number Eight
Kim van Alkemade - 2015
When tragedy strikes, Rachel is separated from her brother Sam and sent to a Jewish orphanage where Dr. Mildred Solomon is conducting medical research. Subjected to X-ray treatments that leave her disfigured, Rachel suffers years of cruel harassment from the other orphans. But when she turns fifteen, she runs away to Colorado hoping to find the brother she lost and discovers a family she never knew she had.Though Rachel believes she’s shut out her painful childhood memories, years later she is confronted with her dark past when she becomes a nurse at Manhattan’s Old Hebrews Home and her patient is none other than the elderly, cancer-stricken Dr. Solomon. Rachel becomes obsessed with making Dr. Solomon acknowledge, and pay for, her wrongdoing. But each passing hour Rachel spends with the old doctor reveal to Rachel the complexities of her own nature. She realizes that a person’s fate—to be one who inflicts harm or one who heals—is not always set in stone.Lush in historical detail, rich in atmosphere and based on true events, Orphan #8 is a powerful, affecting novel of the unexpected choices we are compelled to make that can shape our destinies.