But for Wylie, the gentle, cropped eared ball of fur, miracles seemed to happen quite regularly. Beaten and abused at the hands of uncaring humans, Wylie suffered terrible injuries that needed urgent treatment. Rescued close to death, with hacked off ears and a severed tail, he was attended to by soldiers who feared he would not last the night. Astonishingly he did, only to return days later with new injuries. However a lifeline came when he was handed over to animal welfare Charity Nowzad and flown to Britain in the hope of finding a new life. But would anyone take a chance on a seemingly undomesticated stray? Luckily for Wylie his biggest adventure yet was about to begin...

    Gillet, at the age of 36 an accomplished sailor and paddler, navigated by sextant and always knew his position within a few miles. Still, Gillet underestimated the abuse his body would take from the relentless, pounding, swells of the Pacific, and early into his voyage he was covered with salt water sores and found that he could find no comfortable position for sitting or sleeping. Along the way he endured a broken rudder, among other calamities, but at last reached Maui on his 63rd day at sea, four days after his food had run out. Dave Shively brings Gillet's remarkable story to life in this gripping narrative, based on exclusive access to Gillet's logs as well as interviews with the legendary paddler himself.

    With beautifully commissioned photographs and spectacular 3-D aerial views revealing the charm of each destination, these amazing travel guides show what others only tell.

    The British expected R.101 to spearhead a fleet of imperial airships that would dominate the skies as British naval ships, a century earlier, had ruled the seas. The dream ended when, on its demonstration flight to India, R.101 crashed in France, tragically killing nearly all aboard.Combining meticulous research with superb storytelling, Fatal Flight guides us from the moment the great airship emerged from its giant shed—nearly the largest building in the British Empire—to soar on its first flight, to its last fateful voyage. The full story behind R.101 shows that, although it was a failure, it was nevertheless a supremely imaginative human creation. The technical achievement of creating R.101 reveals the beauty, majesty, and, of course, the sorrow of the human experience.The narrative follows First Officer Noel Atherstone and his crew from the ship’s first test flight in 1929 to its fiery crash on October 5, 1930. It reveals in graphic detail the heroic actions of Atherstone as he battled tremendous obstacles. He fought political pressures to hurry the ship into the air, fended off Britain’s most feted airship pilot, who used his influence to take command of the ship and nearly crashed it, and, a scant two months before departing for India, guided the rebuilding of the ship to correct its faulty design. After this tragic accident, Britain abandoned airships, but R.101 flew again, its scrap melted down and sold to the Zeppelin Company, who used it to create LZ 129, an airship even more mighty than R.101—and better known as the Hindenburg. Set against the backdrop of the British Empire at the height of its power in the early twentieth century,Fatal Flight portrays an extraordinary age in technology, fueled by humankind’s obsession with flight.

    Teeming with adventure, international intrigue, and financial manipulations, the book reveals how a sky-struck young man of immense ambition and vision took a single-engined seaplane carrying mail 90 miles from Key West to Havana and expanded the operation into the vast world-wide airline that at one time considered itself the "chosen instrunment" of the State Department abroard - and was so condidered by official Washington.

    Smith is a legend in the world of finance. Part adventurer and part economic warrior, this Indiana Jones of the financial world was an advance man for the forces of globalization, having spent more than thirty years traveling through five continents, buying and selling high-risk securities in the world's most downtrodden economies. So tenuous was his operation and so covert the transactions, that an overnight fluctuation in a country's currency rate could mean the difference between a spectacular profit or a devastating loss. Today, the trade in emerging market debt is worth more than five billion dollars a day, but it was virtually nonexistent when Smith, a one-time collections lawyer, pioneered the business in the late 1970s. Riches Among the Ruins is the extraordinary story of Robert Smith's search to make money doing the riskiest kind of business. We are at his side as he travels through the treacherous and exhilarating world of the debt trader, dodging bullets and roadside bombs in post-Saddam Iraq, and risking his life on the chaotic streets of Nigeria. As he engages in a battle of wills with businessmen in Istanbul, and loses millions overnight in the ruins of the post-Soviet Russian economy, we experience all of the thrill and terror that accompanies making big money in emerging markets. At once adrenaline-fueled and utterly compelling, this is the gripping story of one man's quest for fortune where others fear to tread.

    With this epic tale of one vast and controversial road project, Matt Dellinger brings to life the country's complex political, social, and economic landscape. The 1,400-mile extension of I-69 south from Indianapolis, if completed, will connect Canada to Mexico through Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. This so-called NAFTA highway has been in development for two decades, and while segments are under construction today, others may never be built. Eagerly anticipated by many as an economic godsend, I-69 has also been opposed by environmentalists, farmers, ranchers, anarchists, and others who question both the wisdom of building more highways and the merits of globalization. Part history, part travelogue, Interstate 69 reveals the surprising story of how this extraordinary undertaking began, introduces us to the array of individuals who have worked tirelessly for years to build the road--or to stop it--and guides us through the many places the highway would transform forever: from sprawling cities like Indianapolis, Houston, and Memphis to the small rural towns of the Midwestern rust belt, the Mississippi Delta, and south Texas. This book vividly illustrates that the story of America is indeed the story of transportation--and that story continues. In an era when bridges fall, levies fail, and states lease their toll roads to foreign-owned corporations, Americans are realizing the central importance of infrastructure, how it affects our standard of living and quality of life and how it determines which places prosper and which places fade.Matt Dellinger connects these dots with an absorbingly human, on-the-ground examination of our country's struggle with development. Interstate 69 captures the hopes, dreams, and fears surrounding what we build and what we leave behind.

    There were no roads, no cars and no telephones. The tiny village that nestled among the rocky hills of Newfoundland's desolate southern coast had existed for generations with ancient customs and patterns of speech that still endured-while the modern world waited impatiently in the wings. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand experience-the Mowats lived in the outport community for five years-Claire Mowat has written a fictional memoir that beautifully recreates an almost vanished world. A world where life revolved tightly around the home and neighbours watched over one another. A world where one's kitchen was open to anyone who might drop in, day or night. A world that Claire Mowat grew to love.

    Marine 1st Force Reconnaissance Company during the bloodiest years of the Vietnam War. Dropped deep into enemy territory, Recon relied on stealth and surprise to complete their mission--providing intelligence on enemy positions and conducting raids, prisoner snatches, and ambushes. Fleming's absorbing memoir recounts his transformation from idealistic recruit to cynical veteran as the war claimed the lives of his friends and the missions became ever more dangerous.

    The author witnessed the mud-soaked agony of the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, and the rapidly moving events of the following year. The book contains one of the most extraordinary accounts of the German spring offensive in 1918, from the point of view of a gunner officer with a grandstand view of the ruthless German advance.The author's father was Prime Minister at the outbreak of the first world war. The author's three brothers also served during the war; his eldest brother died during the Battle of the Somme.

    

    Is the emperor alive? Or is his death being kept a closely-guarded secret? It’s impossible to know for certain, since the spies and agents of the kingdom trade in misinformation and half-truths, and only heighten the tension between the brothers.In this atmosphere of palace intrigue and chicanery—as Murad acquires a reputation for overindulgence, Dara for sensitivity, and Shuja for impulsiveness—the stage seems set for a power-hungry Aurangzeb to make his ascent as emperor. However, will Aurangzeb’s quest for domination become his ultimate undoing? The Mughal High Noon, with master brushstrokes, explores questions of power, faith and contentment.

    The old sailors, who could remember her past, said that she was jinxed and ought never sail again. But in the last days of 1940, as the phoney war drew to an end, Britain needed every ship she could lay her hands on, to challenge the might of Hitler’s Kriegsmarine. So it was that Lieutenant-Commander John Lamb found himself commanding the old destroyer Rose, with a crew of misfits and troublemakers, and set sail across the dark and icy seas in a desperate race to prevent the German invasion of Norway.... Duncan Harding is a pseudonym for Charles Whiting (1926-2007), who also wrote as Leo Kessler and John Kerrigan. Charles Whiting volunteered for the Army aged 16 in 1943, where he saw active service in Belgium, Holland and Germany with the 52nd Reconnaissance Regiment. He has over 350 books to his credit, encompassing military history, espionage, biography and action fiction and holds the Sir George Dowty Prize for Literature.

    Author GM Matheny was a US Navy saturation diver on the nuclear submarine USS Halibut. Involved in Operation Ivy Bells. America's most important (and most dangerous of the Cold War) clandestine operations. If you like good old fashioned American bravado, espionage and American history, you will enjoy this book. GOD & SPIES is a firsthand account of America's greatest intelligence coup! Operation Ivy Bells was not a onetime intercept of foreign intelligence but an ongoing operation of multiple Soviet military channels! Another reason for the high interest in our operation was the audacious nature in which it was done—with not one person risking his neck but the crews of two US Navy nuclear submarines which rendezvoused in Soviet territorial waters. “How did I end up as a navy diver, four hundred feet down in a frigid Russian sea? After making my dad totally disgusted with me, I set out to make him happy. ‘Honor thy father’ - I struggled with a decision to serve God. ‘Lord, I will give my life to you and serve you if you let me make this dive.’ But I had the impression He only wanted to know one thing: ‘What if I do not let you? Will you serve me anyway?’”

    A handsome engineer. And a conspiracy that just might take both their lives.Hope wants excitement and to escape from her humdrum existence. When she comes to the end of her life she wants to know that she truly lived. Making money and buying anything she wants in the city hasn’t brought her fulfillment, so maybe becoming a mail order bride out west will.Solomon has received his civil engineering degree while nursing a broken heart. He doesn’t have any interest anymore in marriage but agrees to take a mail order bride in order to make his grandfather happy. He never expected a woman like Hope. Or to fall in love.Solomon discovers that the company he works for is using dangerous nitroglycerin to speed up work on the railroad line even though many men have been injured and killed since they started using it. So now he has a decision to make. Will he stand up for the workers and help them get safe working conditions and better pay? Or will he keep his mouth shut and hold on to his job and his only way to support Hope?Hope and Solomon must work together to get justice for the workers. But when a former beau shows up and disrupts things, their fragile relationship is pushed to its limits, leaving them wondering whether getting married was a horrible mistake. Or if it’s possible to find in each other the love and happiness they’ve always longed for.