Book picks similar to
Fox Drum Bebop by Gene Oishi


asian-american
culturally-diverse
non-fiction
_tbr-fiction

Born Survivors


Wendy Holden - 2015
    Rachel is sent to Auschwitz, unaware that her husband has been shot. Priska and her husband travel there together, but are immediately separated. Also at Auschwitz, Anka hopes in vain to be reunited with her husband. With the rest of their families gassed, these young wives are determined to hold on to all they have left—their lives, and those of their unborn babies. Having concealed their condition from infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, they are forced to work and almost starved to death, living in daily fear of their pregnancies being detected by the SS. In April 1945, as the Allies close in, the inmates are sent to Mauthausen concentration camp on a hellish seventeen-day train journey. On the seventieth anniversary of Mauthausen’s liberation from the Nazis by American soldiers, renowned biographer Wendy Holden recounts this extraordinary story of three children united by their mothers’ unbelievable—yet ultimately successful—fight for survival.

Nash Cline


R.O. Lane - 2019
    He sees a year and a half of bloody fighting before heading west. At Atchison, Kansas, he picks up the Smoky Hill Trail and travels through Kansas, which is ruled by hostile Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, who attack a stagecoach and capture a young woman named Ada Simmons. Nash is at the Army fort when the abduction is reported, and he insists on going out in the middle of the night to get the young woman from Cheyenne warriors. After he arrives in Denver, Nash sets up a detective business and prospers while the young woman he rescued becomes a consultant to the wealthy, many of whom hit it rich in the the gold and silver mines. As Nash and Ada pursue their vocations, their lives run together and they learn to care for one another. Nash learns to be a top-flight detective and protects his clients at all costs. Another exciting western from R. O. Lane with a touch of romance.

Hungry for Home


Cole Moreton - 2000
    Cole Moreton tells the story of the Blaskets through the eyes of the Kearney family, who lived there for generations until 1947 when they paid a terrible price for their isolation-a young man's life. Moreton discovers a few survivors still alive within sight of the Great Blasket, but most had left Ireland for America, settling in Massachusetts. Hungry for Home is a beautifully written and gripping account of a quest for a vanished people, and the Kearneys' incredible journey into the twentieth century is "a moving, atmospheric testament to the mythic lure of home". Entertainment Weekly.

We Ain't Go No Drink, Pa


Hilda Kemp - 2015
    Too little money. An abusive father too drunk to notice his family is starving. This is the true story of a little girl's struggle to survive against the odds in the slums of 1920s south-east London.'We ain't got no drink, Pa.'I trembled as I spoke. Then somewhere inside me I found the anger, the courage to answer him back.'We don't have no grog cos you drank it all!'I knew he was going for me tonight, so I reckoned I might as well go down fighting after all.Growing up in the slums of 1920s and 30s Bermondsey, Hilda Kemp's childhood was one of chaos and fear. Every day was battleground, a fight to survive and a fight to be safe.For Hilda knew what it was to grow up in desperate poverty: to have to scratch around for a penny to buy bread; to feel the seeping cold of a foggy docklands night with only a thin blanket to cover her; to share her filthy mattress with her brothers and sisters, fighting for space while huddling to keep warm. She knew what it was to feel hunger - not the impatient growl of a tummy that has missed a meal; proper hunger, the type that aches in your soul as much as your belly.The eldest of five children, Hilda was the daughter of a hard drinker and hard hitter as well. A casual dockworker by day, a bare-knuckle fighter by night and a lousy drunk to boot, her pa honed his fists down the Old Kent Road and Blackfriars, and it was Hilda or her ma who bore the brunt of them at home.This is the powerful and moving memoir of Hilda's childhood growing up in dark, filthy, crime-ridden Bermondsey; a place where you knew your neighbours, where you kept your eyes down and your ears shut as defence against the gangs at war in the streets. It's a time when days were spent running wild down the docklands, jumping onto barges and stealing coal, racing through the dank back-streets of east London like water rats, dodging the milk cart or the rag-and-bone man.And out of this bleak landscape emerges a brave, resilient young girl whose life is a testament to the power of love and good humour. Moving, dazzling and sombre by turns, once opened this brilliant, seductive book will not let you rest.

Escort: The Battle of the Atlantic


D.A. Rayner - 1955
     This highly acclaimed firsthand account of convoy escort operations in the North Atlantic from 1939 to 1945 is based on Rayner's astonishing war record. About the author: Denys Arthur Rayner was a Royal Navy officer who fought throughout the Battle of the Atlantic. After intensive war service at sea, Rayner became a writer, a farmer, and a successful designer and builder of small sailing craft.

The Archers: Ambridge At War


Catherine Miller - 2020
    . . ‘Intriguing, comforting and endearingly familiar’ Katie Fforde   It’s 1940 and war has broken out. It is midnight at the turn of the year, and Walter Gabriel speaks the same line that opened the very first radio episode –  'And a Happy New Year to you all!' For Ambridge, a village in the heart of the English countryside, this year will bring change in ways no one was expecting.   From the Pargetters at Lower Loxley to the loving, hard-working Archer family at Brookfield Farm, the war will be hard for all of them. And the New Year brings the arrival of evacuees to Ambridge, shaking things up in the close-knit rural community.   As the villagers embrace wartime spirit, the families that listeners have known and loved for generations face an uphill battle to keep their secrets hidden. Especially as someone is intent on revealing those secrets to the whole village . . .

The LawDog Files


D. LawDog - 2017
    In THE LAWDOG FILES, he chronicles his official encounters with everything from naked bikers, combative eco-warriors, suicidal drunks, respectful methheads, prison tattoo artists, and creepy children to six-foot chickens and lethal chihuahuas. THE LAWDOG FILES range from the bittersweet to the explosively hilarious, as LawDog relates his unforgettable experiences in a laconic, self-deprecating manner that is funny in its own right. The book is more than mere entertainment, it is an education in two English dialects, Police and Texas Country. And underlying the humor is an unmistakable sympathy for society's less fortunate - and in most cases, significantly less intelligent - whose encounters with the law are an all-too-frequent affair.

The Lightless Sky: My Journey to Safety as a Child Refugee


Gulwali Passarlay - 2018
    Fast delivery through DHL/FedEx express.

All the Hits So Far But Don't Expect Too Much: Poetry, Prose & Other Sundry Items [With 14-Track CD]


Bradley Hathaway - 2005
    The commentary will contain background on the poems or more deeply delve into themes or topics discussed in the poems themselves. The spiritual seeker as well as the mature in faith will both benefit from the poems.

We Escaped: A Family's Flight from Holland During WWII


Alexander H. ter Weele - 2015
    seasoned with the terror of war. We Escaped plunges the reader into the extraordinary World War II escapades of an ordinary couple and their children as they first escape from Nazi-occupied Holland; and then deal with the war years by leavening danger and stress with the joy and love of everyday family life. It is the song and dance of The Sound of Music seasoned with the terror of guns and blood. The story begins in the Netherlands, a peaceful nation protected by a treaty of neutrality and kinship with Hitler's Germany. The calm is shattered by the cacophony and confusion of battle as, under the guns of panzers, German troops overrun Holland's lines. The ter Weele family's subsequent exodus from their home is told from the points of view of the father, Lieutenant Carl ter Weele, a Dutch reservist called up to defend the Grebbeberg; his wife Margery, an American citizen raised in Boston, who delivers her third child in a hospital not far from the Grebbeberg as war threatens; their oldest son, six-year-old Jan, whose dark eyes and hair lead Nazis to suspect he is Jewish; and their second son, Alex, a blond and fair-skinned imp, who at the age of two charms a German border guard into allowing the family to cross into Switzerland. Within weeks of Germany's conquest of Holland, the family has to flee the dragnet of the Gestapo, which is arresting all Dutch military officers. As far as Carl can see, the only way out is through Germany, and from there it's a tortuous and terrifying journey through Switzerland, Vichy France, Spain, and Portugal, with the Gestapo a threat at every turn.

Far Above Rubies


Cynthia Polansky - 2001
    A Dutch woman is caught in the nightmare of Hitler's regime when she voluntarily accompanies her six stepdaughters to Auschwitz. What transpires during and after the war exemplifies a rare courage in an extraordinary heroine.

A Girl's Ride in Iceland


Ethel Alec-Tweedie - 1889
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Palm Trees in the Snow


Gloria Maria Strassburger - 2011
    Strassburger begins her story with her parents' courtship in the golden years of pre-Castro Cuba. Her memoir recounts how her father's mental collapse and the communist revolution of 1959 uprooted her privileged childhood, both physically and emotionally. While providing substantial background on Fidel Castro's political revolt, Strassburger focuses on her family's experiences: The appropriation of their wealth and properties by the rebel regime. How families were torn apart as children were taken from their parents, forced to undergo communist indoctrination in Russia. Strassburger narrowly escaped such a fate through Operation Peter Pan, one of the largest political exoduses of children in history. Fearing for her future, her parents sent her out of Cuba-alone-in 1961. She relates the terror of being separated from her family and living in a foreign country without them. With affecting detail, Strassburger depicts her family's disintegration as her father spiraled into schizophrenia and communism forced them into exile. They left behind their loved ones, their homes, and their identities to face the hardships of a new life in the United States. Palm Trees in the Snow is a family's story of love, sacrifice, and survival. It is the author's tribute to a way of life lost forever and the embracing of a new one in America.

Her Father's Daughter


Beezy Marsh - 2019
    One Man's Secrets. A moving true story. From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes a moving true story of two women fighting to survive scandal, poverty and war. When Annie marries Harry after years of heartache in a London slum she believes she's found her happy ever after. But the horrors of the Blitz soon threaten everything they hold dear. The terrible sights Harry witnesses as an air raid warden bring back traumatic memories of his time during the First World War. Suddenly Annie finds herself struggling to cope not only with life in wartime and two little children, but also with a husband who seems like a stranger.Kitty has always been protective of her little brother Harry. Hiding the scandal about their father from the world was the only way to survive as they were growing up in Newcastle. But when she discovers Harry too has a shocking secret, she is torn. Meanwhile Annie wonders why Harry refuses to discuss his life before their marriage and why she has never met his sister. Will the truth ever come to light?From the bombed-out terraces of London to the docks of Newcastle, Her Father's Daughter is a moving and poignant true story about the unbreakable bonds of family, and the power of love to heal the worst wounds.

A Pilgrim for Freedom


Michael B. Novakovic - 2016
    It is one part the account of a refugee family who barely survived explosions and hunger while seeking safety during World War II, and includes vivid descriptions of the hardships Mike, his siblings, and parents endured. It is another part the story of an immigrant family who came to the United States (by way of Argentina) after the war and with great ingenuity and industry worked their way up to levels of success that had been unimaginable during the darkest days of war. Finally, it is also the chronicle of a loyal and valiant soldier who sought to pay back his debts to the United States for defeating fascism and communism through distinguished service in the U.S. Air Force's intelligence operations. In sum, it is a riches-to-rags-to-riches story that testifies both to the resilience of one man and to the ideals of the nation that inspired him.