11 year-old Lydia walks through a village in rural Suffolk on a baking hot day. She is wearing a gas mask. The shops and houses are empty, windows boarded up and sandbags green with mildew, the village seemingly deserted. Leaving it behind, she strikes off down a country lane through the salt marshes to a large Edwardian house - the house she grew up in. Lydia finds it empty too, the windows covered in black-out blinds. Her family are gone.Late that night he comes, a soldier, gun in hand and heralding a full-blown German invasion. There are, he explains to her, certain rules she must now abide by. He won't hurt Lydia, but she cannot leave the house.Is he telling the truth? What is he looking for? Why is he so familiar? And how does he already know Lydia's name?Eerie, thrilling and piercingly sad, The Dynamite Room evokes the great tradition of war classics yet achieves a strikingly original and contemporary resonance. Hypnotically compelling, it explores, in the most extreme of circumstances, the bonds we share that make us human.

    They want it, and they'll do anything to get it. Crossing Zero is a compelling page-turner with ever-increasing suspense. When Kelly's eleven-year-old son's life is in danger, the unimaginable happens. An unforgettable twist propels this thriller in a stunning new direction as it races toward an electrifying conclusion. PRAISE FOR DALE BRANDON'S FEAR RUNNER. The author keeps the action flowing and delivers enough clever twists to make this an enjoyable read for thriller fans . . . – Kirkus Reviews

    --Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads SingSpanning World War II and the sweep of the twentieth century, We Must Be Brave explores the fierce love that we feel for our children and the power of that love to endure. Beyond distance, beyond time, beyond life itself.A woman. A war. The child who changed everything.December 1940. As German bombs fall on Southampton, England during World War II, the city's residents flee to the surrounding villages. In Upton village, amid the chaos, newly married Ellen Parr finds a girl asleep, unclaimed at the back of an empty bus. Little Pamela, it seems, is entirely alone.Ellen has always believed she does not want children, but when she takes Pamela into her home, the child cracks open the past Ellen thought she had escaped and the future she and her husband Selwyn had dreamed for themselves. As the war rages on, love grows where it was least expected, surprising them all. But with the end of the fighting comes the realization that Pamela was never theirs to keep. Spanning the sweep of the twentieth century, We Must Be Brave explores the fierce love that we feel for our children and the power of that love to endure. Beyond distance, beyond time, beyond life itself.

    Too far away to be governed under Earth law, the Collective was formed. Several hundred years later, the Collective has expanded to a system of six worlds. Power struggles and unequal rights have made interplanetary war all but inevitable. With rebellions arising across the Collective, three captains launch near-suicidal missions to free the oppressed fringe and reset equality across the stars. A galactic war is coming, and only an old mail runner, a space pirate, and their ragtag crews can prevent it.

    Soldier. Spy. Leader. Her name is Nancy Wake.To the Allies, she was a fearless freedom fighter, a special operations legend, a woman ahead of her time. To the Gestapo, she was a ghost, a shadow, the most wanted person in the world.But at first, Nancy Wake was just another young woman living in Marseilles and recently engaged to a man she loved. Then France fell to the Nazi blitzkrieg. With her appetite for danger, Nancy quickly finds herself drawn into the underground Resistance standing up to Nazi rule. Gaining notoriety as the White Mouse, with a 5-million-franc bounty hanging over her head, Wake rises to the top of the Nazi's Most Wanted list--only to find her husband arrested for treasonous activity under suspicion of being the White Mouse himself.Narrowly escaping to Britain, Wake joins the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and parachutes into the Auvergne, where she must fight for the respect of some of the toughest Resistance fighters in France. As she and her maquisards battle the Nazis, their every engagement brings the end of the war closer--but also places her husband in deeper peril.A riveting, richly imagined historical thriller, LIBERATION brings to life one of World War II's most fascinating unsung heroines in all her fierce power and complexity. This is the story of one of the one of the war's most decorated women, told like never before.

    Gil Hodges—who escapes to the island of Matinicus to avoid a crazed ex-lover and verify a rumored 22 species of wild orchid, only to find himself hounded by the ghost of a child some 200 years dead.If Gil’s hoping for some peace and quiet, he’s clearly come to the wrong place. Generations of infighting among loose-knit lobstering clans have left them openly hostile to outsiders. When a beautiful, bed-hopping stranger sails into the harbor, old resentments re-ignite and people begin to die—murders linked, through centuries of violence, to a diary whose secrets threaten to tear the island apart.Discover why Cruising World Magazine calls Gil "The best male protagnist to come along since Lee Child's Jack Racher!"

    He had the main conspirators brutally strung up on meat hooks. Among the executed was Axel von Gottberg, a German Rhodes Scholar at Oxford who returned home in 1934, to the dismay of his Oxford friends, particularly Elya Mendel.Sixty years later, Elya, now a distinguished professor, leaves behind a collection of papers and letters to a former student, Conrad Senior, and asks him to find out the truth about Axel, whom he had condemned as a Nazi sympathizer. But the more Conrad tries to uncover the truth, the more complex he finds the relationship between the two friends, especially in their involvement with two beautiful English cousins. As Conrad investigates obsessively, his own life comes apart. Weaving darkly through these complex stories is an infamous film of Axel's execution; a film which Conrad is desperate to find, for reasons he can barely understand himself.Wonderfully written—and based on true events—The Song Before It Is Sung is a novel of profound and sensitive insight into the human condition, spanning Oxford in the 1930s, prewar Prussia, and contemporary Britain and surpassing all of Cartwright's previous works in its scope and ambition.

    Sister Marie's latest novitiate is a young woman named Noele whose fiancé, René, fled to Paris only to find it overrun by the Nazis. Now back in sleepy Brassac, both René and Noele realize that decisions of love and liberation can never, truly, be avoided. Sister Marie is not unsympathetic to the emotions with which Noele battles; having gone through a similar struggle when she was young. The offbeat nuns must wrestle with how far to expand the margins of their vows, in hopes of saving their town and themselves. A Habit of Resistance is a humorous, but thought-provoking story of personal denial and redemption.

     The invasion of Guadalcanal was a long, cruel holding operation fought with too little equipment and support, not enough food and ammunition, and too few men. The marines on the island were subjected to bombing raids and strafing by Japanese aircraft, bombardment by battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and land artillery, as well as being continually attacked by Japanese tanks and infantry. For five long months they were attacked day and night before being eventually relieved by Army units. Who were these men who faced overwhelming odds? And how did they survive? T. Grady Gallant, who fought at Guadalcanal himself, answers these questions in his brilliant book On Valor’s Side Gallant’s account begins with an account of the grueling training that he and his fellow marines received in places such as Parris Island, before they undertook last minute preparations in New Zealand and made the journey towards Guadalcanal. It is a fascinating work that gives an eyewitness view of one of the most ferocious encounters that the United States Marines had to face through the course of the Second World War. “recreates the real-life training, fighting and comradeship of men at arms, from North Carolina to Guadalcanal.” — Kirkus Review “A great book” — Leon Uris T. Grady Gallant was a journalist, editor, columnist, author and editor. He served as a Sergeant of Special Weapons in the U.S. 1st marine Division, Fleet Marine Force 1941-1945, in the assault at Guadalcanal, and served a second tour with the 4th marine Division, Fleet Marine Force and was in the assault and Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. His book On Valor’s Side was first published in 1963 and he passed away in 2009.

    The war may be waning, but the city known as La Serenissima is still occupied and the people of Italy fear the power of the Third Reich. One night, under a canopy of stars, a fisherman named Cenzo comes across a young woman’s body floating in the lagoon and soon discovers that she is still alive and in trouble.Born to a wealthy Jewish family, Giulia is on the run from the SS. Cenzo chooses to protect Giulia rather than hand her over to the Nazis. This act of kindness leads them into the world of Partisans, random executions, the arts of forgery and high explosives, Mussolini’s broken promises, the black market and gold, and, everywhere, the enigmatic maze of the Venice Lagoon.

    Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker's death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family's permission or knowledge. The circumstances surrounding his death reflect the long legacy of mistreating African Americans that began more than a century before with cadaver harvesting and worse. It culminated in efforts to win the heart transplant race in the late 1960s.

    Never – a new science-fiction novel by Colin Dodds – takes on (and possibly answers) in startling fashion. THE STORY Farya Navurian seems like an ordinary young woman trying to get ahead in the city while struggling with depression. But her depression is anything but ordinary - it has the power to destroy time and space. Growing up the moody daughter of a space-faring hero of The Greater Anointed Imperial Ohioan Commonwealth, Farya annihilated most of that world and its history, leaving behind the husk-like Buckeye State. One day at a record swap, she meets Bryan, a divorced telecom CEO. More than record collecting, what they share is that they each carry a howling secret. Bryan’s business is a cover for a bigger operation that buys human souls and sells luxury afterlives using shady terms of service in mobile-phone contracts. The two of them fall in love, and as they start a life together, their secrets back them into a corner where they have to come clean - and take drastic steps - to save themselves, and possibly reality itself. Ms. Never is a distinctly 21st-century vision of consent, memory, and the ways we create and destroy the world every day. REVIEWS! “(A) transfixing, fantastic narrative… The author executes the story with exacting, direct prose and characters who live and breathe in the mind… an exceptional work. Existential dread takes on new meaning in a fantastical tale…” – Kirkus Reviews “Ms. Never is a big-picture novel, which encompasses the nature of reality, the universe, and life after death… a crazy world, but even the craziest parts of it have a ring of truth to them… Dodds’ prose is exquisite… Farya’s battle is the battle we all face: to impose a meaning on a world we only partially understand by fighting to retain what is worthwhile and battling against those people and events that cheapen everything around us… Ms. Never is a soaring novel, an imaginative, creative triumph and one that has some power to change the reader” – Lost Coast Review “Smart and mysterious… With themes uniquely developed and a musicality to the prose… this is a great story with a powerful theme and just about enough mystery to keep you asking questions. It introduces a really unique concept on understanding depression and its impact… this one is sure to satisfy” – Independent Book Review “MS. NEVER is a vast, multifaceted undertaking… adjectives like ‘riveting, complex, detailed, skillfully crafted’ come immediately to mind… delves into comparisons between worlds imagined and worlds that were… manipulating spiritual infrastructures, making a fast buck from knock-off universes… chock full of intriguing ideas” – IndieReader Reviews

    Exquisitely researched, beautifully told, this tiny corner of Scotland came alive for me in all of my senses and I found myself rooting for the central characters with all my heart.”     —Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, YesIn the dark days of World War II, an unlikely romance blossoms between a Scottish woman and an Italian prisoner of war in this haunting novel with the emotional complexity of The Boat Runner and All the Light We Cannot See—a powerful and atmospheric story of love, jealousy, and conscience that illuminates the beauty of the human spirit from the author of The Glass Woman.In the wake of the Allies’ victory in North Africa, 500 Italian soldiers have been sent to a remote island off the Scottish coast to wait out the war. Their arrival has divided the island’s community. Nerves frayed from three years of war and the constant threat of invasion, many locals fear the enemy prisoners and do not want them there.Where their neighbors see bloodthirsty enemies, however, orphaned sisters Dorothy and Constance see sick and wounded men unused to the freezing cold of an Orkney winter, and volunteer to nurse them. While doing so Dorothy finds herself immediately drawn to Cesare, a young man broken by the horrors of battle.But as the war drags on, tensions between the islanders and the outsiders deepen, and Dorothy’s connection to Cesare threatens the bond she shares with Constance. Since the loss of their parents, the sisters have relied on each other. Now, their loyalty will be tested, each forced to weigh duty against desire . . . until, one fateful evening, a choice must be made, one that that will have devastating consequences.

    Alicia is at once dazzled by the large and charismatic family, in particular the oldest son, a rising politician named Jack. Alicia and Jack are soon engaged, but his domineering father forbids the marriage. And so, Alicia trades Hyannisport for Hollywood, and eventually Rome. She dates famous actors and athletes and royalty, including Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas, and Katharine Hepburn, all the while staying close with Jack. A decade after they meet, on the eve of Jack’s inauguration as the thirty-fifth President of the United States, the two must confront what they mean to each other. The Summer I Met Jack is based on the fascinating real life of Alicia Corning Clark, a woman who J. Edgar Hoover insisted was paid by the Kennedys to keep quiet, not only about her romance with Jack Kennedy, but also a baby they may have had together.

    Meacham writes a celebration of the history and songs of the eras, and McGraw reflects on these songs as an artist and performer. Beginning with the battle hymns of the Revolution, and taking us through songs from the defining events of the Civil War, the two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, into the twenty-first century, Meacham and McGraw explore the songs that defined generations and the cultural and political climates that made them. The songs of America remind us where we've been, who we are—and what we can be.