Book picks similar to
FISH TANK: A Fable for Our Times by Scott Bischke
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Road to Antietam (Galloway Series Book 1)
Tom E. Hicklin - 2018
Hicklin brings readers the story of two brothers and the life-altering events they experience amidst the harrowing backdrop of the American Civil War. Daniel and Christopher Galloway are merely teenagers when they join the Eighth Ohio Volunteer Infantry at the beginning of the Civil War. What starts out as a light-hearted adventure, soon descends into a brutal struggle for survival as they go from training camp to skirmishing with an elusive, deadly enemy to full-blown battle, culminating in the single bloodiest day in American history. Along the way, both brothers suffer from illness, exposure, hunger, and extreme fear, and they soon come to realize that the deadly war they've chosen to fight has less to do with glory and banners, and more to do with hardship and depravity. In this blisteringly realistic tale centered around actual events, it becomes apparent that the overall, larger picture does not always reflect the singular human experience. This is a story of suffering and hope, adversity and compassion. This a story of innocence lost and maturity gained. This is a story of two brothers whose love for one another carries them through the darkest time of their lives-until that fateful, bloody day on the banks of the Antietam when they must face their greatest test, and everything changes forever.
The Insider
Reece Hirsch - 2010
Within days, Will is the prime suspect in a murder, the target of an SEC insider trading investigation, and a pawn in a complex criminal scheme involving the Russian mafia and a ruthless terrorist plot.Now, Will must ensure that a deadly enemy doesn't gain access to the nation's most sensitive and confidential information -- and the power to do incalculable, irrevocable harm.
Kansa (Book 1 - The Killer Trilogy) The Professor Black Series
Prassant Kevin - 2017
AFTER FIVE YEARS OF SILENCE, HE IS BACK AGAIN, SEEKING HIS NEXT VICTIM. ONLY ONE MAN CAN STOP HIM - PROFESSOR BLACK. Maher was found unconscious in the middle of the highway and later, in the hospital, she revealed that she had escaped from a killer's house. All the details and patterns matched the serial killer 'Kansa,' who had disappeared five years ago after murdering forty pregnant women. ACP Saargi Desai was assigned to the case. She appealed to her department to bring back Professor Black to help her catch the killer. The Professor, who had a haunting past that had kept him away from the world of crime and investigation for several years, was not willing to take on this case. But the ACP managed to convince him to get on board just for this one last time. Soon after agreeing to help, the Professor realized that for the first time in his life, he had met his match. As he dug deeper into the case, everything got dirtier, the stakes went higher, and nothing was what it seemed.
Tales from a Vending Machine
Anees Salim - 2013
Unfortunately, a stint at the airport lounge's tea vending machine does not seem to be getting her any closer to her dreams. To pass the time she daydreams, chats with air-hostesses and takes part in mock anti-terrorist drills. At home, she studies her English, fights with her twin and engages in a secret love affair with her cousin and neighbour, Eza. But when a scandal threatens her tenuous happiness, she must pull out all stops on her overactive imagination, and seek a terrible revenge.
When I Woke Up: One Man's Unbreakable Spirit to Survive
Paul Evans - 2019
Then went again.He died on the operating table and lived in a parallel universe whilst fighting for his life in a coma.Became a fugitive, captured at gun point and imprisoned in a squalid Cairo jail for a crime he did not commit.As a child he battled with relentless bullies and overcame chronic dyslexia.As a man, he cheated death survived a foreign prison and built a multi-million-dollar business,Yet lost it overnight and found the strength, despite personal tragedy, to rebuild it. Again. He lives today knowing and believing that YOU can survive anything.If you want to know how to get through this thing called life – this is your manual.
Silent Spring: Deadly Autumn of the Vietnam War
Patrick Hogan - 2019
I began the process without much enthusiasm and quickly got side lined by my new civilian life. Little did I realize that I wouldn’t re-visit my disability claims again until almost forty years later, when I watched President Barack Obama give a speech on the horrors of the Vietnam War. I’m still not quite sure what happened that day, but after listening to the president, I committed myself to investigate the causal link between my tactical pesticide exposures and the myriad health problems plaguing my life and the lives of many other Vietnam veterans. My post-service medical problems began mildly enough but soon balloned and were followed by more serious health issues. Every time I would ask one of my doctors what was causing my illness, I would usually get the answer, “I don’t know, but---.” When I began my research in 2012, I would learn that Agent Orange, along with several other military pesticides, were all very capable of impacting every biological system in my body and could actually be linked to many wide-ranging ailments for which many of my doctors could only say they weren’t sure of the cause. Despite the uniqueness of Vietnam veterans and the incredibly diverse range of hazardous chemicals to which we were exposed, the DVA insists on assessing our illnesses by using civilian epidemiological studies, resulting in appallingly inadequate standards for evaluating our toxic exposures during the war. During my years of research, I have quite literally reviewed thousands of studies and documents. The vast majority of those records came to the same inescapable conclusions as I eventually did at the end of my investigation. Low-level exposures to just the various known chemicals discussed in my book will attack living organisms on an undetected hormonal, genetic, and cellular/molecular level, producing covert systemic damage and alterations to immune, cardiovascular, endocrine, respiratory, and neurological systems of any human unlucky enough to be put in their path. Exactly how that damage and those alterations manifest depends on the several exposure factors which I discus in the book. Regrettably, I couldn’t go back over the last half a century to get a do-over or to have the war conducted differently. I couldn’t force our legislative or military leaders to make better decisions. I couldn’t rewrite the unpleasant history of the Vietnam War, with all the numerous negative impacts that war had on me and every other soldier, marine, or sailor who served the United States in South Vietnam and in the blue waters of the surrounding ocean. The very best I could do, almost a half century after the war, was to write an account of our betrayal and describe our exposures to the toxic pesticides and abhorrent conditions of the Vietnam War. All in the sincere effort to correct the present so that what occurred in South Vietnam will never happen again to new generations of military personnel, their families and their children and quite possibility their grandchildren’s children. The mountain of evidence presented in my book points to one common sense conclusion: Exposure to the tactical pesticides used in the Vietnam War were extremely injurious to the health of military personnel, as well as, the health of anyone else exposed to them. Despite all the facts, the government still places the burden of proof on veterans instead of taking responsibility for the mess they made during the Vietnam War or in the words of Dr. Jeanne Stellman, the Vietnam War is, "the largest unstudied environmental disaster in the world."
A Beginner's Guide to Free Fall
Andy Abramowitz - 2020
Brothers and sisters. Mothers and daughters. Okay, everybody. Hold on tight.
Davis Winger has it all. A respected engineer who designs roller coasters in theme parks across the country, he is deeply in love with his wife and has a beautiful young daughter and a happy home. Until an accident strikes on one of his rides. Nothing fatal—except to his career. And to his marriage, when a betrayal from his past inadvertently comes to light. In one cosmically bad day, Davis loses it all.His sister, Molly, is at a crossroads herself. She’s coasting through a dire relationship with an incompatible man-child. And she’s a journalist whose deeply personal columns about mothers and daughters are forcing her to confront the truth about her own mother, who abandoned Molly and Davis years ago and disappeared.For these two siblings, it’s just a matter of bracing themselves for one turbulent summer in this redemptive and painfully funny family drama about making the best of the sharp turns in life—those we choose to take and those beyond our control.
Two for the Show
Jonathan Stone - 2016
Instead of pounding the pavement, he taps a computer keyboard. He can get the goods on anyone, and it’s all to make sure superstar Las Vegas mind reader Wallace the Amazing stays amazing. Thanks to Chas’s steady stream of stealthy intel, Wallace’s mental “magic” packs houses every night.But when someone threatens to call the psychic showman’s bluff, the sweet gig takes a sour—and sinister—turn. Who’s the clean-cut couple gunning for Wallace with an arsenal of dirty tricks? Why does Wallace keep upping the ante instead of backing down? And just how much does Chas really know about his mysterious boss’s life…or his own? The tangled truth—of blackmail, kidnapping, and false identities—quickly becomes the biggest case of his strange, secret career.
Sentinal's Tear
Christine Fonseca - 2012
Nesy is the best of an elite group of angels – warriors called Sentinals – charged with the job of vanquishing the fallen. She’s never made a mistake, never gotten emotionally involved. But when she comes face-to-face with Aydan, she freezes. He is evil incarnate. A fallen angel that feeds off the souls of others. Everything Nesy is supposed to hate. But she can’t, because he’s also the human love of her former life as a teen; a life that ended too soon, tying her to emotions she should never feel. Now she must choose between doing her duty – damning Aydan to the fiery depths of hell – or saving him, and condemning herself. ***FORMERLY PUBLISHED AS LACRIMOSA
Cast Away: Poems for Our Time
Naomi Shihab Nye - 2020
“I couldn’t save the world, but I could pick up trash,” she says in her introduction to this stunning volume.With poems about food wrappers, lost mittens, plastic straws, refugee children, trashy talk, the environment, connection, community, responsibility to the planet, politics, immigration, time, junk mail, trash collectors, garbage trucks, all that we carry and all that we discard, this is a rich, engaging, moving, and sometimes humorous collection for readers ages twelve to adult.Includes ideas for writing, recycling, and reclaiming, and an index.
Sarcophagus
Ben Hammott - 2017
Concealed in a remote area of the Amazon jungle is something the Mayans thought so dangerous they built a secret prison to entomb it. It remained undiscovered for centuries. When a maverick archaeologist hears rumours of a mysterious lost city, he heads into the Amazon jungle, determined to find it. He soon learns that some things are best left unfound. The dangerous past the Mayans tried so hard to bury, is about to become our terrifying future.
Scars Do Heal
Shilpa Menon - 2015
She fights a paradoxical battle between her responsibilities at work and her only family there - her mother. And caught in between these is a story of Sonal's past - a terrible event that got her to flee India. Scars from her troubled past continues to manifest in multitude of ways, reminding her constantly about that horrific event. Serendipity happens when Dr. Ryan Percy enters her life and Sonal is challenged in ways she had never imagined. Ryan turns out as everything from Sonal's quintessential definition of the man of her dreams - BUT, Ryan too comes to the party with his own baggage from the past. A pivotal piece in the jigsaw of their lives appears to be missing. Could their puzzling lives be ever completed by each other? Do they complete or destroy each other?
Taking Liberties
Helen Black - 2017
The oldest of four kids, she tried to protect them from their violent father until one day he murdered their mother and got sent down.What was left of the family rattled through the care system, bouncing from foster placement to care home. Liberty would have probably ended up on drugs, or dead, or worse if it hadn't been for a ballsy solicitor who told her to get her act together.So that's what she did. She kept her nose clean, got an education.And look at her now. New name, new accent, new town. The past is far behind her and she's concentrating on her own legal career. She has a Porsche, a house in Hampstead... and then one morning her boss asks her to do a favour. He wants her to go to Leeds, to get an important client's son off an assault charge.But Leeds is in Liberty's past. And once she hits town, the past slaps her in the face... and pulls her back into what she worked so hard to leave behind.
The Captured Girl: A Novel of Survival during the Great Sioux War
Tom Reppert - 2016
More than four years later in 1875, when the cavalry attacks her Indian village, she is rescued by Lieutenant Raines. Now eighteen, she returns to white society with her Cheyenne son at her side. Her struggle for survival has just begun.Filled with fascinating characters: outlaws, soldiers and warriors, English Dukes, Robber Barons, and the upstairs downstairs of back east society, this epic story of love and survival transports us from the Indian camps of Montana Territory to the mean streets of Gilded Age New York, and back again, right into the heart of the Great Sioux War. Reviews:“Realistic dialog; interpersonal entanglements and characterizations that come alive. It all adds authenticity to a historical work that makes for a delicious read.” Foster W. Cline, M.D, author of Parenting with Love and Logic.“The Captured Girl is a captivating story of survival and strength. Morgan’s is a tale of courage wouldn’t let go of my imagination even after I sadly turned the last page.” Mary Haley author of Ghost Writer, The Great Potato Murder.“An excellently written and fascinating story of the Sioux War of the 1800s. It is obvious that the author Tom Reppert has spent many hours researching that period of history, and he has made it come alive as few authors can. You can feel and identify with the inner struggle that his hero, a young soldier, goes through during his first battle.” Ana Parker Goodwin, author of Justice Forbidden
Sleepaway
T.R. Pearson - 2019
A Blue Ridge camping trip goes sideways for two young brothers and their minder in this sweet, brief novel of calamity and kindness.