Near the end of the current President's term, China and Russia decide the time will never be better to take down America. They know the current administration has run down and demoralized the military. Half of American navy's mighty aircraft carriers are in out of service for repairs, the Army is the smallest it's been eighty years. The average age of the US Air Force fighters is over 25 years old. The AF is down to less than 100 nuclear bombers from a high of 600. Their war plan, Operation Whirlpool was to launch a surprise nuclear attack to knock out America. War usually plans end up in the trashbin when the enemy is engaged. Operation Whirlpool ran into an unexpected situation. The American’s weren’t as surprised as the Chinese and Russians thought. A US Navy attack submarine stumbled upon the Russian and Chinese SSBN’s sneaking up on the American coast. When the first missiles fly, the world explodes in war as old hatreds flare up. The story is told by a Russian historian who was selected by the Russian President to record the shortest war in history, which will leave Russia ruling the surviving world.

    Since publishing his first short story "Seventh Test Tube" in Kalkandu magazine in 1968, he has written over 1,500 short novels and over 2,000 short stories. Many of his detective novels feature the recurring characters Vivek and Rubella. He continues to publish at least five novels every month, in the pocket magazines Best Novel, Everest Novel, Great Novel, Crime Novel, and Dhigil Novel, besides short stories published in weekly magazines like Kumudam and Ananda Vikatan. His writing is widely popular in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in Sri Lanka.

    Multibillionaire Goddard Moss has a vision: a city rising tall on the South Dakota prairie dedicated to Art. Not art of the staid, traditional, edifying, entertaining variety, but the Modern—modern painting, modern theater, modern sculpture, modern dance, all as obscure, pretentious, and offensive as its creators can make it (and with luck, government-funded). As Culture City rises from the grassy fields, playwrights, performers, and artists prepare for the gala opening week. Gregory Lubin's expansive stage re-creation of the Tower of Babel story is awaited with particular anticipation. But revolution is brewing just yards beyond the city walls and as far away as rural Maine. Despite the money being lavished on it, it becomes doubtful that "the Artland in the Heartland" will survive past its premiere.

    Following the life of an abandoned 13 year old who by chance is instrumental in saving a family from robbery and worse. Taken in by the naval Captain Bowers he is placed as a midshipman in his benefactor’s ship. From that time onward with the increasing demands of the conflict with France, Martin Forrest grows up fast. The relationship with his benefactors family is formalized when he is adopted by them and has a home once more. Romance with Jennifer the Captain’s ward links him ever closer to the family. Meanwhile he serves in the West Indies where good fortune results in his gaining considerable wealth personally. With promotion and command he is able to marry and reclaim his birth-right, stolen from him by his step-mother and her lover. The mysterious (call me merely Mr. Smith) involves Martin in more activity in the shadowy world of spies and secret agents. Mainly a question of infiltrating and extricating agents, his involvement becomes more complex as time goes on. A cruise to India consolidates his position and rank with the successful capture of prizes when returning convoying East-Indiamen. His rise to Post rank is followed by a series of events, that sadly culminate in family tragedy. Though still young Martin Forrest-Bowers faces and empty future, yet the mysterious merely Mr. Smith has requested his service. Why does the spymaster require of him, and what lies ahead?

     The Napoleonic wars are brought to life with grit and gunpowder in this trilogy of hugely popular novels: Strike the Red Flag, The Normandy Privateer and Dead Man's Island. With a clear knowledge of the period, McDine skillfully uses actual events in the Royal Navy’s history as the backdrop to Anson's swashbuckling adventures. For fans of Hornblower, Bolitho, Ramage or Aubrey, Oliver Anson will be your next naval hero. David McDine, OBE, is a former Admiralty information officer, Royal Navy Reserve officer and Deputy Lieutenant of Kent, and the author of Unconquered: The Story of Kent and its Lieutenancy.

    Ever hear of the term Pyrrhic victory? A young Roman soldier is a part of history in which the phrase was created.

    Nobody has ever told Eleanor Oliphant that life should not only be fine but better than fine.  Eleanor Oliphant is an ordinary woman who struggles with the appropriate social skills she needs to have on occasion. She has the tendency to say the exact words that she is thinking. Truth is, nothing is really missing in her carefully timetabled life that can be described as avoidance of social interactions. Her weekends are punctuated by frozen vodka, pizza, and phone chats with her Mummy. But everything will change for Eleanor when she meets Raymond in her office. He is the bumbling IT guy who is deeply unhygienic. When Eleanor and Raymond saw an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, together they saved Sammy. This became the start of the three’s friendship. They would rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they have each been living. And it is none other than the big heart of Raymond that would ultimately help quiet Eleanor to find the best way to repair her own profoundly damaged heart. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine will soon be a major motion picture that will be produced by actress Reese Witherspoon. This novel is a warm, smart and uplifting story of an unlikely heroine whose weirdness and unconscious wit would make an irresistible journey.In this comprehensive look into Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: A Novel by Gail Honeyman, you'll gain insight with this essential resource as a guide to aid your discussions. Be prepared to lead with the following: Discussion aid which includes a wealth of prompts and information Overall plot synopsis and author biography Thought-provoking discussion questions for a deeper examination Creative exercises to foster alternate “if this was you” discussions And more!  Disclaimer: This is a companion guide based on the work Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: A Novel by Gail Honeyman and is not affiliated to the original work or author in any way. It does not contain any text of the original work. If you haven’t purchased the original work, we encourage you to do so first.

    He and his wife, Ding, are the parents of an infant and enjoy a contented marriage; he develops a fond obsession with President Calvin Coolidge, the taciturn New Englander whose wry wit and wisdom delights Chai. One day, a chance discovery leads him astray: He learns that a lover from his youth is now in Boston, living with her husband and their son. The son is Chai's very image, and the staid banker is inflamed by the implications of the resemblance. Confused by his emotions, he becomes determined to revive the affair. How Ding schemes to win back her wayward husband--and teach him the necessary truths about love--forms the plot and beguiling conclusion to John Derbyshire's tale.

    The new monster in the IRA's armoury must be destroyed at birth. A top-secret, top-priority order goes out to 22 Special Air Service Regiment:SEEK AND DESTROY - NO MATTER WHERE.For the four-men Sabre team of the legendary SAS this will be their toughest mission... probing the inner sanctum of the IRA's terror machine, fighting in the bloody carnage and chaos of Ulster - never before has so much been at stake. They encounter both triumph and disaster - and the cruellest twist of fate.

    She hoped to work on her novel, play Rook with the old lady next door and spend some lazy time with her husband and daughters. But when a new neighbor winds up dead, Tessa and her Rook partner find themselves jumping to suspicious conclusions. Add a young hippie named Rusty to the mix, and these three seem like an unlikely trio to solve an alleged crime. When you’re not laughing at the humorous rhetoric in Suspicion on Sugar Creek, you’ll be on the edge of your seat wondering how it will all play out.

    Nora Johnson's The World of Henry Orient, published in 1958, is an amusing, affectionate satire of the last days of innocence in the lives of two New York girls, Marian "Gil" Gilbert and Valerie "Val" Boyd. The boredom and impatience of adolescence are richly caught, even as they inspire crazy escapades that will eventually open up the world for these two bright but naive girls.Val and Gil have become friends at an age when friendship is the most important thing. Boys have not entered the picture yet, but childhood has begun to recede and the world is beckoning them. The girls are growing up in comfortable upper-middle-class homes in Manhattan, which creates a special kind of tension and stress in their lives. They are just old enough to have some independence, to play at being grownups, with the city as their playground. At a Carnegie Hall concert, they see a pianist named Henry Orient, and they are immediately smitten with him -- not in the sexual sense, but moonstruck nonetheless. Henry Orient becomes the focus of their lives. They follow him around Manhattan, observing his routine, his "world," unaware at first that they are observing the pianist bound up in a snarl of romantic liaisons. What happens to Val and Gil is what we now called "bonding," the kind of friendship that smoothes the transition from innocence to worldliness, from the certainties of childhood to the infinite possibilities of adulthood.Engaging and exuberant, The World of Henry Orient treats its heroines with affection and good humor. These are silly girls, it seems, doing little more than playing games, but a great deal goes on beneath the surface of their lives. Nora Johnson is sensitive to the delicate stresses that threaten the security adolescents have always known.

    His failed plan, a mere footnote in Jewish-American history, is the starting point for Ben Katchor's brilliantly imagined epic that unfolds on the streets of New York a few years later.A disgraced kosher slaughterer, an importer of religious articles and women's hosiery, a pilgrim peddling soil from the Holy Land, a latter-day Kabbalist, a man with plans to carbonate Lake Erie--these are just some of the characters who move through Katchor's universe, their lives interwoven in a common struggle to settle into the New World even as it erupts into a financial frenzy that could as easily leave them bankrupt as carry them into the future.

    They have nothing in common. Just one amazing, passionate weekend in Chicago and a desire to meet again.

    Rudolfo, a true misfit, is content orchestrating the spectacle, but Jurgen, stricken since childhood with the irrational desire to make magic, hungers for more. He finds it in a musty, mysterious collection of old manuscripts and magic cabinetry that once belonged to Houdini. And when he turns into the miracle-working saint of Las Vegas, chaos results. In a narrative that is whimsical, comic and melancholy by turns, Quarrington takes dead aim at the place in the human heart that hopes that doves can bloom from top hats and illusions can come true.

    With Leland Edwards on piano, Neil Novotny on clarinet, Victor Dash on drums, and Connor on bass, the group comes together with the help of its muse, the lovely Peggy Benoit, who plays saxophone and sings. But soon isolated Rookery State will be touched by the great discontent sweeping the country: the first labor union in the college's history comes noisily to campus. As a teachers strike takes shape, the five musicians must struggle with their loyalties--to the school, the town, their families, and one another. . . .