Army to play a key role in the Allied victory.In 1942, the U.S. Army unleashed one of its greatest secret weapons in the battle to defeat Adolf Hitler: training nearly 2,000 German-born Jews in special interrogation techniques and making use of their mastery of the German language, history, and customs. Known as the Ritchie Boys, they were sent in small, elite teams to join every major combat unit in Europe, where they interrogated German POWs and gathered crucial intelligence that saved American lives and helped win the war.Though they knew what the Nazis would do to them if they were captured, the Ritchie Boys eagerly joined the fight to defeat Hitler. As they did, many of them did not know the fates of their own families left behind in occupied Europe. Taking part in every major campaign in Europe, they collected key tactical intelligence on enemy strength, troop and armored movements, and defensive positions. A postwar Army report found that more than sixty percent of the credible intelligence gathered in Europe came from the Ritchie Boys.Bruce Henderson draws on personal interviews with many surviving veterans and extensive archival research to bring this never-before-told chapter of the Second World War to light. Sons and Soldiers traces their stories from childhood and their escapes from Nazi Germany, through their feats and sacrifices during the war, to their desperate attempts to find their missing loved ones in war-torn Europe. Sons and Soldiers is an epic story of heroism, courage, and patriotism that will not soon be forgotten.

    Luca Benedetto has joined the partisans in their fight against the German troops ravaging the shores of his town on Lake Como. While risking his life to free his country, Luca is also struggling to protect Sarah, his Jewish lover who’s hiding in a mountain cabin. As the violent Nazi occupation intensifies, Luca and Sarah fear for more than their own lives.In the heart of their village, their mothers have also found themselves vulnerable to the encroaching Nazis. But Luca’s mother, undeterred, is devising her own revenge on the occupiers. With Mussolini deposed and Allied armies fighting their way up the peninsula, the fate of Italy hangs in the balance, and the people of Lake Como must decide how much they’re prepared to sacrifice for family, friends, and the country they love.The most trying of times will create the most unexpected heroes and incredible acts of courage in this stirring narrative as seen through the eyes of those devastated by war-torn Italy.

    But patriotism trumps passion, leaving La to worry if her life will always be "a play in which I have no real part." In McCall-Smith's quintessentially English world, perserverance, pots of tea and the power of music will show the way.(Ellen Shapiro for People magazine)

    Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?” Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.

    The name of the detention centre -- Auschwitz.It was only after arriving at the camp that he started to discover the Nazi’s terrifying designs. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities to the West, culminating in the mass murder of over a million Jews. His reports from the camp were to shape the Allies response to the Holocaust - yet his story was all but forgotten for decades.This is the first major account of his amazing journey, drawing on exclusive family papers and recently declassified files as well as unpublished accounts from the camp’s fighters to show how he saved hundreds of thousands of lives.The result is a enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man’s attempt to change the course of history.

    This book was previously withdrawn from its original publisher and is now being released in an author's edition. Same book, new publisher. Stephen King calls Hesh Kestin’s The Siege of Tel Aviv “scarier than anything Stephen King ever wrote.” Iran leads five armies in a brutal victory over Israel, which ceases to exist. Within hours, its leaders are rounded up and murdered, the IDF is routed, and the country's six million Jews concentrated in Tel Aviv, which becomes a starving ghetto. While the US and the West sit by, Israel's enemies prepare to kill off the entire population. On the eve of genocide, Tel Aviv makes one last attempt to save itself, as an Israeli businessman, a gangster, and a cross-dressing fighter pilot put together a daring plan to counterattack. Will it succeed? The Siege of Tel Aviv is as as bizarrely funny as it is fast-paced. In the words of Stephen King: “An irrepressible sense of humor runs through it. It’s not satire I’m talking about―it’s stuff like the cross-dressing pilot (my favorite character) and any number of deliciously absurd situations (the pink jets). It’s the inevitable result of an eye that sees the funny side, even in horror. So few writers have that. This novel will cause talk and controversy. Most of all, it will be read.”

    Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America.In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima—and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag.Now the son of one of the flagraisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever.To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island—an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man.But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo—three were killed during the battle—were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: "The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back."Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.From the Hardcover edition.

    Leaving behind his beloved wife, Helen, he heads north to investigate the Japanese invasion of Alaska's Aleutian Islands, a story censored by the U.S. government. While John is accompanying a crew on a bombing run, his plane is shot down over the island of Attu. He survives only to find himself exposed to a harsh and unforgiving wilderness, known as “the birthplace of winds.” There, John must battle the elements, starvation, and his own remorse while evading discovery by the Japanese. Alone at home, Helen struggles with the burden of her husband's disappearance. Caught in extraordinary circumstances, in this new world of the missing, she is forced to reimagine who she is—and what she is capable of doing. Somehow, she must find John and bring him home, a quest that takes her into the farthest reaches of the war, beyond the safety of everything she knows.

    The special volunteers who make up Long Range Patrols are tasked with setting up ambushes and conducting dangerous night patrols, helicopter insertions behind enemy lines, and fire support in the hottest of fights.Enriched with a memorable cast of characters and thrilling details that only a Vietnam veteran could capture, Long Range Patrol is a powerhouse tale of a band of heroes fighting to keep their brothers alive.

    After returning from a campaign in the Third Afghan War, Major Thomas Waller and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment are assigned to escort two mysterious ladies into the unknown lands of the new world. With the help of an American drifter named Smith, Waller and his men must face daunting hordes of 'savages' that roam the steppes of the alien planet, and help to uncover the ladies' secrets - and the secrets of the new world itself. A dangerous mission awaits on the Grasslands...

    So when her older sister asks her to help care for their ailing grandmother, Zara agrees—despite strained family relationships.Though pale and tired, Nonna has lost none of her sharp mind. She’s fixated on finding something long forgotten, and she immediately puts Zara to work cleaning out the attic. Unexpectedly, amid the tedium of sifting through knickknacks and heirlooms, Zara also reconnects with a man she’s attracted to but whose complicated past makes romance seem impossible.But then Zara finds what Nonna was looking for: a wooden chest, an emerald broach, a leather-bound journal. As she immerses herself in stories of heroism and loss set against the backdrop of war-torn Italy in 1943, Zara finds answers to questions she didn’t know she had. And they change everything she thinks she knows about love, regret, and seizing the day.

    When gamekeeper’s daughter Flora’s remote highland village finds itself the base for the Royal Navy’s Arctic convoys, life in her close-knit community changes forever. In defiance of his disapproving father, the laird’s son falls in love with Flora, and as tensions build in their disrupted home, any chance of their happiness seems doomed.Decades later, Flora’s daughter, singer Lexie Gordon, is forced to return to the village and to the tiny cottage where she grew up. Having long ago escaped to the bright lights of the West End, London still never truly felt like home. Now back, with a daughter of her own, Lexie learns that her mother—and the hostile-seeming village itself—have long been hiding secrets that make her question everything she thought she knew.As she pieces together the fragments of her parents’ story, Lexie discovers the courageous, devastating sacrifices made in her name. It’s too late to rekindle her relationship with her mother, but can Lexie find it in her heart to forgive the past, to grieve for all that’s lost, and finally find her place in the world?

    Michener crafts a tale of the American men who fought the Korean War, detailing their exploits in the air as well as their lives on the ground. Young and innocent, they arrive in a place they have barely ever heard of, on a ship massive enough to carry planes and helicopters. Trained as professionals, they prepare for the rituals of war that countless men before them have endured, and face the same fears. They are American fighter pilots. Together they face an enemy they do not understand, knowing their only hope for survival is to win.  Praise for The Bridges at Toko-Ri   “A vivid and moving story, as well as an exciting one . . . The humanity of the people is deeply felt.”—Chicago Tribune   “The Banshees screaming over Korea, the perilous landings on an aircraft carrier deck ‘bouncing around like a derelict rowboat,’ a helicopter rescue from the freezing waters . . . all are stirringly rendered.”—The Denver Post   “Michener’s best . . . a story of action, ideas, and civilization’s responsibilities.”—Saturday Review

    Really. The Kaiser did order the invasion of Belgium halted, and yet it went ahead, bringing Great Britain and the rest of the British Empire into the war.This book explores what would have happened if the Kaiser’s decision had not been reversed and his troops had not crossed the Belgian border. It is fiction, of course, but the characters are real and, most of them, precisely where they were and where they would have been fulfilling their historical roles at that time.The story is vivid, realistic and exciting, following the action, the intrigue, the political upheavals as well as political apathy and inertia, meticulously researched and accurate in military and historical detail.

    Here is the Vietnam War, in the air and on the ground: gritty, urgent, genuine, a story torn from the hearts and minds of those who served.