An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray. Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S involvement in Afghanistan. They are also the challenges President Truman surmounted in the winter of 1950 as he began managing a war in Korea that risked becoming bigger and more costly. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War: United States troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur came to the aid of the South Koreans after North Korea invaded. When Communist China entered the conflict on the side of the North Koreans, the crisis seemed on the verge of flaring into a world war. Truman was determined not to let that happen. MacArthur kept urging a widening of the war into China itself and ignoring his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951, after MacArthur had “shot his mouth off,” as one diplomat put it, one too many times, Truman fired him. The story of their showdown—one of the most dramatic in U.S. history between a Commander in Chief and his top soldier in the field—is captured in all its detail by David McCullough in his biography Truman, and presented here in a e-book called Truman Fires MacArthur (an excerpt of Truman, McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography), which was the headline carried in many newspapers around the country the next day. Truman Fires MacArthur will continue to ride the headlines. It will go on sale as an ebook just as the Rolling Stone profile that exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s insurrection and forced his resignation hits newsstands, and media coverage of the showdown continues to draw historical analogies between Truman and Obama.

    Like a house. We could just buy a block of land, you know, the four of us, and have a go.' It was just an idea. then it started to take shape. In this frank, funny and thought-provoking memoir, Richard Glover describes how he and his friend Philip and their partners built a house in the bush on weekends. It was a huge and exhausting undertaking ... not least because they decided to use mudbricks. 'Imagine this - with mudbrick you have a building that is made out of the very earth it stands on ... there is another thing: the stuff is free. Once we buy the land we'll have no money left. this way we can get started as soon as we have the block.' In the end it took three years simply to make the bricks. As for the house itself ... But the process gave Richard the opportunity to examine things he had never quite reconciled to himself - big things like what it means to be a man, the nature of male relationships, fatherhood - and to challenge himself in the kind of blokey environment he had rejected. Above all, the mud house proved that even if it 'wasn't the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel' there is nothing like the satisfaction of making something with your own hands.

    Jail attendants said they understood she was held in connection with the shooting of an airline pilot.'Petite, glamorous and beguiling, Jessie 'Chubbie' Miller was one remarkable woman ... flyer, thrill seeker, heartbreaker. No adventure was too wild for her, no danger too extreme. And all over the world men adored her.When the young Jessie left suburban Melbourne and her newspaperman husband in 1927, little did she know that she'd become the first woman to complete an England to Australia flight (with a black silk gown thrown into her small flight bag, just in case), or fly the first air race for women with Amelia Earhart, or that she would disappear over the Florida Straits feared lost forever only to charm her way to a rescue. Nor could she have predicted that five years later she'd find herself at the centre of one of the most notorious and controversial murder trials in United States history. And this all began with something as ridiculously mundane as a pat of butter.The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller is a spellbinding story of an extraordinary woman - an international celebrity during the golden age of aviation - and her passionate and spirited life.

    In writing that is inventive, bold, and generous, Axiomatic introduces an unforgettable voice.

    In the midst of the never-ending quest to please her mother-in-law, Coralie will come to the conclusion that she's not in love with her fiance. At least, not in the way that a wife should love her husband. Will she manage to set her feelings in order? When she's feeling truly lost, how could an old friend help her see clearly what she actually needs?Zack Hank has been in love with Coralie since he's been a young boy, and he hopes to rekindle their close friendship when he returns to the Earhart ranch after a 10-year absence. Finding Coralie engaged to another man, he has no choice but to emotionally pull away from her. Will he express his feelings before it is too late? When a dark secret is revealed, threatening Coralie's life, will he be there for her?When Coralie and Zack see each other, time stops and they feel like everything else fades away. Nevertheless, life gives them a hard time, as their relationship has come to an end before it could even start. Is Coralie brave enough to stand up to her family's will and choose her own path? Is their relationship stronger than fate?"Captivated by Her Loving Gaze" is a historical western romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

    She must prove to Anders Sæterdal, her trapping partner who makes no secret of his disdain, that a woman is fit for the task. Over the course of a Svalbard winter, Wanny and Sæterdal will confront polar bears, traverse glaciers, withstand blizzards and the dangers of sea ice, and hike miles to trap Arctic fox, all in the frigid darkness of the four-month polar night. For Wanny, the darkness hides her own deceptions that, if exposed, speak to the untenable sacrifice of a 1930s woman longing to fulfil a dream. Alongside the raw, confronting nature of the trappers’ work, is the story of a young blue Arctic fox, itself a hunter, who must eke out a living and navigate the trappers’ world if it is to survive its first Arctic winter.

    Boss of the Richardson Gang and rival of the Krays, to cross him would result in brutal repercussions. Famously arrested on the day England won the World Cup in 1966, his trial heard he allegedly used iron bars, bolt cutters and electric shocks on his enemies.The Last Gangster is Richardson’s frank account of his largely untold life story, finished just before his death in September 2012. He shares the truth behind the rumours and tells of his feuds with the Krays for supremacy, undercover missions involving politicians, many lost years banged up in prison and reveals shocking secrets about royalty, phone hacking, bent coppers and the infamous black box.Straight up, shocking and downright gripping, this is the ultimate exposé on this legendary gangster and his extraordinary life.

    The community is paralysed by fear, and a state’s police force and national media come to find a killer. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Paul Kennedy is searching for something else entirely. He is focused on finishing school, getting drafted into the AFL and falling in love. So much can change in a year.The rites of passage for many Australian teenage boys – blackout drinking, simmering violence and emotional suppression – take their toll, and the year that starts with so much promise ends with Kennedy expelled, arrested and undrafted. But one teacher sees Kennedy self-destructing, and becomes determined to set him on another path.Told with poignancy and humour, and evoking the brilliant,dusty haze of late Australian summer, Funkytown is a love letter to adolescence, football, family and outer suburbia.

    Everything that suffuses her well-loved prose is here: compassion, insight, lyrical precision, and the clear, minimalist eye that reveals how life can turn on a single moment. Musing on the undercurrents and interconnections between legacy, memory, motherhood and the natural world, the poems in the collection begin on the surface and then take us, gracefully and effortlessly, to a far more thought-provoking place.

    This is the reverbative document which inspired novelist Peter Carey's highly praised reinvention of the Kelly tale, True History of the Kelly Gang.

    Frank’s thirst for a reckoning takes him across the lawless Indian Territory, to Southwest City, Missouri, to the wide-open mesa lands of eastern New Mexico and, finally, to Albuquerque. Curses hide behind every corner of the devil and death trail as Frank rides hell-bent on a quest that will send him into legend either as an outlaw, or a hero. “David Althouse is one of the freshest voices in Western historical fiction today.” -- John Legg, author of Blood of the Scalphunter “David Althouse captures the majesty and mayhem of the western frontier through a masterful style of storytelling rich in colorful descriptions of people, places and events. Althouse’s historical knowledge of the Great American West and Southwest, coupled with his lyrical and panoramic depictions of the mountain and mesa rich backdrops, brings the Old West alive for readers who often have to pause and catch their breath to keep up with the action. In David Althouse’s stories, the reader sees the sights, hears the sounds and smells the gunpowder!” -- Justin Brotton, Editor, Distinctly Oklahoma Magazine To follow author David Althouse, visit www.davidalthouse.com

    While I was doing that work I used to think that it didn't matter if I died, because without freedom there was no point in living'.Nancy WakeIn the early 1930's, Nancy Wake was a young woman enjoying a bohemian life in Paris. By the end of the Second World War she was the Gestapo's most wanted person.As a naive, young journalist, Nancy Wake witnessed a horrific scene of Nazi violence in a Viennese street. From that moment, she declared that she would do everything in her power to rid Europe of the Nazi presence. What began as a courier job here and there, became a highly successful escape network for Allied soldiers, perfectly camouflaged by Nancy's high-society life in Marseille. Her network was soon so successful - and so notorious - that he had to flee France to escape the Gestapo who had dubbed her 'the white mouse' for her knack of slipping through its traps.But Nancy was a passionate enemy of the Nazis and refused to stay away. She trained with the British Special Operations Executive and parachuted back into France behind enemy lines. Again, this singular woman rallied to the cause, helping to lead a powerful underground fighting force, the Maquis. Supplying weapons and training the civilian Maquis, organising Allied parachute drops, cycling four hundred kilometres across a mountain range to find a new transmitting radio - nothing seemed too difficult in her fight against the Nazis.Peter FitzSimons reveals Nancy Wake's compelling story, a tale of an ordinary woman doing extraordinary things.

    A poll fought between two wildly ambitious men who want to win their first election, whatever it takes. Mark Di Stefano finds out what is happening behind the scenes and how the two campaigns manufacture, massage and manipulate their parties, policies and principles. What a time to be alive documents the daily ride of an historic election campaign, week by long week, taking you into the bizarre world of staged photo ops, booze-drenched regrets and dirty direct messages. The exposure of the unscripted moments with political leaders, their over-worked staff and secretive minders, shows how the sausage that is this Australian election, is made and reveals what is really inside.

    Told through the eyes of a young girl, the book shares Gerda’s memories of Hitler’s rise to power and passionately describes the cruel toll that history can have on those who experience it. The book is much more than Gerda’s story. Through letters she received from her parents, who made the heartbreaking decision to send their two daughters to live with foster families in the relative safety of Holland, we learn how a mother and father try to raise a child from far away in times of great distress. Letters from them to Gerda’s foster parents, and desperate notes to an American family they hoped would act as sponsors, reveal their growing despair. The story is both deeply personal and universal as people wrestle with terrible choices to save their children and protect their families. These issues remain as relevant today as they were during the Holocaust. In 1939, while trying to arrange an escape from Germany, her parents sent 12-year-old Gerda and her younger sister to live with separate families in Holland, which was still safe for Jews. What was intended as a temporary move became permanent and Gerda never saw her parents again. Ultimately, she was the only member of her immediate family to survive and also had to bear the loss of the foster family she had come to love as her own. Gerda describes in searing detail her experiences in six concentration camps, her protection as a worker for the Philips Corporation, and her arrival in the U.S. in 1948 as an 18-year-old Holocaust survivor literally alone in the world. The memoir is a testament to the loving family Gerda built in America. Her husband added translations of the letters from her parents, grandparents and sister. After her oldest child and first grandchild were born, Gerda added notes to them. This group effort illustrates the special generational pull of trauma endured by Holocaust survivors.

    However, nothing was as it seemed and Annabet and Anders were both exposed to harsh, often irrational and frequently violent discipline from their parents, which left them emotionally unbalanced and starved of affection. In a time where domestic violent was never discussed within the family let alone outside of it, Annabet and Anders struggled to keep their spirits and souls afloat. But at least they had each other.As they endeavoured to find their paths in life - Annabet as a children's clothing designer and Anders as an internationally recognised chef, restaurateur and talented potter - neither could escape the legacy of their violent and disturbing upbringing. Anders never overcame a secret he kept tragically to himself and Annabet was perpetually wracked with self-doubt due to her mother's continual criticism.This beautifully written story not only traces the history of growing up on the north shore but the gradual evolution of the food and fashion scene in Sydney in the 70s and 80s. It encompasses many areas of day to day struggles within families that were not discussed then and which are, sadly, still occurring today.