14-year-old Stephen is living with his family. Stephen and his friend Marcel collect souvenirs from strafed convoys and crashed Messerschmitts. Then they are arrested and imprisoned for sabotage and threatened with deportation or the firing squad. Upon his release, and still only 16, Stephen is recruited by the French Resistance. This is his story.

    Krakauer's book, Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn's inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless to global fame. But the real story of Chris's life and his journey has not yet been told—until now. The missing pieces are finally revealed in The Wild Truth, written by Carine McCandless, Chris's beloved and trusted sister. Featured in both the book and film, Carine has wrestled for more than twenty years with the legacy of her brother's journey to self-discovery, and now tells her own story while filling in the blanks of his. Carine was Chris's best friend, the person with whom he had the closest bond, and who witnessed firsthand the dysfunctional and violent family dynamic that made Chris willing to embrace the harsh wilderness of Alaska. Growing up in the same troubled household, Carine speaks candidly about the deeper reality of life in the McCandless family. In the many years since the tragedy of Chris's death, Carine has searched for some kind of redemption. In this touching and deeply personal memoir, she reveals how she has learned that real redemption can only come from speaking the truth.

    Ultimately, they were the only Jewish children of the town to survive the Holocaust.A Guest in My Own Country recalls the life of one of Eastern Europe's most accomplished modern writers, beginning with his survival during the final months of the war. Konrad captures the dangers, the hopes, the betrayals and courageous acts of the period through a series of carefully chosen episodes that occasionally border on the surreal (as when a dead German soldier begins to speak, attempting to justify his actions).The end of the war launches the young man on a remarkable career in letters and politics. Offering lively descriptions of both his private and public life in Budapest, New York, and Berlin, Konrad reflects insightfully on his role in the Hungarian Uprising, the notion of "internal emigration" – the fate of many writers who, like Konrad, refused to leave the Eastern Bloc under socialism – and other complexities of European identity. To read A Guest in My Own Country is to experience the recent history of East-Central Europe from the inside.

    This is about growing up as a young woman torn between her immigrant roots and her desire to be like everyone else.The humour is sometimes offset with the more sombre reminder of the racism that has always existed in this country, from misguided quips to more serious stories of harassment. The impact of recent world events shows that, more than ever, marginalised voices are needed in our cultural discourse.

    Stunned by the news, she immediately flew back to the country where she was born, determined to find answers and forced to reckon with his history of violence and the lingering effects of their most unusual childhood--one marked by death and the misguided love of their mother. In her signature spare and incisive prose, Sheila Kohler recounts the lives she and her sister led. Flashing back to their storybook childhood at the family estate, Crossways, Kohler tells of the death of her father when she and Maxine were girls, which led to the family abandoning their house and the girls being raised by their mother, at turns distant and suffocating. We follow them to the cloistered Anglican boarding school where they first learn of separation and later their studies in Rome and Paris where they plan grand lives for themselves--lives that are interrupted when both marry young and discover they have made poor choices. Kohler evokes the bond between sisters and shows how that bond changes but never breaks, even after death. "A beautiful and disturbing memoir of a beloved sister who died at the age of thirty-nine in circumstances that strongly suggest murder. . . . Highly recommended." --Joyce Carol Oates

     Michaela DePrince was known as girl Number 27 at the orphanage, where she was abandoned at a young age and tormented as a "devil child" for a skin condition that makes her skin appear spotted. But it was at the orphanage that Michaela would find a picture of a beautiful ballerina en pointe that would help change the course of her life. At the age of four, Michaela was adopted by an American family, who encouraged her love of dancing and enrolled her in classes. She went on to study at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at the American Ballet Theatre and is currently a member of the Dutch National Ballet’s junior company. She has appeared in the ballet documentary "First Position," as well as on "Dancing with the Stars, Good Morning America," and "Nightline." In this engaging, moving, and unforgettable memoir, Michaela shares her dramatic journey from an orphan in West Africa to becoming one of ballet's most exciting rising stars.

    ‘Why you not stay with me tonight—in my cave.’ He seemed enthusiastic. And we were looking for adventure." Thus begins the story of how Marguerite van Geldermalsen—a New Zealand-born nurse—became the wife of Mohammad Abdallah Othman, a Bedouin souvenir-seller of the Manaja tribe, and lived with him and their children in a community of 100 families in the ancient caves of Petra in Jordan. Marguerite and a friend were traveling through the Middle East in 1978 when she met the charismatic Mohammad and decided that he was the man for her. Their home was a lofty 2,000 year-old cave carved into the red rock of a hillside. She became the resident nurse and learned to live like the Bedouin—cooking over fires, hauling water on donkeys, and drinking sweet black tea—and over the years she became as much of a curiosity as the cave-dwellers to tourists. This is her extraordinary story.

    Burdon was ripped off by unscrupulous agents, accountants, and record labels, hounded by the police, and framed for a crime he didn't commit. Yet through it all, he never became bitter. He was the first rocker to play behind the Iron Curtain. He sang with Jimi Hendrix, chased Jim Morrison out of his house with a .44, and introduced John Lee Hooker to the toughest venue Hooker ever played. Eric Burdon explains how he became the "Egg Man" in the Beatles' "I am the Walrus." With the enthusiasm and good humor of his live shows, Burdon recalls the tense reunion between John Lennon and Lennon's long-estranged father; racing motorcycles across the California desert with Steve McQueen; picketing the offices of MGM Records for nonpayment of royalties; performing in wartime Sarajevo with a symphony orchestra; getting run out of Meridian, Mississippi for promoting black music, and singing his heart out year after year. A complete discography and fifty photographs, many never before published, are included in this unforgettable memoir. "Burdon has lived like a real rocker." -New York Times Book Review "Riveting and informative."-Los Angeles Times "These reminiscences will delight Burdon's fans . . . in general."-Library Journal

    I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel. . . ."For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for The Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other.In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accompany Mekhennet as she journeys behind the lines of jihad, starting in the German neighborhoods where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized and the Iraqi neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shia turned against one another, and culminating on the Turkish/Syrian border region where ISIS is a daily presence. In her travels across the Middle East and North Africa, she documents her chilling run-ins with various intelligence services and shows why the Arab Spring never lived up to its promise. She then returns to Europe, first in London, where she uncovers the identity of the notorious ISIS executioner "Jihadi John," and then in France, Belgium, and her native Germany, where terror has come to the heart of Western civilization.Mekhennet's background has given her unique access to some of the world's most wanted men, who generally refuse to speak to Western journalists. She is not afraid to face personal danger to reach out to individuals in the inner circles of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates; when she is told to come alone to an interview, she never knows what awaits at her destination.Souad Mekhennet is an ideal guide to introduce us to the human beings behind the ominous headlines, as she shares her transformative journey with us. Hers is a story you will not soon forget.

    His big break came when he was invited to join the England squad for their tour to Argentina in 1990 and has been capped 100 times.

    Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox.The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection.The netsuke—drunken monks, almost-ripe plums, snarling tigers—were gathered by Charles Ephrussi at the height of the Parisian rage for all things Japanese. Charles had shunned the place set aside for him in the family business to make a study of art, and of beautiful living. An early supporter of the Impressionists, he appears, oddly formal in a top hat, in Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. Marcel Proust studied Charles closely enough to use him as a model for the aesthete and lover Swann in Remembrance of Things Past.Charles gave the carvings as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna; his children were allowed to play with one netsuke each while they watched their mother, the Baroness Emmy, dress for ball after ball. Her older daughter grew up to disdain fashionable society. Longing to write, she struck up a correspondence with Rilke, who encouraged her in her poetry.The Anschluss changed their world beyond recognition. Ephrussi and his cosmopolitan family were imprisoned or scattered, and Hitler’s theorist on the “Jewish question” appropriated their magnificent palace on the Ringstrasse. A library of priceless books and a collection of Old Master paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. But the netsuke were smuggled away by a loyal maid, Anna, and hidden in her straw mattress. Years after the war, she would find a way to return them to the family she’d served even in their exile.In The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves.

    Rose (1815-1899) was a Rocky Mountain trapper and mountain man. No novel was ever written depicting more thrilling encounters with Indians or hair-breadth escapes than were experienced by Isaac Rose and his companions. These are fully recounted in a volume entitled, "Four Years in the Rockies," the authorship of which is accredited to James B. Marsh. It is a work full of interest for all readers. He was nineteen years old when he left his plough and, in company with a companion, Joe Lewis, he made his way to Pittsburg. The boys had cherished the hope of securing employment as stage drivers but, as they found no opening in that direction, they accepted berths at $15 per month as deck hands on a steamboat that was then loading for St. Louis. When they reached the latter city, Rose found employment as a hack driver in a livery stable, and Lewis a job of attending to the horses. Here the boys became acquainted with a number of "Rocky Mountain Boys," as they were called, and became fascinated with their stories of mountain life, of fights with bear and adventures in buffalo, elk and deer hunting, together with skirmishes with the Indians. Soon after this he joined a company formed by Nathaniel Wyeth, which started from Independence for the Rocky Mountains, with an outfit worth $100,000, sixty men and 200 horses and mules heavily loaded with goods. At the Gallatin River Isaac Rose and his party were joined by some trappers belonging to the American Fur Company, one of whom was Kit Carson. For years this noted trapper and Mr. Rose were closely associated in their adventurous life. Later, Mr. Rose became so expert a trapper himself that he won a prize of $300 as a trapper of beaver. In 1836 he had a thrilling experience with Indians, which almost caused the loss of his arm. The author writes: "The hunters and trappers of the far west, at the time when the incidents I am about to relate occurred, were a brave, hardy and adventurous set of men, and they had peculiarities in their characters that cannot be found in any other people. From the time they leave civilization they—metaphorically speaking—carry their lives in their hands. An enemy may be concealed in every thicket or looked for behind every rock. They have not only the wild and savage beasts to contend with, but the still more wily and savage Indian, and their life is one continual round of watchfulness and excitement. Their character is a compound of two extremes— recklessness and caution—and isolation from the world makes them at all times self-reliant. In moments of the greatest peril, or under the most trying circumstances, they never lose their presence of mind, but are ready to take advantage of any incident that may occur to benefit themselves or foil their enemies. "As, in the course of this narrative, we may have occasion to describe some of the trappers who were comrades of Mr. Rose, and who took part in many of his adventures, I wish my readers to be fully aware of the character of these men, and that their camp stories are not all idle boasting. A more hardy, fearless, improvident set of men can nowhere else be found." This book originally published in 1884 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.

    Born in 1953, Malika Oufkir was the eldest daughter of General Oufkir, the King of Morocco's closest aide. Adopted by the king at the age of five, Malika spent most of her childhood and adolescence in the seclusion of the court harem, one of the most eligible heiresses in the kingdom, surrounded by luxury and extraordinary privilege. Then, on August 16, 1972, her father was arrested and executed after an attempt to assassinate the king. Malika, her five younger brothers and sisters. and her mother were immediately imprisoned in a desert penal colony. After fifteen years, the last ten of which they spent locked up in solitary cells, the Oufkir children managed to dig a tunnel with their bare hands and make an audacious escape. Recaptured after five days, Malika was finally able to leave Morocco and begin a new life in exile in 1996. A heartrending account in the face of extreme deprivation and the courage with which one family faced its fate, Stolen Lives is an unforgettable story of one woman's journey to freedom.

    They live in a closeted community, and little is known about their way of life. After centuries of persecution Gypsies are wary of outsiders and if you choose to leave you can never come back.This is something Mikey knows only too well.Growing up, he rarely went to school, and seldom mixed with non-Gypsies. The caravan and camp were his world.But although Mikey inherited a vibrant and loyal culture his family’s legacy was bittersweet with a hidden history of grief and abuse.Eventually Mikey was forced to make an agonising decision – to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere he could truly belong.

    His family was wealthy, controlling a rice-milling empire worth millions; but within months of the communist takeover, the Chungs lost everything and were reduced to abject poverty.Knowing that their children would have no future under the new government, the Chungs decided to flee the country. In 1979, they joined the legendary "boat people" and sailed into the South China Sea, despite knowing that an estimated two hundred thousand of their countrymen had already perished at the hands of brutal pirates and violent seas.Where the Wind Leads follows Vinh Chung and his family on their desperate journey from pre-war Vietnam, through pirate attacks on a lawless sea, to a miraculous rescue and a new home in the unlikely town of Fort Smith, Arkansas. There Vinh struggled against poverty, discrimination, and a bewildering language barrier--yet still managed to graduate from Harvard Medical School.Where the Wind Leads is Vinh's tribute to the courage and sacrifice of his parents, a testimony to his family's faith, and a reminder to people everywhere that the American dream, while still possible, carries with it a greater responsibility.