Olive Oatman: Explore The Mysterious Story of Captivity and Tragedy from Beginning to End


Brent Schulte - 2019
    She is the girl with the blue tattoo.The story behind the distinctive tattoo is the stuff of legends. Some believed it was placed on her face during her captivity, following the brutal murders of her family members and the kidnapping of her and her sister. Others believe it was placed on her after her return.Rumors swelled. Her tattoo became a symbol of Native barbarianism and the triumph of American goodness, but like many stories of that era, the truth is far more complicated.This short book details the murders, her captivity, the aftermath, and her baffling return to her captors. Unravel the mystery of the woman who would become famous for all the wrong reasons and discover what her life story says about cultural identity, the power of resiliency, and what happens when fact and fiction bend and twist to muddy the waters.Read on to find out the truth!

THE YOUNGEST GREEN BERET: Real people, real combat, espionage, and conflict in the Mekong Delta 1969


Terry McIntosh - 2019
    From working with a double agent who betrays his friendship and exposes a top secret cross border operation, Terry McIntosh wrestles with his own doubts and fears while protecting the rights of others to live free. He was chosen from the ranks of long range reconnaissance training to serve with Special Forces Detachment A-team 414 in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam 1968-1969. The border camp conducted clandestine operations to observe and engage a growing Viet Cong armed force 15 miles across the line. The top secret mission is exposed after team members are accused of executing the double agent. It is believed that Terry McIntosh is the youngest soldier to serve with the Green Berets on an "A" team and earn the coveted Combat Badge. This is his story about the transition from boy to man in the jungles of Vietnam where he met himself for the first time with a sense of shame and honor.

Parallel Lives: The Remarkable Story of a Young Jewish Family Separated by World War II


Lena Rotmensz - 2018
    Liliana is a beautiful and educated young Jewish woman. She marries Henry and becomes a mother to Rebecca. She has a full life ahead of her in Poland, or so it seems. The time period is the beginning of World War II, when the Germans invade Poland. To protect her, Liliana and Henry entrust Rebecca to their Christian friends. Shortly thereafter, Henry is among those taken to the concentration camp. Time passes, and Liliana knows little about the fate of her husband or daughter. To survive, Liliana (now known as Helena) assumes the identity of a Polish aristocrat and ends up working for a German officer named Robert. In a twist of fate, Robert and Helena fall in love with each other and get married. Unknown to Liliana, Henry survives and reunites with their daughter Rebecca. He finds a way to communicate with Liliana, only to find out that she started a new life. Liliana has yet to reveal her true identity to her German husband. Filled with guilt and longing for Rebecca, she thinks of putting an end to all of the lies. Will Liliana finally overcome her fears and reunite with her daughter? Parallel Lives is based on a true story. It brings the reader on a captivating journey of the "parallel lives" of a family who was separated by war. The journey takes the reader though a myriad of human emotions, including: love, jealousy, fear, despair, and freedom.

The Room on Rue Amelie


Kristin Harmel - 2018
    But war is looming on the horizon, and as France falls to the Nazis, her marriage begins to splinter, too.Charlotte Dacher is eleven when the Germans roll into the French capital, their sinister swastika flags snapping in the breeze. After the Jewish restrictions take effect and Jews are ordered to wear the yellow star, Charlotte can’t imagine things getting much worse. But then the mass deportations begin, and her life is ripped forever apart.Thomas Clarke joins the British Royal Air Force to protect his country, but when his beloved mother dies in a German bombing during the waning days of the Blitz, he wonders if he’s really making a difference. Then he finds himself in Paris, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, and he discovers a new reason to keep fighting—and an unexpected road home.When fate brings them together, Ruby, Charlotte, and Thomas must summon the courage to defy the Nazis—and to open their own broken hearts—as they fight to survive. Rich with historical drama and emotional depth, this is an unforgettable story that will stay with you long after the final page is turned.

And the Show Went on: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris


Alan Riding - 2010
    Alan Riding introduces a pageant of twentieth-century artists who lived and worked under the Nazis and explores the decisions each made about whether to stay or flee, collaborate or resist.We see Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf singing before French and German audiences; Picasso painting and occasionally selling his work from his Left Bank apartment; and Marcel Carne and Henri-Georges Clouzot, among others, directing movies in Paris studios (more than two hundred were produced during this time). We see that pro-Fascist writers such as Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Robert Brasillach flourished, but also that Camus's The Stranger was published and Sartre's play No Exit was first performed-ten days before the Normandy landings.Based on exhaustive research and extensive interviews, And the Show Went On sheds a clarifying light on a protean and problematic era in twentieth-century European cultural history.

Across the Winding River


Aimie K. Runyan - 2020
    His only request of his daughter is to go through the long-forgotten box of memorabilia from his days as a medic on the western front. Then, among his wartime souvenirs, Beth finds a photograph of her father with an adoring and beautiful stranger—a photograph worth a thousand questions.It was 1944 when Max was drawn into the underground resistance by the fearless German wife of a Nazi officer. Together, she and Max were willing to risk everything for what they believed was right. Ahead of them lay a dangerous romance, a dream of escape, and a destiny over which neither had control.But Max isn’t alone in his haunting remembrances of war. In a nearby private care home is a fragile German-born woman with her own past to share. Only when the two women meet does Beth realize how much more to her father there is to know, all the ways in which his heart still breaks, and the closure he needs to heal it.

We Were the Lucky Ones


Georgia Hunter - 2017
    The talk around the family Seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not of the increasing hardships threatening Jews in their hometown of Radom, Poland. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety. As one sibling is forced into exile, another attempts to flee the continent, while others struggle to escape certain death, either by working grueling hours on empty stomachs in the factories of the ghetto or by hiding as gentiles in plain sight. Driven by an unwavering will to survive and by the fear that they may never see one another again, the Kurcs must rely on hope, ingenuity, and inner strength to persevere. An extraordinary, propulsive novel, We Were the Lucky Ones demonstrates how in the face of the twentieth century’s darkest moment, the human spirit can endure and even thrive.

The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz: A Powerful True Story of Hope and Survival


Thomas Geve - 2021
    Separated upon arrival, he was left to fend for himself in the men’s camp of Auschwitz I.During 22 harsh months in three camps, Thomas experienced and witnessed the cruel and inhumane world of Nazi concentration and death camps. Nonetheless, he never gave up the will to live. Miraculously, he survived and was liberated from Buchenwald at the age of fifteen.While still in the camp and too weak to leave, Thomas felt a compelling need to document it all, and drew over eighty drawings, all portrayed in simple yet poignant detail with extraordinary accuracy. He not only shared the infamous scenes, but also the day-to-day events of life in the camps, alongside inmates' manifestations of humanity, support and friendship.To honor his lost friends and the millions of silenced victims of the Holocaust, in the years following the war, Thomas put his story into words. Despite the evil of the camps, his account provides a striking affirmation of life.The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz, accompanied with 56 of his color illustrations, is the unique testimony of young Thomas and his quest for a brighter tomorrow.

Remember Your Name


Erik G. LeMoullec - 2014
    Medallion. While sitting in traffic heading to her great-grandfather's eighty-fourth birthday party, Hayden asks her dad why her great-grandfather speaks the way he does. What follows is a car ride she will never forget as she learns about his difficult childhood. From living in the Lodz ghetto at age ten to surviving the hells of Auschwitz and a death march from Gorlitz concentration camp at fifteen, Teddy Znamirowski faced unfathomable horrors, narrowly escaping death time and time again. Liberated at sixteen, he took on smuggling as a means to survive. It was not until the Bricha approached him and he became a lead operative - smuggling thousands of refugees across country borders - that he was finally able to begin his life again. Teddy's story is one of survival amidst horrific circumstances. The author does not sensationalize the suffering his grandfather and his family endured, but in this work of narrative nonfiction simply recreates this remarkable man's early life during one of the darkest moments of human history.

Pictures at an Exhibition


Camilla Macpherson - 2011
    The authorities have decided that only one masterpiece will be displayed each month. And each month, Daisy Milton writes to her cousin Elizabeth to tell her about the paintings, her life - and the man she loves.London, present dayA terrible tragedy has left Claire's marriage to Rob in tatters and there seems little hope of reconciliation. Then she finds Daisy's letters, written to Rob's grandmother, and gradually, picture by picture, month by month, Daisy's world in the 1940s becomes more real to Claire than her own. Slowly, too, she begins to notice intriguing parallels between both their lives.But Daisy is from another time, and unless Claire can find a way to make sense of the past, she risks losing everything that she cares about in the present.