Lieutenant Richard Sharpe and a detachment of Riflemen are cut off from the British army and surrounded by enemy troops. Their only hope of escape is to accept the help of an unlikely ally, a Spanish cavalry officer, Major Blas Vivar. Unknown to Sharpe, the Spaniard harbours a desperate and quixotic ambition...Sharpe's EagleBold, professional and ruthless, Lieutenant Richard Sharpe leads his men into action at Talavera, the bloodiest battle of the Peninsular War. He is not fighting for victory alone. He has a woman's honour to avenge, the pride of the regiment to restore and his own career to preserve. The danger is as great from his enemies on his own side as from those across the battlefield...

    It tells the story of the virtuous Greeks Glaucus and Ione, their escape from Pompeii amid the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, and their eventual conversion to Christianity, against a background of Roman decadence and corrupt Eastern religion.

    Franciscan friar Anton Starzmann is stripped of his place in the world when his school is seized by the Nazis. He relocates to a small German hamlet to wed Elisabeth Herter, a widow who seeks a marriage—in name only—to a man who can help raise her three children. Anton seeks something too—atonement for failing to protect his young students from the wrath of the Nazis. But neither he nor Elisabeth expects their lives to be shaken once again by the inescapable rumble of war. As Anton struggles to adapt to the roles of husband and father, he learns of the Red Orchestra, an underground network of resisters plotting to assassinate Hitler. Despite Elisabeth’s reservations, Anton joins this army of shadows. But when the SS discovers his schemes, Anton will embark on a final act of defiance that may cost him his life—even if it means saying goodbye to the family he has come to love more than he ever believed possible.

    We meet the Greek gods on Olympus and Norse gods in Valhalla. We follow the drama of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus. We hear the tales of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Cupid and Psyche, and mighty King Midas. We discover the origins of the names of the constellations. And we recognize reference points for countless works of art, literature, and cultural inquiry--from Freud's Oedipus complex to Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas to Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. Praised throughout the world for its authority and lucidity, Mythology is Edith Hamilton's masterpiece--the standard by which all other books on mythology are measured.

    Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army.Day after bloody day they withstood the terrible onslaught, buying time for the Greeks to rally their forces. Born into a cult of spiritual courage, physical endurance, and unmatched battle skill, the Spartans would be remembered for the greatest military stand in history—one that would not end until the rocks were awash with blood, leaving only one gravely injured Spartan squire to tell the tale. . . .“A novel that is intricate and arresting and, once begun, almost impossible to put down.”—Daily News “A timeless epic of man and war . . . Pressfield has created a new classic deserving a place beside the very best of the old.”—Stephen Coonts

    The end to hostilities will bring her violent husband Charlie home. It also sets off a chain of events that brings more strife and destruction to the people of Paradise Gardens, Hackney - including Zeldas squabbling family and the mysterious local healer, Zinnia Makepeace - than did the Blitz.That's not all. A new boss is making Zelda's life difficult. Zelda's nephew, Tony, is hanging around Brian Hole, a one-boy crime wave and only child of Ma Hole, leader of the local spivs.But Tony can sing - he has, in fact, the voice of an angel - and Miss Makepeace knows a voice coach in Soho. The people Zelda meets there change her life. Bert and Maggie Featherby offer her a way out of Hackney and her failed marriage, while the local hood, Maltese Joe, decides to take on Ma Hole.

    Homer's poems occupy, as Adam Nicolson writes "a third space" in the way we relate to the past: not as memory, which lasts no more than three generations, nor as the objective accounts of history, but as epic, invented after memory but before history, poetry which aims "to bind the wounds that time inflicts."The Homeric poems are among the oldest stories we have, drawing on deep roots in the Eurasian steppes beyond the Black Sea, but emerging at a time around 2000 B.C. when the people who would become the Greeks came south and both clashed and fused with the more sophisticated inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean.The poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.

    The "Capcom 30th Anniversary Character Encyclopedia" celebrates Capcom's 30 years in the industry and gives fans concise information about every major Capcom character, their key artwork, statistics, background information, and interesting notes on the history of each character and game franchise. Including almost 200 characters from the Capcom family, this "Character Encyclopedia" sheds new light on these characters in a way nothing else does!

    Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans. Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe

    In October 1942, Britain and its allies were in real difficulties: Germany and its Axis partners seemed to be triumphant everywhere—in Europe, in Russia, in the Atlantic and were now poised to take the Suez Canal. It was in North Africa that the stand was made, that the tide of World War II began to turn. It was a battle of strong characters: the famous battle commander Rommel and the relatively untested new British commander, Montgomery, leading men who fought through an extraordinary eleven day battle, in an unforgiving terrain, amid the swirling sandstorms and the desert winds.

    A convoy of merchantmen with its naval escort ploughs through the Arctic seas towards northern Russia.In the grey seas beneath them lurk the deadly U-boat packs and in the skies above, cloud hides the squadrons of dive-bombing Stukas.Aboard V&W class destroyer Virtue, Ordinary Seaman ‘Lobby’ Ludd is making his first trip in the service of His Majesty … Cockney Lobby Ludd, eighteen, fighting against U-boat ""tinfish"" (torpedoes), arctic gales, and bone-weariness, hears the ribald tales and learns the tricks and techniques of survival from his salty older shipmates. But as the enemy mounts its attack, and the atmosphere intensifies, will the men’s camaraderie be enough to see them through?Or will The Tinfish Run turn out to be their final voyage?Bassett not only captures vividly the fear and boredom of life on a vessel at war--he makes complex tactical questions comprehensible and as taut and engrossing as the more personal aspects of combat at sea.‘Vividly described … the voyage as seen through the sleep-robbed eyes of matelots and officers alike’ - Daily Telegraph Ronald Bassett joined the Navy as a boy. His first ship was the cruiser Norfolk in which he served as a Telegraphist in the Arctic during the Bismarck action, and the North African landings. He served in landing craft during the invasion of Normandy.

    But when the Pharaoh dies without an heir, she is given instead as Great Royal Wife to the new king - a soldier of common birth. For Ahmose is god-chosen, gifted with the ability to read dreams, and it is her connection to the gods which ensures the new Pharaoh his right to rule.Ahmose's elder sister Mutnofret has been raised to expect the privileged station of Great Royal Wife; her rage at being displaced cannot be soothed. As Ahmose fights the currents of Egypt's politics and Mutnofret's vengeful anger, her youth and inexperience carry her beyond her depth and into the realm of sacrilege.To right her wrongs and save Egypt from the gods' wrath, Ahmose must face her most visceral fear: bearing an heir. But the gods of Egypt are exacting, and even her sacrifice may not be enough to restore the Two Lands to safety.

    Three Weeks in October The Manhunt for the Serial Sniper(View amazon detail page)ASIN: B0044KZ458

    Driving home from Canada on the night of 9/19/1961, Betty & Barney Hill of Portsmouth, NH, sighted a flying saucer, which left them shaken. When they arrived home Barney found inexplicable scuff marks on the tips of his shoes; Betty noticed rows of mysterious circles on the boot of their car, but what was worse, they realised they could not account for almost two hours of their time on the road. After many months of psychic distress, they sought medical assistance from Dr Benjamin Simon, a distinguished Boston psychiatrist & neurologist. Under psychotherapy, including time-regression hypnosis, the Hills gave almost identical accounts of what had happened during their two lost hours. They told of intelligent humanoid beings who took them on board an alien spacecraft, questioned them & subjected them to physical examination. The Hills were an American married couple who rose to fame after they claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials on 9/19-20/1961. The couple's story, called the Hill Abduction, occasionally the Zeta Reticuli Incident, was that they had been kidnapped for a short time by a UFO. Theirs was the 1st widely-publicized claim of alien abduction.

    But it was the Romans who built the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Already a bestseller in Japan, China and Korea, acclaimed Japanese historian Nanami SHIONO’s fifteen-volume series-now available for the first time in English-takes readers on a thousand-year odyssey beginning with the city’s mythical founding by a humble shepherd raised by a she-wolf.*CONTENTS*A Note to Readers of the English EditionPrefaceIntroductionChapter One: The Birth of RomeChapter Two: Republican RomeChronologyReferencesAbout the Series and Author