Frederick: A Story of Boundless Hope


Frederick Ndabaramiye - 2014
    When Frederick faced those same genocidaires a few years later, he noted the machete that hung from the right hand closest to him and wondered if his would soon be added to the layers of dried blood that clung to the blade. Either way, young Frederick knew that he wouldn’t be able to carry out the orders just given to him, to raise that blade against the other passengers of the bus, regardless of the race marked on their identity cards.That bold decision would cause Frederick to lose his hands. But what the killers meant for harm, God intended for good. The cords that bound him served as a tourniquet, saving his life when his hands were hacked away. This new disability eventually fueled Frederick’s passion to show the world that disabilities do not have to stop you from living a life of undeniable purpose. From that passion, the Ubumwe Community Center was born, where "people like me" come to discover their own purposes and abilities despite their circumstances.Through miraculous mercy and divine appointment, Frederick forgives those who harmed him and goes on to fully grasp his God-given mission. In this extraordinary true story of forgiveness, faith, and hope, you will be challenged, convicted, and forever converted to a believer of the impossible.

At the Coalface: The memoir of a pit nurse


Joan Hart - 2015
    This is the memoir of Joan, who started nursing in the 1940s and whose experiences took her into the Yorkshire mining pits and through the tumult of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.Joan Hart always knew what she wanted to do with her life. Born in South Yorkshire in 1932, she started her nursing training when she was 16, the youngest age girls could do so at the time. She continued working after she married and her work took her to London and Doncaster, caring for children and miners.When she took a job as a pit nurse in Doncaster in 1974, she found that in order to be accepted by the men under her care, she would have to become one of them. Most of the time rejecting a traditional nurse’s uniform and donning a baggy miner’s suit, pit boots, a hardhat and a headlamp, Joan resolved always to go down to injured miners and bring them out of the pit herself.Over 15 years Joan grew to know the miners not only as a nurse, but as a confidante and friend. She tended to injured miners underground, rescued men trapped in the pits, and provided support for them and their families during the bitter miners’ strike which stretched from March 1984 to 1985.Moving and uplifting, this is a story of one woman’s life, marriage and work; it is guaranteed to make readers laugh, cry, and smile.

Elbow Room: A Tale of Tenacity on Kodiak Island, Alaska


D.D. Fisher - 2011
    From humorous fishing excursions and frightening bear encounters to snow blinding blizzards and quirky characters, they come face to face with the unpredictable Mother Nature and learn the value of friendship, survival, and solitude in a picturesque but harsh life by the sea. Packed with adventures, challenges, and true Alaskan lifestyle.

A Field of Innocence


Jack Estes - 1987
    He was a kid, eighteen years old. Married, broke, flunking out of college-and about to become a father. The Marines seemed like a good way out. He figured the Nam couldn't be any worse than home. He was wrong.Publishers Weekly says "Chilling...It tells how a youngster from Portland, Oregon matured in the crucible of combat...The reader is given a sense of what it's like to fight an unseen enemy who might appear anytime, anywhere and start shooting from ambush." Karl Marlantes, New York Times best selling author of "Matterhorn" calls "A Field of Innocence", "Powerful ...and riveting."Tim O'Brien, New York Times best selling author of "The Things They Carried" says, "With its raw realism and heartbreaking honesty...one of the finest Vietnam memoirs."Kirkus Review says A Field of Innocence is "Exciting and Impressive."

After the Roundup: Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France


Joseph Weismann - 2017
    After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated: all the adults and most of the children were transported on to Auschwitz and certain death, but 1,000 children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children left behind that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt. After eluding the guards and crawling under razor-sharp barbed wire, Joseph found freedom. But how would he survive the rest of the war in Nazi-occupied France and build a life for himself? His problems had just begun.Until he was 80, Joseph Weismann kept his story to himself, giving only the slightest hints of it to his wife and three children. Simone Veil, lawyer, politician, President of the European Parliament, and member of the Constitutional Council of France—herself a survivor of Auschwitz—urged him to tell his story. In the original French version of this book and in Roselyne Bosch’s 2010 film La Rafle, Joseph shares his compelling and terrifying story of the Roundup of the Vél’ d’Hiv and his escape. Now, for the first time in English, Joseph tells the rest of his dramatic story in After the Roundup.

A Pilgrim for Freedom


Michael B. Novakovic - 2016
    It is one part the account of a refugee family who barely survived explosions and hunger while seeking safety during World War II, and includes vivid descriptions of the hardships Mike, his siblings, and parents endured. It is another part the story of an immigrant family who came to the United States (by way of Argentina) after the war and with great ingenuity and industry worked their way up to levels of success that had been unimaginable during the darkest days of war. Finally, it is also the chronicle of a loyal and valiant soldier who sought to pay back his debts to the United States for defeating fascism and communism through distinguished service in the U.S. Air Force's intelligence operations. In sum, it is a riches-to-rags-to-riches story that testifies both to the resilience of one man and to the ideals of the nation that inspired him.

Michelle Obama: A Life


New Word City - 2011
    The direct descendent of slaves, she graduated from Princeton University and the Harvard Law School, and she seemed primed for a life of prestige and wealth. Then she left that path for a life of public service and marriage to Barack Obama. Here’s her inspiring story.

Shawty Fell in Love With A Rude Boy


P. Dotson - 2017
    Fresh on the dating scene, she wasn’t looking for anything serious, just a night of fun with no strings attached. Love was not supposed to be in the cards, but she got more than she bargained for when she crossed paths with Dogada Harris. Dogada, president of the famous biker club ‘Rude Boys’ has never had a problem with the ladies until he met his match in Erica James. Not one to be impressed with his status as a Rude Boy, Dogada found himself in a position that he’s never been in, chasing after a woman. While Erica is running away from love, Dogada has finally found it. Will Erica open up her heart to giving love a second try or will Dogada lose a love he never had

The Battle of Panchavati and Other Stories from Indian Scriptures


Divya Narain Upadhyaya - 2019
    These are the stories most of us have grown up with. The book is an attempt to revisit these timeless stories in a new rendition to make them more acceptable and interesting to the modern reader. This collection of seven timeless classics is an ideal companion of the traveller, the vacationer or even the casual reader. About Author : Divya Narain Upadhyaya is a medical doctor and a Plastic Surgeon by profession. He works in the Department of Plastic Surgery, at King Georges' Medical University, Lucknow, as an Associate Professor. His fields of interest in medicine are cleft and craniofacial surgery and treating brachial plexus injuries. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and has trained extensively in craniofacial and maxillofacial surgery from the United States and Switzerland. He is an International Fellow of the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeon and also an AO-CMF Fellow. His primary literary interests lie in Indian scriptures, religion and Indian history. He has a blog on dnu1blog.com where he writes about a variety of topics. This is his first book.

The Marco Chronicles: To Rome, without love


Elizabeth Geoghegan - 2014
    Handsome, charming Roman men; perfectly made cappuccino and risotto; breathtakingly beautiful antiquities and that incomparable Italian light—none of these are perhaps quite as idyllic as they might seem to the casual traveler. With a jaded eye but an always vulnerable heart, Geoghegan gives us the anti-Eat, Pray, Love, a tale every bit as atmospheric but way funnier than the runaway best-seller. This is what life in Italy really looks like when you're a 30-something woman running from grief and trying to find her way back to love. Elizabeth Geoghegan writes in English, dreams in Italian, and wishes she could remember how to speak French. She earned an MFA in fiction writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in creative writing from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is currently completing a story collection, The Book of Boys, and at work on a novel called The Year of the Cock, a black comedy set in Southeast Asia. She lives in Rome, Italy, on a dead-end street between a convent and a jail. This is a short e-book published by Shebooks--high quality fiction, memoir, and journalism for women, by women. For more information, visit http://shebooks.net.

Dodge City, the Cowboy Capital, and the great Southwest in the days of the wild Indian, the buffalo, the cowboy, dance halls, gambling halls and bad men (1913)


Robert Marr Wright - 1975
     With all that has been said about Dodge City no true account of conditions as they were in the early days was accessible until publication of Robert Wright's 1911 book "Dodge City, the Cowboy Capital." The author was especially well qualified to write a history of the "wicked city of the plains" since he had lived on the frontier for many years previous to the founding of the city and lived in the city from its opening. He had all the experience gleaned as a plainsman, explorer, scout, trader and as mayor of the town. His is a most interesting narrative of early days, as well as a very valuable contribution to western history. Prior to founding Dodge City in 1868, at 16 years old Wright came West to Missouri. In 1859 he made the first of six overland trips across the plains to Denver. He was later appointed post trader at Fort Dodge in 1867, when Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Prairie Apache abounded there. Wright was acquainted with old-school Western sheriff and gunfighter Bat Masterson, of whom he said, "Bat is a gentleman by instinct. He is a man of pleasant manners, good address and mild disposition, until aroused, and then, for God's sake, look out! "Bat was a most loyal man to his friends. If anyone did him a favor, he never forgot it. I believe that if one of his friends was confined in jail and there was the least doubt of his innocence, he would take a crow-bar and 'jimmy' and dig him out, at the dead hour of midnight; and, if there were determined men guarding him, he would take these desperate chances...." Wright describes a typical day in Dodge: "Someone ran by my store at full speed, crying out, 'Our marshal is being murdered in the dance hall!' I, with several others, quickly ran to the dance hall and burst in the door. The house was so dense with smoke from the pistols a person could hardly see, but Ed Masterson had corralled a lot in one corner of the hall, with his sixshooter in his left hand, holding them there until assistance could reach him...." Wright also describes one hair-raising encounter he witnessed from a roof on his ranch: "The savages circled around the poor Mexican again and again; charged him from the front and rear and on both sides. Presently the poor fellow's horse went down, and he lay behind it for awhile. Then he cut the girth, took off the saddle, and started for the river, running at every possible chance, using the saddle as a shield, stopping to show fight only when the savages pressed him too closely

Kisses From Nimbus: From SAS to MI6 An Autobiography


P.J. 'Red' Riley - 2017
    His is the story the establishment doesn’t want you to read.br>Captain P. J. “Red” Riley is an ex-SAS soldier who served for eighteen years as an MI6 agent. Riley escaped internment in Chile during the Falklands war during an audacious top-secret attempt to attack the Argentinian mainland. He was imprisoned in the darkness of the Sierra Leonean jungle, and withstood heavy fire in war-torn Beirut and Syria. In 2015, he was arrested for murder but all charges were later dropped. In this searing memoir, Riley reveals the brutal realities of his service, and the truth behind the newspaper headlines featuring some of the most significant events in recent British history. His account provides startling new evidence on the Iraq war, what Tony Blair really knew about Saddam Hussain’s weapons of mass destruction before the allied invasion, and questions the British government’s alleged involvement in the death of Princess Diana. Chaotic, darkly humorous and at times heart-wrenchingly sad, Kisses From Nimbus charts the harrowing real-life experiences of a soldier and spy in the name of Queen and country.

Tea, Scones, and Malaria


Katlynn Brooke - 2021
    Running wild and free on the veldt. Elephants and giraffe for playmates. What more could a child want? As a builder for the then-Rhodesian government, Dad's job was low-paying and demanding. We were sent to areas where there were few trappings of civilization, such as electricity or potable water. My siblings and I ran barefoot in the bush and swam in crocodile and parasite-infected rivers. We were never clean. We loved it.Our camps were spartan and makeshift, and scorpions, spiders, and snakes regularly invaded our space. There were no schools. I was home-schooled by Mom. Then, at age eight, my parents sent me to a religious boarding school; an institution ripped straight out of the pages of Dickens. It was there I discovered not all adults were kind or empathetic people. In the bush, we were forced to create our own amusements--making our smash hit movie on a riverbank, or writing plays that we produced on a squeaky, portable 8-track tape recorder. We spent sultry nights playing poker in our caravan, reading books, and writing stories. My parents were artists and writers; creative, but not the most practical people. They made mistakes, and in 1963 a whopping blunder bankrupted us and forced our family back into the bush. This memoir will take the reader through my life from birth in 1950 to the abrupt end of my childhood in 1969. Tea, Scones, and Malaria is a story about my family's gypsy-like trek through the African bushveld. It is about loneliness, poverty, dysfunction, and tropical diseases. It is also the laugh-out-loud memoir of a child who finds ways to entertain herself and survive in a world that is the literal definition of wild. How I survived it all, I will never know.

As if it were yesterday: An old fat man remembers his youth as a Marine in Vietnam


Lee Suydam - 2017
    I try to tell what it was like for me and my brother Marines without fanfare or bravado and give the reader a vivid description of my 13 months.

Sold in Secret: A mother’s desperate search to find the men who trafficked and killed her daughter


Karen Downes - 2018
    Because I would never, ever know peace again.' Charlene Downes was 14 when she went missing in Blackpool's seedy underbelly. Once a happy-go-lucky schoolgirl, she had become a truant - hanging out with the wrong crowd by the takeaway shops and pier. But Charlene's mum, Karen, always knew her typical teenage daughter would come home.Until one day she didn't.Karen has been searching for 15 years, campaigning for the truth of what happened to her daughter. To this day, Karen and her family have no body, no convictions and no answers. Arrests were made and a murder trial took place, but no one has ever been brought to justice.On the 15th anniversary of Charlene's disappearance, Karen shares this heartbreaking account of every parent's worst nightmare.