They built lavish villas designed by the best Beaux Arts–style architects of the time, including Richard Morris Hunt, Charles McKim and Robert Swain Peabody. America’s elite delighted in referring to these grand retreats as “summer cottages,” where they would play tennis and polo and sail their yachts along the shores of the Ocean State. The coachman had an important role as the discreet outdoor butler for Gilded Age gentlemen—not only was he in charge of the horses, but he also acted as a travel advisor and connoisseur of entertainment venues. From the driver’s seat, author and guide Edward Morris provides a diverse collection of biographical sketches that reveal the outrageous and opulent lives of some of America’s leading entrepreneurs.

    Dietz, the New York Times bestselling author of the America Rising novels, comes RED DRAGON, the third book in the Winds of War series following RED FLOOD. World War III is a few months month old. After attacking, and sinking the Destroyer USS Stacy Heath, the Chinese seize control of Nepal and Bhutan and push into India where the Allies manage to stop them. But for how long? Pakistan is attacking from the north--and China is preparing for the "big push” from the east. Worse yet, China’s Ministry of State Security has orders to assassinate the Dalai Lama, rather than run the risk that he will inspire a Buddhist rebellion in Tibet. As a team of assassins close in on the Dalai Lama, Green Beret Captain Jon Lee and his men are behind Chinese lines in Nepal, battling to rescue a downed fighter pilot before enemy troops can capture him.   The entire subcontinent is at risk if the assassins succeed…  And, if the region falls, hundreds of thousands of people will die--even as millions more are lost to the Axis.  Together with a self-centered army doctor named Wendy Kwan, and a team consisting of both green berets and Gurkhas, it will be Lee's responsibility to navigate treacherous terrain--and prevent Chinese Agent Fan Tong and his special ops team from changing the course of the war.

    Author GM Matheny was a US Navy saturation diver on the nuclear submarine USS Halibut. Involved in Operation Ivy Bells. America's most important (and most dangerous of the Cold War) clandestine operations. If you like good old fashioned American bravado, espionage and American history, you will enjoy this book. GOD & SPIES is a firsthand account of America's greatest intelligence coup! Operation Ivy Bells was not a onetime intercept of foreign intelligence but an ongoing operation of multiple Soviet military channels! Another reason for the high interest in our operation was the audacious nature in which it was done—with not one person risking his neck but the crews of two US Navy nuclear submarines which rendezvoused in Soviet territorial waters. “How did I end up as a navy diver, four hundred feet down in a frigid Russian sea? After making my dad totally disgusted with me, I set out to make him happy. ‘Honor thy father’ - I struggled with a decision to serve God. ‘Lord, I will give my life to you and serve you if you let me make this dive.’ But I had the impression He only wanted to know one thing: ‘What if I do not let you? Will you serve me anyway?’”

    One of the players, Lieutenant Colonel Sir William Gordon-Cumming Bt, Scots Guards, is accused of cheating. A classic Victorian melodrama: vast amounts of money, illegal gambling, the Royal Family, mistresses, bed-hopping, cover-up, deception and blackmail. The saga ranges from the wind-swept remoteness of Gordonstoun in Scotland, big game hunting in Africa and India, to life in the Guards in London and action in the Zulu Wars and Egyptian Campaign of 1882. For the first time, the Gordon-Cumming family papers are brought to light, including many of Sir William’s diaries and letters, as well as letters from The Royal Archives at Windsor Castle that detail the anxieties amongst the Royal Family. Previously undiscovered, there are more than mere coincidental connections between Gordon-Cumming and the Intelligence community. What was he really up to and why didn’t the Prince, his close confidant and friend, bail him out? Views of present-day descendants of those involved are also revealed for the first time. Was Gordon-Cumming a cheat or not? Or was he the scapegoat for something which is shrouded in even more mystery?

    Author Gene Gurney takes the reader from the superplane’s inception, test flights and production to its combat deployments and its ultimate purpose of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    VT-8 rose from the ashes of the Battle of Midway to become an indispensable air arm in the series of engagements for the Solomon Islands and beyond. In three months, the crack squadron carried out thirty-nine attack missions, sixteen against ships, twenty-three against ground targets. Their motto following the tragedy at Midway was "Attack and Revenge." Herman Wouk paid homage to the squadron in his 1971 novel War and Remembrance, referring to the pilots as, "The soul of America in action." *Includes annotations and images.

     On a steamy August day in 1953, Rick Snedeker, then just three years old, stepped off an Arabian American Oil Co. (Aramco) company airliner with his family into a life as different from what they left behind as sandpaper is to silk. It was to prove fabulously exotic and at the same time just like “home” in many ways. In his charming memoir — 3,001 Arabian Days: Growing up in an American Oil Camp in Saudi Arabia (1953-1962) — author Snedeker describes via a series of vignettes his fond and strange remembrances of living for nearly a decade in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Aramco, then the fledgling national oil company, was in those years run by several American oil giants including Standard Oil, and was hastily hiring American experts to develop the far-flung Saudi oil fields. To ease life for the new residents, Aramco built comfortable communities, some aspects of which were reminiscent of how families lived in the States. While a child, Snedeker considered the camels, endless sand dunes and kindly Saudis that filled his childhood in the desert as nothing unusual. Kids enjoyed the live Nativity pageants at King’s Road baseball field; Santa’s arrival on a camel or by helicopter at Christmas; the crowded, boisterous annual tri-camp desert fairs; Pep Flakes cereal, powdered whole milk, and chocolate milkshakes churned in his dad’s new-fangled Waring blender; the Dining Hall’s culinary delights. Then, too, Aramcons occasionally had to confront dangerous diseases, some unknown in America (polio, for example, ravaged Dhahran children in the fifties). But everywhere, watchful eyes looked out for the kids, creating an enveloping sense of safety and security and, Snedeker recalls, a great deal of happiness. Aramco provided generous biannual “long vacations,” allowing round-the-world travel to visit the planet’s most glittering metropolises, unusual getaways and remote hideaways. London. Hong Kong. Zurich. Honolulu. Asmara. Bangkok. Venice. Hofuf. Bahrain. New York City. Being raised in the unique, exotic environment of oil-camp Dhahran made the kids who grew up there different from other American children. When the expatriate Aramco dependents returned to the U.S., they were often seen as “other” by their untraveled peers. But it all turned out fine, as the entertaining read of 3,001 Arabian Days makes clear.

    The author witnessed the mud-soaked agony of the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, and the rapidly moving events of the following year. The book contains one of the most extraordinary accounts of the German spring offensive in 1918, from the point of view of a gunner officer with a grandstand view of the ruthless German advance.The author's father was Prime Minister at the outbreak of the first world war. The author's three brothers also served during the war; his eldest brother died during the Battle of the Somme.

    Although it is usually seen as an unqualified success, the Battle for Normandy was actually a much more closely fought affair. In The D-Day Deception the author and journalist Alex Gerlis explores whether it would have been won at all without the Allied deception operation. It was not until the 1970s that details began to emerge the Allies’ top secret and audacious deception plan. Operation Fortitude succeeded in confusing the Germans about where the Allies were going to land: would it be Normandy, or the Pas de Calais? The D-Day Deception looks at the part the deception played in the eventual Allied victory and asks to what extent it may have been helped by those in the German High Command and intelligence organizations who by 1944 wanted to see a swift end to the war. Alex Gerlis was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire and now lives with his family in West London. He was a BBC journalist for over 25 years, leaving in 2011 to concentrate on his writing. He is the author of The Best of Our Spies, a highly acclaimed espionage thriller based on D-Day and especially the deception operation that played a big part in its success. The Best of Our Spies was published in December 2012, since when it has featured prominently in the Amazon Kindle Spy best-selling lists and has over 180 Amazon reviews.

    His “Uncle” Ed Pucci, who was Frank Sinatra’s bodyguard and a close family friend, set him up with an entry level dealer’s job in Vegas. Over the next three decades, Jimmy experienced all Las Vegas had to offer. He dealt craps to famous gangsters in a private game, he interacted with John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Redd Foxx, Debbie Reynolds, Louis Prima and other celebrities. Jimmy was a confirmed bachelor who lived the high life with the ladies, although at times his carousing nearly cost him his life. He saw hundreds of thousands of dollars bet on one roll of the dice, he caught gambling cheaters and had run ins with some very nasty types. ˃˃˃ Folktales from a bygone era Jimmy’s stories are folktales from a bygone era, the 1960s, 70s and 80s when Vegas was still a relatively small town. Back in the day, the “joints” were ruled by men whose names all ended in vowels and there was a good time to be had 24/7. When It Was Great will make you laugh and touch your heart, but most of all it will take you back to the Las Vegas of yesterday, when the Rat Pack played at the Sands, Elvis headlined at the Hilton and working stiffs like Jimmy partied like there was no tomorrow. Scroll up and grab a copy today.

    John Randal and Raiding Forces continue the mission in Book XI, Raiding Rommel. OPERATION CRUSADER has had a devastating effect on the Desert Patrol gun jeep patrols due to the constant non-stop pace of operations and being misused by Middle East Command. The new US troops of the 575th Parachute Infantry Regiment (Separate) (Special) aka ‘Rangers’ are being amalgamated into Raiding Forces after rotating through the British Commando School and completing ‘Blood in the Sand’ training under Capt. ‘Mad Dog’ Reupart and Sgt. Maj. ‘March or Die’ Mikkalis ably assisted by the ex-French Foreign Legion veterans of Blue Patrol. Brandy Seaborn alerts Col. Randal to a SOLID GOLD mission to assassinate Nazi Hauptman Alfred Seebohm, Rommel’s Merlin — the commander of the Afrika Korps signals intelligence unit that has exploited the Eight Army’s total lack of radio security. Meanwhile ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, the chief of the Office of Strategic Services, invites Col. Randal to become the head of Special Projects.

    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.

    No human being who stood on her decks that fateful night was alive to commemorate the event on its 100th anniversary. Their stories are with us, however, and the lessons remain. From the moment the world learned the Titanic had sunk, we wanted to know, who had survived? Those answers didn’t come until the evening of Thursday, April 18, 1912―when the Cunard liner Carpathia finally reached New York with the 706 survivors who had been recovered from Titanic’s lifeboats. Harold Bride, “Titanic’s surviving wireless operator,” relayed the story of the ship’s band. “The way the band kept playing was a noble thing. I heard it first while still we were working wireless when there was a ragtime tune for us. The last I saw of the band, when I was floating out in the sea with my lifebelt on, it was still on deck playing ‘Autumn.’ How they ever did it I cannot imagine.” There were stories of heroism―such as that of Edith Evans, who was waiting to board collapsible Lifeboat D, the last boat to leave Titanic, when she turned to Caroline Brown and said, “You go first. You have children waiting at home.” The sacrifice cost Evans her life, but as Mrs. Brown said later, “It was a heroic sacrifice, and as long as I live I shall hold her memory dear as my preserver, who preferred to die so that I might live.” There was mystery. There was bravery. There was suspense. There was cowardice. Most men who survived found themselves trying to explain how they survived when women and children had died. But mostly, there was loss. On her return to New York after picking up Titanic’s survivors, Carpathia had become known as a ship of widows. Rene Harris, who lost her husband, Broadway producer Henry Harris, in the disaster, later spoke of her loss when she said, “It was not a night to remember. It was a night to forget.” Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished letters, memoirs, and diaries as well as interviews with survivors and family members, veteran author and writer Alan Rockwell brings to life the colorful voices and the harrowing experiences of many of those who lived to tell their story. More than 100 years after the RMS Titanic met its fatal end, the story of the tragic wreck continues to fascinate people worldwide. Though many survivors and their family members disappeared into obscurity or were hesitant to talk about what they went through, others were willing to share their experiences during the wreck and in its aftermath. This book recounts many of these first-hand accounts in graphic, compelling detail.

    Army as a two-tour helicopter pilot in Vietnam. It is a true-life story of a pilot who fought for freedom and often his very life. Vietnams Saga is also a story about the meaning of life. Standing back from his war experience, Stan reflects on his ever-present faith and how it carried him through this challenging period of his life. Originally written as a legacy to Stan Corvin’s family- something that will be passed down for many generations-Vietnam Saga is now an opportunity for you to share in the legacy and the personal recollections, memories, thoughts, fears and shed tears of a decorated and dedicated American military pilot. The book also contains numerous photos.

    Thanks to his diligence and determination, the Flying G ranch has rapidly flourished, and he finally lives the life he has always dreamt of. Little does he know that everything will be turned upside down when his devious competitor sets his sight on his ranch. From that moment on, Bronco will do whatever it takes to stand up for his land and escape an evil scheme against him. Will he manage to save his ranch from the greedy cattle baron? How far will he go to prove his worth to the man who has stood by him like a real father?While Bronco is starting a wild range war to capture a bloodthirsty rival, a brilliant woman comes into his life and sweeps him off his feet. The moment Bronco lays eyes on Carrie Thompson, he realizes she is everything he has always been looking for. However, the clock is ticking, and Bronco cannot dive into a romance until he brings down the person who is determined to completely ruin his life. To make matters worse, danger spirals out of control when his new love is caught into a devilish trap. Bronco knows that there is no room for mistakes and that he has to play all his cards right, otherwise he might lose her forever. Will he manage to rescue the only woman who has managed to touch his heart, before it's too late? Will he be courageous enough to put evil behind bars once and for all?The bullets are already flying, and only one man will be left standing when the smoke clears. Will Bronco survive the greatest challenge of his life and protect the people he loves? Will he ride out the storm and make a new beginning by Carrie's side, οr will overpowering forces wipe the smile off his face once and for all?A pulse-pounding drama, which will make you turn the pages with bated breath until the very last word. A must-read for fans of Western action and romance."A Land of Peril and Deceit" is a historical adventure novel of approximately 60,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.