After a conflict, the hunter is becoming the hunted… Nina Markova, courageous and daring, had always wanted to fly. When the Nazis invade the Soviet Union, she puts her life on the line to join the renowned Night Witches, an all-female night bomber battalion that wreaks havoc on the invading Germans. Nina becomes the prey of a vicious Nazi murderess called the Huntress when she is abandoned beyond enemy lines, and only Nina’s bravery and ingenuity can keep her alive.
British war correspondent Ian Graham has become a Nazi hunter after seeing atrocities from Omaha Beach to the Nuremberg Trials. One prey, though, eludes him: the Huntress, a deadly predator. To discover her, the strong, diligent detective teams up with Nina, the only witness who managed to flee the Huntress alive. But unless Ian and Nina push themselves to confront it, a common secret could wreck their purpose.
Jordan McBride, a seventeen-year-old growing up in postwar Boston, is ambitious to be a photographer. Jordan is overjoyed when her long-widowed father suddenly returns home with a new fiancée. The soft-spoken German widow, on the other hand, is unsettling. Jordan convinced that danger is lurking, decides to probe into her new stepmother’s past, only to discover that there are mysteries hidden deep in her family… secrets that may harm all Jordan holds dear.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Some men ogle, some men look. The first makes us bristle, and the second makes us melt, and men are at an utter loss knowing the difference. But we do, and we know it at once.”
“Building a generation is like building a wall—one good well-made brick at a time, one good well-made child at a time. Enough good bricks, you have a good wall. Enough good children, you have a generation that won’t start a world-enveloping war.”
“Moments like this should have been glorious, and they never were. The monsters always looked so ordinary and pathetic, in the flesh.”
“Is a Russian thing. Sit around, drink too much, talk about death.” She pushed her empty plate away. “It makes us cheerful”
“We’re standing in the ashes of a war like no other—if we don’t try harder to see the shades of gray involved, we’ll find ourselves in the thick of a new one.”
Popular BBC television show Peaky Blinders centers on an organized crime family in post-World War I Birmingham, England, but does it accurately reflect Birmingham’s real history? It turns out that Birmingham had its own Peaky Blinders who tormented the city’s streets far before World War I.
The Peaky Blinders gained notoriety in the 1870s in the filthy, congested, late Victorian Birmingham. The working poor, extremely committed union members, homeless youngsters, professional criminals, and members of trade unions made up their ranks. They developed a ferocious reputation as violent criminals who tormented the residents of this industrial city for a little over ten years. However, the actual degree of their participation in crimes other than street fighting and attack is still up for question.
The Peaky Blinders were noted for their fashionable attire as well as their violent behavior. When they were out hunting, no man, woman, or child was secure. The Peaky Blinders had a significant impact on the city they terrorized, and more than 150 years later, music and movies continue to honor their reputation. From the beginning of the slogging gangs until the end of the Peaky Blinder period in the run-up to World War I, this book traces their story.
Thermopylae was a steep mountain pass in northern Greece where three hundred of the feared and revered Spartan troops were stationed. To defend the pass against the advancing millions of the powerful Persian army, it was their suicide mission.
They resisted the horrific onslaught day after bloody day, affording the Greeks some time to gather their forces. The Spartans would be recognized for the best military battle in history—one that would not finish until the rocks were awash in blood, leaving only one badly injured Spartan squire to tell the tale. They were born into a cult of spiritual heroism, physical endurance, and unsurpassed war prowess.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”
“You have never tasted freedom, friend,” Dienekes spoke, “or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.”
“The opposite of fear,” Dienekes said, “is love.”
“As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.”
“He who whets his steel, whets his courage”
A large, impactful tale of men in battle written over the span of 35 years by a Vietnam War veteran with a lot of decorations. Matterhorn is a visceral and enthralling book about what it’s like to be a young man at war that was written over the period of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran. It is a remarkable book that turns the tragedy of the Vietnam War into a stirring tale of bravery, teamwork, and sacrifice that can be applied to any conflict. It is also a tribute to the literary ability to redeem human suffering.
Karl Marlantes, a Yale University graduate and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. He was given the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for bravery, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals for his service. His debut book is this one. He resides in a little town in Washington.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn’t know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about”
“Victory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry image in the mirror.”
“Over time, continual bad news will discourage any civilian population, and Americans had the lowest tolerance on the planet for bad news.”
“He lay before God as a woman opens herself to a man, with legs apart, stomach exposed, arms open. But unlike some women, he did not have the inner strength that allowed them to do such a thing without fear. There was no woman’s strength in Mellas at all.”
“The chanting went on, the musicians giving in to the rhythm of their own being, finding healing in touching that rhythm, and healing in chanting about death, the only real god they knew.”
A gripping story of battle, atonement, and the journey of a hero. Joey, a gorgeous bay-red foal with a distinguishing cross on his nose, is sold to the army in 1914 and forced into the thick of the Western Front war. He rushes toward the enemy with his officer, experiencing the horrors of the fighting in France. Even amid the desolation of the trenches, Joey’s bravery touches the troops around him, and he finds warmth and optimism. But his heart breaks for Albert, the farmer’s son he abandoned. Will he ever be reunited with his true master?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I can hate you more, but I’ll never love you less.”
“Any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other”
“cause when there’s life there still hopes”
“They fight a war and they don’t know what for. Isn’t that crazy? How can one man kill another and not really know the reason why he does it, except that the other man wears a different color uniform and speaks a different language?”
“If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer.”
Tolstoy perceived a tragedy involving all of humanity in Russia’s conflict with Napoleon. War and Peace is more than just a history book; it is an affirmation of life itself, or, in the words of one modern reviewer, “a full image” of everything that humans experience in terms of happiness, greatness, pain, and humiliation. This translation, which has been released in a new one-volume edition with an introduction by Henry Gifford and Tolstoy’s significant essay “Some Words about War and Peace,” received the personal permission of the author.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
Two women—an unconventional American socialite looking for her cousin in 1947 and a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I—are brought together in a captivating new historical novel by national bestselling author Kate Quinn. The story is one of bravery and redemption.
1947. American college student Charlie St. Clair is unmarried, pregnant, and on the verge of being expelled from her extremely proper family in the turbulent years following World War II. She also has a fervent wish that her beloved cousin Rose, who vanished during the war in Nazi-occupied France, is still alive. Charlie, who is determined to learn what happened to the cousin she adores like a sister, escapes her parents’ control and travels to London after they send her to Europe to have her “small problem” resolved.
1915. Eve Gardiner is eager to fight against the Germans a year into the Great War and unanticipatedly gets her opportunity when she is hired to operate as a spy. She is sent into enemy-occupied France where she receives training from the captivating Lili, alias Alice, the “queen of spies,” who oversees a vast network of covert agents directly in front of the enemy’s eyes. Thirty years later, Eve spends her days alone and intoxicated in her dilapidated London home, plagued by the treachery that eventually tore the Alice Network apart. Up until a young American enters, speaking a name Eve hasn’t heard in years, setting them both on a quest to discover the truth—wherever it may lead.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“What did it matter if something scared you when it simply had to be done?”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network
“Hope was such a painful thing, far more painful than rage.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network
“There are two kinds of flowers when it comes to women,” Eve said. “The kind that sits safely in a beautiful vase, or the kind that survive in any conditions . . . even in evil. Lili was the latter. Which are you?”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network
“Poetry is like passion–it should not be merely pretty; it should overwhelm and bruise.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network
“Fleurs du mal,” Eve heard herself saying, and shivered. “What?” “Baudelaire. We are not flowers to be plucked and shielded, Captain. We are flowers who flourish in evil.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network
1940. Three very different women respond to the summons to the enigmatic country estate Bletchley Park, where the brightest minds in Britain learn to decipher German military codes, as England gets ready to fight the Nazis. Osla is a vivacious debutante who has it all—beauty, money, and the handsome Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she is driven to prove that she is more than just a society girl. To that goal, she uses her fluent German to translate enemy secrets. Mab, a conceited self-made woman who was raised in poverty in East London, works the famed code-breaking machines while hiding her scars and looking for a husband who will benefit her social standing.
Meliara must learn a whole new method of fighting if she is to survive—with wit, words, and covert alliances. At least in war, she knew who she could rely on. She can no longer put her trust in anyone.
Both Osla and Mab see potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness hides a tremendous ability with puzzles, and Beth soon spread her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. However, conflict, loss, and the unbearable pressure of secret will separate the three.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If he doesn’t love me in a boiler suit, he’s not worth dressing up for in the first place.”
“Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, Beth had read in Vanity Fair only that morning, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history?”
“Every night, tell yourself what you told me. How you’re a patriot, not a traitor. How you’re the hero of this story, not the villain.” Beth smiled. “Then remember that you got an innocent woman locked in a madhouse to save your own skin, and ask yourself: how goddamned heroic is that?”
“These have knelled your fall and ruin, but your ears were far away,’” Beth quoted one of Dilly’s irreverent verses. “‘English lassies rustling papers through the sodden Bletchley day .”
“No one should tell their mother more than one-third of anything they get up to.”
Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit were dispatched to the bloodiest battlefield in Iraq with the almost impossible objective of assisting American forces in securing Ramadi, a city that was considered to be “all but lost.” They discovered that leadership—at every level—is the most crucial element in determining whether a team succeeds or fails via dramatic first-person narratives of bravery, heartbreaking loss, and hard-won wins in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser. After their deployment, Willink and Babin established SEAL leadership training, which assisted in developing the next generation of SEAL leaders. They founded Echelon Front, a business that teaches these similar leadership concepts to corporations and organizations, after leaving the SEAL Teams.
Babin and Willink have assisted numerous clients across a wide range of industries in building their own elevated teams and dominating their battlefields, from momentum going to Fortune 500 organizations.
Now, Extreme Ownership explains the mindset and values that allow SEAL units to successfully complete the most challenging missions in warfare and demonstrates how to apply them to any team, family, or organization. Each chapter is devoted to a particular subject, such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, and explains what it is, why it is significant, and how to use it in any leadership setting.
Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and pushes leaders everywhere to realize their true objective: lead and win. It does this through a gripping narrative with effective instruction and direct application.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Discipline equals freedom.”
“It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.”
“The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life.”
“Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team.”
“the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.”
On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the overpass of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, engaged in a routine navigational freedom patrol in the South China Sea when her ship notices a trawler that is not flying a flag, clearly in trouble, with smoke billowing from its bridge. The same day, US Marine Major Chris “Wedge” Mitchell is testing new stealth technology while flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, bordering Iranian airspace. By the end of the day, Sarah Hunt’s destroyer will have been sunk by the Chinese Navy, and Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner.
China and Iran have clearly coordinated their actions, which include the use of potent new cyber weapons that leave US ships and aircraft unprotected. America’s belief in the strategic superiority of its military has been destroyed in a single day. We’re about to enter a new, terrible period. Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from actual historical data and the writers’ years spent working at the highest and most sensitive levels of national security. The year 2034 is approaching with alarming speed, and this cautionary story gives the reader a glimpse into a grim but conceivable future that we must all struggle to prevent. Sometimes it takes a masterful work of fiction to reveal the most terrible of warnings.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Because no battle is ever won. . . . They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” —William Faulkner”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War
“The America that we believe ourselves to be is no longer the America that we are. .”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War
“We are from nowhere and have nothing. We have come here to be from somewhere and to have something. That is what makes us American.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War
“The America that we believe ourselves to be is no longer the America that we are. . .”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War
“When empires overreach, that’s when they crumble.”
― Elliot Ackerman, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War
The amazing tale of an American ambulance crew on the Italian front and his desire for a stunning English nurse is told in A Farewell to Arms. This compelling, semiautobiographical work vividly depicts the harsh realities of war and the suffering of lovers caught in its unrelenting swoop. It is set against the looming horrors of the battlefield—the tired, demoralized men parading in the downpours during the German attack on Caporetto; the deep struggle between loyalty and desertion. A Farewell to Arms’ finale was rewritten 39 times before Ernest Hemingway finally got the words right.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“All thinking men are atheists.”
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kill. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.”
“I’m not brave anymore darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.”
“And you’ll always love me, won’t you?
Yes
And the rain won’t make any difference?
No”
The official novelization of the patriotic, vintage military thriller’s remake! Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swayze became household names thanks to the 1984 version of the movie. The acclaimed alternate history war movie is being updated for a new age in this action-packed remake, which will debut in theatres throughout the country in the fall of 2010 and stars Chris Hemsoworth (Star Trek), Josh Peck (The Wackness), and Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights). A rebellious gang of youths known as the Wolverines hides out in the nearby woods when Chinese and Russian soldiers attack their hometown, where they not only struggle to survive but bravely engage the invaders in combat in an effort to stop the invasion and defend their home.
The people are overtaken by fear and panic when an army of martian invaders lands in England. The inhabitants of Earth must accept the possibility that human civilization will come to an end and that Martian domination will take its place as the aliens travel the nation in enormous three-legged vehicles, destroying everything in their path with a heat beam and dispersing unpleasant toxic fumes.
The War of the Worlds is an archetypical work of science fiction that has impacted every alien story that has come after it and is unsurpassed in its ability to thrill readers well over a century after it was first published. It has inspired films, radio dramas, comic book adaptations, television series, and sequels.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by an intelligence greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”
“By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.”
“Few people realize the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.”
“It was a battleground of fear and curiosity.”
“We can’t have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome, and mischievous have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It’s a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race.”
Imagine yourself on a Friday, cruising down the highway, and all you have to think about is starting your weekend. The harsh tone of the Emergency Alert System then flashes over the radio to start ruining your eagerly anticipated weekend before dying. Morgan Carter will travel 250 miles on this journey. When Morgan’s car, Blackberry, and all of his other equipment die while he is working on the road and distance from home, he is in a difficult situation.
He unwillingly finds himself on Shanks’ mare with that stupid load that everybody made fun of him for putting in the car, not knowing what has happened. From Tallahassee to Lake County, the center of Florida, Morgan must navigate his way across the state.
He needs to look for food, water, and shelter along the road while also avoiding being killed by numerous now-frightened and desperate people. He will try to assist where he can while on the road, but this could be an expensive oversight. Everything we want is just a mouse click away in our amazing modern civilization. Turning a switch turns on the lights, and even a little toddler can open the sink’s tap and always get water out of it. But what if everything vanished? Could you make the choices that Morgan must make and confront the challenges he does? Could you handle the sudden change from life to death?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Yeah, it always amazes me how quickly people turn into good little socialists when they run out of their stuff. As long as they have something, it’s theirs. Let them run out, and you need to share.”
“The point, son, is that there are two kinds of people in this country. Those that think for themselves, take care of themselves, and know they have to work for what they want in this world. Then there are those that are happy to do what they are told as long as they are fed, clothed, and given a free cell phone and place to live. As long as those in control provide for their needs, even if they aren’t to the level they want but are just enough to satisfy them, then they will paint their ass white, put their heads down, and graze with the rest of the antelope,”