The Last White Ruby: The Vanishing Polar Circles is a captivating poetry collection that delves into the experiences of living and working in the polar environment. Ronnie Smith, an aviator who spent many years flying for the US Air Force in these extreme regions, shares his unique perspective.
Through his keen sensitivity to the human condition, Smith brings the surreal landscapes and flying phenomena to life, inviting readers to explore the beauty, danger, and unusual wonders of the polar regions. The elements present an ever-present challenge, as extreme cold and wilderness confront aviators and seamen with uncompromising force.
These remote regions, where nature reigns supreme, also offer scientists early clues about global warming and environmental decay. Smith's portrayal captures the pristine beauty and the vital role the icecaps play as the planet's cooling mechanism, a beauty we risk losing due to climate change.
With eloquent prose, Smith transports readers to places few will ever see, allowing them to appreciate the fragile magnificence of the polar circles.
Three hundred years ago, something terrifying arose and pushed humanity to the brink of extinction. Now, a small remnant – the descendants of the few survivors who were able to escape the massacre below – lives above the clouds, on the top of a Mountain.
When they discover that their water supply is being poisoned Down Below, an expedition, including seventeen year-old girl Icelyn Brathius, must descend and face the monsters, the Threat Below, that wiped out civilization centuries ago.
Icelyn quickly learns that all is not what it seems as she uncovers secrets hundreds of years old and struggles to stay alive in a world where no human is fit to survive.
Sven Hassel's iconic war novel about the Russian Front. Convicted of deserting the German army, Sven Hassel is sent to a penal regiment on the Russian Front. He and his comrades are regarded as expendable, cannon fodder in the battle against the implacable Red Army. Outnumbered and outgunned, they fight their way across the frozen steppe...
This iconic anti-war novel is a testament to the atrocities suffered by the lone soldier in the fight for survival. Sven Hassel's unflinching narrative is based on his own experiences in the German Army. He began writing his first novel, Legion of the Damned in a prisoner of war camp at the end of World War Two.
An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture, repatriation, and guide her family to freedom.
As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal totalitarian regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom. As the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question, and realize that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty, and starvation she witnessed, surely her country could not be, as she had been told, “the best on the planet”?
Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family. She could not return, since rumors of her escape were spreading, and she and her family could incur the punishments of the government authorities – involving imprisonment, torture, and possible public execution.
Hyeonseo instead remained in China and rapidly learned Chinese in an effort to adapt and survive. Twelve years and two lifetimes later, she would return to the North Korean border in a daring mission to spirit her mother and brother to South Korea, on one of the most arduous, costly, and dangerous journeys imaginable.
This is the unique story not only of Hyeonseo’s escape from the darkness into the light, but also of her coming of age, education, and the resolve she found to rebuild her life – not once, but twice – first in China, then in South Korea. Strong, brave, and eloquent, this memoir is a triumph of her remarkable spirit.
Children of Time is a thrilling race for survival among the stars. Humanity's last survivors have escaped Earth's ruins in search of a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?
Who will inherit this new Earth?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.
Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain.
Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown, to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.
A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.
People commit suicide not because they are in grief, but because they were unable to solve the lateral equations of insanity.
The world has observed a number of acts of brutality in the form of domestic violence, sexual assault, and rape. Some of the major cases in recent past were of Elizabeth Pena, Rehtaeh Parsons, Oksana Makar, and Nirvaya, to name a few.
Some victims manage to survive, but not all. They live in grief for the rest of their lives, and if not, they QUIT.
This work is inspired by such cases where the victims have set examples by their life from grief to victory. They can inspire you if you or someone near you is in grief.
A man without a name who called himself Pan wanted something more, something better. For as long as he could remember, something or someone was gnawing at him, calling him, draining him, making him hungry, making him strive for more, more of everything. Living the life and pursuing the happiness, Pan lived the "American Dream." Like so many cheerleaders, Pan worked hard to climb the ladder and he bought almost everything that "they" sold. Avoiding the questions and numbing the pain, Pan turned to drink and did drugs, he listened to loud music and had meaningless sex. He was a true consumer and a glutton until all the hedonism and all the materialism could no longer fill the void and help fulfill his life, his liberty and his pursuit of happiness. The sports cars and white picket fences of the picturesque dream were now blurry and misshapen. His dream was shattered and the cracks revealed. Now he waits and watches and fears for the future that he knows is so near. Living in the shadows and preparing for tomorrow, he hopes that he is wrong, but knows that he is right.
Butcher’s Crossing is a fiercely intelligent and beautifully written western novel. Set in the 1870s, it follows the journey of Will Andrews, a young man inspired by Emerson to seek an original relation to nature. Leaving Harvard, he ventures west, finding himself in the small Kansas town of Butcher’s Crossing, a place filled with restless men eager to make and waste money.
Andrews befriends a man who speaks of immense herds of buffalo hidden in a beautiful Colorado Rockies valley. Enticed by the promise, Andrews joins an expedition to hunt the buffalo. The journey is grueling, but the valley's richness is worth the struggle. However, as they indulge in an orgy of slaughter, the men lose track of time, and winter traps them in snow.
The following spring, driven to madness by cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they return to Butcher’s Crossing, only to find a world as irrevocably changed as they are.
After a globally devastating virus sweeps across the world, the ones that are left are trying desperately to survive and pick up the pieces. Paisley Roberts did not have it easy growing up, but the unfortunate knowledge she learned as an adolescent actually elevates her in this new world.
She quickly used those skills to forge ahead, creating a place not only in the world, but in the new government controlling the land as well. However, nothing is the same, including relationships. Love comes in many forms like before, but a new environment complicates the old-fashioned ideas once strongly held.
Will she allow emotions to cloud her judgment? Will traditional values hold up when nothing in the world is the same anymore?
Pattyn’s father is dead. Now she’s on the run in this riveting companion to the New York Times bestseller Burned. Pattyn Von Stratten’s father is dead, and Pattyn is on the run. After far too many years of abuse at the hands of her father, and after the tragic loss of her beloved Ethan and their unborn child, Pattyn is desperate for peace.
Only her sister Jackie knows what happened that fatal night, but she is stuck at home with their mother, who clings to normalcy by allowing the truth to be covered up by their domineering community leaders. Her father might be finally gone, but without Pattyn, Jackie is desperately isolated.
Alone and in disguise, Pattyn starts a new life as a migrant worker on a California ranch. But is it even possible to rebuild a life when everything you’ve known has burned to ash and lies seem far safer than the truth?
Bestselling author Ellen Hopkins continues the riveting story of Pattyn Von Stratten she began in Burned to explore what it takes to rise from the ashes, put ghosts to rest, and step into a future.
What would you do to save someone you love?
Time is slipping away...
Tella Holloway is losing it. Her brother is sick, and when a dozen doctors can't determine what's wrong, her parents decide to move to the middle of nowhere for the fresh air. She's lost her friends, her parents are driving her crazy, her brother is dying—and she's helpless to change anything.
Until she receives mysterious instructions on how to become a Contender in the Brimstone Bleed. It's an epic race across jungle, desert, ocean, and mountain that could win her the prize she desperately desires: the Cure for her brother's illness. But all the Contenders are after the Cure for people they love, and there's no guarantee that Tella (or any of them) will survive the race.
The jungle is terrifying, the clock is ticking, and Tella knows she can't trust the allies she makes. And one big question emerges: Why have so many fallen sick in the first place?
It Takes a Village II: Joining Together is a captivating apocalyptic love story that explores the complexities of relationships in a world turned upside down by a global virus.
After a devastating virus sweeps across the world, the survivors are left to pick up the pieces. Paisley Roberts, who had a difficult upbringing, finds her past experiences unexpectedly valuable in this new world. She quickly uses her skills to forge ahead, creating a place for herself not only in the world but also in the new government controlling the land.
However, nothing is the same, including relationships. Love comes in many forms, but a new environment complicates the old-fashioned ideas once strongly held. Will she allow emotions to cloud her judgment? Will traditional values hold up when nothing in the world is the same anymore?
Join Paisley on her journey through love, survival, and the rebuilding of society in this thrilling narrative.
The Hunted is Charlie Higson's sixth terrifying installment in the thrilling The Enemy series. The sickness struck everyone over fourteen. First, it twisted their minds. Next, it ravaged their bodies. Now, they roam the streets—Crazed and hungry.
The others had promised that the countryside would be safer than the city. They were wrong. Now, Ella's all alone except for her silent rescuer, Scarface—and she's not even sure if he's a kid or a grown-up.
Back in London, Ed's determined to find her. But getting out of town's never been more dangerous—because coming in the other direction is every SICKO in the country. It's like they're being called towards the capital, and nothing is going to stop them.
In the penultimate book in The Enemy series, the survivors' stories cross with chilling consequences.
The city of Parole is burning. Like Venice slips into the sea, Parole crumbles into fire. The entire population inside has been quarantined and left to die—directly over the open flame. Eye in the Sky, a deadly and merciless police force, ensures no one escapes. Ever.
All that's keeping Parole alive is faith in the midst of horrors and death, trust in the face of desperation... and their fantastic, terrifying, and beautiful superhuman abilities.
Regan, silent, scaly stealth expert, is haunted by ten years of anxiety, trauma, and terror, and he's finally reached his limit. Evelyn is a fearless force on stage and a sonic-superheroic revolutionary on the streets. Now they have a choice—and a chance to not only escape from Parole but unravel the mystery deep in its burning heart.
And most of all, discover the truth about their own entwining pasts. Parole's a rough place to live. But they're not dead yet. If they can survive the imminent cataclysmic disaster, they might just stay that way...
The Yellow World is not just a memoir; it's a journey into a vibrant way of living. Albert Espinosa, diagnosed with cancer at thirteen, spent a decade in and out of hospitals. Through this experience, he discovered a world full of hope and resilience, which he calls 'the yellow world.'
In this rich and rewarding book, Espinosa shares his most touching, funny, and tragic memories with the hope that others, whether healthy or sick, can draw strength and vitality from them. He takes us into a place where fear loses its meaning, where strangers become allies, and where the lessons learned nourish you for life.
Espinosa's narrative is both uplifting and insightful, providing a simple philosophy that has the makings of a spiritual classic. The yellow world is a world within everyone's reach, a world the color of the sun, where life is seen through a lens of positivity and possibility.
Where Emmeline lives, you cannot love and you cannot leave... The Council's rules are strict, but they're for the good of the settlement where Emmeline resides. Everyone knows there is nothing but danger beyond the Wall, and the community must prepare for the freezing winterkill that comes every year.
But Emmeline struggles to be obedient under the Council's suffocating embrace - especially when she discovers that a Council leader intends to snatch her hand in marriage. Then Emmeline begins to hear the call of the trees beyond the Wall...
Emmeline lives in a dark, isolated land with merciless winters and puritanical rulers. When the leader of her settlement asks Emmeline for her hand, it is an opportunity to wash her family's slate clean. Emmeline cannot ignore dreams that urge her into the dangerous woods that took her grandmother's life and her family's reputation.
A young woman escapes her settlement community to seek her destiny on an unforgiving and mysterious frontier in this suspenseful YA series debut. Emmeline knows she’s not supposed to explore the woods outside her settlement. The enemy that wiped out half her people lurks there, attacking at night and keeping them isolated in an unfamiliar land with merciless winters.
Living with the shame of her grandmother’s insubordination, Emmeline has learned to keep her head down and her quick tongue silent. When the settlement leader asks for her hand in marriage, it’s an opportunity for Emmeline to wash the family slate clean—even if she has eyes for another. But before she’s forced into an impossible decision, her dreams urge her into the woods, where she uncovers a path she can’t help but follow. The trail leads to a secret that someone in the village will kill to protect. Her grandmother followed the same path and paid the price. If Emmeline isn’t careful, she will be next.
While flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England, American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured by the Nazis and sent to RavensbrĂĽck, the notorious women's concentration camp. Trapped in horrific circumstances, Rose finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery, and friendship of her fellow prisoners. But will that be enough to endure the fate that's in store for her?
Elizabeth Wein, author of the critically-acclaimed and best-selling Code Name Verity, delivers another stunning WWII thriller. The unforgettable story of Rose Justice is forged from heart-wrenching courage, resolve, and the slim, bright chance of survival.
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old human error are much more likely to kill him first.
But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
Belgium ... February 8, 1944 ... Shot Down and Alive
For the first time, the full and complete story of the B-17 Flying Fortress Susan Ruth is shared in unbelievable detail. Author Steve Snyder’s story of his father, Lieutenant Howard Snyder, and the Susan Ruth crew, provides in-depth details about many aspects of World War II few understand or know about including the:
Separation for young families as men went off to war;
Training before heading to foreign soil;
Military combat operations;
Underground and resistance and what Lt. Snyder did when he joined it;
German atrocities toward captured crew and civilians;
Behind-the-scenes stories of the Belgium civilians who risked all to save American flyers who were in the air one moment, spiraling down in flames the next;
Creation and dedication of the monument to the Susan Ruth and its crew located in Macquenoise, Belgium in 1989.
Shot Down was created from the vast number of letters and journals of Howard Snyder; diaries of men and women on the ground who rescued, sheltered and hid the crew; and interviews conducted by historians. Centered around the 306th Bomb Group in Thurleigh, England, it is informative, insightful and captivating.
For most, 70 years is a long time ago. World War II fades in importance as each year goes by. Shot Down moves history out of the footnotes into reality, keeping the stories of real people alive as they experience being shot down. You are there, almost holding your breath as Lt. Snyder gets his crew out of his B-17 when bailing out over Nazi occupied Europe.
Right before my eyes, my beautiful islands are changing forever. And so am I...
Sixteen-year-old Leilani loves surfing and her home in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii. But she's an outsider - half white, half Hawaiian, and an epileptic.
While Lei and her father are on a visit to Oahu, a global disaster strikes. Technology and power fail, Hawaii is cut off from the world, and the islands revert to traditional ways of survival. As Lei and her dad embark on a nightmarish journey across islands to reach home and family, she learns that her epilepsy and her deep connection to Hawaii could be keys to ending the crisis before it becomes worse than anyone can imagine.
A powerful story enriched by fascinating elements of Hawaiian ecology, culture, and warfare, this captivating and dramatic debut from Austin Aslan is the first of two novels.
The perfect gift for fans of The Hunger Games and Divergent, this boxed set includes all of the paperback editions of James Dashner's bestselling series: The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure, and The Kill Order.
When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He's surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone. "Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade."
Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It's the only way out—and no one's ever made it through alive.
"Everything is going to change." Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.
Remember. Survive. Run.
In a scarred and brutal future, The United Commonwealth teeters on the brink of all-out civil war. The rebel resistance plots against a government that rules with cruelty and cunning. Gifted student and Testing survivor Cia Vale vows to fight. But she can't do it alone.
This is the chance to lead that Cia has trained for - but who will follow? Plunging through layers of danger and deception, Cia must risk the lives of those she loves - and gamble on the loyalty of her lethal classmates.
"Take her out back and finish her off." She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know where she is, or why. All she knows when she comes to in a ransacked cabin is that there are two men arguing over whether or not to kill her.
And that she must run.
In her riveting style, April Henry crafts a nail-biting thriller involving murder, identity theft, and biological warfare. Follow Cady and Ty (her accidental savior turned companion), as they race against the clock to stay alive.
Memory of Water is an imaginative and engaging novel set in a world where global warming has dramatically changed the planet's geography and politics. In this future, wars are waged over water, and China holds dominion over Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, occupied by the power state of New Qian.
In this far northern land, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning the ancient art of becoming a tea master like her father. This position holds great responsibility and even greater secrets. Tea masters alone know the locations of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria's father tends, which once provided for her entire village.
But secrets have a way of surfacing. After her father's death, the army begins to watch their town—and Noria. As water becomes even scarcer, Noria faces a difficult choice: between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship.
Lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that feels all too possible.
An action-packed, blood-soaked, futuristic debut thriller set in a world where the murder rate is higher than the birthrate. For fans of Moira Young’s Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.
Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.
The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?
Action-packed, blood-soaked, and chilling, this is a dark and compelling debut novel by Lindsay Cummings.
Cassie Forrest could almost believe life at Kingdom Come Farm is perfect, with Adrian and her friends at her side and spring on the way. However, the spring thaw also means millions of defrosting zombies.
The past year has taught her that life in this new world is highly imperfect. When Safe Zones throughout the country begin to disappear and the zombies at the fences grow in number, Cassie clings to the hope that if she has the people she loves most, it will be all right.
But the highly imperfect world makes only one guarantee—zombies never die, never stop, and are never satiated.
The Dead is the second book in Charlie Higson's jaw-dropping zombie horror series for teens. Everyone over the age of fourteen has succumbed to a deadly zombie virus, and now the kids must keep themselves alive.
A terrible disease is striking everyone over the age of fourteen. Death walks the streets. Nowhere is safe. Maxie, Blue, and the rest of the Holloway crew aren't the only kids trying to escape the ferocious adults who prey on them. Jack and Ed are best friends, but their battle to stay alive tests their friendship to the limit as they go on the run with a mismatched group of other kids - nerds, fighters, misfits. And one adult, Greg, a butcher, who claims he's immune to the disease.
They must work together if they want to make it in this terrifying new world. But when fresh disaster threatens to overwhelm London, they realize they won't all survive...
The sickness struck everyone sixteen and over. Mothers and fathers, older brothers, sisters, and best friends. No one escaped its touch. And now children across London are being hunted by ferocious grown-ups who are hungry, bloodthirsty, and not giving up.
DogNut and the rest of his crew, in search of the friends they lost during the fire, set off on a deadly mission from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace and beyond, as the sickos lie in wait. But who are their friends and who is the enemy in this changed world?
The Sacrifice picks up after Small Sam and The Kid arrive at the Tower of London at the end of The Dead. Though Sam finds safety and friendship at the Tower with Jordan Hordern's crew, he can't settle down. The only thing he wants is to be reunited with his sister, Ella. Despite Ed's protests, Sam and the Kid strike out westward, through the no-go zone.
Meanwhile, Shadowman is tracking Saint George across north London, watching him build up his army. Shadowman knows that Saint George is an extremely dangerous threat, but no one will take his warnings seriously.
Some answers to the questions we've been wondering about—What is the Disease? Where did it come from? Is there a cure?—are addressed by an unexpected source: a diseased adult nicknamed Wormwood who has the ability to speak, though his ravings are difficult to decipher.
Unspeakable horror, edge-of-the-seat suspense, and stomach-churning plot twists continue in Book 4 of Charlie Higson's masterful Enemy saga.
She's searching for answers to her past. They’re hunting her to save their future.
World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They've survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there. At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life.
When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war. Cities were never destroyed. The world is intact. Everything was a lie.
Now Juneau is adrift in a modern-day world she never knew existed. But while she's trying to find a way to rescue her friends and family, someone else is looking for her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about the secrets of her past.
A voyage across the ocean becomes the odyssey of a lifetime for a young Irish woman.
Ireland, 1912
Fourteen members of a small village set sail on RMS Titanic, hoping to find a better life in America. For seventeen-year-old Maggie Murphy, the journey is bittersweet. Though her future lies in an unknown new place, her heart remains in Ireland with Séamus, the sweetheart she left behind. When disaster strikes, Maggie is one of the few passengers in steerage to survive. Waking up alone in a New York hospital, she vows never to speak of the terror and panic of that fateful night again.
Chicago, 1982
Adrift after the death of her father, Grace Butler struggles to decide what comes next. When her great-grandmother Maggie shares the painful secret about the Titanic that she's harbored for almost a lifetime, the revelation gives Grace new direction—and leads both her and Maggie to unexpected reunions with those they thought lost long ago.
Inspired by true events, The Girl Who Came Home poignantly blends fact and fiction to explore the Titanic tragedy's impact and its lasting repercussions on survivors and their descendants.
Kyla is in danger from both the government Lorders who erased her memory and the terrorists who tried to use her. So now she’s on the run.
Sporting a new identity and desperate to fill in the blank spaces of her life pre-Slating, Kyla heads to a remote mountain town to try to reunite with the birth mother she was kidnapped from as a child. There she is hoping all the pieces of her life will come together and she can finally take charge of her own future.
But even in the idyllic wilderness and the heart of her original family, Kyla realizes there is no escape from the oppressive Lorders. Someone close to her may be one of them, and even more frighteningly, her birth mother has been keeping secrets of her own.
In this stunning series finale, Kyla finally finds out who she really is, and the road to this discovery, and to deciding who she wants to become, is full of dangerous twists and turns that will keep readers riveted.
From the quintessential author of wartime Germany, A Time to Love and a Time to Die echoes the harrowing insights of his masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front. After two years at the Russian front, Ernst Graeber finally receives three weeks’ leave. But since leaves have been canceled before, he decides not to write his parents, fearing he would just raise their hopes.
Then, when Graeber arrives home, he finds his house bombed to ruin and his parents nowhere in sight. Nobody knows if they are dead or alive. As his leave draws to a close, Graeber reaches out to Elisabeth, a childhood friend. Like him, she is imprisoned in a world she did not create. But in a time of war, love seems a world away. And sometimes, temporary comfort can lead to something unexpected and redeeming.
Alexi Littrell hasn't told anyone what happened to her over the summer. Ashamed and embarrassed, she hides in her closet and compulsively scratches the back of her neck, trying to make the outside hurt more than the inside does.
When Bodee Lennox, the quiet and awkward boy next door, comes to live with the Littrells, Alexi discovers an unlikely friend in "the Kool-Aid Kid," who has secrets of his own. As they lean on each other for support, Alexi gives him the strength to deal with his past, and Bodee helps her find the courage to finally face the truth.
Annie and Fia are ready to fight back.
The sisters have been manipulated and controlled by the Keane Foundation for years, trapped in a never-ending battle for survival. Now they have found allies who can help them truly escape. After faking her own death, Annie has joined a group that is plotting to destroy the Foundation. And Fia is working with James Keane to bring his father down from the inside.
But Annie's visions of the future can't show her who to trust in the present. And though James is Fia's first love, Fia knows he's hiding something. The sisters can rely only on each other—but that may not be enough to save them.
This is a tale of suspense, intrigue, and the unbreakable bond between two sisters as they navigate a world filled with deceit and danger.
The race to the Still Blue has reached a stalemate. Aria and Perry are determined to find this last safe haven from the Aether storms before Sable and Hess do—and they are just as determined to stay together.
Within the confines of a cave they're using as a makeshift refuge, they struggle to reconcile their people, Dwellers and Outsiders, who are united only in their hatred of their desperate situation. Meanwhile, time is running out to rescue Cinder, who was abducted by Hess and Sable for his unique abilities. Then Roar arrives in a grief-stricken fury, endangering all with his need for revenge.
Out of options, Perry and Aria assemble an unlikely team for an impossible rescue mission. Cinder isn't just the key to unlocking the Still Blue and their only hope for survival—he's also their friend. And in a dying world, the bonds between people are what matter most.
In this final book in her earth-shattering Under the Never Sky trilogy, Veronica Rossi raises the stakes to their absolute limit and brings her epic love story to an unforgettable close.
It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone.
Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they're worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help.
Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other's arms. Without the hope of a future together in their own world, they begin to wonder—would they be better off staying here forever?
Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won't be the same people who landed on it.
The first in a sweeping science fiction trilogy, These Broken Stars is a timeless love story about hope and survival in the face of unthinkable odds.
Ki Longfellow, acclaimed author of Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria, The Secret Magdalene, and Houdini Heart has penned Walks Away Woman, a remarkable story of an ordinary woman driven to an extraordinary decision. Overwhelmed, overwrought, and overweight, an everyday housewife walks into the Sonoran Desert to die.
But there's more to a desert than sand or death. There's thorns, venom, claws, heat, thirst, other people—and unexpected adventure.
As she says, "It's because your gums are receding and your hair is thinning and your neckline is sagging. It's because all you ever had was your youth, and you spent that so long ago now it's hard to remember what you bought with it. Mrs. Warner shuddered in her loosening skin, was almost running now. It's because you're scared. Lately you're so scared and so aimless and so useless you sleep half the day and panic half the night. In between, you watch TV to ward off the evil of watching yourself. So—if not death, then what?"
When she tripped over a rock—and in tripping, plunged over the edge of a cliff—Mrs. Warner had forgotten the desert, the cacti, the heat, the hunger, the thirst. All that was left was an ever increasing panic and an ever deepening desperation. And then there was the shock of falling and the screaming inside: Here we go, here we go—but don't hurt, don't hurt. Oh god, please! Don't hurt!
After that, there was nothing.
Until she woke up at the bottom of an arroyo with a lot of surviving to do. And all she had was her purse. It wasn't much to face a desert with, but Mrs. Warner, born Molly Brock, was in a fight for her life, the life she didn't want until she was just about to lose it.
What's an everyday housewife to do? In Molly's case, a lot. And every bit of it changing her from ordinary to extraordinary.
On a clear night in late June 2005, four U.S. Navy SEALs left their base in northern Afghanistan for the mountainous Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less then twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs remained alive.
This is the story of fire team leader Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of Operation Redwing, and the desperate battle in the mountains that led, ultimately, to the largest loss of life in Navy SEAL history. But it is also, more than anything, the story of his teammates, who fought ferociously beside him until he was the last one left-blasted unconscious by a rocket grenade, blown over a cliff, but still armed and still breathing. Over the next four days, badly injured and presumed dead, Luttrell fought off six al Qaeda assassins who were sent to finish him, then crawled for seven miles through the mountains before he was taken in by a Pashtun tribe, who risked everything to protect him from the encircling Taliban killers.
A six-foot-five-inch Texan, Leading Petty Officer Luttrell takes us, blow-by-blow, through the brutal training of America's warrior elite and the relentless rites of passage required by the Navy SEALs. He transports us to a monstrous battle fought in the desolate peaks of Afghanistan, where the beleaguered American team plummeted headlong a thousand feet down a mountain as they fought back through flying shale and rocks.
In this rich, moving chronicle of courage, honor, and patriotism, Marcus Luttrell delivers one of the most powerful narratives ever written about modern warfare -- and a tribute to his teammates, who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
Seventeen-year-old Rachel Cole was ecstatic when her little sister Morgan left for science camp at the University of Michigan – anything that would get Morgan out of their horrible foster home for a few weeks. Little did Rachel know that life as she knew it was about to change forever.
A suspected biological terror attack has spread over the northern half of the country causing the dead to reanimate and attack the living. The sudden attacks have catapulted Middle America into an all-out war zone. Zombies have swarmed the City of Flint and Rachel must battle through the infected streets to rescue Morgan.
Along the way, Rachel meets Cage Vance – the local star quarterback dealing with his own personal demons. Rachel is immediately attracted to Cage, but who has time for love during the zombie apocalypse?
Can Rachel and Cage’s small group of friends survive the journey to Ann Arbor and rescue Morgan? Or are they already too late?
September. A beautiful New York editor retreats to a lonely cabin on a hill in the quiet Maine beach town of Dead River—off season—awaiting her sister and friends.
Nearby, a savage human family with a taste for flesh lurks in the darkening woods, watching, waiting for the moon to rise and night to fall...
And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophisticated people and one tired old country sheriff will learn just how primitive we all are beneath the surface...and that there are no limits at all to the will to survive.
When the world ends, can love survive?
For Scarlet, raising her two daughters alone makes fighting for tomorrow an everyday battle. Nathan has a wife, but can’t remember what it’s like to be in love; only his young daughter Zoe makes coming home worthwhile. Miranda’s biggest concern is whether her new VW Bug is big enough to carry her sister and their boyfriends on a weekend escape from college finals.
When reports of a widespread, deadly “outbreak” begin to surface, these ordinary people face extraordinary circumstances and suddenly their fates are intertwined.
Recognizing they can’t outrun the danger, Scarlet, Nathan, and Miranda desperately seek shelter at the same secluded ranch, Red Hill. Emotions run high while old and new relationships are tested in the face of a terrifying enemy—an enemy who no longer remembers what it’s like to be human.
Set against the backdrop of a brilliantly realized apocalyptic world, love somehow finds a way to survive. But what happens when the one you’d die for becomes the one who could destroy you?
Regret was for people with nothing to defend, people who had no water.
Lynn knows every threat to her pond: drought, a snowless winter, coyotes, and, most importantly, people looking for a drink. She makes sure anyone who comes near the pond leaves thirsty, or doesn't leave at all.
Confident in her own abilities, Lynn has no use for the world beyond the nearby fields and forest. Having a life means dedicating it to survival, and the constant work of gathering wood and water. Having a pond requires the fortitude to protect it, something Mother taught her well during their quiet hours on the rooftop, rifles in hand.
But wisps of smoke on the horizon mean one thing: strangers. The mysterious footprints by the pond, nighttime threats, and gunshots make it all too clear Lynn has exactly what they want, and they won’t stop until they get it….
With evocative, spare language and incredible drama, danger, and romance, debut author Mindy McGinnis depicts one girl’s journey in a barren world not so different than our own.
"I'm darkness, Maddie. Stay away from men like me. You'll only get hurt."
At one time, my life was simple. Easy. But that was before the war. Now, I am no longer an average college student; I am a survivor—a woman living in a ravaged world. My future is not bright, and my life is far from perfect. The war has taken so much from me... but it isn't finished yet. It wants more. It wants my heart. My soul. The one person I can't live without. It wants Ryder Delaney.
Ryder is my best friend. The bad boy. The one person who can fight like no other and love me like no one else. He is the father of my baby. I watched him walk away one hot summer day, and I prayed he would return. I need him like I need air to breathe and water to drink. Without him, I'm lost. A light without her darkness.
Until he returns, I'll wait for him. And I believe he will return because love is powerful... And so is the light calling him home.
The Breathing Series is one girl's story of unspeakable cruelty, life-changing love, and her precarious grasp of hope.
Reason to Breathe: Emma Thomas is hiding a terrible secret. Despite her academic prowess and athletic accomplishments, she focuses on surviving high school by fading into the shadows. Without expecting it, she finds love. It challenges her to recognize her own worth—at the risk of revealing a truth that could destroy everything.
Barely Breathing: When Emma's torment is horrifyingly exposed, all those involved are still haunted by the memories. The bruises fade, but the scars and fears remain. And while some try to mend the wounds of the past, more secrets are revealed, along with a long-forgotten heartache.
The Breathing Series will have readers gasping until the very last page.
It is autumn, 1941, and a German U-boat commander and his crew set out on yet another hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. Over the coming weeks, they must brave the stormy waters of the Atlantic in their mission to seek out and destroy British supply ships. But the tide is beginning to turn against the Germans in the war for the North Atlantic.
Their targets now travel in convoys, fiercely guarded by Royal Navy destroyers, and when contact is finally made, the hunters rapidly become the hunted. As the U-boat is forced to hide beneath the surface of the sea, a cat-and-mouse game begins, where the increasing claustrophobia of the submarine becomes an enemy just as frightening as the depth charges that explode around it.
Of the 40,000 men who served on German submarines, 30,000 never returned. Written by a survivor of the U-boat fleet, Das Boot is a psychological drama merciless in its intensity, and a classic novel of World War II.