A political science major with three years of college under his belt, Charlie R. McNeil has planned his future, but serving in the military and fighting in a war is not part of the future he imagined. The American government thinks otherwise, however; he is drafted into the military, and sent to Korea-an assignment no one asks for. McNeil neither complains nor make waves; he goes where he's told to go and does what he's told to do. When the unexpected happens in Korea and the North Koreans cross the thirty-eighth parallel, Corporal McNeil finds himself immersed in war-a war that came so quickly after WWII that no one believed it possible and none of the military services were prepared. While McNeil moves up in military rank he never loses sight of his goal to earn a degree and work in Washington, DC. But first, he must survive Korea and return home to the United States. A military novel, "McNeil" captures the essence of war and the hardships of life on the battlefield from one young man who has other dreams.

Andy Bishop's quest begins promisingly when he leaves Columbus, Ohio, in 1914 after graduating from the University of Notre Dame. In Austria, Hungary, his goals are threefold: make contact with distant Austrian relatives, practice his nascent journalistic skills, and discover why his aristocratic ancestor, Matthias zu Windischgratz, immigrated to America so long ago. The scenery changes drastically as Andy witnesses the last stand of imperial Austrian society. He arrives just three weeks before the assassination of the Kaiser's nephew, the Habsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie. This event sparks the fateful slide toward world war and chaos for both family and friends. Andy's fateful decision to remain in the doomed Habsburg Empire after the war begins-and his irresistible attraction to a young Austrian countess-lead him to Budapest, Rome, and finally Paris, as Europe is convulsed by the greatest war since the defeat of Napoleon. Told from the perspective of Andy Bishop, "An American in Vienna" presents historical insight into the Austrian court, royal society, and the demise of a once-powerful empire as it becomes embroiled in the Great War.

It is 1962, and the US Army Special Forces is expanding to confront the communist challenge in Southeast Asia. Sergeant Jake Campbell has come a long way from the sharecropper's house he grew up in near Nickelsville, Virginia. Just three years ago, he and a friend hitched a ride to Kingsport, Tennessee, and joined the army. Now he is headed for training camp in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, unaware that he is about to undergo the biggest challenge of his life. Campbell immediately immerses himself in the Special Forces training group, anxious to prove himself. He is expecting a tough road ahead lined with mental and physical challenges, but soon finds that he must also face bigotry and class discrimination. Regardless, Campbell persists through pain, sweat, and blood and soon earns a coveted spot with the Green Berets. Ordered on a mission with First Sergeant William Booth-a man who has no love for Campbell-to Laos to train Hmong soldiers to fight the CIA's secret war, Campbell's idealistic view of the world is turned upside down as he witnesses the ugly underbelly of unfettered power, corruption, and injustice. In this fast-paced, action-packed military thriller, one soldier must fight for his life in the steamy Vietnamese jungles amidst murder, conspiracy, and a superior who harbors a secret that, if revealed, will ruin him forever.

"The Last Hookers" is intrigue, danger, action, and romance about aviators in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos Colonel Dunn who were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Their story shines light into dark corners of the NSA and CIA during covert operations in Southeast Asia.

Thessaly alienates her husband Karl, an American air force officer stationed in England, as she defends her mother, a bitter war-widow. Mum attempts to dominate Karl as she does Thessaly. The stress between the trio builds when Mum follows her daughter and Karl to the United States and Gloucester, Massachusetts.

As Karl and Thessaly's children grown up, Thessaly suffers seizures while being haunted by images of Shadowbrooks, the country house where she and her mother fled to during the stepped up bombing in World War II.

Plagued by sleepless nights, Thessaly wonders if the years she can't remember could be connected to this haunting Shadowbrooks house.

Mum comes to stay with them for a month each August which disrupts Thessaly, Karl and their children as Mum distorts and denies the life she and Thessaly had led at Shadowbrooks. Thessaly profoundly dreads her mother coming as she still attempts to dominate them. When Mum suddenly dies, Thessaly's seizures accelerate, but her medical tests are negative.

Convinced her illness is to do with Shadowbrooks. Thessaly sees a Boston psychiatrist who brilliantly unravels her Shadobrooks hauntings. After a trip back to Shadowbrooks, England, Thessaly not only discovers the disturbing story behind her mother and herself, but also the cover-up that had sent both into decades of denial

In the uncertain days before a young America would be torn apart by a war between the states, a small boy named Morgan Montgomery is orphaned and sent to live with his mother's wealthy relatives. They attend her funeral service and take the nine-year-old to live with them and grow up on their large plantation near Columbia, Tennessee.

As he begins to grow into manhood, tensions erupt to the boiling point. And for one frightening year after war breaks out, Morgan remains on the plantation, torn between his loyalty to his adopted family and his duty as a Southern man. After much trepidation, he decides to enlist in the Confederate army and ends up riding with Nathan Bedford Forrest.

The story tells of the hardships and tribulations of the war, and of his undying love for Charity, the young lady who helped nurse him back to health after he was severely wounded near her home in Mississippi. After the war's end, they are separated by circumstance, and Morgan begins his quest to find her again.

Morgan, clinging desperately to the hope that he will find her, travels to Texas. He works his way across the state, surviving any way he can, hoping that his travels will reunite him with his lost Charity.

What if the world was faced with a terrorist's nuclear threat, and there was no top secret agent with super-human, near-telepathic abilities standing by? What if the best people for the job were actually the laboratory scientists who had developed the appropriate diagnostic equipment? What if the decision-makers were bureaucrats who were possibly more concerned with their political careers than they were with the actual outcome?

What if the bad guys weren't motivated by an evil desire to control the world but by circumstance and the need to provide for their families-and the device wasn't a globe-destroying hydrogen bomb but a dusty, misplaced remnant of the Cold War?

In other words, what if the threat was real?

Guided to its termination by three distinctly different ideologies, the convergence of a series of events culminates in September, 1995, with six scientists sitting in silence deep within the Parisian catacombs, staring at an armed rogue nuclear weapon. With tens of thousands of lives hanging in the balance, they are awaiting a decision from the Control Point-a decision that they are increasingly beginning to fear might not come in time.

All heads turned as the device started to click.

Sumia Sukkar's The Boy From Aleppo Who Painted The War is about a 14-year-old boy with Asperger Syndrome who attempts to understand the Syrian conflict and its effect on his life by painting his feelings. Yasmine, his beautiful older sister, devotes herself to him, but has to cope with her own traumas when she is taken by soldiers. Their three brothers also struggle - on whether or not to take sides and the consequences of their eventual choices. The book has recently been dramatised by BBC Radio 4. The Boy From Aleppo Who Painted The War is the powerful and deeply moving debut novel from 21-year- old Sumia Sukkar. It chronicles the intimate sufferings of a family in the midst of civil war with uncommon compassion, wit and imaginative force. Told mainly from a challenged young man's perspective, it achieves the timeless dignity of a true report from an unpredictable and frightening place. It will take its place among the list of necessary books to read about how we preserve love and beauty during brutal times. The story is sure to become a beloved classic, as it follows in the footsteps of other novels touching on the lives of young people during war. "Writing my timely novel was a way for me to express my grief towards the tragedies of what's happening in my country," says Sumia. "Readers will find it interesting to experience the traumatising events of war through the eyes of an innocent young autistic boy who has lived his whole life completely dependent on his family and then having to be separated from them. It contains a blend of political events, emotional drive and Arabian tradition."

"Battle Stations--Gun Action " Ensign Charley Jason, a Reserve officer faces the searing experience of submarine warfare in the Pacific. When a Fleet type submarine went to war in the Pacific it operated mainly on the surface, attacking convoys at night, always heavily escorted as well as single vessels, rescuing downed fliers during intense air battles and shooting up enemy trawlers, junks, fishing boats and sampans. Often it had to fight to rescue downed pilots with the submarine at total risk during such daytime actions.

This WW II novel revolves around the experience of a callow youth destined to join the Fourth Infantry Division in Hrtgen Forest. The narrative traces the bonded ties of six comrades in arms, three of whom are killed and three wounded. Vividly detailed, the stressful existence of Combat Infantrymen causes some men to break. What helps those who see it through is their loyalty to one another, called a "culture of caring" by their Chaplain. In Part I our innocent recruits are sobered by incidental casualties on the way up, which initiate them into the inconsequence of death. Part II takes them into Hrtgen, a battle fought under continuous icy rain in steep-hilled terrain favoring the well entrenched Germans. Casualties often run over l00% of a Company's authorized strength. Attacks are met by unrelenting artillery and mortar fire-machine guns at close range. In a typical situation, our narrator covers a Sergeant, who, after taking out a machine gun pinning the Company down, is himself killed by a sniper. A hard-headed West Pointer insists on night action, impossible in the Forest, and, after stepping on a mine that takes his legs off, he rolls on another that hits those nearby. General Patton called Hrtgen "an epic of stark infantry combat." Part III deals with how, badly depleted in numbers and morale, the men successfully withstand the Breakthrough, thereby saving Luxembourg, a defense for which Patton gave the Fourth a Unit Citation. In the concluding Part, the narrator is wounded and put on limited assignment. He dislikes the rear echelon life-style, guys being obsessed with whores, drinking, stealing, and feasting, but he holds his peace and decides he'll return to the world wherereality matters.

"Completing the mission, they have a chance to rescue, as Mickey put it, "out of all the people we've eliminated somebody in Washington had a hard on for, how many damsels in distress have we run across?" "
JD Volt was assigned to room with Mickey Dix his senior year in high school through junior college at a deep south military academy. Their constant efforts to find ways to get away from the academy to seek out members of the fair sex led them to join, enroll and try out for any team that traveled; the rifle, drill and football teams.

After graduation from junior college, they were approached by a special forces officer to be inducted into an eighteen month training regimen as a special forces sniper team. They spend the next twenty on active duty and retire when a new regime moves into the White house and immediately makes gay rights an issue in the military.

An older gentleman clad in a rumpled three piece worsted suit that reminded JD of the benevolent God, George Burns played in a movie offers them contract employment to terminate with extreme prejudice, a Colombian drug lord that both the U.S. and Colombian Governments want removed with no one knowing exactly who did it as reprisals against Colombian officials would be severe.

Can friendship survive in a divided world? Written on the eve of the Holocaust as a series of letters between a Jew in America and his German friend, Kressmann Taylor's classic novel is a haunting tale of a society poisoned by Nazism.

First published in 1938, Address Unknown met with immediate success in English but was banned in Europe by the Nazis. Tragically prescient about what was to come, it was one of the earliest works of fiction to warn against the growing dangers of fascism and antisemitism in Europe. It became an international bestseller and has been translated into more than twenty languages.

A novel of enduring impact with a memorable sting in its tail, Address Unknown stands as a powerful reminder of the dangers posed by the rhetoric of intolerance.