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.

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

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.

Will the coming war divide them . . . ? For as long as she can remember Peggy O'Shea has been expected to work at the family dairy, look after her younger siblings, and eventually marry cow-keeper Martin Gallagher. And that's the way it has predictably gone, apart from one glorious summer when at the age of eight she meets handsome Anthony Giardano. But there's bad blood between the Irish O'Sheas and the Italian Giardanos, so perhaps for the sake of both of their families, it's a good thing when Anthony suddenly disappears. Ten years later at the start of the war, Peggy bumps into Anthony again. But as they begin to rekindle their friendship, Italy joins forces with Germany and Liverpool turns on its Italian residents overnight, making any relationship between Peggy and Anthony impossible . . . The Girl From Liverpool is a gritty World War Two historical saga from Elizabeth Morton, acclaimed author of Angel of Liverpool.

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.

Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life - and the fate of his country - forever changed. Together with his sister-in-law, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile in Chile. There, they find themselves enmeshed in a rich web of characters who come together in love and tragedy over the course of four generations, destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world.

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."

During World War II, Bernie Abraham is unfairly punished by his anti-Semitic captain. The surprise Nazi attack captures him with thousands of his division. He escapes to the Americans, who suspect he's one of the spies they're catching and promptly shooting.

Forty years ago during the Vietnam War, as a Navy SEAL team was executing a daring mission deep inside enemy territory, they watched a plane crash into the Cambodian jungle. Now, possessing new intelligence that the plane contained South Vietnam's gold bullion, retired SEAL Team Commander Jake Boucher re-assembles his men to search for the gold. But riches are not the only thing found. What Jake and his team discover may cost them their lives. They find themselves targeted by two superpowers who will risk war to silence them. A vast conspiracy is underway, and only Jake and his men can stop it.if they survive.

"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.

"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.