Highpockets War Stories is an eloquent account of combat leadership in Korea and Vietnam. Colonel Peter L. Hilgartner is widely recognized in the Marine Corps as a successful combat leader, first as a junior officer in Korea and later commanding the First Battalion, Fifth Marines fighting the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. Hilgartner tells of leading troops in counter-guerilla action, and major battles with North Vietnamese troops -- Union I, Union II and Swift -- to control the strategic Que Son Valley. His story gives never-before-told, vivid descriptions of Marines in hand-to-hand combat with North Vietnamese troops from the perspective of Marines who were there. Every grunt will appreciate this gripping account.

Darren Hopkins, a young, naive international businessman without government experiences is hired as a research analyst with the President's National Security Committee and suddenly finds himself embroiled in a highly divisive struggle. He learns that so-called super patriots are acquiring weaponry from the Mid-East and that the CIA is trying to track the shipments. But the CIA fails and the potential volatility of a link between America's domestic terrorists and international terrorists sends chilling shock waves throughout the nation. Secret deliberations of a newly formed Terrorism Task Force are constantly leaked to the domestic terrorists. It becomes impossible to trust anyone. Old friendships are torn asunder and families are ripped apart. The unbelievable turns believable as domestic terrorism erupts at all levels of American life and no citizen is left unscathed. Are the self-styled super patriots capable of doing what Nazi Germany and other nations have been unable to accomplish--bring the U.S. government to its knees? DON E. POST has an MA in sociology, MTh in theology, and a PhD in educational anthropology. A Professor and Dean for many years, he has worked extensively throughout the world as an international business consultant. He is the author of numerous books and articles.

When the raid is completed that rainy March night in 1072 A.D., Charles the Merciless counts his spoils. He and his raiders have captured twentyfive men, fourteen women, five dozen gold coins, twenty-five small silver bars, an assortment of jewelry, and one baby boy with blond hair, green eyes, and a telling birthmark.

Sold into slavery, the boy, John-the son of Robert and Mary Joinville and the grandson of Baron William Joinville-leads a difficult life at the Abbey of Lille. Tutored by a monk, John becomes not only a talented shepherd, but an educated young man. John yearns to become a knight. When his opportunity arises, this shepherd boy shows his true mettle as a leader and a warrior. As a knight of Baron Legran, he and his compatriots join God's Crusades where the battles never seem to end.

The Arab and Turkish people have never forgotten the Crusades, even 1000 years after the fact. "Gods of War" provides a unique, historical look through John's eyes at the advance of Christendom into the heart of Islam.

In 409 BC, the Greek historian Herodotus described an Athenian soldier who had no physical battle injuries but suffered permanent blindness after seeing the death of a fellow soldier. It has been reported down through the ages and given a dozen different names from "combat stress reaction" to "the 1,000-yard stare" to "survivor syndrome." For Sergeant Bryan Hamilton, it would eventually be recognized as "post-traumatic stress disorder" or PTSD. After serving two combat tours in Vietnam, Bryan Hamilton returns to his small hometown in rural central Pennsylvania in search of some sense of normalcy. Although Bryan believes he is the same quiet, clean-cut young man that departed for military service some three years earlier, his family is increasingly convinced the Bryan they once knew may be gone forever. Bryan's only salvation may be Cindi Roget, the pretty young liberal coed he meets at University Park, the main campus of Penn State University. Although the two have absolutely nothing in common, they fall in love and prove once again the old adage that opposites really do attract. About the Author: R.T. Budd served combat tours in Vietnam with the 1st Air Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal). Forty years later he freely admits that "the deepest wounds of war need not be physical." The damage to the psyche may not be visible, but it is just as real as the blood that is spilled. Budd lives with his wife of 38 years near Hershey, Pennsylvania. http://SBPRA.com/RTBudd

Lieutenant Xavier Moran, USMC, better known as "X," is out of the Afghanistan battlefield-his first reprieve in over sixty days. As he arrives at the sprawling airbase at Bagram with nothing more than a pack, a weapon, and a reputation for getting things done, he secretly wishes he was back in the fight, where life is helter-skelter. When he is assigned a tough mission by Colonel Fran Matthews, X has no idea he is about to become immersed in the rampant corruption that surrounds the Afghan war.

Assigned to assume command of an isolated marine rifle company in disarray, X faces many challenges, including bringing casualties in line with operations, raising the marine's morale, and facing off with the current battalion commander. As he heads to Kotjay to begin his mission, X is apprehensive. He must succeed; failure could mean the end of his career-or the end of his life.

In this action-packed military tale, X bravely stands up to the entrenched powers in Afghanistan. Caught between doing what is right and doing what is expected, he makes powerful enemies intent on ensuring his failure. Only time will tell if they will be successful.

Sophie follows her husband, Dr. Alfred Fritze from the rich city life in Prussia to the poverty of the American frontier. Immediately, the lush green countryside and crisp clean air lulls her into a false sense of security. Until her very survival is challenged by the first long frigid Minnesota winter so cold it swallows up hope and leaves privation in its stead.

Although the Dakota people are friendly as a whole, there are those who hate the whites. Bigotry spreads on both sides of the river. Men, who would gain from their demise, harass and belittle the Indian way of life. Then in August of 1862, Chief Little Crow, one of the calmer voices of the Dakota Nation, declares war on the "cut-hairs and those who take the white ways." Caught in the middle of a civil war, Sophie loses her son and is taken captive by Killing Ghost who plans to make her his princess.

Captain Parker declares war on a politically powerful traitor to England. Immediately, Parker becomes a marked man. All hell is visited upon him, but Parker has been fighting battles since he was seven years old and is not easily daunted. To survive, he fights one brutal battle after another, descending into war's inexpressible darkness.

The author of this well-crafted thriller stages his war from a perspective that sheds light on our post 9/11 experiences. We observe the overextended British Empire fighting two wars amidst the corruption resulting from war's confusion and excess.

This is an 18th century sea story. It is, however, more than just a sea story-in the way that "Heart of War" is more than a steamer trip into the Congo. For its brilliance and its honesty, it will win a place in the reader's heart.

"Hal Weidner has emerged to write a spectacular yarn in the tradition of Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander." Weidner's imagination creates a hair-raising thriller that will keep you rooted to your easy chair with the doors locked. Weidner's twists, turns and subplots keep us guessing by pitting good and evil against an uneasy grey. I could not put this book down." -Robert Sain, psychiatrist and author.

"In Hal Weidner's novel, the beauty and strangeness of the past and of the sea are evoked in spare and lovely prose. This novel brings to life a fully imagined reality in all its splendor. "Heart of War" is suspenseful and languorous, sparse and lyrical, by a novelist fully capable of transporting the reader skillfully to its world."
-Laura Kasischke, Internationally renowned poet and novelist.

"Hal Weidner's vivid depiction of warfare, intrigue, treachery, and heroism among British, American and French factions during the 18th Century mirrors eerily the tensions that we see and imagine shaping the world today."
-Tom Zimmerman. Editor, "The Huron River Review."

First Lieutenant Joshua Jeffreys comes face to face with the reality that "war is hell" during the Battle of the Bulge. His unit is torn apart by the advancing German forces, and he is thrust into a nightmare of blood, death, and faith-shaking trials. Jeffreys gathers together a group of stragglers, leading them behind enemy lines. Lost and wounded, this band of strangers must quickly come together in order to survive. As war is raging around him, First Lieutenant Jeffreys navigates the battlefield while struggling internally with nagging doubts that cause his faith to waver. The outcome of his personal torment is as questionable as is the fate of his small group of GIs. The Battle of the Bulge cost the United States Army thousands of soldiers--captured, killed, wounded. If Jeffreys makes a mistake, he and his men will be part of these casualties, but the torture of his soul may be the ultimate cost of this battle.

Coming of age during the Vietnam War, Mike McCurry decides to join the U.S. Army rather than be drafted or take a fl ight to Canada. He is assigned to the Army Security Agency and begins a life of covert operation as a voice interceptor.

In the late 1960s, McCurry arrives at Teufelsberg, a super-secret listening station in West Berlin. McCurry and his fellow operatives have direct access to some of the most sensitive conversations of top offi cials of the East German government's Central Committee in East Berlin. Unfortunately, McCurry's group of interpreters and analysts are supervised by regular Army personnel, who have no idea of the tasks being carried out by those under their command.

McCurry's supervisors are more interested in how their troops perform on the drill field than how they are fulfilling their assigned intelligence mission, and that doesn't sit well with McCurry when national security is at stake. It doesn't take him long to recognize that it will require a combination of guile and humor to overcome the obstacles put in his path by clueless supervisors.

But the incompetence of the leadership ultimately becomes deadly, forcing McCurry to make a choice between following orders ... or facing a court martial.

There's a new breed of terrorist living in America.He's a nationalized citizen educated at a prestigious university, trained by a high-tech corporation, and all the while he's been biding his time, building his army, waiting to strike. When he sets his diabolical plans in motion, there's only one man and one organization that can stop him.Jason Talbot is the leader of Strike Squad Alpha, an elite fighting force in the Terrorism Prevention Agency (TEPA), a secret organization within the Department of Homeland Security. He is authorized to operate outside the law to put a stop to terrorist attacks before they occur. But now he faces his greatest challenge. From a hijacked oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea, to a castle in the woods of Northern Virginia, to an abandoned missile base in Washington State, Jason Talbot, aided by the capable Sarah Ruger of the NTSB, races to stop a modern-day Armageddon.'"Engineering Evil" grips you from the beginning and will not let you go! This author knows his way around the guarded world of special operations. You will not be disappointed!"-Lieutenant Colonel Storm Savage, U.S. Army

The winner of the National Book Award returns with a moving story of a family of women drawn together by the trials of the times. The women in the Hand family are no strangers to either controversy or sadness. Those traits seem, in fact, to be a part of their family s heritage, one that stretches back through several generations and many wars. A Dangerous Age is a celebration of the strength of these women and of the bonds of blood and shared loss that hold them together. Louise, Winifred, and Olivia are reconnecting the pieces of their lives and rediscovering love, but each is unwittingly on a collision course with a seemingly distant war that is really never more than a breath away. By turns humorous and heartbreaking, this finely honed novel about the centuries-old struggle for women who are left to carry on with life when their men go off to war is by a writer the Washington Post says should be declared a national cultural treasure. "

Everyone is gunning for the New Guy
Gabriel Sauers of Two Squad is a soldier, newly arrived in Vietnam--a country too beautiful to invite so savagely unreal a war. But Gabriel won't be a New Guy for long. He'll go through incoming mortars, he'll see the enemy alive. He'll wander through a hell that will turn the green recruit lucky enough to survive into a death-hardened veteran, longing for nothing more than a return to the world of hot baths and cold beer, no bullets, and no noise. Now, 40 years later, he is grappling with an action on the verge of his grandson Seth's deployment to Iraq that will change both their lives forever.
Critics Praise Don Bodey's "F.N.G"
"One of the most hard-hitting of all the vietnam novels" -- The Boston Herald
"A powerful social document and a well-written, deeply moving first novel...highly recommended" --The Library Journal "Raw, profane...a candidly moving portrayal of the average American soldier in Vietnam, who often found courage when he did not seek it--but little of anything else." --Chicago Sun-Times
"The day to day grind, beautifully and touchingly rendered by...a Vietnam veteran, is told with an unrelenting accumulation of detail." --The New York Times Book Review
"Bodey packs considerable emotional freight...into a style that remains deliberately supple, cool, and declarative...An impressive novel." --The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A harrowing vividly written account of hell with a leavening of light moments. A revelation for one who wasn't there. Painful for those who were." -Bob Mason, author of "CHICKENHAWK"
""All Quiet on the Western Front" drives its readers to the front of World War I. "F.N.G" helicopters its readers to a new front: Vietnam." -Bestsellers
More info at www.DonBodey.com
The Reflections of History Series from Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com
(an Imprint of Loving Healing Press)

Autumn 1960. Nikita Khrushchev is politically adept, visionary, and locked in a fight with the Politburo and a battle with Mao and the Chinese. His country and his political future are in trouble because he has opened doors to the West and espoused the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. Meanwhile, the arms race is crushing the Soviet economy and there is unrest throughout the Communist empire. Changes are imperative. The army must be reduced, money redirected to a consumer economy, and the US neutralized. But the old boars of the Red Army will not be easily displaced; its leaders are intent on saving their country from Khrushchev. A cabal of senior Red Army patriots are led by a man who the world thinks is Khrushchev's unswerving toady. The game is treason, and the tools are Albania's mad-dog leaders, for whom assassination is second nature. What begins subtly soon turns brittle. A rocket technician disappears before a major accident at the Soviet Space Center. In Belgrade a psychotic CIA agent escapes an ambush, vows revenge, and disappears. Khrushchev turns to the Special Operations Group, the elite hunting team featured in the author's prequel, THE BERKUT. In Washington the Bay of Pigs invasion is in the final planning stages, and its timing is tied to the missing CIA agent. He must be found. Two teams, one from Russia and one from the United States, begin a desperate hunt that leads them on an inward spiral toward each other and to a lethal showdown at the 1961 summit in Vienna. There they find themselves in an uneasy alliance as they race to find the American renegade and the Albanian death team, both groups pawns in a global chess game. With a vast canvas of disparate characters and events, The Domino Conspiracy is a coruscating tour de force. Breathtakingly suspenseful, it lays open the myths of the Soviet monolith and reveals the delicate seeds of glasnost and perestroika, movements that were not to flower until three decades later. Readers know how the Soviet story ended; now they will see how it all began.

Federal surgeon Erik Reichmann searches for a contraband of medical supplies in Savannah during Sherman's March to the sea, and discovers Layla Stuart, apothecarian, midwife, and smuggler up to her neck in intrigue, she in a photo and letter he retrieved off her brother a year before. Told her twin was killed by a sawbonz, Layla believed her beau left the Yankee for dead. Erik wants revenge and his mother's ring on Layla's finger. Trying various means of seduction, he lodges in the Stuart household to find the whereabouts of the shipment and Layla's beau (thought to be her husband). He learns the truth of her marital status and against his better judgement, cannot avoid the building flames of desire for this willful woman. Layla wants no part of this Yankee, but she is weak to his advances, good looks, strange philosophy and bedside manner. Intrigue surmounts when Erik's adversary exposes the "truth" about her twin. Although Layla loses all trust in Erik, she realizes she's smitten. To discover the truth as much as these feelings tearing her apart, she takes the shipment to find her beau. Unfortunately the trap has been set. Layla is shot, literally blinded and nearly drowned until Erik rescues and heals her back to health. Layla discovers passion and unconditional love, and soon Erik convinces her to marry him before he leaves Savannah. While he follows Sherman through the Carolinas, Layla's beau returns. Blind, she still knows the truth despite his lies, and discovers the ring she use to wear is Erik's mother's. Maddened with jealousy, her beau ignites a fire to Layla's shop and home. As Erik saves her from a burning inferno, her sight returns and she is forced to make a choice between the two loves of her life.

This is the story of a skinny Italian boy from an immigrant Sicilian family who goes to war to fight for his country and ends up playing the taps on Mount Suribachi as the colors are raised. Travel with Peter as he explores the journey from boyhood to manhood and experiences a terrible battle in the fight for American freedom along the way. Learn the Sirna family secret and what it meant to Peter to be a real American boy; but most of all, take the time as Peter did to give tribute to those brave American men and boys who died on the battlefield of Iwo Jima. This is Peter's story, the story of the boy who played the taps on Iwo Jima.