In this memoir spanning nine decades, Lieutenant Colonel C.F. Jerram (1882-1969) of the Royal Marines recounts his life and military service through both world wars. Jerram describes in candid detail his late 19th-century childhood in Devon and Cornwall, the late Victorian and Edwardian Royal Navy, the Royal Navy's Far East Station, a traditional Corps of Marines, the Gallipoli Campaign, the World War I Western Front and the interwar and World War II years. His experience and insight convey two fundamental lessons: "Know thy profession and look after those for whom you are responsible." An essay by the editor, based on other sources, provides a broader perspective on Jerram, whose approach to professional military service is still pertinent today.
And Then There Were None is the signature novel of Agatha Christie, the most popular work of the world's bestselling novelist. It is a masterpiece of mystery and suspense that has been a fixture in popular literature since it was originally published in 1939. First there were ten-a curious assortment of strangers summoned to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to any of them, is nowhere to be found. The ten guests have precious little in common except that each has a deadly secret buried deep in their own past. And, unknown to them, each has been marked for murder. Alone on the island and trapped by foul weather, one by one the guests begin to fall prey to the hidden murderer among them. With themselves as the only suspects, only the dead are above suspicion.
*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
This sweeping New York Times bestseller is “the most thorough and most captivating, most engrossing novel ever written about World War II” (Los Angeles Times). Epic in scope, Marge Piercy’s sweeping novel encompasses the wide range of people and places marked by the Second World War. Each of her ten narrators has a unique and compelling story that powerfully depicts his or her personality, desires, and fears. Special attention is given to the women of the war effort, like Bernice, who rebels against her domineering father to become a fighter pilot, and Naomi, a Parisian Jew sent to live with relatives in Detroit, whose twin sister, Jacqueline—still in France—joins the resistance against Nazi rule. The horrors of the concentration camps; the heroism of soldiers on the beaches of Okinawa, the skies above London, and the seas of the Mediterranean; the brilliance of code breakers; and the resilience of families waiting for the return of sons, brothers, and fathers are all conveyed through powerful, poignant prose that resonates beyond the page. Gone to Soldiers is a testament to the ordinary people, with their flaws and inner strife, who rose to defend liberty during the most extraordinary times.
The story of one girl's experience in the Israeli national army where strict routines, grueling marches, poor food, and lack of sleep are the norm, but service has its rewards as well.
This charming account of the voyage of two men in a small boat half way round the world from Plymouth to New Zealand in 1953 is a rare insight into a time, not long ago, when sailors had no GPS, electronics, radio or any of the mod cons that we take for granted today. Without lifejacket or a liferaft, they 'just took what came along', hand steering all the way, navigating by sextant, hand-cranking their engine and using oil lamps for light at night and for navigation. Sailors will be staggered how primitive conditions were only a few decades ago, even though it was the norm at the time. Part travelogue and part adventure story, the two friends encountered drunken harbourmasters, the mafia, the legacy of slavery and lost civilisations in the Pacific. Beautifully written, vivid in its descriptions of the two men's exploits ashore and on board, this quirky and entertaining book will be a fascinating read for sailors and non-sailors alike. 'A compelling story - I feel like I have sailed with them.' Yachting Monthly
The Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937 led some thirty million Chinese to flee their homes in terror, and live—in the words of artist and writer Feng Zikai—“in a sea of bitterness” as refugees. Keith Schoppa paints a comprehensive picture of the refugee experience in one province—Zhejiang, on the central Chinese coast—where the Japanese launched major early offensives as well as notorious later campaigns. He recounts stories of both heroes and villains, of choices poorly made amid war’s bewildering violence, of risks bravely taken despite an almost palpable quaking fear. As they traveled south into China’s interior, refugees stepped backward in time, sometimes as far as the nineteenth century, their journeys revealing the superficiality of China’s modernization. Memoirs and oral histories allow Schoppa to follow the footsteps of the young and old, elite and non-elite, as they fled through unfamiliar terrain and coped with unimaginable physical and psychological difficulties. Within the context of Chinese culture, being forced to leave home was profoundly threatening to one’s sense of identity. Not just people but whole institutions also fled from Japanese occupation, and Schoppa considers schools, governments, and businesses as refugees with narratives of their own. Local governments responded variously to Japanese attacks, from enacting scorched-earth policies to offering rewards for the capture of plague-infected rats in the aftermath of germ warfare. While at times these official procedures improved the situation for refugees, more often—as Schoppa describes in moving detail—they only deepened the tragedy.
