A science fiction epic from "the best writer in America" (Tom Clancy)—Hugo and Nebula award-winning author John Varley. Fleeing Earth after an alien invasion, the human race stands on the threshold of evolution. Their new home is Luna, a moon colony blessed with creature comforts, prolonged lifespans, digital memories, and instant sex changes. But the people of Luna are bored, restless, suicidal—and so is the computer that monitors their existence...
The author of "Run Silent, Run Deep" and "Around the World Submerged" relates the highlights of his career as a submariner, beginning in World War II with the Battle of Midway and culminating with his role as a consultant on the nuclear power program. 13 photos.
By late 1973 America's ground troops had left South Vietnam. But the South China Sea was still patrolled by the US Navy and its carrier battle groups, which continued to sail the coastal waters of Vietnam and the Tonkin Gulf. Caught in the restlessness of being in neither war nor peace, missions were flown, sorties counted, bombs loaded and missiles and rockets armed. The saga of Vietnam was not over yet and as America strained to put the war behind, the sailors of Task Force 77, known as the "Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club," continued their vigilance. Wedged between the withdrawal from Vietnam and confrontations with the Soviets in the Cold War, Task Force 77 faithfully plied the green waters of the South China Sea. The situation was best summed up by a popular phrase from that time: "If you're not confused, you don't understand the situation."Jeff Lee Manthos was a helicopter aircrewman during this period, deploying on aircraft carriers in the South China Sea, Tonkin Gulf, Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. The flight deck was the center of activity for him and the rest of the air wing. Given rare time off from long hard days and nights of flight operations at sea, aircrews and sailors would congregate on the flight deck for sun and relaxation. As a result, the flight deck was affectionately called "Steel Beach."
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Jeff Shaara's No Less Than Victory. Jeff Shaara, America’s premier author of military historical fiction, brings us the centerpiece of his epic trilogy of the Second World War. General Dwight Eisenhower once again commands a diverse army that must find its single purpose in the destruction of Hitler’s European fortress. His primary subordinates, Omar Bradley and Bernard Montgomery, must prove that this unique blend of Allied armies can successfully confront the might of Adolf Hitler’s forces, who have already conquered Western Europe. On the coast of France, German commander Erwin Rommel fortifies and prepares for the coming invasion, acutely aware that he must bring all his skills to bear on a fight his side must win. But Rommel’s greatest challenge is to strike the Allies on his front, while struggling behind the lines with the growing insanity of Adolf Hitler, who thwarts the strategies Rommel knows will succeed. Meanwhile, Sergeant Jesse Adams, a no-nonsense veteran of the 82nd Airborne, parachutes with his men behind German lines into a chaotic and desperate struggle. And as the invasion force surges toward the beaches of Normandy, Private Tom Thorne of the 29th Infantry Division faces the horrifying prospects of fighting his way ashore on a stretch of coast more heavily defended than the Allied commanders anticipate–Omaha Beach. From G.I. to general, this story carries the reader through the war’s most crucial juncture, the invasion that altered the flow of the war, and, ultimately, changed history.
Struggling with a terrible accident that devastated her family, young Pip meets artist Matt Bowles, whose friendship helps Pip and her mother heal, until an unresolved issue from Matt's past compromises their progress.
An American expatriate in Rome unearths his family legacy in this sweeping novel by the acclaimed author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini A Southerner living abroad, Jack McCall is scarred by tragedy and betrayal. His desperate desire to find peace after his wife’s suicide draws him into a painful, intimate search for the one haunting secret in his family’s past that can heal his anguished heart. Spanning three generations and two continents, from the contemporary ruins of the American South to the ancient ruins of Rome, from the unutterable horrors of the Holocaust to the lingering trauma of Vietnam, Beach Music sings with life’s pain and glory. It is a novel of lyric intensity and searing truth, another masterpiece among Pat Conroy’s legendary and beloved novels. Praise for Beach Music “Astonishing . . . stunning . . . The range of passions and subjects that bring life to every page is almost endless.”—The Washington Post Book World “Magnificent . . . clearly Conroy’s best.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Blockbuster writing at its best.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “Pat Conroy’s writing contains a virtue now rare in most contemporary fiction: passion.”—The Denver Post “A powerful, heartfelt tale.”—Houston Chronicle
Part of a trilogy covering the last year of fighting in the European theater of World War II, and in time for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Sand and Steel gives us the full story of the Allied invasion of France.
MISSING PERSONS is the first book in the new Buddy Steel mystery series by New York Times best selling author, Michael Brandman. Steel...smart, aggressive, ironic, spare and cynical...has been content working homicide at the LAPD until his father, the legendary Sheriff Burton Steel, falls ill with Lou Gehrig's disease. Sheriff Steel is headquartered in Freedom, a privileged coastal community located a hundred miles north of Los Angeles. His health failing, he asks his son Buddy to come home to cover his back and to groom him to be his successor. Buddy reluctantly agrees. He returns to Freedom despite having outgrown its small town limits, wary of his father's authoritarianism. No sooner does he hit town than Buddy learns the wife of the high-flying star of a Freedom based world-renowned television ministry has gone missing. A visit to the woman's home leads to a hostile confrontation with her husband's family and Buddy's realization that something greater than simply a missing person is at stake. Allegiance between father and son provides the backdrop for Buddy's complex investigation of twisted families, avaricious con artists, violent gangs, drugs, corruption, and murder. And added to the mix is an enigmatic femme fatale who succeeds in upending Buddy's tenets regarding contemporary relationships. MISSING PERSONS is its own book, yet crime fiction fans will find it a joy to trace its literary lineage from Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker through to Sue Grafton and Michael Connelly.
“[An] irreverent and remarkably candid memoir about growing up in wealthy eighties San Francisco . . . rollicking, ruthless . . . ultimately generous-hearted.” —Vogue “A vivid mix of brio, self-awareness and sophistication . . . writing well is indeed the best revenge.” —The New York Times Book Review “A monumental piece of work.” —Kirkus Reviews “In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess.” With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families. Sean's blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City) is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse, "eight hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows full of water and bridges and hills." His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms, "You should wash your hands first, before you use the urinal. Not after. Your penis isn't dirty. But your hands are." When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope, hoping each one might come back to San Francisco and persuade his father to rejoin the family. Instead, Sean is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community," in Italy. With its multiplicity of settings and kaleidoscopic mix of preoccupations-sex, Russia, jet helicopters, seismic upheaval, boarding schools, Middle Earth, skinheads, home improvement, suicide, skateboarding, Sovietology, public transportation, massage, Christian fundamentalism, dogs, Texas, global thermonuclear war, truth, evil, masturbation, hope, Bethlehem, CT, eventual salvation (abridged list)—Oh the Glory of It All is memoir as bildungsroman as explosion.
"A ... novel about a young American woman who finds love and fulfillment in the course of her involvement with a Downton Abbey-style TV show in England"--
