Thousands of travelers become stuck after ISIS attacks the United States, leaving the nation's physical, electrical, and technological infrastructure in tatters. Jim Powell and his co-workers are stranded in a hotel in Richmond, Virginia, about five hundred miles from home. He and several others embark on a journey to try to get back home, by any means possible, in a world with scarce law enforcement where the rules of civilized society no longer apply.
A legendary detective uncovers Hong Kong’s darkest crimes: “An ambitious narrative brilliantly executed . . . What an achievement!” (John Burdett, author of Bangkok 8). From award-winning author Chan Ho-kei, The Borrowed tells the story of Kwan Chun-dok, a detective who’s worked in Hong Kong fifty years. Across six decades of Hong Kong’s volatile history, the narrative follows Kwan through the Leftist Riot of 1967, when a bombing plot threatens many lives; the conflict between the HK Police and ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) in 1977; the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989; the Handover in 1997; and the present day of 2013, when Kwan is called on to solve his final case, the murder of a local billionaire, in a modern Hong Kong that increasingly resembles a police state. Along the way we meet Communist rioters, ultra-violent gangsters, pop singers enmeshed in the high-stakes machinery of star-making, and a people always caught in the shifting balance of political power, whether in London or Beijing. Tracing a broad historical arc, The Borrowed reveals just how closely everything is connected, how history repeats itself, and how we have come full circle to repeat the political upheaval and societal unrest of the past. It is a gripping, brilliantly constructed novel from a talented new voice.
An ELECTRIFYING story of survival . . . In THE BORROWED WORLD, Franklin Horton showed us an America brought to its knees by a nationwide terror attack. The target? The American infrastructure. Cell phone connections became sporadic. Electrical power began to fail. Fuel was unavailable, stranding travelers wherever their vehicles ran dry. One of those stranded travelers, Jim Powell, and his group of coworkers were frantically trying to make their way home using the gear on their backs. It was a journey wracked with violent, deadly encounters and exhausting physical demands, pushing each of them to the brink of their abilities. Meanwhile, on the other side of Virginia, Jim's family was facing their own struggle as desperate neighbors began to turn on each other with increasing brutality. In the second book in this series, ASHES OF THE UNSPEAKABLE, we find Jim and his group still working to get home. While just a few days have passed since the initial attacks, the country is quickly descending into a desperate, chaotic landscape where nothing comes easy. Conflict becomes unavoidable as a growing number of people realize there are no boundaries in a world without law. At home, Jim's family is forced into seclusion as the local jail discharges its starving inmates, leading to the arrival of a new and extremely violent presence in their valley. This new arrival is intent on driving families from their homes and taking their possessions. As Jim fights to reach them, his wife Ellen struggles to keep their family safe while neighbors begin to disappear, and homes burn to the ground each night.
Over the last century mankind has irrevocably damaged the environment through the unscrupulous greed of big business and our own willful ignorance. Here are the strikingly poignant accounts of disasters whose names live in infamy: Chernobyl, Bhopal, Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, Love Canal, Minamata and others. And with these, the extraordinary and inspirational stories of the countless men and women who fought bravely to protect the communities and environments at risk.
When World War II “borrows” the men in seven-year-old Gerda’s family, the German government sends them three new men in return: Gabriel, Fermaine, and Albert, French prisoners of war who must sleep in an outbuilding and work the farm until the war is over. Gerda knows they are supposed to treat the men as enemies, but it doesn’t seem fair. Can’t they invite them into the warm house for one meal? What harm could it do to be friendly? Writing from her mother’s childhood memories of Germany during World War II, Michelle Barker shares the story of one family’s daring kindness in a time of widespread anger and suspicion. Renné Benoit’s illustrations bring warmth to the era, showing the small ways in which a forbidden friendship bloomed: good food, a much-loved doll, a secret Christmas tree. Family photographs and an Author’s Note give further insight into the life of Gerda, the little girl who proved that it isn’t so far from Feinde (enemies) to Freunde (friends).
"An ELECTRIFYING story of survival . . . " In his bestselling novels, The Borrowed World and Ashes of the Unspeakable, Franklin Horton showed us a nation facing societal collapse from a coordinated ISIS attack on the American infrastructure. Most of the country is without power, communication, and fuel. As a result of the attack, a group of business travelers in Virginia found themselves among the millions stranded on the highways with no idea how they would be getting home. In this third installment, Legion of Despair, the country is teetering on the brink of anarchy. While one of the stranded travelers, Jim Powell, made it home and is working to establish a safe, sustainable enclave for his family, his co-workers Gary and Alice are not faring as well. After spending hundreds of painful miles dreaming of his reunion with his family, Gary arrives home only to find his family under attack. Now he must face the painful decision as to whether his family's plan to bug-in is viable or whether they may need greater numbers and a better location to survive in this collapsing nation. While Gary's homecoming is bittersweet, he has at least found his way into the arms of his family. His co-worker Alice has awakened on the cold, concrete floor of a basement in Bluefield, Virginia. She is bound and chained to a support column. She doesn't know if she will ever see her son or husband again. All she knows for certain is that the man in front of her has already brutally killed her friend, Rebecca, and unless she finds a way out, he will kill her, too.
Amanda Hardy and Chris Chandler have been living comfortably at the Double H Ranch where they took sanctuary after the EMP. Deciding it was time to head to Austin, where they both have relatives, they leave the safety of the ranch to embark on a journey filled with unknown perils. They have meticulously planned for the trip, carrying extra food, ammo, and water, and they think they are prepared for every possible contingency, except for one. Amanda hasn't been completely truthful with Chandler about her past -- a past that will have tragic consequences.
"Rock-solid characters, buzz-saw action and backstories deserving of books of their own. Amazing..." Conor Maguire nearly lost his daughter Barb when she was three years old, injured by the drunk driver that killed his wife. When the justice system failed him, Conor -- the son and grandson of IRA bombers -- retaliated against the driver in dramatic and gruesome fashion. While an ironclad alibi prevented the police from pinning the murder on Conor, it did not prevent a covert agency within the US government from recruiting the talented young bomber and machinist. For over twenty-five years, Conor designed and built custom weapons of death and destruction at his compound in the mountains of Virginia. Then a series of devastating terror attacks brought down the United States. Conor and Barb assumed they were safe in their secure compound. They had food and a water source. They were armed and highly-trained. Then Barb was kidnapped. The kidnappers, needing slave labor for their farm, didn't know why Conor was known as The Mad Mick. They didn't know the fear and respect his name invoked in the shadowy world of covert operations. They didn't know that when it came to protecting his family, he was without conscience, without compassion, and without equal. But they would soon find out.
We Borrowed Gentleness interrogates the innateness of pain and forms of destruction—through natural disaster, through God, through family, and through the power structures and patriarchal violence that embeds itself in language and cultural memory. Poems critique and challenge the patriarchal narratives that dominate American history. The poems leave the question open of whether man, men, a father and son, are redeemable after the surge of rising white nationalism in America. And yet, there are poems that find, still, bits of joy and perhaps a shred of hope. By juxtaposing poems of louder narrative imagination with quieter poems that explore intimate failings within a family, often portrayed with a realist aesthetic, the book attempts to work through the essential fault in man, in men—in the structures that they design and maintain.
This imaginative new fantasy will charm fans of the Ranger’s Apprentice and Rick Riordan. Denizen Hardwick is an orphan, and his life is, well, normal. Sure, in storybooks orphans are rescued from drudgery when they discover they are a wizard or a warrior or a prophesized king. But this is real life—orphans are just kids without parents. At least that’s what Denizen thought. . . . On a particularly dark night, the gates of Crosscaper Orphanage open to a car that almost growls with power. The car and the man in it retrieve Denizen with the promise of introducing him to a long-lost aunt. But on the ride into the city, they are attacked. Denizen soon learns that monsters can grow out of the shadows. And there is an ancient order of knights who keep them at bay. Denizen has a unique connection to these knights, but everything they tell him feels like a half-truth. If Denizen joins the order, is he fulfilling his destiny, or turning his back on everything his family did to keep him alive?
