A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR – 'a dark remembrance of 1953, when nuclear annihilation was only the press of a button away'. January 1953. Eight years on from the most destructive conflict in human history, the Cold War enters its deadliest phase. An Iron Curtain has descended across Europe, and hostilities have turned hot on the Korean peninsula as the United States and Soviet Union clash in an intractable and bloody proxy war. Former wartime allies have grown far apart. An ageing Winston Churchill, back in Downing Street, yearns for peace with the Kremlin – but new American President Dwight Eisenhower cautions the West not to drop its guard. Joseph Stalin, implacable as ever, conducts vicious campaigns against imaginary internal enemies. Meanwhile, the pace of the nuclear arms race has become frenetic. The Soviet Union has finally tested its own atom bomb, as has Britain. But in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the United States has detonated its first thermonuclear device, dwarfing the destruction unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the first time, the Doomsday Clock is set at two minutes to midnight, with the risk of a man-made global apocalypse increasingly likely. As the Cold War powers square up, every city has become a potential battleground and every citizen a target. 1953 is set to be a year of living dangerously.
"If you are a believer this book is a must read. If you are a sceptic this is a must read for you too. If you think you are too "intellectual" for Christian belief let this book tell you how wrong you are and inspire you to try a better way with God, instead of without Him. Highly recommended - a great Australian book which will blow you away." (Marian Klitzke, (Tasmania), a retired social worker and ex-owner of a Christian bookshop. Emailed to the author and posted on You-tube with the promo.) Trained at the University of New South Wales, Dr Ern Crocker is an experienced nuclear medicine physician, and the first to practise ultrasound in Australia. As he reconciled his Christian faith with his understanding of medicine, Dr Crocker became aware that God was working alongside him during an after-hours medical emergency. In this book, Dr Crocker recounts this life-changing encounter with the miraculous power of God, and also presents the testimonies of many other doctors who, like him, have experienced the presence of a "silent partner" as they carry out their medical duties. Readers will be amazed at these insiders' accounts of how God intervenes in the world of medicine today! "An essential read for those struggling with the considerable challenge of integrating a passion for the science of medicine, the art of compassionate holistic care and a love of the God who has created them." Dr Michael Burke MBBS, PhD, FRACGP, FAICD Christian Medical and Dental Fellowship of Australia "It is my hope that this book will encourage a large number of people to recognize that their hope lies with God, rather than with themselves." Ben Carson MD, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Professor of Neurological Surgery, Oncology, Plastic Surgery, and Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University. Author of Gifted Hands "This is an inspirational book. I recommend it to all, but especially to students and young professionals in health care. Over and over again it shows that God is faithful to those who seek him and intervenes in the lives of his followers. He is the healer, whether it be through medical or miraculous means. May it encourage those in the medical world to go after God more and more and see his kingdom come in health care in the nations." Dr Ken Curry, Health Care In Christ, Australia "To some, a Christian doctor is an oxymoron in our day and age. Dr Ern Crocker in his book Nine Minutes Past Midnight demonstrates keen intellectual precision whole at the same time positioning himself in a very real faith. I love the reality of the book. I enjoy the stories of incredible medical and technological breakthrough. I am in awe when healing comes when doctors know that it was not their efforts alone that won the day. Both types are stories of divine intervention. I am comforted that others struggle with the reality that healing is not effected in every case, either by divine or by natural means. The reality of our limitations as shared in this book, serves to remind us that there is still much to learn, and much to keep us humble, even while celebrating great success. This book and its heroes are worth celebrating." David Crabtree, Senior Pastor, DaySpring Church, Australia "Nine Minutes Past Midnight is a compelling book, demonstrating perfectly what it looks like when the kingdom of heaven is expressed through the hands of those in the medical field. With interviews and testimonies from professionals all over the world, Dr Ernest Crocker has courageously painted a clear picture of what it looks like when the hand of God is upon and working through doctors surrendered to Him. This book will encourage your faith as you read about the many who have encountered God and have successfully carried Him into the world of medicine." Bill Johnson, Senior Pastor, Bethel Church, California. Author of When Heaven Invades Earth and Secrets To Imitating God Nine Minutes Past Midnight is essentially a compilation of interviews, conversations, and anecdotes, involving both doctors and patients. The purpose of Crocker's assembled interviews, conversations, and anecdotes, was to set out "factual evidence" - sometimes quite startling factual evidence - entrusted to him by "prominent medical practitioners of sound mind and undisputed word" (thereby confirming Crocker's own relevant experiences) regarding "the manner in which a 'personal' God interacts and intervenes in the lives of doctors, their patients, families and friends." This factual evidence related to God's intervening in the healing process today, not simply in the past. Put differently, the central theme of Nine Minutes Past Midnight is the experience by doctors and patients of God's presence now in day-to-day medical practice as the "third person involved in patient care and in the healing process...that unseen person or 'silent partner'." Rarely does a reviewer get to write about a book as remarkable as Ernest Crocker's Nine Minutes Past Midnight. Dr Colin Goodwin (extract from review) "Mr Ernest Crocker does not work alone but with a 'silent partner' he calls on during his treatment. As a young doctor he found just how powerful this 'silent partner' is when called out to a medical emergency at Nine Minutes Past Midnight. It was beyond explanation how this woman, pronounced dead twice by other medical personnel, lived without any lasting effects. This miracle encouraged and changed Dr Crocker, the first nuclear medicine physician in Australia to practise ultrasound. Nine Minutes Past Midnight begins with this incredible story and is followed by Dr Crocker's medical and spiritual journey and stories of other Christian doctors he encountered and interviewed over the years. It is a book of incredible faith, from medical personnel praying and trusting God to heal patients when their prognosis and ethics tell them the opposite, to the faith of patients whose lives are healed when their prognosis is non-existent. This truly inspirational book would be a great encouragement to those training or working in the health field. They will learn to trust God the healer would be a great encouragement to those training or working in the health field. They will learn to trust God the healer to work in the lives of patients either through medical or miraculous means and realise the limits of medical abilities against God's healing power. Highly recommended." - Elizabeth Gardner Weekly Challenge New Zealand's Christian Newspaper, 23/06/2012
(Book). 2 Minutes to Midnight: An Iron Maiden Day-by-Day offers a fresh form of band biography, examining myriad events in Iron Maiden's history in a detailed timeline form. The book springs to life with illustrative quotations, historical notations that put the band in the wider context of the rock world, and then, as icing on the cake, an explosion of color via live photography and memorabilia shots. Great Britain's Iron Maiden has enjoyed over 40 years of multiplatinum success the world over as pretty much the biggest, most famous heavy metal band in history, save perhaps Metallica. The band continue to tour exhaustively, a happenstance that surely will help keep this book front-racked in the minds of metalheads everywhere. A book on Maiden has been the #1 request that Martin Popoff's fan base has put upon the author for the past ten years and now he's delivered.
In 2003, Trent Parke began a road trip around his native Australia, a monumental journey that was to last two years and cover a distance of over 90.000 km. Minutes to Midnight is the ambitious photographic record of that adventure, in which Parke presents a proud but uneasy nation struggling to craft its identity from different cultures and traditions. Minutes to Midnight merges traditional documentary techniques and imagination to create a dark visual narrative portraying Australia with a mix of nostalgia, romanticism and brooding realism. This is not a record of the physical landscape but of an emotional one. It is a story of human anxiety and intensity which, although told from Australia, represents a universal human condition in the world today.
It was called Denvers Crime of the Century. In 1988, Frank Magnuson, a young man struggling with lifes curve balls, was set to testify against a Crip kingpin who along with three other men perpetrated a robbery of a Denver restaurant. The night before the trial, two dispatched killers lay in wait in the basement of a house in Bonnie Brae owned by Franks friend and roommate, Steve Curtis. At just before midnight in June of 1989, two young men lay dead with a third left for dead. Ten Minutes till Midnight takes the reader into the very depths of Hell as two of these innocent men experience twenty insane moments of pure horror. Five years after the heinous crime would justice be served? Prosecutors Al LaCabe and Mike Little, doing battle with a polished public defender and his eccentric, wily partner, would be at their passionate best to see that it was. The true story of faith, miracles and recovery, Ten Minutes till Midnight will not only leave the readers adrenaline pulsating, but pondering the very credibility and prudence of the justice system.
An electrifying military thriller from the national bestselling author who “writes with a gripping and gritty authority” (Richard North Patterson, #1 New York Times–bestselling author). It begins with the kidnapping of an Army Reserve officer on U.S. soil. Name: Captain Maeve Cassidy. Profession: Geologist specializing in natural gas drilling and fracturing. Mission: classified. Abducted less than twenty-four hours upon her return from Afghanistan, Cassidy’s disappearance from a Fort Bragg compound is more than a security breach. It is the first stage of a large-scale domestic attack that few Americans could imagine—or survive . . . Enter Delta Force veteran Jake Mahegan. The seasoned operative is on a personal mission of vengeance, tracking down his mother’s killer at a drilling site in North Carolina. When he’s assigned the task of locating the geologist, he can’t help but wonder if her abduction is connected to the fracking magnate he’s pursuing. But when a nearby nuclear plant is attacked, and then another, in a matter of days, Mahegan knows it’s no coincidence. It is a brilliantly conceived, ruthlessly orchestrated assault on our homeland that no intelligence analyst could ever foresee—or stop . . . When a third nuclear plant is targeted, Mahegan has no choice but to try. If he fails, our nation falls. The countdown is launched. The clock is ticking. Armageddon begins . . . Three Minutes to Midnight. The Jake Mahegan thrillers are . . . “Absolutely fantastic . . . pulse-pounding.” —Brad Thor, #1 New York Times-bestselling author “Explosive!” —W.E.B. Griffin, #1 New York Times-bestselling author
A Chicago cop is out to avenge his nephew’s murder in this “masterly creation” that puts the Edgar Award–winning author in “the Parker/Paretsky league” (Chicago Tribune). When you’re a sixty-two-year-old cop with bad knees, most days feel pretty long. But the longest day of Abe Lieberman’s life begins just after midnight when he learns his nephew David has been shot dead and David’s pregnant wife has been gravely injured by two gunmen trying to rob the couple. Now Carol is barely clinging to life, and it’s up to Lieberman to track down the killers. With the help of his partner, the troubled alcoholic Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman will turn the city upside down to find the men who stole his nephew’s bright future. But as they step out into the howling Chicago wind, it’s clear both partners will need to fight to survive the day that started out terrible and is about to get a lot worse. This day in the life of two veteran Chicago cops is “beautifully rendered . . . Kaminsky is extraordinarily attuned to the domestic minutiae of his detectives’ lives” (The New York Times Book Review).
Time Between Days By Greg Johns Students walking to class at Sun Yat-Sen University on Mainland China find the body of Sean Michael Barber, a high-level arms dealer, lying beside a small saltwater canal. He had been shot in the back of the head with a small caliber pistol, execution style. Firearms transgressions in Asian countries are nothing new to André Woo, an investigator in the Firearms Division of Interpol. Possessing average intelligence but sharp instincts, Woo finds himself on yet another investigation in Hong Kong. However, the Barber assassination isn’t all what is seems. André quickly learns that the Barber assassination is just one of five committed in various locations around the world, all within a few minutes of each other at exact solar midnight. What is the significance of the exact solar midnight to these murders? Can André piece together the pieces of this puzzle and realize the key to solving the crimes?
Just by Chance has comedy, romance and tragedy all wrapped up in one novel! This story follows the unusual lives of four generations of the Hanson family. The beginning catches your interest immediately and the end of each section makes you want to keep reading to find out what’s going to happen next. The ending is both touching and funny. The author’s unusual and sometimes morbid sense of humour will keep you chuckling and groaning throughout. Just by Chance takes a lighthearted look at retirement homes, cemeteries, the people who show up at funerals homes, the Hanson family who try to take advantage of the funeral home, and death itself (as people do have to die and quite often in strange and unique ways).
