Other books that might interest you

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  Nightfighter - Radar Intercept...

  Mark A. Magruder

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  A biography of the leader of the top scoring Nightfighter Squadron who risked their lives flying through darkness in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. 
   
  During World War II, the job of a nightfighter was akin to a deadly game of hide-and-seek in a pitch-black sky. Each pilot’s life literally depended on his radio link to support personnel on the ground. Electrical failures could be catastrophic and engine trouble usually proved fatal. Unlike other fighter pilots, these men had zero visual perspective. Alone in a cockpit, it was easy for their minds to play tricks on them, but for nightfighters, a few moments of vertigo were a death sentence . . . 
   
  No one knew this better than then-ranked Lt. Col. Marion Milton "Black Mac" Magruder. His highly classified training program required each of his "scrappers" to identify every part of the cockpit environment by sound, smell, and touch. Strict, innovative, and intense, this no-nonsense marine would lead his men to the Okinawa Campaign, in an emergency deployment after a year in combat, in the longest over-water flight of single-engined fighters in the Pacific Theatre, just to get into the fight. During their time on Okinawa and Engebi, VMF(N)533, also known as Black Mac’s Killers, experienced the worst typhoon season the island had seen in several hundred years. They also would become the target of the Giretsu, when the ruthless Japanese suicide warriors attacked Yontan Air Field, the only attack of its kind during the war. And even though the squadron arrived one month after battle commenced, the 533 held the record for all radar-intercept kills. Black Mac's Killers set many records and earned many distinctions during the war, including the Presidential Unit Citation. 
   
  This biography follows Magruder through his military career, highlighting his accomplishments as leader of the top scoring Nightfighter Squadron in the Pacific Theatre.

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  A Cigar Box Full of Short Stories

  Steve Kube

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  My mom said, "Don't You Dare!" a lot to me when I was little, but there's this one time she said it that superimposes itself over all the other times...  
    
  During one of those parts of mass that called for kneeling, I felt an inspiration well up inside of me. I whispered urgently, "Kit, Kit, …" I nudged him with my elbow to clue him in that I was going to do something that shouldn't be missed, (As it turned out no one in the building missed it). 
    
  The Fall Festival was hopping every afternoon and into the evening of those three days. Little kids chasing one another and squealing, and the big ones sneaking off to smoke or to make out with a girl and maybe cop a feel, and come back to talk about it. 
    
  Back in those days, a pack of Harley's was kind of threatening. If a bunch of Harleys were parked outside a hamburger joint, most folks would just go on down the road to the next burger joint rather than risk confronting a bunch of bikers. 
    
  He turned out to be a reporter from the city paper, wanted to take some pictures, do a little story on my treehouse. I thought for sure if it got in the papers, foremen, and contractors from miles around would recognize their building materials and show up with bills. 
    
  The full charge of the powerful magneto shot a bolt of electricity through Paul's butt, shocking out of him an outrageous holler that brought peels of laughter from me. Paul didn't need any more prodding to get himself properly seated and he did so, only to have his now flapping shirt-tails get caught in the cooling fins of the flywheel. The engine ripped most of Paul's shirt off and proceeded to slap him with the rags from behind. Paul gave out another outrageous holler as he sped past me. 
    
  Dad's belt stirred angry, self-righteous vengeance in the air in front of my eyes. As he drew himself up and turned to look down on me I saw that face I never understood as a kid. That sadistic grimace of some sort of evil power over another person. 
    
  The fish, about twelve inches long, rose head first, gracefully and evenly the full length of Pat's body, knee to nose. At the apex of its short flight, the fish flipped over. Now head down it flapped its tail, slapping Pat once on each cheek, then plunged as gracefully back into the water. 
    
  I love being a dad. I loved making pancakes for the kids Saturday morning after a spend-over and listening to them make plans for the day and I'm cast back thinking how happy it was and how sad it feels for it to be in the past and not right here anymore and... and I have to stop and be quiet a moment. 
    
  I've sometimes convinced myself I was supposed to live on a civilized planet this time around, and I think I must have gotten confused on a between-lives mass transit system and popped out on the wrong planet. 
    
  One night I went to bed wearing a pair of well-worn briefs and woke in the morning with an erection that poked right through the front of the comfortable undies with the loose elastic and I started to feel ashamed of my shabby skivvies, but when I realized I had poked through two layers of fabric on the front of my briefs I started my day with a sense of pride!

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  Thomas Hardy - Chapter & Verse -...

  Thomas Hardy

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  Literature is a world of words and wonder, able to take us on almost unimaginable journeys from the wild and fantastic to the grind and minutiae of life. 
   
  An author’s ideas are his building blocks, his architecture of the mind, building a structure on which all else will rest; the narrative, the characters, the words - those few words that begin the adventure. 
   
  In this series we look at some of our leading classic authors across two genres: the short story and the poem.  In this modern world there is an insatiable need to categorise and pigeon-hole everyone and everything.  But ideas, these grains and saplings of the brain, need to roam, to explore and find their perfect literary use vehicle.  Our authors are masters of many literary forms, perhaps known for one but themselves favouring another. 
   
  Story. Poems. Story.  Within these boundaries come all manner of invention and cast of characters.  And, of course, each author has their own way of revealing their own chapter and verse.    
   
  1 - Chapter & Verse - Thomas Hardy - An Introduction 
  2 - An Imaginative Woman by Thomas Hardy 
  3 - A Broken Appointment by Thomas Hardy 
  4 - The Mother Mourns by Thomas Hardy 
  5 - Rain on a Grave by Thomas Hardy 
  6 - The Dead Man Walking by Thomas Hardy 
  7 - Rome - Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter, April 1887 by Thomas Hardy 
  8 - At the Royal Academy by Thomas Hardy 
  9 - In the Moonlight by Thomas Hardy 
  10 - The Seasons of Her Year  by Thomas Hardy 
  11 - Birds at Winter Nightfall (Triolet) by Thomas Hardy 
  12 - The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy 
  13 - The Calf by Thomas Hardy 
  14 - The Oxen by Thomas Hardy 
  15 - The Fiddler of the Reels by Thomas Hardy

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  Working the Waterfront - The Ups...

  Gilbert Mers

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  An eighty-year-old looks back on his life as a Texas longshoreman and radical labor activist in this “colorful and absorbing” memoir (The Southwestern Historical Quarterly).Somebody said, “History is written by the winners. The losers have nothing to say.” This book is by one of the losers, a bit player, not the star of the drama.  So begins Gilbert Mers in these personal recollections of forty-two years on the Texas waterfront as a longshoreman and radical union activist. But far from having “nothing to say,” Mers reveals himself as a thoughtful philosopher of democratic ideals and eloquent agitator for union reform. He challenges the conventional wisdom that the leader is more valuable than the led. He contends that long tenure in positions of power dulls the union officer’s working-class instincts. Always one to row against the current, Mers believes the union exists for the benefit of its members!  This is primary material of the best kind, vivid and evocative, and Mers, in his eighties at the time of writing the book, is an unusually vigorous and articulate spokesman for a democratic and humane unionism. Whether he’s describing the sweaty, dangerous, backbreaking work of loading cotton bales into the hold of an outbound ship or the gut-gripping tension of a face-to-face encounter with Texas Rangers bent on “law and order,” Mers writes with the voice and conscience of the rank-and-file worker. He paints the waterfront world as it was, and perhaps still is—full of peril, humor, dignity in demoralizing circumstances, frustration, struggle, and sometimes hope—and tells his story with such wry humanity that even those who disagree with his destination will enjoy the ride.

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  Beautiful Scars - A Life Redefined

  Kilee Brookbank, Lori...

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  Kilee Brookbank was a typical sixteen-year-old, but her last ordinary day erupted when an explosion consumed her house, burning forty-five percent of her body and sending her to the brink of death. After thirty-eight days of surgeries, skin grafts, physical therapy, and excruciating pain, Kilee had to discover how to live again-and she did, facing her journey with determination, strength, and a positive attitude that has inspired people in her community and from around the world. Now a thriving college student, Kilee has become an author, advocate, and philanthropist, helping other survivors through her charity, the Kilee Gives Back Foundation, and her partnership with the Shriners Hospitals and their Be Burn Aware campaign. Told together by Kilee and her mom, this updated edition of their 2016 Benjamin Franklin Award winning memoir is a story of recovery, healing, and hope, reminding us that we're never powerless, never alone, and that each challenge we face helps make us the people we're meant to be.

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  Lady Windermere's Fan

  Oscar Wilde

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  "Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman" is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it bitingly satirizes the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage. 
  The story concerns Lady Windermere, who discovers that her husband may be having an affair with another woman. She confronts her husband but he instead invites the other woman, Mrs Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere leaves her husband for another lover. Or does she? Is it really possible to trust delicious gossip? Are all men really bad? These and many other questions are raised and if not answered, then held up for public scrutiny in this biting satire of morals and proper behavior. The best known line of the play sums up the central theme: 
  "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."–Lord Darlington

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