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  They Are All My Family - A...

  John P. Riordan

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  Published for the fortieth anniversary of the final days of the Vietnam War, this is the suspenseful and moving tale of how John P. Riordan, an assistant manager of Citibank's Saigon branch, devised a daring plan to save 106 Vietnamese from the dangers of the Communist takeover.Riordan-who had left the military behind for a career in international banking-was not the type to take dramatic action, but once the North Vietnamese Army closed in on Saigon in April 1975 and it was clear that Riordan's Vietnamese colleagues and their families would be stranded in a city teetering on total collapse, he knew that he could not leave them behind. Defying the objections of his superiors and going against the official policy of the United States, Riordan went back into Saigon to save them.In fifteen harrowing trips to Saigon's airport, he maneuvered through the bureaucratic shambles, claiming that the Vietnamese were his wife and scores of children. It was a ruse that, at times, veered close to failure, yet against all odds, the improbable plan succeeded.They Are All My Family is a vivid narrative of one man's ingenious strategy that transformed a time of enormous peril into a display of extraordinary courage.

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  Early Graves - A True Story of...

  Thomas H. Cook

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  Shocking true crime from the Edgar Award–winning author. "Powerful . . . A frightening close-up of sociopathic personalities at their most deadly" (Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter).Evil has a way of finding itself. How else could you explain the bond between Alvin and Judith Ann Neelley, who consecrated their marriage in blood? Before the killings started, they restricted themselves to simple mischief: prank calls, vandalism, firing guns at strangers' houses. Gradually their ambition grew, until one day at the Riverbend Mall in Rome, Georgia, they spotted Lisa Ann Millican. Three days after Lisa Ann disappeared, the thirteen-year-old girl was found shot and pumped full of liquid drain cleaner. In between her abduction and her death, she was subjected to innumerable horrors. And she was only the first to die. Drawing on police records and extensive interviews, Thomas H. Cook recounts the story of Judith Ann Neelley, who at nineteen became the youngest woman ever sentenced to death row.

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  Gladys Aylward - The Little Woman

  Christine Hunter, Gladys Aylward

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  A solitary woman. A foreign country. An unknown language. An impossible dream? No.With  no mission board to support or guide her, and less than ten dollars in her pocket, Gladys Aylward left her home in England  to answer God's call to take the message of the gospel to China. With the Sino-Japanese War waging around her, she struggled  to bring the basics of life and the fullness of God to orphaned children. Time after time, God triumphed over impossible  situations, and drew people to Himself. In Gladys Aylward: My Missionary Life in China, Gladys tells her story—a  remarkable tale of one woman's determination to serve God at any cost. A true story of a determined missionary, Gladys  Aylward: My Missionary Life in China will challenge you to bold and expectant faith.

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  The Fatal Sleep

  Peter Kennedy

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  The bite of the tsetse fly - a burning sting into the skin - causes a descent into violent fever and aching pains. Severe bouts of insomnia are followed by mental deterioration, disruption of the nervous system, coma and ultimately death.
  Sleeping sickness, also known as Human African trypanosomiasis, is one of Africa's major killers. It puts 60 million people at risk of infection, occurs in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and claims the lives of many thousands of people every year. Transmitted by the tsetse fly, trypanosomiasis affects both humans and cattle. The animal form of the disease severely limits livestock production and farming, and in people the toxic effects of the treatment for the brain disease can be as painful and dangerous as the disease itself. Existing in the shadow of malaria and AIDS, it is an overlooked disease, ignored by pharmaceutical companies and largely neglected by the western world.
  Peter Kennedy has devoted much of his working life to researching sleeping sickness in Africa, and his autobiographical account shares not only his trials and experiences, evoking our empathy with the affected patients, but an explanation of the disease, including its history and its future. Interwoven with African geography, his compassionate story reveals what it is like to be a young doctor falling in love with Africa, and tells of his building of a vocation in the search for a cure for this cruel disease.

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  A Matter of Life and Death -...

  Sue Armstrong

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  True tales of microscopic detective work that catches killers both human and pathogen: “More fascinating than fiction. Forget CSI, this is the real thing” (Val McDermid).  A Matter of Life and Death profiles some of the world’s most eminent and pioneering pathologists. This is a hidden world, yet one we will all inevitably encounter at some time in our lives, for pathology lies at the cornerstone of modern medicine. It is pathologists who are responsible for recognizing new diseases such as AIDS, SARS or bird flu, and for diagnosing which cancer a patient is suffering from. Beyond this, it is pathologists who must explain the cause of death at the autopsy table.  A Matter of Life and Death tells fascinating stories of mysterious illnesses and miraculous scientific breakthroughs. But it is also crammed full of extraordinary characters - from the forensic anthropologist with his own Body Farm in Tennessee to the doctor who had a heart-and-lung transplant and ended up using her own lungs for research.  “If you’re interested in criminal investigation, this is the must-read of the year. Probably of the decade.” —Val McDermid, author of Insidious Intent    

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  Cleopatra's Daughter - Egyptian...

  Jane Draycott

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  The first biography of one of the most fascinating, and unjustly neglected, female rulers of the ancient world: Cleopatra Selene. Princess, prisoner, African queen – and surviving daughter of Cleopatra VII.In 1895, archaeologists excavating a villa outside Pompeii unearthed a hoard of Roman silverware. Among the treasures was a bowl featuring a female figure with thick, curly hair, deep-set eyes, a slightly hooked nose and a strong jaw, and sporting an elephant scalp headdress. Modern scholars believe this woman to be a depiction of Cleopatra Selene, daughter of the infamous Cleopatra and Mark Antony.Using this discovery as her starting point, Jane Draycott recreates the life and times of a remarkable woman. Unlike her siblings, who were either executed as a threat to Rome's new ruler, Augustus, or simply forgotten, Cleopatra Selene survived and prospered. She was a princess who became a prisoner; a prisoner who became a queen; an Egyptian who became a Roman; and a woman who became a powerful ruler in her own right at a time when women were marginalized. Her life shines new and revelatory light on the politics and culture of Rome and Egypt, as well as on the relationship between Rome and Mauretania, one of its most significant allied kingdoms.

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