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  Destiny of Dreams - Time Is Dear

  Cathy Burnham Martin

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  What happens when an American girl of Eurasian descent finds herself suddenly immersed in all facets of her Armenian ancestry?   “Destiny of Dreams” follows the painfully poignant, true story of a teenager and her grandfather, retracing loving, learning, and terrifying footprints of the past.  While survival remains center stage, love and courage must emerge, or all will be both lost and forgotten.   The author reveals her Armenian roots in this haunting historical novel, chronicling her family members’ love, strength, and resolve to both survive and thrive in treacherous times.   Reflecting the traumas suffered by all people displaced from their original homelands, this Armenian story focuses on one family’s challenge to find light in the dark days of the waning Ottoman Empire.   Anyone with the diaspora in their family heritage will relate.   Whether thinking of Jewish people from Israel, Africans scattered through slavery, Armenians fleeing annihilation in Turkey, so-called boat people escaping Asia, or Syrians fleeing life-threatening violence in their own nation, humans continue to rise up in the face of the toughest times. Who would emerge from extraordinarily desperate places, and how could they choose to set positive examples of humanity during highly inhumane times?   Set in the early 1900s and flashing forward to the 1960s, the story’s themes ring with tolerance and intolerance, dreams and destroyers, family and friends, amidst challenges that eerily parallel life in current judgmental scenarios.Written for Young Adult and Adult audiences, the book contains some explicit descriptions and a couple of disturbing, though not graphic, violent scenes.  While not gratuitous, the depictions may be unsuitable for young readers.

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  The Young Lions - A Novel

  Irwin Shaw

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  One of the great World War II novels, this New York Times–bestselling “masterpiece” captures the experiences of three very different soldiers (The Boston Globe).   Standing alongside Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s From Here to Eternity, The Young Lions is one of the most powerful American novels to tackle the Second World War. Ambitious in its scope and robust in its prose, Irwin Shaw’s work is also deeply humanistic, presenting the reality of war as seen through the eyes of ordinary soldiers on both sides. The story follows the individual dramas—and ultimately intertwined destinies—of Christian Diestl, a Nazi sergeant; Noah Ackerman, a Jewish American infantryman; and Michael Whitacre, an idealistic urbanite from the New York theatrical world.   Diestl first appears as a dashing ski instructor in Austria, mouthing his loyalty to Nazi ideals. As the war progresses, Diestl’s character continues to erode as he descends into savagery. Ackerman must endure domestic anti-Semitism and beatings in boot camp before proving himself in the European theater. Eventually, as part of the liberating army, he comes face-to-face with the unimaginable horrors of the death camps. Whitacre, trading cocktail parties for Molotov cocktails, confronts the barbarism of war, and in fighting simply to survive, finds his own capacity for heroism.   Shaw’s sweeping narrative is at once vivid, exciting, and brutally realistic as well as poignant in its portrayal of the moral devastation and institutional insanity of war. Penned by a master storyteller at the height of his craft, The Young Lions stands the test of time as a classic novel of war and the human experience.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of Irwin Shaw including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

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  Jerusalem

  Cecelia Holland

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  With a young king facing death, a warrior of the Knights Templar struggles to maintain Christian control of the Holy Land in this “masterful . . . great read” (Publishers Weekly). Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomine Tuo da gloriam. “Not to us, O Lord, but to Your Name give glory.” This motto highlights the vows of chastity and humility taken by the Knights Templar. But, it also speaks to their role as ferocious warriors, passionately and bloodily seeking out glory for their God. Set in the Holy Land in 1187 A.D., Cecelia Holland’s historical novel masterfully explores the conspiracies and political maneuvers leading up to the Third Crusade. Following a stunning victory at the Battle of Ramleh, Norman Templar Rannulf Fitzwilliam must negotiate a truce with the enemy and determine the order of succession to the throne of Baudouin, the young Christian king dying of leprosy. However, Rannulf’s instincts are for battle, not diplomacy. Temptation and betrayal await him around every corner. The question is not whether he can survive on the battlefield, but whether he can survive the politics and protocol of the royal court. “Holland's masterful layering of subplots, historical detail and multiple perspectives makes for a great read.” —Publisher’s Weekly “She brings as much suspense to political intrigue as to the sprawling battle scenes at which she excels.” —The New York Times Book Review 

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  The Wolf-Leader

  Alexandre Dumas

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  This is a werewolf tale, by the famous author of The Man in the Iron Mask, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Three Musketeers.
   
  "It is an exciting story of a diabolical pact; more than that it is an acute and merciless study of the corruption of a man's character by envy, and a colorful and ironic account of high and low life in rural eighteenth-century France. Like all Dumas stories it is lively, fast-moving, romantic without being sentimental, and always readable." ~ from the Introduction by L. Sprague de Camp
  "Dumas's most successful supernatural work by far... an entertaining historical romance based on traditional legends of the werewolf."
  An Author's Republic audio production.

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  All the Living - A Novel

  C. E. Morgan

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  Aloma's chances of becoming a concert pianist diminish. Aloma is an orphan, raised by her aunt and uncle, educated at a mission school in the Kentucky mountains. At the start of the novel, she moves to an isolated tobacco farm to be with her lover, a young man named Orren, whose family has died in a car accident, leaving him in charge. The place is rough and quiet; Orren is overworked and withdrawn. Left mostly to her own, Aloma struggles to settle herself in this lonely setting and to find beauty and stimulation where she can. As she decides whether to stay with Orren, she will choose either to fight her way to independence or accept the rigors of commitment.

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  Fishing for Birds

  Linda Quennec

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  Kate, a somewhat clumsy widow of thirty-two, flees her stifling hometown on Vancouver Island to live alone on an even smaller island in the Salish Sea. In so doing, she has vague expectations of solace and sanctuary, despite past experience. Instead she meets Ivy, a woman who through their conversations transports her to the intoxicating world of 1926 Cuba. Within the context of their friendship, Ivy’s past begins to unravel from a long-held silence, just as Kate finds herself confronting her relationship with the colourful community she’s known all her life, along with an unexpected visitor who threatens to remove all peace from her chosen refuge. Told from the perspectives of three narrators: Ivy, Kate, and Kate’s mother Nora, Fishing for Birds is a novel that juxtaposes the expectations we cling to so fiercely and the unexpected and sometimes unconventional things that turn up. The novel challenges traditional constructs of time, ethnicity, and relationship. Set against the tropical beauty of 1920s Cuba and the Northwest Coast of contemporary time, both the landscape and unique character of island life underscore the experiences of three very different women.

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