The award-winning historian's acclaimed account of British sea power throughout WWII: "a must-read for anyone interested in Naval warfare" ( PowerShips magazine).For four centuries the British realm depended on sea power to defend itself against a myriad of threats. The Royal Navy established itself as the "Sovereign of the Seas," helping transform a small island nation into the center of a global empire. But Britain's maritime services faced an unprecedent...

The Art of Life Is the Avoiding of Pain is Brian Walters' fourth collection of stories and poetry. As with all of Walters' poetry you'll find this book accessible and moving, but this is without a doubt his most powerful book to date. As a physical therapist Walters is welcomed into the homes of a vast cross-section of society, and he opens a window on the quiet desperation that so many of our neighbors live with every day. This collection is both beautiful and, at times, profoundly sad. B...

Winter of 1945. Aksel Foss, a Dane forced at gunpoint to fight in the German Army, flees Soviet tanks across the snow-bound fields of East Prussia. His goal: return to Denmark, and escape both the Russians and the dreaded SS who seek him for killing concentration camp guards. Retreating through burning towns and cities, he engages in near-daily combat as he tries to save himself and his lover, a beautiful refugee woman who has lost her entire family in the war.

Donald Harington, best known for his fifteen novels, was also a prolific writer of essays, articles, and book reviews.The Guestroom Novelist: A Donald Harington Miscellany gathers a career-spanning and eclectic selection of nonfiction by the Arkansawyer novelist Donald Harington that reveals how a life of devastating losses and disappointments inspired what the Boston Globe called the “quirkiest, most original body of work in contemporary US letters.”This extensive...

That the Roman republic died is a commonplace often repeated. In extant literature, the notion is first given form in the works of the orator Cicero (106-43 BCE) and his contemporaries, though the scattered fragments of orators and historians from the earlier republic suggest that the idea was hardly new. In speeches, letters, philosophical tracts, poems, and histories, Cicero and his peers obsessed over the illnesses, disfigurements, and deaths that were imagined to have beset their body ...

Double Toil and Trouble is the first new volume of fiction in more than a decade by beloved Arkansas writer Donald Harington (1935–2009). Featuring the long-lost suspense novel of the title and four previously unpublished or uncollected stories, this volume adds several new chapters to the saga of Stay More, the fictional Ozarks village that serves as the setting for more than a dozen other Harington novels.Edited by longtime Harington scholar Brian Walter*, Double Toil an...

On the eve of the American Civil War, Wade Hampton, one of the wealthiest men in the South and indeed the United States, remained loyal to his native South Carolina as it seceded from the Union. Raising his namesake Hampton Legion of soldiers, he eventually became a lieutenant general of Confederate cavalry after the death of the legendary J. E. B. Stuart. HamptonÆs highly capable, but largely unheralded, military leadership has long needed a modern treatment. After the war, Hampt...

Few people doubt the importance of that rare thing…a truly compelling elevator speech that immediately increases interest in a person, business or product. However, it’s also true that few people know who to trust for the strategy for creating and delivering that compelling elevator speech.Communications advisor Brian Walter has developed a proven system for powerfully and memorably communicating your unique value proposition. The result is that people you’re talking to will actual...

Gripping, deeply researched, and authoritative, the history of one of the closest intelligence and security relationships in the worldThe Special Relationship between the United States and Britain is touted by politicians when it suits their purpose and, as frequently, dismissed as myth, not least by the media. Yet the truth is that the two countries are bound together more closely than either is to any other ally. In The Real Special Relationship, Michael...

For the first time ever the full story of how Charles “Lucky” Luciano—the U.S. Mafia boss who put the “organized” into organized crime—was recruited by U.S. Naval Intelligence in 1944 to aid the Allied war effort in the U.S. invasion of Sicily that was a turning point in WWII.In 1942, fears were growing that New York Harbor was vulnerable to sabotage. If the waterfront was infested with German and Italian agents, the U.S. Navy needed a secret plan just as insidious...

Forty-five gruesome but not gratuitous accounts from the Tudor reign, including the death of Richard III and the botched execution of Mary Queen of Scots.This decidedly darker take on the Tudors, from 1485 to 1603, covers a whole host of horrors from the Tudor reign. Particular attention is paid to the various gruesome ways in which the Tudors despatched their various villains and lawbreakers, from simple beheadings, to burnings and of course the dreaded hanging, d...

"A first-class history, impeccably researched and skillfully written . . . by the foremost historian of the American D-Day experience." — Naval HistoryAdded to the invasion plan largely at the insistence of British General Bernard Montgomery, the attack at Utah Beach aimed to secure the Cotentin Peninsula and ultimately seize the port of Cherbourg. Although the assault on Utah Beach became one of the most successful American military operations of World Wa...