Journey through the war-torn landscapes of Normandy, Stalingrad, and Midway. Witness the power struggles and tactical genius of leaders like Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler, and Stalin. Understand the profound sacrifices of the ordinary men and women who fought on the front lines and the home front, whose resilience shaped the fate of nations.From the blitzkrieg assaults that thundered across Europe to the epic naval battles in the Pacific, this book delves into the strategic decision...

When Deon Scott and Simon Tshabalala get stuck in a lift one Friday evening during a power cut in post apartheid South Africa, they are forced to face their demons of a traumatic time not only for the country, but in their own lives. Deon is a well off white businessman while Simon is a black security guard. Despite their different backgrounds, upbringings and current status, they were both touched by the violence that gripped the country as it fumbled towards democracy. As they begin to b...

'We shall go to the ocean, Oddsock. They said that it is very, very big, as big as the sky.' The donkey nodded its head, then shook it, watching the young boy, looking for guidance, a restlessness twitching in its body. He knew they should move on, get away from this place, but he was bound to the boy. They were twins, born of different mothers, he with one leg black to the knee, the only blemish on a grey coat, while the boy carried a strange pigmentation disorder that left one arm a pale...

In this dazzling debut collection of realistic, speculative, and New Fabulist stories, Pushcart-Prize-nominated author Rin Kelly introduces readers to wax boys, sentient sex dolls, angels doing market research, gods transformed into sheep, and a man whose painful breakup is reported minute by minute by the 24-hour media cycle. Filled with wry humor, satire, and heart, Kelly's fiction depicts moments of estrangement from a reality that no longer feels real, warns us of near-future technolog...

A BBC Radio 4 production of Wynyard Browne’s classic play about a 1950s family homecoming at Christmas.It is Christmas Eve and the family are gathering at Reverend Martin Gregory’s Norfolk vicarage. A soldier son destined for Oxbridge, two elderly aunts with a passion for chatter, a cousin with a military background and a pair of daughters who are both hiding secrets join the vicar to celebrate the festive season.But family tensions soon come to the fore, and as skeletons tum...

A detailed history and analysis of the most controversial amphibious operation in the Pacific during WWII: the Battle for Peleliu.On September 15, 1944, the United States invaded the tiny Pacific island of Peleliu, located at the southern end of the Palau Islands. Boasting a large airfield from which the Americans could mount bomber campaigns, Peleliu was a strategically essential part of Gen. MacArthur's long-awaited liberation of the Philippines. With the famed 1...

The Battle of Midway is traditionally held as the point when Allied forces gained advantage over the Japanese. In Islands of Destiny, acclaimed historian and military intelligence expert John Prados points out that the Japanese forces quickly regained strength after Midway and continued their assault undaunted.Taking this surprising fact as the start of his inquiry, he began to investigate how and when the Pacific tide turned in the Allies’ favor. Using ar...

This vivid history chronicles the decisive US naval campaign that secured the Japanese island of Tinian—the site that would launch the end of WWII.In July 1944, the United States Navy and Marine Corps, Army, and Air Corps descended on the Pacific island of Saipan, just three miles away from the Japanese stronghold on the island of Tinian. There had been 20,000 Japanese troops on Saipan before the US unleashed a horrific all-arms campaign. The sudden silence indicat...

The 25th Anniversary ebook, now with more than 50 images. 'Touching the Void' is the tale of two mountaineer’s harrowing ordeal in the Peruvian Andes. In the summer of 1985, two young, headstrong mountaineers set off to conquer an unclimbed route. They had triumphantly reached the summit, when a horrific accident mid-descent forced one friend to leave another for dead. Ambition, morality, fear and camaraderie are explored in this electronic edition of the mountaineering classic, with never...

On 19 February 1945, Operation Detachment began with US marine forces storming Iwo Jima, aiming to capture the island and its airfields. This was the first campaign on Japanese soil and would result in some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific. A brutal example of war at all costs, the defending garrison fought to almost the last man; it was a fight they couldn't hope to win against the superior US numbers, but they exacted horrific casualties on the invading forces bef...

'Smith will take you on an exciting, taut and thrilling journey you will never forget' - Sun'With Wilbur Smith the action is never further than the turn of a page' - Independent'No one does adventure quite like Smith' - Daily MirrorLOVE IN A TIME OF WAR. HOPE IN A TIME OF CRISIS.One of the greatest fighter pilots of the Great War, Michael Courtney, is saved by the French noblewoman Centaine de Thiry when he crashes...

A harrowing account of an epic, yet nearly forgotten, battle of World War II—General Douglas MacArthur's four-year assault on the Pacific War's most hostile battleground: the mountainous, jungle-cloaked island of New Guinea.“A meaty, engrossing narrative history… This will likely stand as the definitive account of the New Guinea campaign.”—The Christian Science MonitorOne American soldier called it “a green hell on earth.” Monsoon-...