Fully illustrated, this absorbing study explores the evolving sniping technology and tactics employed by both sides in Asia and the Pacific during 1941–45.During World War II, both the Japanese and their Allied opponents made widespread use of snipers armed with a variety of rifles, scopes and accessories and prepared by widely differing levels of training and tactical doctrine. The challenges of fighting in a variety of harsh environments, from the Pacific islands...

In the near future, a couple seeks to evade societal confusion by joining a commune based upon sharing and solidarity. However, the once free-thinking members become oppressed by authoritarian leadership and investigating governmental agencies. As the escalating situation becomes increasingly restrictive and intolerable, the couple plans an escape.

When a hitchhiker returning from an extended trip abroad in the early 1970s crosses the United States, he plunges into a dark, surrealistic, frightening landscape from which there seems to be no escape.After a worldwide plague has decimated their city, four children searching for sustenance enter a seemingly deserted mansion, only to find out that its owner, a madman seeking the alchemical secret to immortality, has modeled it after an elaborate ancient torture chamber.In t...

Sister Mary Grace is part of a group of nuns who have settled in isolation on a far planet to devote themselves to prayer for humankind. When she is sent on an errand of mercy she realizes that in the guise of another colonist evil has followed her even to this remote place, and that it lusts after her and seeks to trap her in a horrifying prison.

Inspiration and insight for writers. Includes: "Getting Out There", "Staying Put", "Step By Step", "Endings", "On Exercise", "Reality Check", "The New Hack Writers", and "The Lepers of Literature".

From the author's introduction:Preparing the second volume of Reviews and Reflections on Books, Literature, and Writing has caused me to think about the role not only of reading books but also of writing book reviews in my life. To write about the thoughts and impressions brought about by a book is as valid as writing about a physical journey that I take to another location. The author of the book serves as my traveling companion.Because of the inevitably profound effect th...

Three dark fantasies. A traveler in the Himalayas trapped in a castle labyrinth must play a guessing game with death the penalty of failure. The undead arise from a surfing beach in California. A chalk drawing on a European sidewalk becomes a doorway into hell.

An elderly homeless man suddenly discovers that his debit card, which is usually almost empty, has been filled with thousands of dollars, and whenever he spends money, by the next morning it has somehow reappeared. He uses this inexplicable bounty to get off the streets, clean himself up, and attain a measure of personal security. The source of the magical largesse is something he never would have imagined.

While the PP and PPK were intended for police work, the Walther P 38 was produced for the Germany military; all three pistols have garnered a formidable international reputation since the 1930s.The innovative Walther PP (Polizeipistole), a double-action semi-automatic pistol intended for the law-enforcement market, became available in 1929 and went on to arm the police of several European countries in the 1930s. Its smaller cousin the PPK, more readily concealed fo...

This is the absorbing story of the handguns credited to Nambu Kijiro, the principal personal-defence weapons of the Imperial forces.Featuring full-color artwork and carefully chosen photographs, this book charts the origins, development, combat use, and legacy of the Nambu pistols. Cutaway artwork reveals the inner workings of these important handguns, while specially commissioned battlescenes depict them in use in action.Influenced by the German C 96 and o...

The air-cooled Hotchkiss machine gun was the first to function effectively by tapping propellant gas from the bore as the gun fired.Although the Hotchkiss would be overshadowed by the water-cooled Maxim and Vickers Guns, it proved successful enough to develop the Modèle Portative: a man-portable version which, it was hoped, could move with infantrymen as they advanced. Later mounted on tanks and aircraft, it became the first automatic weapon to obtain a 'k...

Aliens attack Earth, or so world governments believe. In the aftermath of global warfare brought on by the crash of an alien spacecraft, Adriana wakes up in a hospital-like facility with no memory of who she is or how she got there. The administrator tells her she has family on the outside that she needs to find. When she leaves, she begins to hear whispers in her mind that draw her to a disparate group of strangers that she instinctively feels are her brothers and sisters. After discoveri...