An indispensable guide to a regional treasure—now thoroughly updated and expanded.A comprehensive guide to one of America's unique national parks, The C&O Canal Companion takes readers on a mile-by-mile, lock-by-lock tour of the 184-mile Potomac River waterway and towpath that stretches from Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland, and the Allegheny Mountains. Making extensive use of records at the National Archives and the C&O Canal Park Headquarters, M...

Taliban: A Critical History from Within by Abdul Hai Mutma’in offers an inside account of the Afghan movement and their government. In his preface, the author notes that his book will please neither supporters of the Taliban nor those who fight and condemn them. It is this trenchant quality that makes it unique among the memoirs of those who used to work for and with the Taliban. Mutma’in’s account often feels like a corrective, critical of those outside the Taliban but also of the movemen...

NOVELCaptains of Souls, by Edgar WallaceA shadowy figure holds the key to power and peril in a fog-drenched London mystery.SOLVE-IT-YOURSELF MYSTERY“Death Takes a Dinner Cruise,” by Hal CharlesCan you solve the mystery before the detective? All the clues are there!SHORT STORIES“Dead Gifted,” by Robert Jeschonek

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.Britain has invaded Afghanistan twice before in the nineteenth century. Both times tenacious Afghan fighters defended their country to humiliating British defeats. The Soviet Union also discovered what a tough enemy the Afghans are after nearly a decade of conflict from 1979 to 1989. When not fighting foreign invaders, Afghanistan was torn apart by Civil War from 1990 to 1996, resulting in victory for the Taliban.The Afg...

***Now a six-part TV series starring Natalie Dormer, from Amazon Prime*A 50th-anniversary edition of the landmark novel about three “gone girls” that inspired the acclaimed 1975 film, featuring a foreword by Maile Meloy, author of Do Not Become Alarmed**It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the...

A journalist with deep knowledge of the region provides "an enthralling and largely firsthand account of the war in Afghanistan" ( Financial Times).Few reporters know as much about Afghanistan as Carlotta Gall. She was there in the 1990s after the Russians were driven out. She witnessed the early flourishing of radical Islam, imported from abroad, which caused so much local suffering. She was there right after 9/11, when US special forces helped the Northe...

Gentle, lovely Julia Cloud has devoted her life to caring for others. Now, after her invalid mother’s death, she is without the financial means to live on her own. But she dreaded accepting her selfish younger sister’s offer to come and live with her and take care off her demanding children.Then, just when Julia resigns herself to a bleak future as a servant in her sister’s home, something amazing happens! Julia’s lively young niece and nephew, her deceased brother’s children, turn ...

The Angel is an award–winning expose about the sensational life and mysterious death of Ashraf Marwan, an Egyptian senior official who spied for Israel.A National Jewish Book Awards WinnerBasis for the Netflix Original MovieA Best Intelligence Book by The American Association of Former Intelligence OfficersAs the son-in-law of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and a close advisor to...

Together they looked down at the inert sprawling figure of a man fantastically dressed in red-and-white-striped pyjama trousers, with a red sash belt and a white silk shirt open at the neck.A Christmas gathering of young and old in a great country house in England—a masquerade—and the lights are turned off for a game of hide and seek. Silence—then a man’s cry for “Lights!” The lights come on, revealing Hugh Darrow, blind since the War, standing in the main hall, fresh bloo...

The Osama bin Laden I Know is an unprecedented oral history of Osama bin Laden's rise to revered leader of al Qaeda.Peter Bergen takes the reader onto the battlefields of Afghanistan as bin Laden goes from a shy, quiet teen to a leader; he brings you into Osama's intimate family life as he lives under the radar in Sudan, then Afghanistan; he puts you right in the room for al Qaeda's very first meeting; and he uses eyewitness accounts to relate what bin Laden said, and thoug...

A short but interesting detective story. Dick Martin plans for an early retirement from the police force seeking a quite life. His final job is to bring in Lew Pheeney, wanted in connection with a bank robbery. When Lew confesses to trying to open a dead man’s tomb, however, Martin has a mystery he must unravel. He races to find the connection between an attractive young librarian, a mad scientist and the vanished heir to a vast fortune, as everyone becomes entangled in a web of fraud, dec...

A sly, funny novel about an American girl trying to make it in 1960s London–and discovering that she's in over head.In The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy revealed the life of the young expatriate in Paris in all its hilarious and heartbreaking drama. With The Old Man and Me, written when Dundy was living in England in the early 1960s, she tackles the American girl in London, a bit older but certainly no wiser.Honey Flood (if that’s her real nam...