Field Wars

1938: As Hitler sets his sights on the Sudetenland, not everyone in Britain is willing to appease him. Convinced that the fürher’s land hunger is insatiable, the head of the SIS recruits Cal Jardine to help him prove that Czechoslovakia is threatened with invasion. Before heading undercover to Prague, however, Jardine must first extricate himself from France, where his attempts to smuggle guns to Spain have been held up by a group of fanatical fascists. Finally arriving in Czechoslovakia, working undercover for the SIS proves no less dangerous.

Many believe that despite its destructive character, war ultimately boosts long-term economic growth. For the United States this view is often supported by appeal to the experience of the Second World War, understood as a triumph of both production and productivity. Alexander Field shows that between 1941 and 1945 manufacturing productivity actually declined, depressed by changes in the output mix and resource shocks from enemy action, including curtailed access to natural rubber and, on the Eastern Seaboard, petroleum.

For generations of Americans, the word Antietam - the name of a bucolic stream in western Maryland - held the same sense of horror and carnage that the date 9/11 does for Americans today. But Antietam eclipses even this modern tragedy as America's single bloodiest day, on which 22,000 men became casualties in a war to determine our nation's future.

The photographs of three young men had stood in his grandmother's house for as long as he could remember, beheld but never fully noticed. They had all fought in the Second World War, a fact that surprised him. Indians had never figured in his idea of the war, nor the war in his idea of India. One of them, Bobby, even looked a bit like him, but Raghu Karnad had not noticed until he was the same age as they were in their photo frames. Then he learned about the Parsi boy from the sleepy south Indian coast, so eager to follow his brothers-in-law into the colonial forces and onto the front line.

As he struggles to rekindle the faith of a guilt-ridden Wehrmacht veteran, a morose widow, and her grieving teenage son, Fr. Viktor Koch, C.P. is haunted by self-doubt. What is driving him to stay in the Third Reich? Is he following a higher plan, or the mystic compulsion of his German heritage? Exposed to American ideals, his parishioners grow restless under Nazi rule. Relying upon his ingenuity to keep them out of prison, Fr. Viktor solicits aid from an unlikely intercessor-the Nazi charity worker who confiscated his monastery for state purposes.

Former SAS soldier Jeff Bradley thought he had left warzones behind when he inherited a vineyard in rural New Zealand. But now his vineyard manager, Arben Shala, has gone missing in his native Kosovo. An enigmatic message tells Jeff that his friend is in grave danger.

On 25 October 1415, a trapped and vastly outnumbered force of exhausted and demoralized English archers and men-at-arms faced a colossal army of French knights on a desolate field in northern France. What took place that day became one of the greatest moments of the Hundred Years War and English history. Based on chronicles of the times, Agincourt 1415: Field of Blood is a dramatic minute-by-minute retelling of the battle as seen through the eyes of the commanders and soldiers on both sides.

Ben Stuart felt the dual struggle in his early twenties of purposelessness and powerlessness. He wanted his life to have meaning, and he wanted to overcome his personal struggles, but the self-help books he read only left him feeling defeated and discouraged. In this six-session Bible study, Ben shares how this knowledge led him to develop a practical strategy to battle against the enemy and build the life that God intended him to have. He helps group members to likewise deconstruct their destructive thinking and construct their own lives of purpose.

1948: Change has come to every corner of the globe - and Rosie Stanton, returning home to Northern Queensland after serving the war effort in Brisbane, plans to rescue her family’s foundering sugarcane farm with her unstoppable can-do spirit. Coming up against her father’s old-world views, a farm worker undermining her success, and constant reminders of Rosie’s brothers lost in the war, Rosie realizes she wants more from life and love - but at what cost? Italian immigrant Tomas Conti arrives at a neighboring farm, and sparks fly as Rosie draws close to this enigmatic newcomer.

On Sunday, December 7, 1862, two armies collided at an obscure Arkansas hamlet named Prairie Grove in a desperate battle that effectively ended Confederate offensive operations west of the Mississippi River. In Fields of Blood, historian William L. Shea offers a gripping narrative of the events surrounding Prairie Grove, one of the great unsung battles of the Civil War.

In the study of field fortifications in the Civil War that began with Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War, Hess turns to the 1864 Overland campaign to cover battles from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor. Drawing on meticulous research in primary sources and careful examination of trench remnants at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, and Bermuda Hundred, Hess describes Union and Confederate earthworks and how Grant and Lee used them in this new era of field entrenchments.

The ISIS strategy is unchanged: to expand their bloody caliphate by means of conquest and slaughter. Yet the tide has begun to turn against the brutal regime. The Russians have arrived in force, along with their legions of aircraft and armor. In spite of this, the Mullahs ignore mounting losses and continue to send jihadi fighters to probe the Syria-Iraq border. Their intentions are clear and unequivocal. Conquer and kill.

England 1922. It’s been four years since Rudy’s brother Edgar went missing in war-torn France. Still deep in mourning and grappling with unanswered questions, Rudy and his mother struggle to move on. When the enigmatic Mariette arrives unexpectedly at the family’s manor claiming to be Edgar’s widow, and the mother of his child, Rudy urges her to stay, hoping she’ll shed light on the missing pieces.

This is the final novel of the Saga of the New Gods. This trilogy will be followed by two additional trilogies set in the same world, as well as several stand-alone books, though you may see a familiar face here and there, now and then.

In a stunning follow-up to her best-selling debut, Mrs. Kimble, Jennifer Haigh returns with Baker Towers, a compelling story of love and loss in a western Pennsylvania mining town in the years after World War II.

Elizabeth "Bette" Leigh Black comes of age in the years before WWII. Although money is scarce in the aftermath of the Depression, her home with her mother, Chloe, and her stepfather is happy. But as the war taints their sheltered world, Bette begins to realize life is sometimes cruel, and not everyone has the happiness she does. She finishes school and briefly becomes involved in anti-Nazi espionage until she marries.

Joe runs into a hidden punji trap, and the poisoned stakes deal him a hammer blow. A dustoff back to Da Nang and a long stay in the hospital puts him out of action, and the only consolation is the pretty nurse who attends to his wounds. When he is released, his platoon is in the field, and they give him a temporary posting to another platoon about to fly out to the Laotian border to check out a rumored convoy of vital supplies, weapons, and ammo for the VC.

Albert Kesselring holds a strange place in the history of World War II. A commander in the Luftwaffe, he is remembered as much for the skill with which he oversaw the German armies as for his mastery of the air fleets. Called "Uncle Albert" by many of his men and "Smiling Albert" by the Allies, he was widely respected by men on both sides of the war and loved by many of his troops, yet he was responsible for massacres in occupied Italy for which he was condemned to death during the post-war trials.

History of the 318 Field Hospital has been timely written for the 100th anniversary of the United States' entry into WWI, the Great War. The story will take you from the early days in Georgia, Camp Oglethorpe, as the medical specialist begins to learn about army life, to the Camp Lee, Virginia, experience, where nonspecialists learn quickly how to become soldiers.

During the Civil War, one of the tales that was often told among Confederate soldiers was that Joseph E. Johnston was a crack shot who was a better bird hunter than just about everyone else in the South. However, as the story went, Johnston would never take the shot when asked to, complaining that something was wrong with the situation that prevented him from being able to shoot the bird when it was time.