Foster Memoir

The first in a series of books, I Somehow Survived is an extraordinary collection of true stories giving testimony to those who survived World War II. Based on interviews with numerous veterans from across the spectrum of wartime experience, the book documents and reflects upon one of the most gruesome times in history. From anti-partisan warfare in the French mountains and atrocities in East Prussia to the experience of a Norwegian concentration camp, the accounts include rarely heard stories from a range of people caught up in the war.

This book starts where the first book, The Unknown Mongol, ended. The year is 1998, and Scott "Junior" Ereckson, the national president of the Mongols Motorcycle Club, has been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. Because he's an ex-felon and it’s his second strike, he's been sentenced to 14 years in state prison.

Maggie Hartley is one of the UK's most prolific foster mothers. These heartwarming and inspiring short stories show the power of a foster mother's love, and her determination to help the children who come into her care. Includes 'Too Scared to Cry', 'The Girl No One Wanted' and 'A Family for Christmas'.

An adrenaline-fueled travel memoir of life in the wild among the planet’s most ferocious and fascinating predators. Over the last forty years, bestselling science-fiction writer Alan Dean Foster has journeyed around the globe to encounter nature’s most fearsome creatures. His travels have taken him into the heart of the Amazon rain forest on the trail of deadly tangarana ants, on an elephant ride across the sweeping green plains of central India in search of the elusive Bengal tiger, and into the waters of the Australian coast to come face-to-face with great white sharks. Packed with pulse-pounding adventure and spiked with rapier wit, Predators I Have Known is a thrilling look at life and death in the wild.

General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the US Army during World War II, faced the daunting task not only of overseeing two theaters of a global conflict but also of selecting the best generals to carry out American grand strategy. Marshall and His Generals is the first and only book to focus entirely on that selection process and the performances, both stellar and disappointing, that followed from it. Stephen Taaffe explores how and why Marshall selected the Army's commanders.

For decades, books about John or Robert Kennedy have woven either a shimmering tale of Camelot gallantry or a tawdry story of runaway ambition and reckless personal behavior. But the real story of the Kennedys in the 1960s has long been submerged - until now. In Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, David Talbot sheds a dramatic new light on the tumultuous inner life of the Kennedy presidency and its stunning aftermath. Talbot has written a gripping political history.

Founder of the largest indigenous Christian church in American history, Joseph Smith published the 584-page Book of Mormon when he was 23 and went on to organize a church, found cities, and attract thousands of followers before his violent death at age 38. Richard Bushman, an esteemed cultural historian and a practicing Mormon, moves beyond the popular stereotype of Smith as a colorful fraud to explore his personality, his relationships with others, and how he received revelations.

It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window.

In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the '90s were, according to Lipsky, like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.

When Cara felt her teenaged children slipping away and saw an empty nest on the horizon, she decided the best way to fill that void was with dogs - lots of them - and so her foster journey began. In 2015, her Pennsylvania farm became a haven for Operation Paws for Homes. There were the nine puppies at once, which arrived with less than a day's notice; a heart-worm positive dog; a deeply traumatized stray pup from Iraq; and countless others who just needed a gentle touch and a warm place to sleep.

In 2012, Hakeem al-Araibi was a promising young player on Bahrain's national football team when he was arrested for attacking a police station during the Arab Spring, despite television footage showing him playing soccer at the time of the alleged attack. After three months of torture and wrongful imprisonment, Hakeem was released. He fled the country and made his way to Australia, where he was granted refugee status. Hakeem made a life here and was playing for the suburban Pascoe Vale Football Club, in Melbourne. He thought he was safe.

Havana Nocturne takes listeners back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Thanks to strong ties with the island's brutal dictator, President Batista, the mob soon owned the biggest luxury hotels and casinos and launched an unprecedented tourist boom. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others.

Parents Angelina and Ben exist in enviable luxury: not just wealth, success and a gorgeous home, but a loving relationship and beautiful twin babies to complete the perfect family. But having it all means that you have the most to lose. And when cracks begin to appear things fall apart at a shocking pace; and it's twins Max and Mia who suffer the most. Money isn't enough to paper over the problems in this extraordinary and heartbreaking story. It is a foster-caring experience like no other, and one which tests Louise's emotional strength to the core.

When Sky and her older sister Avril were taken into care, the social workers knew this was a case like no other. Raised by unhinged parents who hoarded compulsively, creating horrific conditions no child should live in, the two girls arrived at foster carer Louise's home, neglected, malnourished and indoctrinated. Louise had to draw on all of her experience as one of Britain's leading foster carers to rehabilitate and change the course of their lives.

After parting ways with the eponymous McAfee Antivirus software company in 1994, John McAfee embarked on innumerable business, political, and criminal enterprises. From investing in cybersecurity and cryptocurrency to accusations of murdering his neighbor in Belize to making two unsuccessful bids for President of the United States—the latter attempt done in exile following a federal indictment—this larger-than-life man nurtured a rakish public profile while evading law enforcement for his involvement with drugs, weapons, and murder.

The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople, and Jerusalem.

An insider exposes the shocking facts deliberately left out of the hit Netflix series Making a Murderer - and argues persuasively that Steven Avery was rightfully convicted in the 2005 killing of Teresa Halbach.

Simon Bolivar, known as “the Liberator”, was an incredible figure who led countless South American countries to independence from the Spanish. A military mastermind who rivaled the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte and George Washington, Simon Bolivar left behind a rich legacy which shook the world and changed the face of South America forever.

For decades there have been two iconic Japanese auto companies. One has been endlessly studied and written about. The other has been generally underappreciated and misunderstood. Until now. Since its birth as a motorcycle company in 1949, Honda has steadily grown into the world’s fifth largest automaker and top engine manufacturer, as well as one of the most beloved, most profitable, and most consistently innovative multinational corporations.

David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.