Fosters War

After learning about Nazi persecution of his family, Herschel Grynszpan (pronounced "Greenspan"), an impoverished 17-year-old Jew living in Paris, bought a small handgun and on November 7, 1938, went to the German embassy and shot the first German diplomat he saw. When the man died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels made the shooting their pretext for the great state-sponsored wave of anti-Semitic terror known as Kristallnacht, still seen by many as an initiating event of the Holocaust.

The Napoleonic Wars had torn Europe apart, and the peace conference of 1814 was to be held in the continent's grandest city: Vienna. Everyone had an agenda in the postwar world, and spy networks, bitter hatreds, illicit affairs, and tangled alliances ensued.

At the beginning of 1864, the Civil War was far from won; terrible and bloody Union setbacks and casualties lay ahead. Abraham Lincoln was facing a re-election battle as some northern Democrats were ready to start peace talks that could leave the Confederacy a separate slaveholding American nation and as his secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, challenged him for the Republican nomination. But by the end of the year, the war's end was in sight, and slavery was on the verge of extinction.

Thirty-three-year-old Luke “Pax” Paxton has been out of the military for almost a decade, adrift in an America he no longer understands, haunted by a mistake made in an unforgiving moment of combat. When an old army friend suggests they travel to Ukraine to help fight against the Russian invasion, he agrees, and together they cross an ocean to Lviv, the City of Lions. But Pax isn’t merely going out of the goodness of his heart. He carries with him the address of a former love, a Ukrainian woman named Svitlana whom he had known as a young soldier and has been unable to forget.

Solomon Bull is the son of a rebel who died in the '80s fighting for the American Indian Movement. He trains for an Arizona race called Desert Dog, designed to shred a man, while using monkey-wrench tactics to unseat a corrupt senator. Pursued by a smoking-hot agent from the Treasury's Terrorism and Financial Intelligence office, a doe-like prostitute with burn marks on her back and a sick story about a demented senator, and by Cal Barrett - Desert Dog organizer and brain behind Operation Guillotine - Solomon Bull has a difficult choice and no time to make it.

Francis Joseph Cassavant is eighteen. He has just returned home from the Second World War, and he has no face. He does have a gun and a mission: to murder his childhood hero. Francis lost most of his face when he fell on a grenade in France. He received the Silver Star for bravery, but was it really an act of heroism? Now, having survived, he is looking for a man he once admired and respected, a man adored by many people, a man who also received a Silver Star for bravery. A man who destroyed Francis's life.

College campuses have become flashpoints of the current culture war and, consequently, much ink has been spilled over the relationship between universities and the cultivation or coddling of young American minds. Philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath takes head-on arguments that infantilize students who speak out against violent and racist discourse on campus or rehash interpretations of the First Amendment. Ben-Porath sets out to demonstrate the role of the university in American society and, specifically, how it can model free speech in ways that promote democratic ideals.

The Silent Hen is fiction based on actual events of WWII, written by Helen Montague Foster as a tribute to her parents and other courageous men and women of the OSS, whose secret struggles and relationships continue to impact the world. This morally complex story follows a Jewish child sheltered by a Muslim couple in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, and a Virginia woman named Lucy whose conscience compels her to enlist in the OSS, forerunner to the CIA, for service in Egypt.

Part fugitive, part hero, fifteen-year-old Nya is barely staying ahead of the Duke of Baseer's trackers. Wanted for a crime she didn't mean to commit, she risks capture to protect every Taker she can find, determined to prevent the Duke from using them in his fiendish experiments. But resolve isn't enough to protect any of them, and Nya soon realizes that the only way to keep them all out of the Duke's clutches is to flee Geveg. Unfortunately, the Duke's best tracker has other ideas.

By the acclaimed author of the classic Patriots and Union 1812, this major work of narrative history portrays four of the most turbulent decades in the growth of the American nation. After the War of 1812, Presidents Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, and Polk led the country to its Manifest Destiny across the continent, but the forces and hostility unleashed by that expansion led inexorably to Civil War.

Americans are justly proud of the role the United States played in liberating Europe from Nazi tyranny. For many years, we have celebrated the courage of the Allied soldiers, sailors, and aircrews who defeated Hitler's regime and restored freedom to the continent. But in recounting the heroism of the "greatest generation," Americans often overlook the wartime experiences of European people themselves - the very people for whom the war was fought

Whirlwind is the only book to examine in depth the human drama behind the most important bombing campaign in history. While the air war against Nazi Germany has been covered in-depth by many books, Barrett Tillman, a renowned authority on military aircraft and the air war in the Pacific, is the first to tackle the air war against Japan. For decades, historians and politicians have debated whether or not Japan was on the verge of surrender in August 1945---before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Closing with the Enemy picks up where D-Day leaves off. From Normandy through the "breakout" in France to the German army's last gasp in the Battle of the Bulge, Michael D. Doubler deals with the deadly business of war - closing with the enemy, fighting and winning battles, taking and holding territory. His study provides a provocative reassessment of how American GIs accomplished these dangerous and costly tasks.

Abandoned as infants, twins Peter and Rory have never known a real family. While Peter wants nothing more than to escape his abusive adoptive father, Rory struggles to not get kicked out of her twelfth foster home since she was separated from Peter seven years ago. All that changes when magical birds appear offering to help them reunite...and return them to the home they never knew. But fate is cruel. They arrive on the planet Inara, on opposing sides of a brutal war. It is up to them to uncover the real enemy if they ever want to see each other again.

At first light on Tuesday, May 28th, 1918, waves of American riflemen from the US Army's First Division climbed from their trenches, charged across the shell-scarred French dirt of no-man's-land, and captured the hilltop village of Cantigny from the grip of the German Army. Those who survived the enemy machine-gun fire and hand-to-hand fighting held on for the next two days and nights in shallow foxholes under the sting of mustard gas and crushing steel of artillery fire.

Frazier has made use of previously untapped primary sources, allowing him to present new interpretations of the famous Civil War battles in the Southwest. Using narratives of veterans of the campaign and official Confederate and Union documents, the author explains how this seemingly far-fetched fantasy of building a Confederate empire was an essential part of the Confederate strategy.

Climbing his way out of the foster care system and into the Marine Corps, Sean P. Jensen rebuilt his life to include a loving wife, family, and the rediscovery of a Hawaiian heritage that illuminated his past, his character, and his way forward. Part of that way forward was founding Polu Kai Services, LLC, in 2002, a construction and environmental services company that he grew from an initial investment of $1,600 to an Inc. 5000 competitor that handles million-dollar government contracts.

Ciara has traveled to the barracks, but the promised teaching has not come to pass, leaving her worse off than before and her people without the nya'shin for protection. If she can't master the summoning, she fears the darkness will claim her. But now that the darkness has revealed itself, Jasn must find a way to save Alena from her connection to the draasin before that connection kills her. Only then can he search for whether Katya was destroyed by the darkness or learn if he can still save her.

Even 150 years later, we are haunted by the Civil War---by its division, its bloodshed, and perhaps, above all, by its origins. Today, many believe that the war was fought over slavery. This answer satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gary W. Gallagher shows in this brilliant revisionist history, it is an anachronistic judgment.

In Atenas, the dark summoners of the Khalan press their attack. Alena's discovery of how to use spirit gives them an advantage, but the Khalan have numbers, and have infiltrated much of the city. Forced to lead, Alena struggles with the expectations now placed upon her. Returned from captivity and now a master of summoning, Ciara is the key to stopping the Khalan and Tenebeth for good, but she will need the help of both the warriors of Atenas and the remnants of Hyaln.