War Birds

Billy Flynn always wanted to fly. An attractive young man, a patriot, he is also an artist with pencil and paint and has an abiding affinity for nature. It's 1970 and he cannot resist the call to serve in Vietnam. A year later he is the only survivor when his helicopter is shot down. A Catalog of Birds is the story of a family and a community confronted with a loss of innocence and wounds that may never heal. The legacy of war and its destruction of nature is seared onto the memories of a small American town.

In their rise to fame over the course of the war, Bea Herron, Ivy Sparrow and Rainey Bird have faced down bombs and looked tragedy in the eye. They have also found love, created their own families and had careers that they never thought possible. With peace finally on the horizon, what will the new world hold for them?

Rainey Bird, Ivy Sparrow and Bea Herron all love to sing. For Rainey, music has been a solace during the upheaval of starting a new life with her mother, away from her abusive dad. Bea finds a confidence when she sings that she cannot get from anything else. Ivy sees it as her best chance of making a life away from Gosport and a dead-end job. The three of them sing in a choir run by the strict but kind Mrs Wilkes. The choir provides a couple of hours of stardust each week, away from school and work and family worries.

1943, and The Bluebird Girls are at the top of their game. They are touring with ENSA, visiting army bases across the world in order to boost the morale of the brave boys fighting in the desert and the jungle. The hours are long and the travelling uncomfortable, but Bea, Rainey and Ivy wouldn't be anywhere else for the world. Then tragedy strikes the group and their little show business family. Their manager, Blackie, and Rainey's mother, Jo, find themselves with heavy new responsibilities, and the change in circumstances causes the girls themselves to reconsider their lives.

When it comes to flying gliders, ace pilot Breeze Callaghan is as smooth as they come. He perfects a skill that will prove vitally important for decades to come - even into the jet age, as demonstrated by Captain Sully Sullenberger, who famously landed his disabled passenger plane on the Hudson River.

The clandestine Ground Division has a single mission. They exist for the sole purpose to take on tasks the United States government doesn’t want to be implicated in. They work in the shadow of the Central Intelligence Agency, but the men of the Ground Division are not CIA agents. Many of them come from the ranks of America’s greatest war fighters - soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines, but the men of the Ground Division are not military; they are ghosts. They are off the books of any official government roster.

Vlad flea is with his friend Crisp VC, the carrier pigeon. They are on a mission to deliver a secret message. It is March 25, 1918, and the friends are behind enemy lines. They must dodge the dog-fights, survive the trenches and seek help from the staff of the hospital tent as they race to reach Britain safely.

Endlich sind alle drei Rabengeschichten in einer Hörbuchedition versammelt. Zu den zwei Bilderbuchklassikern "Als die Raben noch bunt waren" und "Der Rabe, der anders war", die vom wundersamen Farbwechsel der zerstrittenen Vögel und dem ungewollten Buntraben erzählen, gesellt sich nun eine neu veröffentlichte Geschichte. In "Wer will den blauen Raben haben?" vertreibt ein Feuer den Blauraben aus seiner Heimat. Eine Reise ins Unbekannte beginnt, die ihn über's Meer und an fremde Ufer führt.