War Birds

Combining vibrant novelistic storytelling with extensive research, interviews, and previously unpublished accounts, Simon Parkin describes for the first time the role that women played in developing the Allied strategy that, in the words of one admiral, "contributed in no small measure to the final defeat of Germany." Rich with unforgettable cinematic detail and larger-than-life characters, A Game of Birds and Wolves is a heart-wrenching tale of ingenuity, dedication, perseverance, and love, bringing to life the imagination and sacrifice required to defeat the Nazis at sea.

In the autumn of 1915 Will Bird was working on a farm in Saskatchewan when the ghost of his brother Stephen, killed by German mines in France, appeared before him in uniform. Rattled, Bird rushed home to Nova Scotia and enlisted in the army to take his dead brother's place. And We Go On is a remarkable and harrowing memoir of his two years in the trenches of the Western Front, from October 1916 until the Armistice.

It is 1944, and Twyla Campbell has been transporting fighter planes to Alaska for the Army Air Force, President Roosevelt, and Premier Stalin. In Fairbanks she befriended Marina, a Russian pilot with indefatigable courage and an odd sense of humor. When tragedy struck again, Twyla boarded a transport, only to find herself arrested on the Eastern Front scheduled for execution.

"I'm waiting for my life to begin. Waiting for the train to come in," Ava Stilwell, a young woman eager for life, sings a popular song with the big band that reflects her heart. In the midst of a world at war, Ava finds love, a passion for her music, and new opportunities, but the war still looms over her, threatening to take it all away. It's 1943, and World War II has gripped the nation, including the Stilwell family in Jacksonville, Alabama. Rationing, bomb drills, patriotism, and a changing South barrage their way of life.

Book One of the Twyla & the Warbirds saga, Family Lost, traces a difficult path for an American-Ukrainian rural girl from Boonville California. At a tender age, Twyla Campbell loses her family in a freak aeroplane accident. Her young life is salvaged from indenture by the neighbor boy, who teaches her to fly.

Son against father for rangeland justice. What son could draw against his own father? That's the question Neil Wallace had to ask himself. Neil admired his father, King Wallace, for building up the biggest ranch in the territory and defending it with guns blazing against rustlers and robbers. But Neil knew the days of the wild west and the taking of law into one's own hands were gone. Yet he was positive his father wouldn't be restrained by any scruples.

In the glamorous world of 1940s New York, Hattie James is a rising star, enchanting audiences at the iconic Copacabana Club. But her glittering life is shattered by a shocking phone call: her father, a respected diplomat, has been arrested for espionage, accused of aiding Nazi Germany. As her world crumbles, Hattie is plunged into a whirlwind of danger and deceit. Following her father's dramatic escape and alleged betrayal, Hattie is coerced by the FBI to aid their hunt. Her mission: infiltrate Rio de Janeiro's high society and uncover the truth about her father's loyalties.

October, 1952. The war is over, but for CIA officer Miriam Becker, memories of the horrors she witnessed remain jagged in her mind. While vacationing in Argentina, recovering from a mission that nearly killed her, she's seeing more ghosts from the past than the sights. When a longtime family friend and fellow operative, Jake Devlin, tracks her down, Miriam is forced to push everything to the back of her mind for the next mission: help a highly prized and heavily guarded rocket scientist defect from Soviet-controlled East Berlin—right out from under the KGB's nose.

Despite Germany’s stranglehold on the French, Benjamin Cohen, an introverted but musically talented adolescent, alters the course of his life when he defies his father to study the 55-bell carillon in the Catholic cathedral. Can Benjamin’s budding mastery of the carillon and his love affair with the troubled novitiate nun Marie-Noëlle give him le courage he needs to perform the one act that can save his people from Nazi arrest and earn back the respect from his father he craves? Or will it doom them all?

This evening, no one looks like me. I put my heart into the fridge, my eyes into the shoe closet. I left my fingers yonder on the door handle.