Lucky Bastard A Hero Club Novel

To all appearances, Anthony “Tony” Korkuc was just another casualty of World War II. A gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, Korkuc was lost on a bombing mission over Germany, and his family believed that his body had never been recovered. But when they learned in 1995 that Tony was actually buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his nephew Bob Korkuc set out on a seven-year quest to learn the true fate of an uncle he never knew. Finding a Fallen Hero is a compelling story that blends a wartime drama with a primer on specialized research. Author Bob Korkuc initially set out to learn how his Uncle Tony came to rest at Arlington. In the process, he also unraveled the mystery of what occurred over the skies of Germany half a century ago. Korkuc dug up military documents and private letters and interviewed people in both the United States and Germany. He tracked down surviving crewmembers and even found the brother of the Luftwaffe pilot who downed the B-17. Dozens of photographs help readers envision both Tony Korkuc’s fateful flight and his nephew’s dogged search for the truth. A gripping chronicle of exhaustive research, Finding a Fallen Hero will strike a chord with any reader who has lost a family member to war. And it will inspire others to satisfy their own unanswered questions.

A straightforward guide to creating a great story that keeps your audience riveted. The art of telling stories has been around as long as humans. And in today’s noisy, techy, automated world, storytelling is not only prevalent?it’s vital. Whether you're interested in enlivening verbal communication, building your business brand, making presentations, sharing family wisdom, or performing on stage, Story Power shows you how to make use of a good story. Telling stories is the most effective verbal communication?if you know how to use it. Story Power provides techniques for creating and framing personal stories alongside effective tips for telling them in any setting. Plus, this book models stories with unique storytelling examples, exercises, and prompts, as well as storytelling techniques for delivery in a spontaneous, authentic style. Story Power is an engaging, lively guide to the art of telling stories from author and librarian Kate Farrell, a seasoned storyteller and founder of the Word Weaving Storytelling Project. In Story Power, more than twenty skillful contributors with a range of diverse voices share their secrets to creating, crafting, and telling tales. In this book discover: How to share your own coming-of-age stories and family folklore The importance of a personal branding story and storytelling marketing Seven Steps to Storytelling, along with helpful tools, organizers, and media options With a foreword by New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Susan Wittig Albert Praise for Story Power “You can read a lot of books that tell you how to tell a story. Unlike them, Story Power illustrates the art, with twenty-one diverse voices and fascinating tales that entertain as you learn how to create and craft personal stories of all types.” —Nina Amir, bestselling author of How to Blog a Book, The Author Training Manual, and Creative Visualization for Writers “Mining her own experiences, Farrell offers small narrative gems alongside craft tips, commentary, and writing samples from an impressive list of acclaimed writers. Learn travel writing from Lisa Alpine, for example, or keys to crafting adventure stories from Mary Mackey, or personal branding from Marissa Moss . . . . Engaging and accessible, Story Power will help you jump-start and sustain your writing practice.” —Mary Volmer, author of Reliance, Illinois

The sequel to the much-loved The Damned Busters.

LONGLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC PRIZE 2017 The coke-fuelled mania behind pop’s greatest successes Tom Watkins is the famously entertaining pop Svengali with killer commercial instincts and prodigious talent for design. He propelled the Pet Shop Boys, Bros and East 17, among others, to global stardom, all whilst maintaining a savage hedonistic lifestyle and a stellar art collection. His fingerprints are all over British pop, and he’s decided the time has come for a tell-all autobiography about the business behind the stars that shaped your life in the 80s and 90s. Follow Tom’s journey from his humble boyhood in post-war South-East London, to his teenage misdeeds and the birth of Rock and Roll; his days as a design student under the tutelage of Terence Conran and Rodney Fitch, to the excesses of the 80s and 90s where he became one of the original boy band innovators – the driving force behind the pop icons plastered on the walls of teenage girls’ bedrooms. Funny, unstoppable and outspoken, a razor-sharp and greatly respected businessman, marketing visionary, designer and art collector, Tom takes us through his extraordinary and colourful life into the inner-circle of 80s pop-culture. From hobnobbing with Bruce Sprinsteen to bust-ups with Bros, Tom has seen it all. Expect a gripping, gossipy, meticulously researched memoir of the drug-addled 80s and 90s, layered on top of an insightful and intelligent portrait of a recent but very different age, from the singular perspective of a man who played a huge role in defining the era and paved the way for industry moguls like Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh.

Detective MC Riggio can't wait to get married. She is desperately in love with her fiancé Dan, and is counting down the days until the wedding. Best of all, her big Italian family have welcomed Dan with open arms, her mother ecstatic at the thought of more grandchildren. But MC never does marry Dan or have his children. A few weeks before the wedding day he is shot dead - and MC's world crumbles into pieces. Detective Kitt Lundgren is there to support her colleague. She knows grief only too well - her only daughter has recently died - and she knows that MC's only concern now will be to find out who killed her fiancé. So the two women work day and night to discover what happened to Dan. But there is a ruthless killer on the loose, a killer who knows no fear. And Kitt and MC have put themselves right in the firing line...

Congratulations! Your pain is commercially viable. It's 1991 and the Gulf War rages three thousand, three hundred and twenty miles away. Darlee is 8 years old, crying behind the wheelie bookcase in Miss Stratford's classroom. She's just realised she's Iraqi. Or half. Maybe both. She saw it on the news last night after Neighbours and fish fingers. Heard the fear slipping through the receiver, saw it oozing from Dad's eyeballs and into the living room as he tried to phone home. What she can't process now, she'll be haunted by later; the spirits hounding her will make sure of that... Baghdaddy is a playfully devastating coming-of-age story, told through clowning and memory to explore the complexities of cultural identity, generational trauma and a father-daughter relationship amidst global conflict. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at London's Royal Court Theatre in November 2022.

Heyday is a brilliantly imagined, wildly entertaining tale of America’s boisterous coming of age–a sweeping panorama of madcap rebellion and overnight fortunes, palaces and brothels, murder and revenge–as well as the story of a handful of unforgettable characters discovering the nature of freedom, loyalty, friendship, and true love. In the middle of the nineteenth century, modern life is being born: the mind-boggling marvels of photography, the telegraph, and railroads; a flood of show business spectacles and newspapers; rampant sex and drugs and drink (and moral crusades against all three); Wall Street awash with money; and giddy utopian visions everywhere. Then, during a single amazing month at the beginning of 1848, history lurches: America wins its war of manifest destiny against Mexico, gold is discovered in northern California, and revolutions sweep across Europe–sending one eager English gentleman off on an epic transatlantic adventure. . . . Amid the tumult, aristocratic Benjamin Knowles impulsively abandons the Old World to reinvent himself in New York, where he finds himself embraced by three restless young Americans: Timothy Skaggs, muckraking journalist, daguerreotypist, pleasure-seeker, stargazer; the fireman Duff Lucking, a sweet but dangerously damaged veteran of the Mexican War; and Duff’s dazzling sister Polly Lucking, a strong-minded, free thinking actress (and discreet part-time prostitute) with whom Ben falls hopelessly in love. Beckoned by the frontier, new beginnings, and the prospects of the California Gold Rush, all four set out on a transcontinental race west–relentlessly tracked, unbeknownst to them, by a cold-blooded killer bent on revenge. A fresh, impeccable portrait of an era startlingly reminiscent of our own times, Heyday is by turns tragic and funny and sublime, filled with bona fide heroes and lost souls, visionaries (Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin, Alexis de Tocqueville) and monsters, expanding horizons and narrow escapes. It is also an affecting story of four people passionately chasing their American dreams at a time when America herself was still being dreamed up–an enthralling, old-fashioned yarn interwoven with a bracingly modern novel of ideas. "In this utterly engaging novel, the author of Turn of the Century brings 19th-century America vividly to life . . . While this is a long book, it moves quickly, with historical detail that's involving but never a drag on the action; the characters are beautifully drawn. A terrific book; highly recommended." –Library Journal "Heyday is fuled by manic energy, fanatical research, and a wicked sense of humor.... It's a joyful, wild gallop through a joyful, wild time to be an American." -Vanity Fair

From the author of A PALER SHADE OF RED -- Memoirs of a Radical; FLIGHT FROM EIN SOF and THE INVENTOR comes this collection of gritty, satirical, chilling, iconoclastic, always ferocious and unrepentant dystopias. Death and virgin birth, immortality and cannibalism, paradise and hell, the cosmos, bigotry and vigilantism, close encounters, wars to end all wars, hallucinations, disquieting prophecies and insanity -- mainly insanity -- are the forces that drive ONE NIGHT IN COPAN. Oscillating between parody and polemic, allegory and unalloyed horror, paradox and hyperbole, the apocalyptic canvases W. E. Gutman paints can be read as one man's antidote for the despotism of inflexible creeds and the paralyzing effects of groupthink. A work of hyper-realism, this collection of thirteen tales uses bizarre, fantastic, sometimes ghoulish, always disquieting devices to capture and expose truths that people ensconced in ideological cocoons ignore, shirk or refute. About the Author Born in Paris, W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist and author. A former writer at OMNI magazine and U.S. editor of Science in the USSR, he covered politics and human rights in Central America from 1994 to 2006. He lives with his wife in southern California.

The first girl came back. The next might not be so lucky... -------- 'A real gripper of a read' Peter James 'Masterful, engrossing, twisty' Rosamund Lupton 'One of our most exciting crime writers' John Marrs A girl is taken from the streets of Oxford. But it's unlike any abduction DI Fawley's seen before . . . Faith Appleford was attacked, a plastic bag tied over her head, taken to an isolated location . . . and then, by some miracle, she escaped. What's more, when DC Erica Somer interviews Faith, she quickly becomes convinced that Faith knows who her abductor is. Yet Faith refuses to press charges. Without more evidence, it's looking like the police may have to drop the case. But what happens if Faith's attacker strikes again? The fourth twisty, up-all-night thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling Cara Hunter. For fans of Shari Lapena, Claire Douglas and Lisa Jewell. -------- What they're saying about Cara Hunter 'Twist follows twist at a breathtaking pace' Daily Mail 'Fantastic...my favourite series ever!' Shari Lapena, Not A Happy Family 'You can almost hear her characters breathing from the page' Jane Corry, We All Have Our Secrets 'Utterly compelling' Nicci French, The Unheard 'A top-notch psychological thriller' JP Delaney, The Perfect Wife 'I was totally gripped and terrified!' Araminta Hall, Hidden Depths 'Hunter has rejuvenated the form' Financial Times And readers are loving this series, too 'All hail the new queen of all things crime' Penny, Netgalley 'Mind-bending brilliance' Kath, Netgalley 'Packed full of twists' Gary, Netgalley 'Definitely for fans of Lisa Gardner, Karin Slaughter and the like' Fiona, Netgalley 'Captivating: full of mystery, tension, moral dilemma . . . outstanding' Peter, Netgalley 'This series just gets better and better' Tina, Netgalley

Over the years, both inside and out (though mainly in) he met and associated with many armed robbers, and in Raiders he tells their amazing stories. Like Big Bad Bob, the Scotsman who raided bureaux de change 'armed' only with a water-pistol; Steve the Saint, who risked the best relationship of his life on one last big one in the West End and ended up getting a life sentence; and the members of the Little Firm who terrorized south London till their addictions got the better of them. The heyday of the armed bank robber may have passed as security has become all but watertight and sentences draconian. But there are some still prepared to risk it, for the thrills as well as the money. But be warned: if you are stupid enough to take up bank robbery as a career, you will be going to prison. It's odds on. Just read this book.

Yunnan Province, China, 1943...Two men wage an intellectual war over a timeworn chessboard, a metaphor for the conflict that rages in the skies above. The young, handsome Army pilot seethes against the violent forces of a hostile world, angry that his bombs and bullets cannot vanquish the enemy who threatens all his values. His opponent, the older, world-wise man of the cloth dispatched long ago to this dreary, distant outpost, offers divine guidance: "You can't force the hand of God." Such advice is wasted on Major Rodger Brown, who has never been one to simply accept fate--not since the terrible night of his childhood when another evil penetrated his world, forcing a good man to flee for his life. A helpless boy then, Rodger grew to be a man who vowed to change the course of injustice--even if it meant using the lethal power he learned to wield both above the clouds and in the boxing ring. Author Jacquie Ream paints a vivid picture of life during wartime, both at the front lines and on the home front. Her story evokes a time when men and women found the courage to do the necessary, the objectionable, even the unthinkable to defend their lives and loved ones, and to preserve the essential fabric of this great country.

Akuto has awakened as the Demon King, and has declared that he will kill the gods. Now he faces thousands of troops, Eiko Teruya, and his friends, Junko and Hiroshi. Meanwhile, Keena may hold the key to the future of humanity itself.

Among Stephen Jay Gould's many gifts was his ability to write eloquently about baseball, his great passion. Through the years, the renowned palaeontologist published numerous essays on the sport which have now for the first time been collected in a volume alive with all the candour and insight that characterized Gould's writing. Here are his thoughts on the complexities of childhood streetball and the joys of opening day; tributes to Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, and lesser-knowns such as deaf-mute centerfielder 'Dummy' Hoy; and a frank admission of the contradictions inherent in being a lifelong Yankees fan with Red Sox season tickets. So, too, does Gould deftly apply the tools of evolutionary theory to the demise of the 0.400 hitter, the Abner Doubleday creation myth, and the improbability of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. This book is a delight - an essential addition to Gould's remarkable legacy, and a fitting tribute to his love for the game.