Upstate New York in the mid-19th century is a cauldron bubbling with the lure of fast fortunes, religious zealotry, and battles for civil liberties. This fervor centers on the Erie Canal, which successfully supports scores of villages brimming with opportunity. One such village, Fayetteville, shapes the lives of two future American leaders.

High Bridge tells the stories of a young newlywed, the only child of freethinking abolitionists, and a prankster lad who grows up in the large family of an austere reverend. Despite their different childhoods and worldviews, they form an unlikely friendship. Can they combine their skills to solve a mystery and vindicate a Black man accused of murder?

 

 

I became a man when I was nine. My other option was death.

I just didn’t know it then, but the truth is that I . . . we . . . had to leave.

Why would parents send their children, alone, to a foreign country with no guarantee that they would ever see each other again? From December 1960 to October 1962, over 14,000 unescorted children fled Cuba for the United States in what became known as Operation Peter Pan. Under Fidel Castro’s tyrannical regime, the state confiscated people’s property and bank accounts. Food, clothing, and medicine were rationed. Churches, houses of worship, and clergy were attacked. There was no freedom. Cubans lived in fear.

When Tony and Norma boarded the plane that would fly them to freedom, they had no idea what the future would hold. Theirs was a voyage into the unknown. A Boy, an Orphanage, a Cuban Refugee chronicles their emotional journey through Tony’s eyes as he and Norma navigate life for six weeks in a refugee camp and then a year in an orphanage, until they are finally reunited with their mother.

 

 

 

After a life as a Navy fighter pilot, medical doctor, avid boater, and outdoorsman, William “Buddy” Bethea retired from practicing medicine in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and moved to Florida. Never the porch-sitter, and inspired by his passion for fishing and cruising on the water, he ordered a customized yacht able to traverse oceans. So, where to go?

Join Buddy and his wife, Kathy, as they set off from California for Alaska, where they spend many weeks alone or with friends, plying the waters of the great state. Buddy’s dispatches are a must-read for anyone contemplating similar sojourns, or for those who love high-seas adventure. These beautiful vignettes will transport readers from their armchairs to stunning-and at times dangerous-seas and along his return through the Panama Canal.

 

 

Loving & Leaving is the first installment of Jack Lucci’s living memoir, beginning in Lucci’s early twenties and ending five years later. Touching on themes of gratefulness and regret, Lucci tells stories of addiction and his efforts to sustain the love he has found for people and places. He spins his tale with brutal honesty, playing both hero and anti-hero. Though he longs for stability, Lucci only manages to create the inconsistency that plagues many addicts.

Whether you find yourself rooting for or against him, you are guaranteed to be invested in the mystery of where his life is headed next-the very mystery that is most integral to a life in motion.

 

 

On the technologically advanced planet Novart, Warrior cadet Trinity Knight suddenly loses her invincibility. The indestructible dakkie cladding her gray skin is rendered useless, and the supercomputer implanted in her head becomes dysfunctional. At the same time, things go awry for the prized Esra10 mission, and she has forty-eight hours to save it.

Separated from Central Command and forced to go dark, Trinity plunges into high-stakes battles with androids, drones, and hackers controlled by rich and powerful enemies fixated on her termination and stopping Esra10. Reconnecting with her base increases the danger, as some commanders are spies selling information to the highest bidder, and her capture is worth a fortune.

Her ultimate survival hinges on leaving Novart. Help comes from allies and incredible new abilities, giving Trinity and her broken supercomputer a fighting chance.

 

 

The 1960s did not go well for Michael Fisher’s mother. Abandoned by the abusive biological father of her sons, she moves her family in with her parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where life is happy enough but means are meager.

Everything changes in 1971 when she meets a young Army officer who becomes a true father to her boys. Within a year, they are married, and Michael finds himself moving to the other side of the globe, Bangkok, Thailand, and into a life of relative affluence. There, Michael will make mistakes and grow up way too fast in an environment with no rules, but he will also find his place in the world.

 

 

Part memoir and part fiction, Saving America’s Citizens follows Tod Gohl through his real life in the US Air Force and into a hypothetical future that offers the United States of America a light at the end of the tunnel.

Violence runs rampant in US cities. Children are being killed and trafficked, riots erupt for no reason, and there is no regard for human life or private property. The border is being overrun by illegal immigrants, often mixed with terrorists. Lawlessness exists everywhere.

Tod Gohl and many others took an oath to protect the United States of America. When Tod realizes that elections and leadership changeovers offer no overall solution, he decides to take matters into his own hands and create a task force to defeat America’s enemies. Can they reclaim this country’s bright future?

 

 

Against the backdrop of the late Cold War, a tiny American start-up company forged a secret deal to place American scientific payloads aboard the Soviet space station MIR. Born out of sheer desperation after the Challenger explosion and grounding of the US space shuttle program, the agreement was negotiated and approved behind the backs of NASA and Congress, with the help of US government officials inside the Commerce and Defense departments.

On a cold gray morning in February 1988, the company founder met with three graduate students and their professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put his plans into action. Baikonur Man, written by one of those students, recounts the subsequent five-year saga of how science, comradery, hardship, drama, and occasional lunacy led to the first American experiments and payloads to fly on Russian rockets.

 

 

In his stirring, witty memoir, first-time author Roger M. Hughes chronicles the mesmerizing exploits of his family. Spanning 130 years, four generations, and four continents, Hughes invites readers into the lives of his brave and adventurous great-grandfather; his cantankerous grandfather; his decorated war-hero and spy father; and into his own life-finding his own identity in the world and becoming a successful trial lawyer.

Conveying in striking detail how each generation of his family became an integral part of the history of their time and place, each disregarding their legacy and finding their own way to pursue historical and cultural opportunities, That Which Cannot BeDenied culminates in the touching story of how Roger found his true purpose in life.