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Checkpoint Charlie : the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the most dangerous place on earth / by MacGregor, Iain,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-326) and index."Checkpoint Charlie is the story of the men and women - from both sides of the Cold War's political divide - who lived, served on, or escaped through the Berlin Wall during its life span (13th August 1961 - 9th November 1989). This physical monstrosity created by the East German communist state was to divide one of the most beautiful and by 1961, ruined cities of the world; dividing families, friends and lovers. Its creation, and its sudden collapse twenty-seven years later, were the key moments of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie was the one place in a paranoid continent where East faced West across one hundred yards of No Man's Land. Where soldiers served, spies watched through trained binoculars, escapees fled, politicians made speeches, people died and, mothers wept. The Wall was seen by many as permanent as the Himalayas. Across the Wall's almost three decades of existence, over two hundred people died trying to escape through it to the West, and these are just the recorded deaths. Many more who attempted and failed to break to freedom, would later die of their wounds in an East German hospital or prison. Historian Iain MacGregor travels to America, Britain, Germany and France to talk to the many people the Berlin Wall affected and who found themselves at the gates of Checkpoint Charlie - either on the Allied, or Soviet side. He interviews soldiers, politicians, journalists, spies, policemen, refugees and escapees to build a picture of what life was like in the city that was universally seen as the "hot spot" of the Cold War for four decades"--
Subjects: Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany, 1961-1989; Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, Germany, 1961-1989; Cold War;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Hotline / by Nasrallah, Dimitri,1978-author.;
"A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman's struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration. It'ss 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories in Lebanon. She had plans to find work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec trusts her to teach the language. She needs to start making money, and fast. The only work Muna can find is at a weight-loss center as a hotline operator. All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines or on TV. On the phone, she's Mona, and she's quite good at listening. These strangers all have so much to say once someone shows interest in their lives--marriages gone bad, parents dying, isolation, personal inadequacies. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers at every turn, at the office Muna is privy to her clients' deepest secrets."--
Subjects: Novels.; Call center agents; Immigrants; Lebanese; Marginality, Social; Nineteen eighties;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Now we shall be entirely free / by Miller, Andrew,1961-author.;
One rain-swept February night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain's disastrous campaign against Napoleon's forces in Spain. Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind - he cannot talk about the war or face the memory of what happened in a village on the gruelling retreat to Corunna. After the command comes to return to his regiment, he sets out instead for the Hebrides, with the vague intent of reviving his musical interests and collecting local folksongs. Lacroix sails north incognito, unaware that he has far worse to fear than being dragged back to the army: a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer are on his trail, with orders to kill. The haven he finds on a remote island with a family of free-thinkers and the sister he falls for are not safe, at all.--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Great Britain. Army; Great Britain. Army; Veterans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Beyond that, the sea / by Spence-Ash, Laura,author.;
"A sweeping, tenderhearted love story, Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash tells the story of two families living through World War II on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and the shy, irresistible young woman who will call them both her own. As German bombs fall over London in 1940, working-class parents Millie and Reginald Thompson make an impossible choice: they decide to send their eleven-year-old daughter, Beatrix, to America. There, she'll live with another family for the duration of the war, where they hope she'll stay safe. Scared and angry, feeling lonely and displaced, Bea arrives in Boston to meet the Gregorys. Mr. and Mrs. G, and their sons William and Gerald, fold Bea seamlessly into their world. She becomes part of this lively family, learning their ways and their stories, adjusting to their affluent lifestyle. Bea grows close to both boys, one older and one younger, and fills in the gap between them. Before long, before she even realizes it, life with the Gregorys feels more natural to her than the quiet, spare life with her own parents back in England. As Bea comes into herself and relaxes into her new life--summers on the coast in Maine, new friends clamoring to hear about life across the sea--the girl she had been begins to fade away, until, abruptly, she is called home to London when the war ends. Desperate as she is not to leave this life behind, Bea dutifully retraces her trip across the Atlantic back to her new, old world. As she returns to post-war London, the memory of her American family stays with her, never fully letting her go, and always pulling on her heart as she tries to move on and pursue love and a life of her own. As we follow Bea over time, navigating between her two worlds, Beyond That, the Sea emerges as a beautifully written, absorbing novel, full of grace and heartache, forgiveness and understanding, loss and love"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945; Young women;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Cassino '44 : the brutal battle for Rome / by Holland, James,1970-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Acclaimed World War II historian James Holland vividly relates the dramatic last months of the Italian Campaign in a masterful volume that brings new awareness to this vital hinge point of the war. As the new year of 1944 began in Italy, the Allied army's momentum had ground to a halt just south of the vaunted German Gustav Line of defense, far short of their initial objective of liberating Rome by Christmas. The fighting up the Italian peninsula had been brutal -- rugged terrain, fierce resistance, terrible weather. While Allied leaders in London prepared for the cross-Channel invasion of France later that spring, the war in the West hinged in Italy. As bestselling historian James Holland relates in his seminal concluding volume on the Italy Campaign, the next five months saw two of World War II's most famous battles -- the four ferocious assaults on Monte Cassino and the fraught landing northwest in the marshes at Anzio -- culminating at last in the liberation of Rome on June 4, merely two days before D-Day. Based on twenty years of research, Cassino '44 offers perspectives and conclusions that differ from the standard narrative. Holland elevates the narrative of war, chronicling the dramatic events primarily through in-the-moment letters and diaries of those who were there. Counterpointing the memories of German soldiers like battalion commander Jurg Kellner with those of British captain John Strick and American corporal Audie Murphy, whose exploits in the field would lead to Hollywood fame, and of Italian citizens and politicians caught up in the maelstrom, Holland vividly recreates their day-to-day encounter with destiny over each bloodily contested mile. General Mark Clark, overall Allied commander in Italy, has been criticized for being overly cautious and needlessly extending the campaign. Holland argues that, given the conditions and constant shortage of materiel held back for the D-Day invasion, Clark and other commanders led a remarkably successful campaign. Well more than 100,000 Allied casualties occurred in the five months leading to Rome, more than in any other campaign of the war. Cassino '44 is the definitive account of a key turning point of World War II and brings our appreciation of the experience of war to a new level"--
Subjects: Cassino, Battle of, Cassino, Italy, 1944.; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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More than sorrow : a mystery / by Delany, Vicki,1951-;
Hannah Manning was once an internationally renowned journalist and war correspondent; today she's a woman suffering from a traumatic brain injury. Unable to concentrate, full of pain, and haunted by her memories, Hannah goes to Ontario to her sister's small vegetable farm to recover. But Hannah experiences strange visions of a woman emerging from the icy-cold mist. Is the woman real or the product of her damaged brain? Which would be worse?
Subjects: Detective and mystery stories.; Mystery fiction.; Brain damage; Journalists; Visions;
© 2012., Poisoned Pen Press,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Memory and desire : a novel / by Caputo, Philip,author.;
"From the acclaimed storyteller, a propulsive tale of desire, betrayal, duty, and infidelity-and the explosive consequences of buried passion. The newsman in Luke Blackburn shuns the spotlight when he and his old friend, now the county mayor in Key West, discover stranded Cuban refugees during a fishing outing turned tragic, but he is part of the story that goes out on the wire. When Corinne, his lover from many years ago, happens to read it and reaches out, the news she bears will disrupt his carefully orchestrated life and threatens to blow up his marriage. His wife, Maureen, lace-curtain Irish while he was from Appalachia, is a brilliant scholar who is also bipolar and fragile. Luke has never told her about his youthful passion or the infant that Corinne, barely out of her teenage years, gave up at birth when they split and he went to war. Maureen's illness has meant that she and Luke have foregone having children of their own. In Luke's mind, she cannot find out about Corinne or the child. Meanwhile, in Miami, where Luke works as the managing editor at a newspaper struggling to survive in the digital era, his star investigative reporter is slowly piecing together a blockbuster story zeroing in on the corrupting influence of cartel money in south Florida. The evidence she has uncovered links a flashy real estate developer, a legacy of murky land dealings, and the stink of political corruption in Luke's own refuge, Key West"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Marriage; Money laundering; Newspaper editors; Political corruption;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A man of two faces : a memoir, a history, a memorial / by Nguyen, Viet Thanh,1971-author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-380)."With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son. At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thuot and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny facade of what he calls AMERICA TM.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971-; Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971-; Authors; Immigrants; Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Vietnamese Americans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Paris agent / by Rimmer, Kelly,author.;
Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Noah Ainsworth is still preoccupied with those perilous, exhilarating years as a British SOE operative in France. A head injury sustained on his final operation has caused frustrating gaps in his memory--in particular about the agent who saved his life during that mission gone wrong, whose real name he never knew, nor whether she even survived the war. Moved by her father's frustration, Noah's daughter Charlotte begins a search for answers that resurrects the stories of Chloe and Fleur, the code names for two otherwise ordinary women whose lives intersect in 1943 when they're called up by the SOE for deployment in France. Taking enormous risks to support the allied troops with very little information or resources, the women have no idea they're at the mercy of a double agent among them who's causing chaos within the French circuits, whose efforts will affect the outcome of their lives ... and the war. But as Charlotte's search for answers bears fruit, overlooked clues come to light about the identity of the double agent--with unsettling hints pointing close to home--and more shocking events are unearthed from the dangerous, dramatic last days of the war that lead to Chloe and Fleur's eventual fates.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Spy fiction.; War fiction.; Novels.; Great Britain. Special Operations Executive; Moles (Spies); Secrecy; Women spies; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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When the summer was ours : a novel / by Veletzos, Roxanne,author.;
"Hungary, 1943: As war encroaches on the country's borders, willful young Eva Cesar arrives in the idyllic town of Sopron to spend her last summer as a single woman on her aristocratic family's estate. Longing for freedom from her domineering father, she counts the days to her upcoming nuptials to a kind and dedicated Red Cross doctor whom she greatly admires. But Eva's life changes when she meets Aleandro, a charming and passionate Romani fiddler with a love for painting. With time and profound class differences against them, Eva and Aleandro still fall deeply in love-only to be separated by a brutal act of hatred. As their lives diverge and they are each swept into the tides of war and its aftermath-they try to forget what they once shared. But as the years ass, the haunting memory of their romance will re-shape their destinies and drive them to decisions which are felt through generations. From the hours of the Second World War to the tensions of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and beyond, When the Summer was Ours is a sweeping story about the toll of secrets, the blurred lines between desire and loyalty, sacrifice and obsession, and the endurance of the human spirit"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; War fiction.; Families; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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