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D-Day Girls The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II [electronic resource] : by Rose, Sarah.aut; cloudLibrary;
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The dramatic, untold history of the heroic women recruited by Britain’s elite spy agency to help pave the way for Allied victory in World War II “Gripping. Spies, romance, Gestapo thugs, blown-up trains, courage, and treachery (lots of treachery)—and all of it true.”—Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To “set Europe ablaze,” in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive  (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France. In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently de­classified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. There’s Andrée Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE’s unflap­pable “queen.” Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence—laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war. Rigorously researched and written with razor-sharp wit, D-Day Girls is an inspiring story for our own moment of resistance: a reminder of what courage—and the energy of politically animated women—can accomplish when the stakes seem incalculably high. Praise for D-Day Girls “Rigorously researched . . . [a] thriller in the form of a non-fiction book.”—Refinery29 “Equal parts espionage-romance thriller and historical narrative, D-Day Girls traces the lives and secret activities of the 39 women who answered the call to infiltrate France. . . . While chronicling the James Bond-worthy missions and love affairs of these women, Rose vividly captures the broken landscape of war.”—The Washington Post “Gripping history . . . thoroughly researched and written as smoothly as a good thriller, this is a mesmerizing story of creativity, perseverance, and astonishing heroism.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Subjects: Electronic books.; Women; World War II; Intelligence & Espionage;
© 2019., Crown,

Somewhere in France / by Robson, Jennifer,1970-;
Includes bibliographical references."Lady Elizabeth Neville-Ashford, has struggled against both her mother's expectations and the restrictions early 20th-century British society imposes upon women of "gentle breeding". Lilly longs to make a difference, to have a life of substance and meaning. Only one person other than her beloved brother Edward ever listened to what she really wanted-Robert Fraser, Edward's best friend. But that was many years ago when he was visiting and Lilly was young, and she is certain Robbie has long forgotten her. Robbie Fraser knows he shouldn't have come to the lavish ball given by Edward's parents, the Earl and Countess of Cumberland. This world is far removed from the hospital in Whitechapel where he works as a surgeon. In his work, he is fêted and admired by his colleagues and friends, yet his accomplishments count for nothing to the privileged few attending the Neville-Ashford gala. As he plots his quiet escape, he is stopped by a vision of loveliness-Lilly. He finds her utterly captivating. She believes he is the man of her dreams. In a few short weeks, the world is engulfed by war. As the lights go out across Europe, Robbie becomes a trauma surgeon in a field hospital on the Western Front, while Lilly breaks free of convention, as well as from her disapproving parents, leaving home and eventually becoming an ambulance driver with the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. When she is transferred to the same field hospital where Robbie works, she hopes to strengthen the growing bond between them. Yet how can love survive the class restrictions that separate them and the horrors and suffering of the Great War?"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Love stories.; Social classes; World War, 1914-1918;

Eight days in May : the final collapse of the Third Reich / by Ullrich, Volker,1943-author.; Chase, Jefferson S.,translator.; translation of:Ullrich, Volker,1943-Acht tage im Mai.English.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The best-selling author of "Hitler: Ascent" and "Hitler: Downfall" reconstructs the chaotic, otherworldly last days of Nazi Germany. On April 30, 1945, in a bunker deep beneath the Old Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and his newly wedded wife, Eva Braun, killed themselves. But Nazi Germany lived on, however briefly. The subsequent eight days were among the most turbulent in history, witnessing not only the final battles of World War II and the collapse of the Wehrmacht, but the near-total disintegration of the once-mighty Third Reich. In a taut, propulsive narrative, eminent historian Volker Ullrich depicts the final days of the Nazi empire through the eyes of Germans, both famous and ordinary, who experienced them. He takes us inside the phantomlike regime of Hitler's chosen successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, while capturing the drama of a society in its death throes--from mass suicides to fanatics calling for one last stand. Integrating an astonishing variety of new primary sources, Ullrich offers an indispensable account of the costs of mass delusion"--
Subjects: Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945; World War, 1939-1945;

Resilience [sound recording] : two sisters and a story of mental illness / by Close, Jessie.; Close, Glenn,1947-; Earley, Pete.;
Read by Jessie Close and Glenn Close."The Close sisters are descended from very prominent and wealthy ancestors. When the Close sisters were very young, their parents joined a cult called the MRA, or Moral Rearmament. The family was suddenly uprooted to a cult school in Switzerland and, ultimately, to the Belgian Congo where their father became a surgeon in the war ravaged republic, and ultimately the personal physician to President Mobutu. Shortly after the girls returned to the US for boarding school, Jessie first started to exhibit symptoms of severe bipolar disorder (she would later learn that this ran in the family, a well-kept secret). Jessie embarked on a series of destructive marriages as the condition worsened. Glenn was always by her side, going so far as to adopt Jessie's daughter when Jessie was abandoned by the child's father. Jessie's mental illness was passed on to her son, Calen. It wasn't until Calen entered McLean's psychiatric hospital that Jessie herself was diagnosed. Fifteen years and twelve years of sobriety later, Jessie is a stable and productive member of society. Glenn continues to be the major support in Jessie's life. In Resilience, the sisters share their story of triumphing over Jessie's illness. The book is written in Jessie's voice with running commentary and an epilogue written by Glenn"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Close, Glenn, 1947-; Close, Jessie.; Audiobooks.; Manic-depressive illness.; Mentally ill; Psychoses.; Sisters.;
© p2015., Hachette Audio,

10/7 : 100 human stories / by Yaron, Lee,author.; Cohen, Joshua,writer of afterword.;
"The definitive account of the 10/7 attacks through the stories of its victims and the communities they called home. On October 7, 2023 -- the Sabbath and the final day of the holiday of Sukkot-the Gaza -- based terror group Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on the people of Israel. Crashing through the border, attacking from the sea and air, militants indiscriminately massacred civilians in what became one of the worst terror attacks in modern history, and the most lethal day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. A radically passionate work of investigative journalism and political critique by acclaimed Haaretz reporter Lee Yaron, 10/7 chronicles the massacre that ignited a war through the stories of more than 100 civilians. These stories are the products of extensive interviews with survivors, the bereaved, and first responders in Israel and beyond. The victims run the gamut from left-wing kibbutzniks and Burning Man-esque partiers to radical right-wingers, from Bedouins and Israeli Arabs to Thai and Nepalese guest workers, peace activists, elderly Holocaust survivors, refugees from Ukraine and Russia, pregnant women, and babies. At a time when people are seeking a deeper understanding of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how internal political turmoil in Israel has affected it, they predominantly encounter perspectives from the powerful-from politicians and military officers. 10/7 takes a fresh approach, offering answers through the stories of everyday people, those who lived tenuously on the border with Gaza. Yaron profiles victims from a wide range of communities-depicting the fullness of their lives, not just their final moments-to honor their memories and reveal the way the attack ripped open Israeli society and put the entire Middle East on the precipice of disaster. Each chapter begins with a portrait of a community, interweaving history with broader political analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to provide context for the narratives that follow. Ultimately, 10/7 shows that the tragedy is much greater than the violence of the attacks, and in fact extends back through the entire Netanyahu era, which propagated a false image of Israel as a technologically advanced, militarily formidable powerhouse so essential to the region that it could continue to ignore and undermine Palestinian statehood indefinitely"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmīyah.; Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmīyah.; Arab-Israeli conflict; Israelis; Jews; October 7 Hamas Attack, Israel, 2023.;

Motherland : a feminist history of modern Russia, from revolution to autocracy / by Ioffe, Julia,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Award-winning journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the history of its women, from revolution to utopia to autocracy. In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow -- only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up -- doctors, engineers, scientists -- had seemingly been replaced with women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to the last bastion of conservative Christian values? In Motherland, Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin's lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, wife of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate -- and documents how that failure paved the way to the revanche of Vladimir Putin. Part memoir, part journalistic exploration, part history, Motherland paints a portrait of modern Russia through the women who shaped it. With deep emotion, Ioffe shows what it means to live through the cataclysms of revolution, war, idealism, and heartbreak -- and reveals how the story of Russia today is inextricably tied to the history of its women"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Feminism; Feminism; Sex role; Sex role; Women; Women;

Mrs. Fletcher : a novel / by Perrotta, Tom,1961-author.;
"From one of the most popular and bestselling authors of our time, a penetrating and hilarious new novel about sex, love, and identity on the frontlines of America's culture wars. Eve Fletcher is trying to figure out what comes next. A forty-six-year-old divorcee whose beloved only child has just left for college, Eve is struggling to adjust to her empty nest when one night her phone lights up with a text message. Sent from an anonymous number, the mysterious sender tells Eve, "U R my MILF!" Over the months that follow, that message comes to obsess Eve. While leading her all-too-placid life--serving as Executive Director of the local senior center by day and taking a community college course on Gender and Society at night--Eve can't curtail her own interest in a porn website called MILFateria.com, which features the erotic exploits of ordinary, middle-aged women like herself. Before long, Eve's online fixations begin to spill over into real life, revealing new romantic possibilities that threaten to upend her quiet suburban existence. Meanwhile, miles away at the state college, Eve's son Brendan--a jock and aspiring frat boy--discovers that his new campus isn't nearly as welcoming to his hard-partying lifestyle as he had imagined. Only a few weeks into his freshman year, Brendan is floundering in a college environment that challenges his white-dude privilege and shames him for his outmoded, chauvinistic ideas of sex. As the New England autumn turns cold, both mother and son find themselves enmeshed in morally fraught situations that come to a head on one fateful November night. Sharp, witty, and provocative, Mrs. Fletcher is a timeless examination of sexuality, identity, parenthood, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they're no longer sure of who they are or where they belong"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Humorous fiction.; College students; Middle-aged women; Mothers and sons;

Chasing the dark : a 140-year investigation of paranormal activity / by Machell, Ben,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Tony Cornell spent his life probing the very edges of reality and paranormal activity. A member of the UK's Society for Psychical Research (SPR) from the post-war era to the dawn of the 21st century, Cornell's role as an investigator of so-called "spontaneous cases" saw him returning time and again to the unsettling spaces that exist just on the periphery of our ordered, tidy, and rational lives: Ghosts. Spirits. Premonitions. Psychic powers. Glimpses of other worlds that throw into question everything we take for granted about life, death, and material existence itself. This is a gripping and page turning narrative drawing on decades of Cornell's case files, which survive as a huge and uniquely untapped repository of stories reported by ordinary people, as well as correspondence between some of the great intellectuals of the 20th century -- including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, and Marie Curie. Award-winning journalist Ben Machell mines the extensive archives of the SPR for the first time to reveal the untold history of the secretive organization, and to understand our ceaseless fascination with the unexplained"--
Subjects: Case studies.; Cornell, A. D.; Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain); Parapsychology.; Supernatural;

The secret gate : a true story of courage and sacrifice during the collapse of Aghanistan / by Zuckoff, Mitchell,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."When the U.S. began its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Afghan Army instantly collapsed, Homeira Qaderi was marked for death at the hands of the Taliban. A celebrated author, academic, and champion for women's liberation, Homeira had achieved celebrity in her home country by winning custody of her son in acontentious divorce, a rarity in Afghanistan's patriarchal society. Homeira tried and failed to escape with her family through the turmoil of the Kabul airport, while evacuation planes departed without Homeira and her eight-year-old son, Siawash. Meanwhile, young foreign service officer from New Jersey named Sam Aronson was enjoying a brief vacation between assignments when chaos descended upon Afghanistan. Sam immediately volunteered his services in the evacuation and got on a plane to Kabul. As he frantically raced to help rescue the more than 100,000 Americans and their Afghan helpers stranded in Kabul, Sam learned that the CIA had established a secret entrance into the Kabul Airport, two miles away from the desperate crowds crushing toward the gates. He started bringing families directly through, personally rescuing as many as fifty-two people in a single day. On the last day of the evacuation, Sam was contacted by Homeira's literary agent, who persuaded him to help her escape. He needed to risk his life to get Homeira and Siawash through the gate in the final hours before it closed forever. He borrowed night-vision goggles and enlisted a Dari-speaking colleague and two heavily armed security contract "shooters." He contacted Homeira with a burner phone, and they used a flashlight code signal borrowed from boyhood summer camp. Homeira broke Sam's rules and withstood his profanities. They braved gunfire by Afghan Army soldiers anxious about the restive crowds outside the airport. Ultimately, they had to leave behind their family and everything young Siawash had ever known"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Qādirī, Ḥumayrā, 1979 or 1980-; Afghan War, 2001-2021; Mothers and sons; Women authors, Afghan;

The reproach of hunger : food, justice, and money in the twenty-first century / by Rieff, David,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The 1990s held up the idea that hunger and poverty were the results of war, mismanagement, and undemocratic societies. The international community, and humanitarian focus, acted to address these threats above all others--instilling democracy and free markets would generate greater wealth for more people. The assumption was that natural disasters were unlikely to constitute a challenge on anywhere near the same level as human rights emergencies, which had created tens of millions of refugees and internally displaced people. The plan didn't work. This is a book about the global crisis we did not expect. Even as the world races to grab and hold energy resources the next great challenge is building in complexity: famine--world hunger. In 2009, unlike in 1999, the most important UN relief agency was not the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) but the World Food Program (WFP), and the most pressing crisis is not resettling refugees, but making sure tens of millions of people--many in countries where there is no war at all--do not starve to death. What the food crisis illustrates for us is one dark side of globalism--not the system that will eventually make everyone prosperous, but rather a zero sum game in which full bellies in one country and empty bellies in another are inextricably linked. An increasing push towards "One world, ready or not," has paradoxically raised the living standards of hundreds of millions of people to previously unachieved levels, but at the same time the prosperity of one is fraught with the potential tragedy for another. The Reproach of Hunger describes the tragedy of the world hunger pandemic, and explains how we continue to struggle to feed the "new hungry" of the world. It is an issue not of availability, but rather of affordability."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Food supply.; Hunger.; Money.; Social justice.;

Results 111 to 120 of 164 | « previous |