Before the Internet, Pursuing the Truth about Adolf Hitler and Mein Kampf In 1939, a 24-year old American journalist, recently returned to New York City from Europe, discovers that Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf—as published in the United States—is sanitized. Using Hitler’s own words from the original Nazi manifesto, he translates and writes an annotated condensed edition to expose the full measure of Hitler’s evil ideology, chilling anti-Semitism, and plans for world domination. The American publisher of Mein Kampf sues for copyright infringement. This short historical non-fiction book is about the people and events that shaped the young journalist’s life. It recounts his determined pursuit of the truth to alert Americans and the world to the danger six months before Hitler’s war machine invades Poland and begins the march toward WWII. The journalist was Alan Cranston, future Senator from California, a leader in the United States Senate, and candidate for President. Cranston dedicated his life to public service, nuclear arms reduction, and world peace.
Author: Lorraine Tong
Rating: 
55 reviews
The Dirty Parts of the Bible — A Novel by Sam Torode
“Funny as Hell, with a Heart as Big as Texas”The Dirty Parts of the Bible is a humorous adventure across America during the Great Depression—a rollicking tale of love and liquor, preachers and prostitutes, trains and treasure, sure to appeal to fans of Water for Elephants, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Mark Twain, and Johnny Cash.Semifinalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel AwardPublishers Weekly says:”While the title suggests a raunchy read, this rich and soulful novel is actually a rather well-done bildungsroman [coming-of-age story] steeped in wanderlust and whimsy that at times recalls The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and at others a tamer On the Road. The story begins in 1936 as 19-year-old Tobias is thumbing his way from Remus, Mich., to his uncle’s farm in Glen Rose, Tex., to find a hidden bag of money, after his father, a Baptist pastor, drunkenly slams his car into the church and is removed from the parsonage. The author does an excellent job in making well-charted territory (riding the rails; scavenged campfire meals under the stars) seem vibrant and new. Snippets of scripture, Southern spirituals, and folk ballads lend context and flavor to the text. Most impressive are the jangly dialogue and the characters’ distinctive voices, which are authentic and earthy but not remotely hoary. When Tobias finally arrives at his uncle’s, the surprises that await him are more than enough to keep his–and readers’–interests piqued.” (Review from the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award)”The Dirty Parts of the Bible has it all … a plot that brings lots of laughs and a few tears, a writing style that is comfortable and matches the story, and characters that are pure joy.” –Front Street Reviews”The Dirty Parts of the Bible is a grown-up Mark Twain-type adventure with lots of spirit and humor.” –Reader Views”A fun read.” –The Nashville Scene
Author: Sam Torode
Rating:
2109 reviews
Whiskey Sour – A Thriller (Jacqueline Jack Daniels Mysteries Book 1) by J.A. Konrath
Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels is having a bad week. Her live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has caused her to max out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases, and a frightening killer who calls himself ‘The Gingerbread Man’ is dumping mutilated bodies in her district.
While avoiding the FBI and its moronic profiling computer, joining a dating service, mixing it up with street thugs, and parrying the advances of an uncouth PI, Jack and her binge-eating partner, Herb, must catch the maniac before he kills again…and Jack is next on his murder list.
Whiskey Sour is the first book in the bestselling Jack Daniels series, full of laugh-out-loud humor and edge-of-your-seat suspense.
About the Author
JA Konrath is the author of eight novels in the Jack Daniels thriller series. They do not have to be read in chronological order to be enjoyed, but for those who want to know it is: Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail, Dirty Martini, Fuzzy Navel, Cherry Bomb, Shaken, and Stirred.
Jack also appears in the novels Shot of Tequila, Flee, Spree, Three, Timecaster Supersymmetry, Banana Hammock, and Serial Killers Uncut, as well as the short story collection Jack Daniels Stories, and the novellas Floaters and Burners.
Last Call, the ninth Jack Daniels novel, will be available in spring of 2013.
Konrath writes horror under the name Jack Kilborn, including the bestsellers Afraid, Trapped, and Endurance.
He has sold over a million ebooks.
Author: J.A. Konrath
Rating:
1803 reviews
A Strange and Bitter Fruit by Barry C. Davis
A chilly spring night in rural South Carolina at the tail end of Reconstruction, the murder of innocents. This is the setting for the initial chapter of the historical thriller, A Strange and Bitter Fruit.Thomas “Tee” Powell, 15, manages to escape as his family is lynched. His father, Zeke, mother Hessie and young sisters Lannie and Effie were hung to teach the blacks of Aiken that voting is not the right of the former slaves, not anymore. He is angry, but instead of wildly lashing out at the Klansmen that murdered his family, he runs away. After a disastrous detour to Tallahassee, Tee joins the Army and ends up in the West, at a remote Army outpost on the lip of the Black Hills. Here, he grows up and begins to accept responsibility for his life and for the lives of others. After six years, the past, in the form of two of the Klansmen, one now a U.S. Senator on a mission to sign a treaty with the Indians, confronts him.He had buried his past deep, even changing his last name. Now, he has to confront it head on, starting with the two killers that entered his fort. Trained by the Army to kill, Tee emerges from his exile and takes revenge on those that committed the murder of his family, beginning with the two men. His purpose is now clear, he must take revenge, and he proceeds ruthlessly to do so. But revenge has its own cost, and Tee suffers that price. Many innocent people are killed, and he struggles with the guilt.A Strange and Bitter Fruit is the story of revenge and its consequences. It is a story of violence and race, a true American story. The novel raises serious questions: Is there a limit on revenge? Is there an act so horrible that any response, no matter how vicious, is just? A Strange and Bitter Fruit, although it takes place in the 19th Century, confronts the reader with many of the issues of race and violence that we continue to live with today.
Author: Barry C. Davis
Rating:
354 reviews
My Ántonia (AmazonClassics Edition) by Willa Cather
When high-powered New York attorney Jim Burden recollects his childhood on the Nebraska prairie, Ántonia Shimerda is at the heart of every memory.Orphaned at age ten, Jim is traveling west to his grandparents’ home in Black Hawk when he first meets Ántonia, the daughter of a Bohemian family who settles on a neighboring farm. Through sunbaked summers and frigid winters, Ántonia bears the hardships of a young immigrant as she longs for a vanishing past. It is a profound nostalgia for a lost time that Jim now also holds dear as he recalls all that he left behind and that which he’ll never lose.Set against a defining and reflecting midwestern landscape—melancholic, nurturing, and changeable—My Ántonia is a celebration of an enduring friendship and a moving tribute to the courage and resolve of pioneering immigrants.AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.Revised edition: Previously published as My Ántonia, this edition of My Ántonia (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.
Author: Willa Cather
Rating:
1091 reviews
Hank Brodt Holocaust Memoirs: A Candle and a Promise by Deborah Donnelly
A Candle and a Promise The Troubling but ultimately Triumphant Memoirs of Holocaust Survivor Hank Brodt A story of resilience, Hank Brodt Holocaust Memoirs – A Candle and a Promise makes the memories of Holocaust survivor Hank Brodt come alive. It offers a detailed historical account of being a Jewish teenager under the Nazi regime, shedding light on sickening truths in an honest, matter-of-fact way.Hank Brodt lived through one of the darkest periods of human history and survived the devastation of World War II. Born in 1925 into a poor family in Boryslaw (Poland), he was placed in a Jewish orphanage. Losing his family when the Germans invaded Poland, he waged a daily battle to survive. Moving from forced labor camps to concentration camps, one of which features in Schindler’s List, his world behind the barbed wire consisted of quiet resistance, invisible tears and silent cries for years on end.This story of survival includes rare photographs from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that powerfully illustrate these intimate and shocking memoirs. One recently discovered picture shows Hank Brodt in prison uniform removing the dead on carts at the liberated Ebensee concentration camp on May 7, 1945. It is hard to believe that someone who endured such horrific events could go on to live a life of gratitude. Through his unwavering compassion towards others, Hank Brodt managed to keep his humanity and find a way to move forward. After the Second World War, Hank Brodt testified at the trial of Nazi war criminal Amon Goeth in Dachau, Germany. He has joined the March of the Living since 2006, walking from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Yom Hashoah to pay tribute to the millions that died. Lighting the candle, he made a promise to himself to always answer the call to talk.“As the train rattled down the tracks, the noise it made seemed to say, death – death – death. But in my mind and heart it sang, life – life – life.”˃˃˃ Hank Brodt’s Holocaust memoirs are a necessary reminder of one of the ugliest times in the history of human civilization. Scroll up and grab a copy today”Deborah Donnely narrates her father’s memoirs. It is one of the very few books about the Holocaust experience narrated by descendents of Holocaust survivors. This is remarkable and commendable, because regrettably nowadays not many children and grandchildren have a keen interest in the life stories of their parents and grand parents. Hank Brodt’s Holocaust Memoirs offers a poignant account of what it was like for a young man to experience so many travails under the Russian and German occupation of Poland in WWII.” Alter Wiener, Holocaust survivor, author of ‘From a Name to a Number’
Author: Deborah Donnelly
Rating:
67 reviews
Among the Reeds: The true Story of how a Family survived the Holocaust by Tammy Bottner
Author: Tammy Bottner
Rating:
122 reviews
Out of the Shoebox: An Autobiographic Mystery (Historical Nonfiction story) by Yaron Reshef
Did you ever get a phone call that changed your life?That is what happened to author of this book. A mysterious unexpected phone call hurls Yaron Reshef into an intensive two-year journey, during which he has to solve a mystery that took shape in the 1930s and gradually unfolded in the present. A mysterious lot, a forgotten bank account, a people long gone ”” along with their memory which were obliterated during the Holocaust. All of these rise to the surface, bearing with them memories and emotions previously hidden away in the shoebox.Out of the Shoebox is a fascinating journal that reads like a detective story, comes across as an imaginative quest into the past, yet is the true personal story of the writer, Yaron Reshef. “I had no intention of writing a book. I had no need to write a story in general nor a story about my family and the Holocaust in particular. But life being what it is, sometimes things happen in mysterious, even surprising ways. Stuff that used to take center stage moves to the background, and background stuff moves downstage and center. That’s what happened in my case.” Yaron Reshef *** I read this fascinating book as a “quest story” and couldn’t stop reading it even for one moment. It is the story of the children of holocaust victims”. Rose Finkelman “Together with its literary values, Yaron Reshef’s book,” Out of the Shoebox”, can be used as a textbook or a model for anyone who believes in Intuitive Methods of information search”. A. Panini “It’s a long time since I enjoyed so much reading a historical story. It is an optimistic novel that tells us about the nature of reconciliation and acceptance”. Moses Bari Out of the shoebox reads absolutely like a detective story. When I read Yaron’s book I felt like “hearing the author voice reading me the story”. It was a spiritual experience for me. Ruth Levine Scroll up and grab a copy today.
Author: Yaron Reshef
Rating:
486 reviews
Juliana:: Book 1 (Juliana Series) by Vanda
Alice “Al” Huffman comes from the potato fields of Long Island with her beau, her best girlfriend and her girlfriend’s beau to make it on the Broadway stage only to find she has no talent. On the kids’ first day in New York City, they meet Maxwell P. Hartwell III, a failed nightclub owner and Broadway producer, who, according to Al, looks a little like Clark Gable. He invites them to a nightclub where Al hears Juliana, the glamorous, perpetually-on-the-brink-of stardom nightclub singer, sing for the first time. Al is instantly drawn to her and seeks her out. Juliana, a sexual risk-taker, easily reels in the mesmerized Al.
Al is increasingly pulled into a secret gay underworld of men who wear dresses and women who smoke cigars, while her childhood friends continue in their “normal” lives. Al glides easily between the two worlds until these worlds begin to collide.
Author: Vanda
Rating:
92 reviews
Twelve Months of a Soviet Childhood:Short Stories by Julia Gousseva
“Having had relatives on the other side of the Berlin Wall I have found it always very hard to imagine just how life was for people in ‘The East’, and many comparisons of our and their lives tended to focus on TV, VHS and Cigarette brands. All very justifiable points, but to portray life the way Gousseva does is a true gift.”– ChristophFischerBooks, Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer “The short stories do a good job of transcending the formulaic representations of the much vilified regime and showing the children are children and childhood – no matter where and when it takes place – is still a magical time, filled with adults who know and care, places that are exciting and new and simple joys, such as seeing the sun after endless months of winter.”– Vardan Partamyan, Amazon Reviewer “Each one of these childhood memories is told in a refreshingly honest manner, and you can get a feel for the Russian soul simply by the temperature and locale of these vignettes: ‘February: Sunshine above the Clouds,’ ‘March: Meeting My Best Friend,’ ‘April: Swimming in Gorky Park,’ ‘May: The Swamp Spirit,’ ‘June: A Real Gentleman,’ ‘July: The Hedgehog,’ ‘August: The Music Box,’ ‘September: The First Day of School,’ ‘October: The Witch Club,’ ‘November: House Repairs,’ and ‘December: New Year’s Tree,’ which brings us full circle to the beginning of the year.”– Uvi Poznansky, Amazon Reviewer
Author: Julia Gousseva
Rating:
35 reviews