Burning Shield


Book Description

When a taxi smashed into police officer Jason Schechterle's patrol car, the fireball that consumed the vehicle should have killed him. But by a series of small miracles, Schechterle survived: Dying would have been easier. As he would learn only after his own horrific ordeal, law enforcement officers across the country were perishing in similar fires, trapped inside burning Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptors. Schechterle, who began a long, gruesome, and gut-wrenching battle back to health, would also take on Ford Motor Company to stop the heinous and ultimately preventable deaths. Interweaving narratives of human triumph and high-stakes legal showdown, this "inspiring true story" (Kirkus Reviews) reveals a rare human being with an undeniable will to live. "Burning Shield: The Jason Schechterle Story" exemplifies the mystery and beauty of the human spirit, and the healing power of love.




The Shield of Achilles


Book Description

Back in print for the first time in decades, Auden’s National Book Award–winning poetry collection, in a critical edition that introduces it to a new generation of readers The Shield of Achilles, which won the National Book Award in 1956, may well be W. H. Auden’s most important, intricately designed, and unified book of poetry. In addition to its famous title poem, which reimagines Achilles’s shield for the modern age, when war and heroism have changed beyond recognition, the book also includes two sequences—“Bucolics” and “Horae Canonicae”—that Auden believed to be among his most significant work. Featuring an authoritative text and an introduction and notes by Alan Jacobs, this volume brings Auden’s collection back into print for the first time in decades and offers the only critical edition of the work. As Jacobs writes in the introduction, Auden’s collection “is the boldest and most intellectually assured work of his career, an achievement that has not been sufficiently acknowledged.” Describing the book’s formal qualities and careful structure, Jacobs shows why The Shield of Achilles should be seen as one of Auden’s most central poetic statements—a richly imaginative, beautifully envisioned account of what it means to live, as human beings do, simultaneously in nature and in history.




EVE: The Burning Life


Book Description

A new novel set in the world of the popular science fiction online role playing game, EVE. We all crave a purpose. A fire to spark our lives into action. It's this burning life within that drives us to our destinies. But when it burns too deep, or goes unchecked, it can shatter innocent lives in its wake. A vicious attack on a deep-space mining colony rains death and destruction on nearly all its inhabitants. Only a handful survive. Among the shattered survivors is a young man, hell-bent on an impossible revenge. In another part of the universe, a wealthy agent of death finds her tenuous grip on sanity slipping, and is forced to leave everything she's come to know and love. But her last chance at redemption lies in the last place she ever thought to look. Their respective paths take them through the vast universe of EVE, to galactic empires built on faith, hedonism, discipline, and rebellion. Their fates plunge them into the darkest parts of this galaxy, to encounters with denizens of the chaotic and dangerous pirate kingdoms. And all the while, as each draws closer to what they seek, they begin to realize that the only stakes worth playing for are the ones from which they've run so far away. . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




The Hole in the Magic Shield


Book Description

"Great Book! Intense and gripping story. Good character development and compelling story. Hard to put this book down. Waiting for the next installment." - Tony via Amazon review "Addicting! Can't wait for the next one! Enjoying the countdown and the adventure. Never a dull moment. Hope the next one is soon." - tm via Amazon review In 41 hours, the world as we know it will end! Like it has done every twenty-six millennia, the magnetic field of the earth is about to be short-circuited by a series of massive solar storms, which will destroy our modern technological society virtually overnight. It will take the planet two centuries before the natural protective magnetic field will build back up to full strength. While it is weakened, the surface of the earth will be scorched by the sun and daylight will become dangerous to all life. The first wave of storms and destruction has already begun, but the only people who have the means to help, aren’t aware of the impending disaster. And the only clue to when the disaster will occur is a mysterious clear rock locked in a black plastic case. New characters and fresh dangers arrive building the mystery and intrigue; all while the deadline approaches and the world unknowingly counts down to its doom. THE HOLE IN THE MAGIC SHIELD continues with the unforgettable story and extraordinary characters from THE GOD IN THE CLEAR ROCK. Filled with more epic adventure, mystery, high-tech, science, and intrigue than the first fast-paced thriller, the story starts exactly where the last one stopped. Over the following 9 hours, out of only 41 hours left in the world, intertwined wheels of action and new people are set in motion. MAGIC SHIELD blends the counting-by-hour style of the TV drama ‘24’ with the intensely complex larger-than-life characters and adventure driven plots of Clive Cussler in a page-turner that’s guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat. As the intricate story begins to twist and turn, fans will relish the cliffhanger maddening mystery and be left scrambling to pick up book three. ~97k words




The Burning Kingdoms


Book Description

The heart-pounding conclusion to the daring Smoke Thieves trilogy. In this conclusion to the epic Smoke Thieves trilogy, the world has erupted into all-out war. King Aloysius is mining powerful demon smoke and using it to fuel an unstoppable army of children. March, now banished for treason, has joined up with this boy army. Forbidden from ever seeing Edyon again, and overwhelmed by his own betrayal, March no longer cares if he lives or dies. Catherine--now queen of Pitoria--must find a way to defeat the boy army, while also grappling with her own troubles: her secret demon smoke addiction, and unresolved tension with her former lover, Ambrose. Catherine seeks military support from Calidor by reaching out to her illegitimate cousin Edyon, who has been proclaimed heir to the Calidorian throne. But Edyon has almost no power as he's entangled in the unfamiliar machinations and manipulations of the royal court, finding that being the claimed son of a prince may be no easier than being a bastard. With Catherine, his love, now married off and moving on, and his brother and sister tortured and executed before him, Ambrose doesn't know what his role in this world is any more. He leads an expedition into the demon world, hoping to destroy the boy army's stores of demon smoke. In this underground world, he runs into Tash, whom everyone had believed dead. She has survived in this new world using magical abilities that, prior to now, only demons had. Aloysius will send his demon smoke-powered boy army to kill them all, if he can. But what nobody knows is that there is more to the smoke than meets the eye...




Burn Girl


Book Description

2016 Westchester Fiction Award After her drug addict mother dies of an overdose and her uncle becomes her guardian, Arlie must adjust to the new stability in her life and the pressures of going to school with a face disfigured by a meth lab explosion. Arlie's face was disfigured by burns when her stepfather's meth lab exploded. After that, Arlie discovered the street smarts and survival skills she needed to shelter her addict mother, since the law and Lloyd, her deranged stepfather, are both looking for them. People died in the explosion and everyone wants answers. But Arlie's carefully constructed world is ripped apart when her mother overdoses shortly after Arlie's 16th birthday. Now she can no longer remain hidden. Social Services steps in and before Arlie can make sense of anything, she is following the rules, going to school, and living in a 31-foot Airstream trailer with an eccentric uncle she didn't even know she had. Then she meets a boy who doesn't care about her scars or her past. Just when she begins to think a normal life might be possible, Lloyd shows up. He's looking for the drug money he insists Arlie's mother stole. Will Arlie be able to shield her Uncle and her boyfriend from Lloyd? Did Lloyd somehow play a role in her mother's death? And can she get rid of him once and for all before her world blows apart again?




Reconstructing the Shield of Achilles


Book Description

Details the author's reconstruction of the shield of Achilles, using Homer as her guide in the creative process.




Resenting the Hero


Book Description

In a realm beset by natural disasters, only the magical abilities of the bonded Pairs—Source and Shield—make the land habitable and keep the citizenry safe. The ties that bind them are far beyond the relationships between lovers or kin—and last their entire lives… Whether they like it or not. Since she was a child, Dunleavy Mallorough has been nurturing her talents as a Shield, preparing for her day of bonding. Unfortunately, fate decrees Lee’s partner to be the legendary, handsome, and unbearably self-assured Lord Shintaro Karish. Sure, he cuts a fine figure with his aristocratic airs and undeniable courage. But Karish’s popularity and notoriety—in bed and out—make him the last Source Lee ever wanted to be stuck with. The duo is assigned to High Scape, a city so besieged by disaster that seven bonded pairs are needed to combat it. But when an inexplicable force strikes down every other Source and Shield, Lee and Karish must put aside their differences in order to defeat something even more unnatural than their reluctant affections for each other…




Echo Burning


Book Description

Jack Reacher finds trouble in Texas in the fifth novel in Lee Child’s #1 New York Times bestselling series. DON'T MISS REACHER ON PRIME VIDEO! Thumbing across the scorched Texas desert, Jack Reacher has nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get there. Cruising the same stretch of two-lane blacktop is Carmen Greer. For Reacher, the lift comes with a hitch. Carmen’s got a wild story to tell—all about her husband, her family secrets, and a hometown that’s purely gothic. She’s also got a plan. Reacher’s part of it. And before the sun sets, this ride could cost them both their lives.




The Big Burn


Book Description

National Book Award–winner Timothy Egan turns his historian's eye to the largest-ever forest fire in America and offers an epic, cautionary tale for our time. On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men to fight the fires, but no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan recreates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, and the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, that follows is equally resonant. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. Even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by his rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service in ways we can still witness today. This e-book includes a sample chapter of SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER.




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