The monumental battles of World War II's Eastern Front--Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk--are etched into the historical record. But there is another, hidden history of that war that has too often been ignored in official accounts. Boris Gorbachevsky was a junior officer in the 31st Army who first saw front-line duty as a rifleman in the 30th Army. Through the Maelstrom recounts his three harrowing years on some of the war's grimmest but forgotten battlefields: the campaign for Rzhev, the bloody struggle to retake Belorussia, and the bitter final fighting in East Prussia. As he traces his experiences from his initial training, through the maelstrom, to final victory, he provides one of the richest and most detailed memoirs of life and warfare on the Eastern Front. Gorbachevsky's panoramic account takes us from infantry specialist school to the front lines to rear services areas and his whirlwind romances in wartime Moscow. He recalls the shriek of Katiusha rockets flying overhead toward the enemy and the unforgettable howl of Stukas divebombing Soviet tanks. And he conveys horrors of brutal fighting not recorded previously in English, including his own participation in a human wave assault that decimated his regiment at Rzhev, with piles of corpses growing the closer they got to the German trenches. Gorbachevsky also records the sufferings of the starving citizens of Leningrad, the savage execution of a Russian scout who turned in false information, the killing of an innocent German trying to welcome the Soviet troops, and a chilling campfire discussion by four Russian soldiers as they compared notes about the women they'd raped. His memoir brims with rich descriptions of daily army life, the challenges of maintaining morale, and relationships between soldiers. It also includes candid exposs of the many problems the Red Army faced: the influence of political officers, the stubbornness of senior commanders, the attrition through desertions, and the initial months of occupation in postwar Germany. Through the Maelstrom features the swiftly moving narrative and rich dialogue associated with the grand style of great Russian literature. Ultimately, it provides a fitting and final testament to soldiers who fought and died in anonymity.

The Maelstrom is building – inexorable, relentless, causing destruction and death on an unprecedented scale, pouring elements from one realm into another – and the only hope for humanity, the young Glimmer, has strayed far from her destiny to unite the Four Worlds. An accidental touch of the Plainsman Memory Stone infects her with emotions and she abducts the coldest of the nobles, Kert Sh'hale, taking him to the Fireworld of Haddash where her clumsy seduction allows the Serpent of Death to escape. On our world, Pagan's son Vandal has grown into a young man, bitter at his father for abandoning him to return to Ennae. When tragedy steals Vandal's future, his bitterness becomes deadly and he follows his father through the Sacred Pool, intent on destroying the one thing Pagan loves most. While Glimmer must give up everything she holds dear to fight the Serpent and secure a future from the remnants of mankind; Vandal hunts his father's betrothed, Lae; and the Maelstrom draws closer ... The final instalment of the Shadow Through Time trilogy is pure magic. A sumptuous conclusion to a feast of fantasy.

Second in the Rifters Trilogy, Hugo Award-winning author Peter Watts' Maelstrom is a terrifying explosion of cyberpunk noir. This is the way the world ends: A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbe—voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction—and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who'd inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement. The resulting tsunami killed millions. It's not as through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage. Unless, of course, you miss the target. Now North America's west coast lies in ruins. Millions of refugees rally around a mythical figure mysteriously risen from the deep sea. A world already wobbling towards collapse barely notices the spread of one more blight along its shores. And buried in the seething fast-forward jungle that use to be called Internet, something vast and inhuman reaches out to a woman with empty white eyes and machinery in her chest. A woman driven by rage, and incubating Armageddon. Her name is Lenie Clarke. She's a rifter. She's not nearly as dead as everyone thinks. And the whole damn world is collateral damage as far as she's concerned. . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Christophe Jones never asked to be a pirate. Pressed into a crew, he moved up in rank to make his eventual escape. When he finally has a chance to cut ties and return to his former life, he takes it-or tries to. A whirling maelstrom sucks him beneath the waves... Only he doesn't drown. Instead, Christophe finds himself three hundred years in the future, captivated by a beautiful woman. Serena's twenty-eighth birthday cruise isn't going as planned. The only one of her friends who didn't cancel gets sick on the voyage, forcing Serena to spend her birthday alone. As an introvert, there's little chance of meeting new people-at least on purpose. So when a wish upon a falling star comes true, can she open her heart to a handsome stranger who claims to be an eighteenth century pirate? Christophe attempts to woo the siren who summoned him through time, but she's convinced he's nothing but a con man playing a part. They must determine if fate brought them together, or if it's just a trick of the Bermuda Triangle.

Because Disney cooperates solely with Birnbaum Travel Guides, the details in this book about the World are the most accurate and up-to-date. Full-color photos.