This collection of short stories is intended to illustrate a more humorous glimpse of a soldier's life in Vietnam. It's of the times when boredom and a fertile imagination often lead to amusing situations, rather than the "blood and guts" of combat. All the narratives in this book, saves one, are true, or at least were presented to the author as fact. Some are without a doubt true, as they happened to the author. Other Vietnam veterans related the remainder of the yarns, swearing that each and every detail was unquestioningly genuine. We all know that combat veterans do not lie but their memories may, nevertheless recall their experiences slightly altered from actual events. Perusing these stories the reader might logically conclude that ego or passing years might, just possibly, influence a few of the bone-chilling tales. GI's live through numerous happenstances that are not heroic but are embarrassing or mundane. No matter how cynical a GI becomes, some events, maybe only in retrospect, are viewed as ironic or downright funny. These random experiences are what the book are about.

In his signature larger-than-life style, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall is a revealing self-portrait of his illustrious, controversial, and truly unique life. The greatest immigrant success story of our time. His story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in these pages. He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of an austere police chief. He dreamed of moving to America to become a bodybuilding champion and a movie star. By the age of twenty-one, he was living in Los Angeles and had been crowned Mr. Universe. Within five years, he had learned English and become the greatest bodybuilder in the world. Within ten years, he had earned his college degree and was a millionaire from his business enterprises in real estate, landscaping, and bodybuilding. He was also the winner of a Golden Globe Award for his debut as a dramatic actor in Stay Hungry. Within twenty years, he was the world’s biggest movie star, the husband of Maria Shriver, and an emerging Republican leader who was part of the Kennedy family. Thirty-six years after coming to America, the man once known by fellow body­builders as the Austrian Oak was elected governor of California, the seventh largest economy in the world. He led the state through a budget crisis, natural disasters, and political turmoil, working across party lines for a better environment, election reforms, and bipartisan solutions. With Maria Shriver, he raised four fantastic children. In the wake of a scandal he brought upon himself, he tried to keep his family together. Until now, he has never told the full story of his life, in his own voice. Here is Arnold, with total recall.

This special enhanced edition of Total Recall includes over 150 photos with narration by Arnold Schwarzenegger along with video clips from his careers in bodybuilding, film, and politics. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in Total Recall. He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of an austere police chief. He dreamed of moving to America to become a bodybuilding champion and a movie star. By the age of twenty-one, he was living in Los Angeles and had been crowned Mr. Universe. Within five years, he had learned English and become the greatest bodybuilder in the world. Within ten years, he had earned his college degree and was a millionaire from his business enterprises in real estate, construction, and bodybuilding. He was also the winner of a Golden Globe Award for his debut as a dramatic actor in Stay Hungry. Within twenty years, he was the world’s biggest movie star, the husband of Maria Shriver, and an emerging Republican leader who was part of the Kennedy family. Thirty-six years after coming to America, the man once known by fellow bodybuilders as the Austrian Oak was elected governor of California, the seventh largest economy in the world. He led the state through a budget crisis, natural disasters, and political turmoil, working across party lines for a better environment, election reforms, new infrastructure to rebuild California, and bipartisan solutions. Until now, he has never told the full story of his life, including his greatest successes and his biggest failures, in his own voice. Here is Arnold, with total recall.

Morris White escaped the crime and working-class roots in the Philly projects by learning to cook. He’s got great taste and impeccable kitchen skills, and now he’s a Sous Chef at a first-rate Philadelphia French bistro. The stove burners aren’t the only thing that’s on fire in Morris’s life, since his affair with Vicky Ward has just heated up. She’s the manager at the bistro and comes from money and a privileged background. Together, they’re dreaming of opening their own restaurant, where she’ll run the front-of-the-house business and he’ll run the kitchen. But their dream gets sidetracked when Morris takes in his half-brother, Vince Kammer, who’s just been released from prison. Vince did time for a jewelry store robbery that went sideways, and the local mob boss who bankrolled the crime, Johnny “Stacks” Staccardo, is insisting that Vince pull another job to make up for the loss of the jewels he never received. Johnny Stacks has his gangster wannabe henchmen, Lenny and Mo, riding Vince pretty hard, and to make matters worse, Dick Franks, the corrupt cop who originally investigated the jewelry store heist, has gotten wind that Vince is out of the can. Franks believes Vince has the missing diamonds, and there’s not much that Franks won’t do to get his hands on those stones. When Morris discovers Vince’s predicament, he has to summon the inner tough guy from his youth (and dig up a gun he had hidden away), to keep Vince from doing anything stupid. Caught between the gangsters, the vicious Dick Franks, and Vince’s own desire for revenge, Morris risks losing his new love, his dreams, even his life in order to save Vince from himself. Praise for DARK IS NIGHT: “Dark as Night is a funny, violent, and damn near perfect noir. If you like your heroes flawed, your villains amoral, and your body count high, you might well think that Mark T. Conard has been reading your mind. A fantastic debut.” —Tod Goldberg, author of Living Dead Girl “If you crossed Anthony Bourdain’s Bone in the Throat with Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant and threw in a little bit of Carl Hiaasen for good measure you might get something like Mark T. Conard’s funny and brutal Dark as Night. He’s one to watch.” —Scott Phillips, author of The Walkaway

A classic coming-of-age murder mystery with corrupt cops, segregation, ice cream and missing lesbians It is the summer of 1958 in Dewmont, Texas, a town the great American postwar boom passed by. The kids listen to rockabilly on the radio and waste their weekends at the Dairy Queen. And an undetected menace simmers under the heat that clings to the skin like molasses. . . For thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchell, the end of innocence comes with his discovery of the mysterious long-ago demise of two very different young women. In his quest to unravel the truth about their tragic fates, Stanley finds a protector in Buster Lighthorse Smith, a black, retired Indian-reservation cop and a sage on the finer points of Sherlock Holmes, the blues, and life's faded dreams. But not every buried thing stays dead. And on one terrifying night of rushing creek water and thundering rain, an arcane, murderous force will rise from the past to threaten the Stanley and everything he holds dear. Vintage Lansdale, A FINE DARK LINE brims with exquisite suspense, powerful characterizations, and the vibrant evocation of a lost time.

This collection bundles all 3 titles from Mel Odom’s Military NCIS series into one e-book for a great value! #1 Paid in Blood The death of a fellow NCIS agent in North Carolina leads Will Coburn and his special team of naval crime-scene investigators to discover a drug-and-arms smuggling ring. The investigation leads them to a U.S. military base in South Korea. When a body is stolen from a crime scene, the team discovers that their suspect is not who he seems. Nuclear weapons have gone missing, and it’s a race against time as the NCIS team uncovers the true face of evil. #2 Blood Evidence While investigating the abduction/kidnapping of a marine captain’s teenage daughter, Will Coburn and his team of NCIS agents discover a link to a high-profile murder that took place more than seventeen years ago. As the team investigates, they discover a trail of lies, betrayal, and a political cover-up. Forensics specialist Nita Tomlinson will need a faith deeper than she can imagine as she struggles with the past and a family that she can no longer ignore. #3 Blood Lines Commander Will Coburn’s NCIS team is investigating the carjacking and assault of a young Marine and his wife. All evidence points to Bobby Lee Gant, son of the notorious criminal and suspected international drug smuggler Victor Gant. When NCIS agent Shel McHenry is wounded during a botched arrest, the team rallies around him even as Victor threatens retribution. Meanwhile, in west Texas, Shel’s father, Tyrel McHenry, struggles with his own demons as buried secrets from a war long since fought come to light. The path he chooses will change his—and Shel’s—life forever.

After over a decade in prison, a young sculptor, Yuri Dilienko, returns to his old neighborhood in Cicero, Illinois. He finds the town stripped of so many places he used to know, while the town's familiar streets, bricks and steeples trigger memories of his traumatic youth. To convalesce, he sculpts from collected scrap metal, but his arrival in town soon rouses a young girl, Lita Avila, to curiosity. Could this reclusive and oddly quiet man, whose art is sensitive yet intense, truly be guilty of setting fire to his parents' bungalow and burning them alive? At once an homage to the urban grit of Nelson Algren and the family sagas of Leo Tolstoy, The Fugue is a true epic that spans three generations and over fifty years, a major new achievement in the history of Chicago literature. It considers the effects of war and the silent, haunting traumas inherited by children of displaced refugees. Gint Aras's lucid yet lyrical prose braids and weaves a tale where memory and imagination merge, time races and drags, and identity collapses and shifts without warning.

The Porcher House After his divorce Anthony Walker walks away from his life in Maryland and moves to the Space Coast of sunny Florida where he finds the love of his life, Emilia Porcher. There’s only one thing keeping them apart…. She’s been dead for over fifty some years. Anthony has to ‘Risk it All’ to find his way through the thin veil of reality, past and present, to be with the woman he’s fallen in love with.

Spiritual Abuse is a three part novel about two teenagers from two different families who are the victims of abuse. Teaming up to investigate their parents' pasts in order to learn the reasons for their parents' behavior, they discover shocking secrets that force them into a world of worse physical and mental dangers that they never imagined possible. Violence, sex, lies, drugs, kidnapping, murder and deception are but a few of the many obstacles that these two teens must deal with before reaching the goal of finding out what is going on. What they find is so shocking that nearly every second in this period of their lives ticks by with mystery. Each character in this novel is unique with a role to play in the intricate web of child abuse and relationships. Hopefully, this novel will arouse some to take action to finally eradicate all forms of abuse from the face of this planet forever.

This book is a direct offspring of the schism in the Worldwide Anglican Communion concerning its traditional and future identity, which came apart in 2003 over the election of V. Gene Robinson, a practicing gay priest as the Bishop of New Hampshire, United States. When 62 out of 107 leaders of the Episcopal Church {US Anglicans} confirmed his ordination at its triennial conference later that year, the ice that held "God's frozen people" together for so long began to thaw. For the 38 provinces of World Anglicanism, it's been a sloppy and loud reversal of communion since its February 10-15, 1997 "Second Anglican Encounter in the South", at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The prophetic theme of that meeting; "The Place of Scripture in the Life and Mission of the Church in the 21st Century", has been challenged by theologically "enlightened" American, British and Canadian Councils. Revisionist ministers and methods then began to dictate the life and mission of these dioceses.