Bücher veröffentlicht von MilSpeak Books, MilSpeak Foundation, Inc.

FALL 1929The mansion of larger-than-life business magnate Titus McAvoy hums with the energy of his servants Nessa and Aoife, two Irish maids bonded through their journey to America, and a dream of escape. When preparation for one of Titus's famous parties sends the pair to the beach, Aoife stumbles upon a strange find on the shoreline. She instinctively pockets it, unaware that the waxy, musky substance, ambergris, is the key to her and Nessa's freedom. Ounce for ounce, ambergris holds more worth than silver or gold. Amid this discovery, a young white-passing British World War I veteran named John enters the mansion's ranks, his history dragging behind him. When John's path intersects with Nessa and Aoife, the trio forms a quiet trust. Eventually, the girls show John the ambergris treasure, and together, they formulate a plan to cash in their secret and make their getaway. These three friends are determined to forge a different life together-one free from the dark underbelly of how the rich treat the poor, and free from the pervasive rot of nationalist and racist behavior, not to mention the injustices and dangers that too often befall women. But with a crash in the stock market demolishing Titus's wealth, his eye is sharp and malicious. As the trio's strategy unfolds, so too does their boss's own merciless plan to punish whoever defies his power. Nobody walks away from Titus McAvoy.

When Commander Tauran's young son, Lausus, is diagnosed as one of the despised changeling mutants, Tauran believes the government assurances that his boy will be treated well. His less trusting wife, Beatra, however, flees with Lausus to a changeling planet. After years of leading troops into battles against the mutants, while tirelessly searching for signs of Beatra and Lausus, Tauran seizes on an offer from a trusted, yet rogue, scientist with a time travel device that will enable Tauran to harvest fresh DNA from humans before Earth's nuclear wars. Teamed with three others-a scientist, a scholar, and a war criminal with nothing to prove-Tauran maxes out the time travel device, arriving to Earth's first century where he encounters a healer from an abandoned religious sect. Faced with more of a mystery than ever, Tauran determines to learn the healer's secrets or risk kidnapping him for his DNA to save Lausus, purge the mutation, and end the war between humans and their mutant offspring. But Tauran and his team have to move fast-before mutants from their own era overrun the team's time travel site on Terra, and before a government conspiracy to prolong the war destroys what's left of humanity's home world with a final nuclear blast.

Lauren Kay Johnson is just seven when she first experiences a sacrifice of war as her mother, a nurse in the Army Reserves, deploys in support of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. A decade later, in the wake of 9/11, Lauren signs her own military contract and deploys to a small Afghan province with a non-combat nation-building team. Through her role as the team's information operations officer-the filter between the U.S. military and the Afghan and international publics-and through interviews and letters from her mother's service, Lauren investigates the role of information in war and in interpersonal relationships, often wrestling with the truth in stories we read and hear from the media and official sources, and in those stories we tell ourselves and our families. A powerful generational coming-of-age narrative against the backdrop of war, The Fine Art of Camouflage reveals the impact from a child's perspective of watching her mother leave and return home to a hero's welcome to that of a young idealist volunteering to deploy to Afghanistan who, war-worn, eventually questions her place in the war, the military, and her family history-and their place within her.

After years of flirting in the baseball dugout of their small South Dakota town, denying to friends and family anything beyond a friendship, Amber-now home from her college study abroad in Mexico-and Blake-newly committed to military service-reunite, and finally confess their true feelings for one another. Later, their love and marriage are tested by Blake's deployment to Iraq during Amber's first pregnancy, and by the changes in Blake after his return and reintegration, his subsequent battle with chronic pain, and the slow-burning challenges of married life. Through it all, Amber and Blake draw on their deep commitment to each other and to the legacy of family in a discovery of what to let go of and what to hold on to. Clinging to memories of baseball and hunting, family traditions, and to each other, Amber and Blake learn to discard expectations and Midwestern reticence, and to find comfort in silence while also asking the difficult questions they hope will keep their love alive.

Karen and Lash meet as teenagers and form an immediate bond over their mutual love for horses. Year later, Lash marries, and she and her husband locate their dream acreage for building a home and an equestrian facility, only Lash's dream isn't complete if she can't convince Karen to risk everything in a purchase of the adjoining property. Karen eventually gambles it all, and together, she and Lash weather countless falls from horses, a roller coaster of love losses and triumphs, the emotional pitfalls of equestrian breeding and competing-and finally, a heartbreaking diagnosis of a fatal illness.

As the spouse of a newly-minted Navy submariner, Samantha soon discovers how little she and the other wives are permitted to know about the top secret workings of their husbands' lives while underway. When the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan goes quiet in November 2017, other than the reporting of an underwater "seismic anomaly," a sound consistent with an implosion, Sam and her fellow Navy wives devise ways to keep themselves afloat during the excruciating silence of their husbands' sub. Wide-eyed Sam, at times unsure of her place in a world governed by reactors, warheads, and relentless operational tempo, eventually discovers a truth about the inner strength of women.