Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 23 items
The great escape
By Paul Brickhill. 2000
The Great Escape tells how more than six hundred men in a German prisoner of war camp worked together to…
achieve an extraordinary break-out. Every night for a year they dug tunnels, and those who weren't digging forged passports, drew maps, faked weapons and tailored German uniforms and civilian clothes to wear once they had escaped. All of this was conducted under the very noses of their prison guards. When the right night came, the actual escape itself was timed to the split second - but of course, not everything went according to plan... 2000.The devil and Sherlock Holmes: [tales of murder, madness, and obsession]
By David Grann. 2010
Each of the dozen stories in this collection reveals a hidden and often dangerous world, and pivots around the gravitational…
pull of obsession and the captivating personalities of those caught in its grip. There is the world's foremost expert on Sherlock Holmes who is found dead in mysterious circumstances; an arson sleuth trying to prove that a man about to be executed is innocent; and sandhogs racing to complete the brutally dangerous job of building New York City's water tunnels before the old system collapses. Throughout, Grann's hypnotic accounts display the power--and often the willful perversity--of the human spirit. 2010.Cordélia: ou, La lampe dans la fenêtre
By Pauline Cadieux. 1979
Le 22 novembre 1897, Cordelia revient de chez son père où elle a passé la nuit. Affreuse découverte; son mari…
gît dans son lit; assassiné. Elle ne se doute pas que bientôt, à Sainte-Scholastique, la rumeur publique l'accusera du meurtre. 1979.Le Pacifique: de l'autre côté de l'océan,l'enfer
By Hugh Ambrose. 2011
Novembre 1941, les troupes américaines quittent la Chine. Août 1945, l'avion du général MacArthur se pose sur le territoire japonais.…
Entre ces deux événements, cinq recrues inexpérimentées, cinq soldats venant d'horizons différents sont plongés dans une guerre violente sur le front asiatique. Débâcle de Bataan, tumulte de Guadalcanal, implacables forteresses de corail de Peleliu, terribles charniers d'Okinawa ; puis retour au pays, triomphal mais douloureux. Chacun joue son rôle dans ce conflit, et tous doivent puiser dans leurs ultimes ressources physiques et mentales pour venir à bout d'un ennemi qui préfère mourir plutôt que de se rendre. Descriptions régulières de violence, beaucoup de langage grossier, et quelques descriptions de nature sexuelle. 2011. Titre uniforme: The Pacific.La trêve (Le livre de poche #15438)
By Primo Levi. 2003
A la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, un groupe d'Italiens, rescapés des camps nazis, entame une marche de plusieurs…
mois : « accompagnés » par l'Armée Rouge, ils cherchent à rejoindre leur terre natale. Héros et traîtres, paysans et voleurs, savants et nomades se retrouvent pêle-mêle dans une réjouissante pagaille : autant d'hommes qui redécouvrent, émerveillés, la vie, le monde, la forêt, les filles, sans oublier l'art du trafic pour subsister... La Trêve est le récit picaresque et authentique de leurs tribulations extravagantes sur les routes d'Europe centrale. A travers la confrontation de deux peuples, Primo Levi révèle les ressources merveilleuses d'hommes qui se montrèrent à la hauteur de leur destin.Gomorra: dans l'empire de la camorra
By Roberto Saviano, Vincent Raynaud. 2007
Roberto Saviano a enquêté pendant plusieurs années sur les activités de la Camorra, l'organisation criminelle qui règne sur Naples et…
toute la Campanie. Une organisation moins connue que la mafia sicilienne mais bien plus dangereuse, car la mafia se pose comme un 'contre-État', a un code d'honneur et respecte certaines règles, alors que la Camorra est une forme 'd'entreprenariat' criminel dont le seul but est de maximiser ses profits, ses membres étant prêts à tout pour atteindre cet objectif. Elle constitue pour l'auteur l'avant-garde de l'économie mondialisée, dont elle pousse les mécanismes jusqu'à leurs conséquences les plus extrêmes. Les rapports avec la Chine et le rôle du port de Naples, l'importance du textile en Italie et au-delà, le trafic d'armes et de drogue, les activités de construction et l'immobilier. Passant en revue tous ces dossiers, Saviano présente des faits, des chiffres et des éléments concrets sur la portée de la criminalité au sein du 'Système', le véritable nom de la Camorra. 2007.Black mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a devil's deal
By Dick Lehr, Gerard O'Neill. 2013
Investigative journalists expose FBI corruption. In 1975 Boston FBI agent John Connolly began using Irish mobster Jim "Whitey" Bulger as…
an informant. Though Bulger committed outrageous crimes, the state police and federal drug agents were never able to get a conviction, and authorities became suspicious of a fix. 2013.Defiance: the Bielski partisans
By Nechama Tec. 2008
The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust is one of helpless victims, but many Jews struggled against the…
terrors of the Third Reich. This is the history of one such group, a forest community numbering more than 1,200 Jews, that carried out the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. These men and women of all ages - hungry, largely unarmed, and exposed to harsh winter weather - smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, led retaliatory raids against Nazi collaborators, and offered protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Some descriptions of violence. 2008.All the President's men
By Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein. 1974
Above suspicion
By Joe Sharkey. 1993
Mark Putnam's first assignment as an FBI agent is in the coal town of Pikeville, Kentucky. Almost immediately, Mark solves…
a bank robbery case with the help of local informant Susan Smith. Susan becomes enamoured of Mark (even befriending his wife to learn more about him), and Mark eventually succumbs to Susan's advances. Her "fatal attraction" response leads to a deadly struggle. Strong language and violence. c1993.The secret
By Deric Henderson. 2016
May 1991 in the seaside town of Castlerock in Northern Ireland and the bodies of two people, police officer Trevor…
Buchanan and nurse Lesley Howell, are found in a car filled with carbon monoxide. The pair have apparently taken their own lives, unable to live with the pain of their spouses’ affair with each other. Their adulterous spouses, Sunday school teacher Hazel Buchanan and dentist Colin Howell, continued their affair secretly but both later remarried other people. A series of disasters in Howell's life made him reveal that he and Hazel Stewart had conspired to murder their spouses nearly two decades earlier. That confession led to two of the most sensational murder trials ever seen in the UK. 2016. Uniform title: Let this be our secretMonuments Men: Allied heroes, Nazi thieves, and the greatest treasure hunt in history
By Bret Witter, Robert M Edsel. 2010
From 1943 to 1951, 350 or so men and women from 13 Allied nations served in the Monuments, Fine Arts…
and Archives section of the Allied armed forces. This was the most ambitious effort in history to preserve the world's cultural heritage in times of war. They were known simply as 'Monuments Men'. This is their story. 2010.We were soldiers once -and young: Ia Drang, the battle that changed the war in Vietnam
By Harold G Moore, Joseph L Galloway. 1993
Lieutenant General Moore and Galloway, a journalist, focus on the first major ground battle of a war that lasted ten…
years. Drawing on their own experiences and that of other participants, they describe four days of combat waged by 450 men in the Ia Drang valley of Vietnam and provide their view of the impact of this war on a proud generation of soldiers. 1993.War
By Sebastian Junger. 2010
For one year, in 2007-2008, Sebastian Junger accompanied a single platoon of thirty men from the storied 2nd battalion of…
the U.S. Army, as they fought their way through a remote valley in Eastern Afghanistan. Over the course of five trips, Junger was in more firefights than he can count, men he knew were killed or wounded, and he himself was almost killed. War is a narrative about combat: the fear of dying, the trauma of killing and the love between platoon-mates who would rather die than let each other down. Violence and strong language. Bestseller. 2010.The zookeeper's wife
By Diane Ackerman. 2007
When Germany invaded Poland, bombers devastated Warsaw--and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers…
Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into the empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants and refusing to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, even as Europe crumbled around her. Bestseller. 2007.Black Hawk down: a story of modern war
By Mark Bowden. 1999
Recreates the U.S. military operation in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 3-4, 1993, when ninety-nine American soldiers were surrounded and trapped.…
Describes how the planned one-hour mission turned into an overnight fight for survival. Based on journalist's interviews with the soldiers, helicopter pilots, and Somali clan leaders. Bestseller. 1999.The battle of Arnhem, the greatest airborne operation of World War II, was the master-stroke by which Field Marshal Montgomery…
proposed to end the war in 1944. The strategy of "dropping the combined forces of the American and British armies behind German lines" to capture the crucial bridge across the Rhone, ended in defeat for the Allies. 1974.The physics of Star Trek
By Lawrence Maxwell Krauss, S. W Hawking. 1995
Krauss uses the original Star Trek television series (and its spinoffs) to explore concepts in physics, quantum mechanics, interstellar flight,…
and time travel, as he questions the possibility of "warp drives," "transporters," "wormholes," "phasers," and "holodecks," as well as extraterrestrial life. With a foreward by Stephen Hawking. 1995.A civil action
By Jonathan Harr. 1995
Written like a novel, this true account of a liability lawsuit focuses on the plaintiffs' attorney. Parents whose children died…
of leukemia retained Jan Schlichtmann, described here as flamboyant, bankrupt, and tenacious. Schlichtmann spent nine years tracking the cause of the illness to bring suit against two giant corporations. Describes how justice became secondary to the legal battle. Strong language. Bestseller. 1995.Dead man walking: an eyewitness account of the death penalty in the United States
By Helen Prejean. 1992
When Louisiana nun Helen Prejean and death-row inmate Patrick Sonnier become pen pals, Sonnier’s friendly nature and ambiguities about his…
crime reinforce Prejean’s feelings against the death penalty. After fighting unsuccessfully to have Sonnier’s sentence commuted, Prejean continues her activism, including work with victims’ groups. Includes violence and strong language. 1992.