Fraser's Run is the story of a British and German pilot and an OSS officer during World War II. The British pilot, flying a single-engine Lysander, is killed on a mission to support an OSS team in occupied France. Details of his death are sketchy and another pilot takes over the run. Thirty years later at a reunion of the British squadron, the German pilot and the OSS officer are invited to speak.In 1974, now knighted, the British pilot hosts a banquet to honor Flight Lieutenant Fraser for the members of 138 Squadron. At the banquet, after the German officer speaks he introduces the former OSS officer who is well known to the audience as he has appeared on television and is frequently mentioned in the press. After much thought, the OSS officer decides to tell the members of 138 Squadron how Fraser really died and a dramatic tale unfolds.
Flight to Dungavel begins in 1918 when an infantry sergeant saves the life of a lieutenant whose Spad crashes in no-man's-land. After the war and throughout the twenties the two ex-soldiers construct a bootlegging empire. To avoid charges of income tax evasion, and account for their illegal income, the miscreants finance two British engineers who claim to have discovered diamonds in British Guiana. Thinking the venture is sure to fail, they 'cook' the books to show income from the mine. In 1933, one step ahead of an arrest warrant they are forced to flee the country. In British Guiana they are surprised to find the mine is modestly successful. As they cannot return to the States until the statute of limitations expires, they take an active role in the mine. They buy a British Avro, hack an airfield out of the jungle, and fly supplies to and from the mine. In 1934, the mine produces an enormous cache of diamonds. The ten kilogram sack of diamonds is strapped into the front seat of the biplane. While airborne, the pilot passes out from the sting of a Veinticuatro ant. After he regains consciousness, he is off course and nearly out of fuel. The Avro crashes in an unexplored corner of Guiana populated by aborigines who have never seen a white man. In 1940, Hitler learns that diamonds were aboard the aircraft and orders the SS to recover them. Churchill learns of the plan and the plot continues...
During the first Gulf War, an Iraqi army professional soldier named Ahmed Al-Zawiri incurs a lifetime hatred for the United States. In possession of a silencer equipped pistol, issued to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (SOCOM), he leaves Iraq and begins a career as a hit man for a drug cartel. After Ahmed threatens the cartel's accountant, he realizes his mistake and bugs out before he feels the cartel's wrath. When he arrives in Pakistan, Ahmed joins al-Qaeda—this is the story of SOCOM's hunt for Captain Ahmed Al-Zawiri.
In 1942 two OSS officers, Major Huff a pilot and Major Murphy an infantry officer are tasked with kidnapping an Africa Corps officer from an internment camp in Turkey. During a meeting with Colonel Groves, the officer in charge of the Manhattan Project, they learn the Africa Corps officer is one of Germany's leading physicists who Groves believes was inadvertently assigned to the Africa Corps. After realizing their mistake, the Germans reassigned the officer to the Kaiser Wilheim Institute of Physics in Berlin. While flying back to Berlin, the aircraft was shot down and Turkish fisherman plucked the physicist from the Gulf of Adalia. Subsequently, according to international law, he was interned by the neutral Turkish government.From Harry Hopkins they learn the president has 'green lighted' the operation and are handed an OSS planning document. Huff, an experienced pilot, thinks the plan is absurd until he spots Jimmy Doolittle's signature. Days later a technically complex plan springs into action.
A former Russian paratroop commander, Colonel Yuri Vitrenko, attempts to terrorize the United States into withdrawing its troops from Europe so Russia can have a free hand in bringing the break-away republics back into the fold. Vitrenko is part of a military and civilian clique that includes retired Colonel General Alexi Kuchma. The general has a large following and is planning to run in the next presidential election. Vitrenko is convinced that getting American troops out of Europe will ensure Kuchma's election. To this end, he devises a series of terrorist plots but does not involve any members of the clique for fear of retaliation against Russia.Vitrenko begins his reign of terror by anonymously notifying the Americans of his intentions if they do not withdraw their troops from Europe. The Americans do not heed his warning. As a result, Vitrenko executes a congressman and a senator. When his next warning is not heeded, Vitrenko downs a Boeing 747 with a missile killing 230 passengers and crew members. The American president devises a strategy to counter Vitrenko's moves. Both politicians' deaths are described as accidental and the downing of Aeroexpress Flight 120 is attributed to a fuel tank explosion. Reluctantly, Vitrenko plans his next move and the plot continues...
There was no name on the C-46 but the ground and flight crews who flew the Hump called her the Betty G. The airplane was identified by a painting of a scantily clad female on the left side of the nose. In 1944 the Betty G encountered severe turbulence and crashed into the side of a mountain. The wreckage was located in an uncharted area and attempts to reach the site were futile. Rumors circulated that gold coins for Chiang Kai-shek's payroll were aboard the Betty G.Fifty years later, faced with exorbitant taxes from inheriting the family business the young owner is unable to raise the money. Desperate and unwilling to sell the business and having heard about the Betty G from his father, he obtains satellite photographs and pinpoints the location of the aircraft. With help from his congressman, he receives permission from the Indian government to search for World War II artifacts and sets out to search for the Betty G's gold.
In 1945 after Germany surrendered Berlin was divided into British, French and American occupation zones (West Berlin) and a Soviet zone (East Berlin). For years West Berlin, surrounded by the Russian zone, was a simmering Cold War issue. From June 1948 until May 1949 West Berlin was blockaded by the Soviet Union. All rail, waterway and road traffic was cut off by the Russians. The Berlin Airlift by Great Britain and the United States was West Berlin's lifeline.In 1949, after a Berlin Airlift crew returns to the States an explosion rips the right wing of their C-54 open over an unexplored area of Brazil. Only two of the five-man crew survive. The information is closely held---only President Truman and a select few know the cause of the crash. On national security grounds, the information is classified 'Top Secret' and sealed for fifty years. After spending a year in the jungle with aborigines both surviving crewmembers reach Cayenne, French Guiana. Neither crewman has any idea what caused the explosion that forced them down. Through the years, the engineer blames the death of his crewmembers on something he did or didn "t do that he should have. After living with guilt for forty-five years he sets out to discover the truth and a bizarre plot is uncovered.
In 1942 the Blue Goose, a B-24 bomber, disappeared during a routine test flight from an airbase in Florida. After an intensive search, no trace of the plane or crew was ever found. Thirty years later, the remains of the copilot were discovered on a remote beach in northern Brazil. The pilot's son learns of the discovery and teams up with his father's former commanding officer. They mount an expedition to Brazil and find a Luger pistol that leads them to a Luftwaffe pilot who flew with the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War. While he is sympathetic, the former Luftwaffe pilot refuses to cooperate and the investigation reaches a dead end. Years later, the Condor Legion pilot dies in a crash at Tenerife and a bizarre Nazi plot is uncovered.
The Mannerheim Line follows a historic timeline and is the story of two Americans, Jimmy Carson and Joe Lyons, who meet while flying for the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. After the Loyalist surrender, Carson and Lyons fly freight for a Canadian company based in Gibraltar. In 1939, they offer their services to the Finnish government and fly French built fighters during the Russo-Finnish War. After the Finns surrender, both men return to Gibraltar where they are imprisoned. President Roosevelt intervenes and the pilots are released to fly for the British.After the United States enters the war, Lyons remains in England while Carson is assigned to the China-Burma-India Theater. They meet briefly during the Berlin Airlift and the Korean War then go their separate ways. In 1961, Lyons is killed when his B-26 is shot down at the Bay of Pigs. Unwilling to admit Americans were involved, the CIA devises an elaborate cover story to explain Lyons' death. Years later, Carson decides to investigate and uncovers information that unravels the CIA cover story.
In the last days of World War II, an American bomber sinks a German submarine in the West Indies. The crew manages to board life rafts but a squall approaches and the weather turns deadly. Weeks later, off the Florida coast, a fishing boat recovers a life raft with two dead men aboard. One of the men is the submarine's captain, Oberleutnant von Weizsacker. The fishing boat captain finds a diary in a waterproof pouch sewn into von Weizsacker's jacket. He scans a few pages but is unable to read German. The captain tosses the diary and other personal effects into a shoe box. He turns the corpses and their identification tags over to the coast guard but neglects to mention he retrieved some personal effects. Twenty-eight years later, the diary turns up at a Florida flea market.
The Czar's Last Soldier is the story of the search for the Star of Golconda a 42.5-carat diamond slightly smaller than the Hope diamond. Before he was killed, a marine buried the diamond in his foxhole on the island of Corregidor during World War II. Thirty-two years later, at a Nebraska post office, Sam Gibbons and Roscoe Barnes are removing the old post office boxes and replacing them with new ones. Both men are World War II veterans who teamed up as general contractors after the war. When the old post office boxes are removed a letter hidden between warped boards falls to the floor. The letter, dated 1942, is from the marine who died on Corregidor and gives the particulars of a jewel theft he committed at the Shanghai Officer's Club in 1941. As there are no members of the marine's family still alive, they read the letter. Shortly after the theft, the marine's regiment was transferred from China to the Philippines. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the regiment was tasked to defend Corregidor. When the order to surrender was given, not wanting the Japanese to gloom onto the stolen jewels, the marine buried them. Sam and Roscoe hunt for the jewels but are unaware they were stolen from a czarist officer and are thrust into the middle of an international legal battle.
A former air force pilot, a retired marine and a disabled ex-army doctor team up to uncover a scam artist—the current occupant of the White House. When the miscreant behind the greatest Ponzi scheme in history was exposed, Bernie Madoff's name was plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country and heard on television ad nauseam. But nary a sound was heard about the occupant of the White House—there was a total media blackout of the president's forged birth certificate. Some journalists were threatened that their careers would end if they raised the subject. The only coverage of the investigation was on the Internet and that was sparse. At every opportunity, the president's supporters tried to present the issue as a far out conspiracy theory—but that was just another scam.
This book introduces contemporary Buddhists from across Asia and from various walks of life. Eschewing traditional hagiographies, the editors have collected sixty-six profiles of individuals who would be excluded from most Buddhist histories and ethnographies. In addition to monks and nuns, readers will encounter artists, psychologists, social workers, part-time priests, healers, and librarians as well as charlatans, hucksters, profiteers, and rabble-rousers—all whose lives reflect changes in modern Buddhism even as they themselves shape the course of these changes. The editors and contributors are fundamentally concerned with how individual Buddhists make meaning and display this understanding to others. Some practitioners profiled look to the past, lamenting the transformations Buddhism has undergone in recent times, while others embrace these. Some have adopted a “new asceticism,” while others are eager to explore different religious traditions as they think about their own ways of being Buddhist. Arranging the profiles according to these themes—looking backward, forward, inward, and outward—reveals the value of studying individual Buddhists and their idiosyncratic religious backgrounds and attitudes, thus highlighting the diversity of approaches to the practice and study of Buddhism in Asia today. Students and teachers will welcome sections on further readings and additional tables of contents that organize the profiles thematically, as well as by tradition (Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), region, and country.
Annotation ebXML is a framework of specifications that enables businesses to collaborate electronically using XML-based technologies. This book looks at each of the ebXML components required to implement a complete e-business solution, including defining business processes and associated roles and activities, creating and publishing business information in a registry/repository, searching for other business partners, agreeing trading protocols, creating business documents, and sending them via secure and reliable messaging systems. It also introduces the alternatives where applicable. ebXML is open, interoperable, and affordable. Maintained by industry consortia (OASIS and UN/CEFACT) and based on XML, it allows companies to benefit from electronic trading via a global network regardless of size or geographical location, both within and across industries. This book is for developers who are familiar with XML - it will be useful to anyone responsible at a technical level for assessing the relevance or importance of ebXML for their requirements and starting to develop ebXML solutions.
A tale of revenge involving two friends in the publishing world. It is bad enough that writer Nicolas Fabry steals Edward Destry's woman, it is worse that he discards her and she commits suicide, but when he writes a novel about it and the novel wins a prize, Destry decides to fix him. Destry's plan: forge a novel under Fabry's name and have him sued for plagiarism. Written in English by a Swiss, the novel won a prize for detective fiction in France.
Fans of the New York Times bestselling Redwall series will be delighted with Brian Jacques' latest. The legend of the Flying Dutchman, the ghost-ship doomed to sail the seas forever, has been passed down throughout the centuries. But what of the boy, Neb, and his dog, Den, who were trapped aboard that ship? What was to become of them? Sent off on an eternal journey of their own, the boy and his dog roam the earth through out the centuries in search of those in need. Braving wind and waves and countless perils, they stumble across a 19th-century village whose very existence is at stake. Saving it will take the will and wile of all the people--and a very special boy and dog. "The swashbuckling language brims with color and melodrama; the villains are dastardly and stupid; and buried treasure, mysterious clues, and luscious culinary descriptions (generally involving sweets) keep the pages turning." (Booklist)
Grasslands are an important element of European nature. About half of Europe's endemic species depend on grasslands, whether in mountains, lowlands, river plains or coastal areas. Many grasslands originate in traditional agricultural landscapes. Modern intensification, however, brings many of these ecosystems under threat. 'Grasslands in Europe' is a tribute to these important ecosystems. It was written by an international team of grassland experts, who describe twenty-four case studies from countries in all of Europe - ranging from the grasslands of Gotland and #land (Sweden) to the Spanish Dehesa, and from the hay meadows of the British Pennine Dales to the steppes of Turkish Anatolia. Together, these case studies provide a fascinating glimpse into the various European grasslands, their value for nature, culture and agriculture, and the threats they are facing today. The accessible text as well as the rich illustrations will appeal to a wide audience. Grasslands in Europe contains a large number of stunning full-colour photographs of grassland landscapes, species and cultural history. It also contains many maps and infographics. Thematic chapters provide essential background information on topics such as grassland fauna, the history of agriculture, grassland communities, and the connection between grasslands and climate. The book also analyses the opportunities and risks of EU policy to conserve these grasslands. It offers a farmer-centred outlook to manage and to maintain the European grasslands of high nature value.
In life, I want students to be alive and on stage I want them to be artists' Jacques Lecoq Jacques Lecoq was one of the most inspirational theatre teachers of our age. In The Moving Body, he shares with us first-hand his unique philosophy of performance, improvisation, masks, movement and gesture, which together form one of the greatest influences on contemporary theatre. Neutral mask, character mask and counter masks, bouffons, acrobatics, commedia, clowns and complicity: all the famous Lecoq techniques are covered in this book - techniques that have made their way into the work of former collaborators and students including Dario Fo, Ariane Mnouchkine, Yasmina Reza and Theatre de Complicite. The book contains a foreword by Simon McBurney, a critical introduction by Mark Evans and an afterword by Fay Lecoq, Director of the International Theatre School in Paris.
This book contains 25 short stories from 5 classic, prize-winning and noteworthy authors. The stories were carefully selected by the critic August Nemo, in a collection that will please the literature lovers. The theme of this edition is: Mystery and Detective. For more exciting titles, be sure to check out our 7 Best Short Stories and Essential Novelists collections. This book contains: - Jacques Futrelle. - H. and E. Heron. - Arthur Morrison. - John Ulrich Giesy. - Frank L. Packard.
This is a detailed, illustrated and up-to-date study of the fauna, flora, landscapes, coastal areas and seascapes of the entire Mediterranean Basin, and the Sea itself. Since the publication of the first edition in 1999, the field has advanced in significant ways and this revision is timely.
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