Download or read book Sink or Swim A Novel of World War II written by Steve Watkins and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the true story of the youngest boy who served in World War II, Steve Watkins weaves a story of courage in the face of danger and hope in the face of defeat. It's been a month since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. America is officially at war with Germany and Japan, and everyone wants to do their part. In twelve-year-old Colton's case, that means stepping up at home once his older brother, Danny, ships out with the navy. But before Danny leaves for boot camp, the brothers are fishing on the Atlantic Ocean when Danny's boat is capsized by a Nazi U-boat, nearly killing him.When more U-boats start attacking the next day, Colton realizes just how close the enemy is to American shores. With Danny's life in the balance, Colton does the only thing he can think of to help his family and his country: He steals his brother's enlisting papers and joins up instead.Colton's bold decision leads to a deadly journey. Even if he can keep his age a secret and survive boot camp, he'll have to face Hitler's ruthless submarines. But the longer he's on the seas, the less sure Colton is that he and his shipmates can stop such a relentless enemy . . .

Download or read book Sink Or Swim written by Steve Watkins and published by Scholastic Paperbacks. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the true story of the youngest boy who served in World War II, Steve Watkins weaves a story of courage in the face of danger and hope in the face of defeat. It's been a month since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. America is officially at war with Germany and Japan, and everyone wants to do their part. In twelve-year-old Colton's case, that means stepping up at home once his older brother, Danny, ships out with the navy. But before Danny leaves for boot camp, the brothers are fishing on the Atlantic Ocean when Danny's boat is capsized by a Nazi U-boat, nearly killing him.When more U-boats start attacking the next day, Colton realizes just how close the enemy is to American shores. With Danny's life in the balance, Colton does the only thing he can think of to help his family and his country: He steals his brother's enlisting papers and joins up instead.Colton's bold decision leads to a deadly journey. Even if he can keep his age a secret and survive boot camp, he'll have to face Hitler's ruthless submarines. But the longer he's on the seas, the less sure Colton is that he and his shipmates can stop such a relentless enemy . . .

Download or read book The Secret of Midway Ghosts of War 1 written by Steve Watkins and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2014-12-30 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History comes alive -- with ghosts! In the basement of his family's junk shop, Anderson and his friends Greg and Julie discover a trunk full of old military stuff, including a battered navy peacoat from World War II with a mysterious letter in the pocket. Curious, Anderson takes both home. Only that's not all he brings home . . .Later that night, the owner of the coat and letter appears in Anderson's room - the ghost of a World War II sailor.But who is the ghost and why hasn't he crossed over? And what does he want with Anderson?Soon Anderson, Julie, and Greg are wrapped up in a mystery that's over seventy years old. Can the friends figure out what happened to the ghost before it's too late?

Download or read book Lost at Khe Sanh Ghosts of War 2 written by Steve Watkins and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History comes alive -- with ghosts! Anderson finds himself drawn to the old trunk of military relics in the basement of his family's junk shop again. His friends Greg and Julie warn him to stay away from it, but he can't help himself. This time Anderson discovers an old grenade with a strange message scratched into it. But an old grenade is dangerous . . . especially when the ghost of a soldier appears, claiming that it's his lucky grenade from during his service in the Vietnam War. What does this ghost want from Anderson, Greg, and Julie? Is he here for their help - or for something more sinister? It's a race against time as the friends work to solve the mystery!

Download or read book Sink Or Swim Brooklyn written by Ron Kemper and published by Atmosphere Press. This book was released on 2020-07 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1947, World War II has just ended. The country is buoyant. But Brownsville, a gritty Brooklyn neighborhood, is experiencing enormous change. Southern blacks and Puerto Ricans are moving into this traditionally Jewish/Italian working class neighborhood. Tension on the streets is palpable. Since his birth six year-old Stevie Alpert has endured illness, fear and anxiety. Plagued by nightmares he often sleepwalks. His mother, Rachael, half-jokingly says, "Stevie is more active at night than during the day." As he grows up he fights to overcome his personal demons and the hostilities he encounters on the street. A Nazi-like thug he knows only as "Wolf Eyes" threatens his life. Will the black friends he's made in the projects come to his aide? Will Stevie reciprocate when rivals threaten their territory? Follow Stevie's wins and losses through his junior high school years and his family's struggle to help him and themselves. Can his parents save their faltering retail business? Can they/should they remain in their home as the neighborhood gets poorer, blacker and more violent. Their struggle is a story of fear, doubt, resilience and perseverance.

Download or read book Unbroken written by Laura Hillenbrand and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. Appearing in paperback for the first time—with twenty arresting new photos and an extensive Q&A with the author—Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand. Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and the Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York “Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People “A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”—The Washington Post “Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . incredible . . . [Hillenbrand] has crafted another masterful blend of sports, history and overcoming terrific odds; this is biography taken to the nth degree, a chronicle of a remarkable life lived through extraordinary times.”—The Dallas Morning News “An astonishing testament to the superhuman power of tenacity.”—Entertainment Weekly “A tale of triumph and redemption . . . astonishingly detailed.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “[A] masterfully told true story . . . nothing less than a marvel.”—Washingtonian “[Hillenbrand tells this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter’s pace.”—Time “Hillenbrand [is] one of our best writers of narrative history. You don’t have to be a sports fan or a war-history buff to devour this book—you just have to love great storytelling.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Download or read book Slaughterhouse Five written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 1999-01-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time). Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.” An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.” More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.

Download or read book Beetle Boy written by M.G. Leonard and published by Chicken House. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darkus's dad has disappeared - but his new friend, a giant beetle called Baxter, is some consolation. Together, boy and beetle set out to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance. But Lucretia Cutter - a fashion designer with a penchant for beetle jewellery - is dead set against their success ...

Download or read book Darkness written by Christopher Krovatin and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For horror fans of all ages, a twisted tale of what happens in a town plagued by darkness. If you're not afraid of the dark . . . you should be. In a town which is plunged into darkness without warning, strange things rise when no one else can see . . . and the source of the darkness may be the scariest thing of all.

Download or read book Love and Treasure written by Ayelet Waldman and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spellbinding new novel of contraband masterpieces, tragic love, and the unexpected legacies of forgotten crimes, Ayelet Waldman’s Love and Treasure weaves a tale around the fascinating, true history of the Hungarian Gold Train in the Second World War. In 1945 on the outskirts of Salzburg, victorious American soldiers capture a train filled with unspeakable riches: piles of fine gold watches; mountains of fur coats; crates filled with wedding rings, silver picture frames, family heirlooms, and Shabbat candlesticks passed down through generations. Jack Wiseman, a tough, smart New York Jew, is the lieutenant charged with guarding this treasure—a responsibility that grows more complicated when he meets Ilona, a fierce, beautiful Hungarian who has lost everything in the ravages of the Holocaust. Seventy years later, amid the shadowy world of art dealers who profit off the sins of previous generations, Jack gives a necklace to his granddaughter, Natalie Stein, and charges her with searching for an unknown woman—a woman whose portrait and fate come to haunt Natalie, a woman whose secret may help Natalie to understand the guilt her grandfather will take to his grave and to find a way out of the mess she has made of her own life. A story of brilliantly drawn characters—a suave and shady art historian, a delusive and infatuated Freudian, a family of singing circus dwarfs fallen into the clutches of Josef Mengele, and desperate lovers facing choices that will tear them apart—Love and Treasure is Ayelet Waldman’s finest novel to date: a sad, funny, richly detailed work that poses hard questions about the value of precious things in a time when life itself has no value, and about the slenderest of chains that can bind us to the griefs and passions of the past. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

Download or read book Parachute Infantry written by David Webster and published by Dell. This book was released on 2008-02-26 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Kenyon Webster’s memoir is a clear-eyed, emotionally charged chronicle of youth, camaraderie, and the chaos of war. Relying on his own letters home and recollections he penned just after his discharge, Webster gives a first hand account of life in E Company, 101st Airborne Division, crafting a memoir that resonates with the immediacy of a gripping novel. From the beaches of Normandy to the blood-dimmed battlefields of Holland, here are acts of courage and cowardice, moments of irritating boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, and pitched urban warfare. Offering a remarkable snapshot of what it was like to enter Germany in the last days of World War II, Webster presents a vivid, varied cast of young paratroopers from all walks of life, and unforgettable glimpses of enemy soldiers and hapless civilians caught up in the melee. Parachute Infantry is at once harsh and moving, boisterous and tragic, and stands today as an unsurpassed chronicle of war—how men fight it, survive it, and remember it.

Download or read book Traitors Among Us written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War II may be over. But two sisters are far from safe. Inspired by true events, this is the latest gripping and powerful novel from the acclaimed author of Making Bombs for Hitler. Sisters Krystia and Maria have been through the worst -- or so they think. World War II ravaged their native Ukraine, but they both survived, and are now reunited in a displaced persons camp. Then another girl accuses the sisters of being Hitler Girls -- people who collaborated with the Nazis. Nothing could be further from the truth; during the horrors of the war, both sisters resisted the Nazis and everything they stood for. But the Soviets, who are now in charge, don't listen to the sisters' protests. Krystia and Maria are taken away and interrogated for crimes they never committed. Caught in a dangerous trap, the sisters must look to each other for strength and perseverance. Can they convince their captors that they're innocent -- or escape to safety before it's too late?

Download or read book Supergirl written by Daniel Wallace and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains the back story of Superman's cousin, Kara Zor-El-- Supergirl--from her life as a teenager on Krypton and her arrival on Earth after years in suspended animation to her efforts to adjust to human society and her role as a superhero.

Download or read book Deep Water written by Watt Key and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr). This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a dive off the coast of Alabama goes horribly wrong, 12-year-old Julie and one of her father's scuba clients struggle to survive after reaching an abandoned oil rig.

Download or read book Pacific Glory written by P. T. Deutermann and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling, multi-layered World War II adventure following two men and an unforgettable woman, from Pearl Harbor through the most dramatic air and sea battles of the war Marsh, Mick, and Tommy were inseparable friends during their naval academy years, each man desperately in love with the beautiful, unattainable Glory Hawthorne. Graduation set them on separate paths into the military, but they were all forever changed during the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. Glory, now Tommy's widow, is a tough Navy nurse still grieving her loss while trying to save lives. Marsh, a surface ship officer, finds himself in the thick of terrifying sea combat from Guadalcanal through Midway to a climactic showdown at Leyte Gulf. And Mick, a hotshot fighter pilot with a drinking problem and a chip on his shoulder, seeks redemption after a series of failures leaves him grounded. Filled with wide-screen action, romance, and heroism tinged with the brutal reality of war, Pacific Glory is a dynamic new direction for an acclaimed thriller writer. One of Library Journal's Best Historical Fiction Books of 2011

Download or read book Baseball Saved Us written by Ken Mochizuki and published by Lerner Publishing Group. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Author Ken Mochizuki reads his award-winning book. There is some soft background music, and a few gentle sound effects, but the power of the words need little embellishment...This treasure of a book is well-treated in this format." - School Library Journal

Download or read book Love and Shame and Love written by Peter Orner and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2011-11-07 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Popper can't stop remembering. Four years old when his father tossed him into Lake Michigan, he was told, Sink or swim, kid. In his mind, he's still bobbing in that frigid water. The rest of this novel's vivid cast of characters also struggle to remain afloat: Popper's mother, stymied by an unhappy marriage, seeks solace in the relentless energy of Chicago; his brother, Leo, shadow boss of the family, retreats into books; paternal grandparents, Seymour and Bernice, once high fliers, now mourn for long lost days; his father, a lawyer and would-be politician obsessed with his own success, fails to see that the family is falling apart; and his college girlfriend, the fiercely independent Kat, wrestles with impossible choices. Covering four generations of the Popper family, Peter Orner illuminates the countless ways that love both makes us whole and completely unravels us. A comic and sorrowful tapestry of memory of connection and disconnection, Love and Shame and Love explores the universals with stunning originality and wisdom.