True Military

For twenty years, the Taliban was the number one enemy of Western forces in Afghanistan. But it was an enemy that they knew little about, and about whose founder and leader, Mullah Omar, they knew even less.

In 1938, 29-year-old 'Nicky' cancelled a ski holiday and instead spent nine months masterminding a seemingly impossible plan to rescue hundreds of Jewish children and find them homes in the UK. Over 6,000 people are alive today because of his efforts. What motivated an ordinary man to do something so extraordinary? This book, written by his daughter, Barbara, explores the 106-year life of an incredible humanitarian, a man whose legacy only came to public light decades later.

Originally intended as a trainer, the Anglo-French Sepecat jet, equipped with the very latest in weapon-aiming and navigational equipment, eventually became the backbone of the RAF's tactical strike-attack and recce forces for a decade from the mid-1970s. In these minutes, the Jaguar Boys - pilots, engineer, and ground crew - tell of the aircraft's drawbacks and joys, their sadness at losses, and their pleasure at its development into a readily deployable and outstandingly capable fighter-bomber for the post-Cold War era.

Capturing history was Jonathan Alpeyrie's job, but he never expected to become a news story himself. For a decade, the French-American photojournalist weaved in and out of over a dozen conflict zones. But, during his third assignment to Syria, Alpeyrie was betrayed by his fixer and handed over to a band of Syrian rebels. For 81 days, he was bound, blindfolded, and beaten. Over the course of his captivity, Alpeyrie kept his spirits up and strived to see, without his camera lenses, the humanity in his captors.

The incredible true story of British special agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne, sisters who risked everything to fight for freedom during the Second World War. When elderly recluse Eileen Nearne died, few suspected that the quiet little old lady was a decorated WWII war hero. Volunteering to serve for British intelligence at age 21, Eileen was posted to Nazi-occupied France to send encoded messages of crucial importance for the Allies, until her capture by the Gestapo.

Toto Koopman - beautiful, mixed-race, bisexual Vogue cover girl in 1930s Paris and lover of the all-powerful press baron and wartime cabinet minister Lord Beaverbrook. Coco Chanel, brilliant couturier and parfumier, rich beyond dreams and friend of Winston Churchill, the greatest-ever Briton. Both the toast of Parisian and London high society.

At 10.20 p.m. on 21 May 1991, a young woman bowed before Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally in Sriperumbudur, 42 km north of Chennai. And then there was an explosion. This book is the definitive account of one of the most controversial crimes in contemporary India. It unravels the complex plot hatched by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) to ensure that Rajiv Gandhi did not return to power in the 1991 general elections.

World War II was raging, with thousands of American soldiers fighting overseas against the injustices brought on by Hitler. Back on the home front, the injustice of discrimination against African Americans was playing out as much on Main Street as in the military. Enlisted black men were segregated from white soldiers and regularly relegated to service duties. At Fort Benning, Georgia, First Sergeant Walter Morris’s men served as guards at The Parachute School while the white soldiers prepared to be paratroopers.

In January 1940, navy nurse Dorothy Still eagerly anticipated her new assignment at a military hospital in the Philippines. Her first year abroad was an adventure. She dated sailors, attended dances, and watched the sparkling evening lights from her balcony. But as 1941 progressed, signs of war became imminent. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Dorothy and the other nurses braced for a direct assault. In that frantic dash, Dorothy transformed from a navy nurse to a war nurse. Along with the other women on the nursing staff, she provided compassionate, tireless, critical care.

Second Lieutenant James Madison Page was a Union officer of Company A, Sixth Michigan Cavalry during the Civil War. After participating in many skirmishes and battles, including Gettysburg, Page was captured in Virginia on September 21, 1863 by Confederate forces along the Rapidan. After spending several months in various prison camps, he arrived at Andersonville Prison in Georgia on February 27, 1864. He would remain there seven months during a time when the prison population grew from 10,000 to over 30,000.

As the Second World War raged across Europe, and the Nazi regime tightened its reign of horror and oppression, nine women, some still in their teens, joined the French and Dutch Resistance. Caught out in heroic acts against the brutal occupiers, they were each tortured and sent east into Greater Germany to a concentration camp, where they formed a powerful friendship. In 1945, as the war turned against Hitler, they were forced on a Death March, facing starvation and almost certain death.

He’s a bastard bathed in sin. She’s an angelic nun. Are they secretly the match made in Heaven? Hot on the trail of his evil father, Liam Harker is a no-nonsense Chicago cop willing to take the law into his own hands. But when he’s faced with the impossible task of investigating Finch’s finances, he’ll need to call in a favor and enlist the help of an unlikely ally. Catriona is a novice nun with a heart of gold and a talent for numbers. From the moment she meets Liam, he makes her heart flutter – but she took a vow, and no dashing cop is about to make her give up her Holy path. ...

Euphemistically labeled as the "Water Supply and Prophylaxis Administration" and "HippoEpizootic Administration" of the Imperial Japanese Army, Unit 731 and Unit 100, as well as their subsidiary branches, performed human experimentation on the innocents under the leadership of Dr. Ishii Shiro. Although the exact number of victims is unclear since the Japanese destroyed most of the evidence at the end of the war, but it ranged from 3,000-250,000 innocent men, women, and children.

Mike and Kate Blaise fell in love during high school in small-town Macon, Missouri. Sharing a deep sense of patriotism, they both entered the US Army, she as a commissioned officer and he as an enlisted infantry soldier who later became a helicopter pilot with the Air Cavalry. Forced to accept the realities of a military marriage yet determined to stay with her husband, Kate passed up her dream assignment in the United States to be with Mike, who was deployed to Korea. But they never imagined a day like 9/11 or the military aftermath that sent them to Iraq.

The U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay - known to the public as Gitmo - has been called the American Gulag, a scene of medieval horrors where innocent farmers and goat herders swept up in Afghanistan and Iraq have been sequestered, tortured, and abused for years on end without access to legal counsel or basic medical services.

It's time to revisit 1945 and the final days World War II in a way that no one else ever has. Grab your thinking cap and join author Steve Ubaney in volume two of his five volume "Who Murdered?" book series, where he probes every part of FDR's mysterious death. We have been told all the lies for decades, and now it's time to answer some very pointed questions.

In 2007, US Army Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval Jr. was charged with murder by the government he had sworn to serve. While deployed to the most dangerous area in Iraq, Sandoval, an airborne infantryman and elite sniper, was instructed to "take the shot" and kill an enemy insurgent wearing civilian clothes. Two weeks later, Army Criminal Investigation Command descended upon Sandoval's unit and began interrogating the soldiers, trying to link Sandoval and others to war crimes, including murder. Captain Craig W. Drummond was the JAG military defense attorney assigned to Sandoval's case.

For 32 days, they were chased across the mountains as they headed for the coast and a rendezvous with a Royal Navy launch waiting to spirit the general to Cairo. Rick Stroud, whose Phantom Army of Alamein won plaudits for its meticulous research and its lightness of touch in the telling, brings these same gifts to bear in this new project.

In 1967, a retired army major and self-made millionaire named Paddy Roy Bates cemented his family’s place in history when he inaugurated himself ruler of the Principality of Sealand, a tiny dominion of the high seas. And so began the peculiar story of the world’s most stubborn micronation on a World War II anti-aircraft-gun platform off the British coast. Incorporating original interviews with surviving Sealand royals, Dylan Taylor-Lehman recounts the battles and schemes as Roy and his crew engaged with diplomats and even thwarted an attempted coup.

At the end of the Second World War, some of the highest ranking Nazis escaped from justice, Aided and abetted by the Vatican, they travelled down secret 'rat lines' and were taken in by shady Argentine secret agents. Vengeful Holocaust survivors and inept politicains attempted to bring them to justice and there were daring plots to kidnap or assassinate the fugititives.