Military Disasters

So Others May Live: Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers: Saving Lives, Defying Death is the award-winning untold story of the US Coast Guard's quiet but resolute rescue swimmers. From deep ocean caves on the Oregon coast to the panicked and chaotic streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, here are their stunningly heroic stories.

The world's worst air disaster happened more than 40 years ago on a remote Atlantic Ocean island, when two fully loaded 747 passenger jets collided after a horrendous series of human errors. One of the jets, KLM Flight 4805, was traveling more than 150 miles an hour and was within seconds of lifting off when it crashed into Pan Am Flight 1736 taxiing in its path. The loss of lives was staggering - 583 dead. The crash happened after a lengthy series of major and minor human errors. In the intervening years, has aviation advanced to the point that such a disaster can't happen again?

A fireball over the Arctic. A missing hydrogen bomb. A Cold War program exposed in a single, shattering night. Before dawn on January 21, 1968, a U.S. Air Force B-52G code-named HOBO 28 streaked across the polar sky carrying four thermonuclear weapons. Its mission—Operation Chrome Dome—kept nuclear-armed bombers in the air 24/7, ready to strike Moscow in minutes. But when a cockpit fire roared through the bomber at 41,000 feet, the crew faced an unthinkable choice: burn alive or bail out into −60 °F darkness. Minutes later a mushroom-shaped blast lit North Star Bay, scattering ...

Grayson Mack knew what he was getting into when he was flown in by chopper to the island to search for people with his K-9 dog, Biscuit. The devastation was intense, the destruction horrifying, and now he was face to face with the one person he never expected to see: his ex-girlfriend, Tina. Tina Rogers never wanted to see Grayson again – especially now. This trip was the opportunity of a lifetime. It gave her a chance to each in paradise, a change of scenery, and time to heal her wounded heart. If her rescuer was the man that broke her heart and soul — well, he could just rescue her ...

A new fire rescue officer needing to prove his place on the team, a model struggling to make a career, and a fire that brings the high school loner back into the life of his secret crush. Clark Voclain is a a skilled fire rescue officer and after finishing training at the Disaster City Search and Rescue Academy, he and his K9 partner are offered a permanent position. When they're assigned to help with a structure fire at the largest mall in all of Texas, he's surprised to find out that his high school crush is reported missing in the fire. Roselyn Lewis just got the biggest modeling gig of ...

In the best-selling tradition of Indianapolis and In Harm’s Way comes a “captivating...gripping” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) account of the USS Plunkett - a US Navy destroyer that sustained the most harrowing attack on any Navy ship by the Germans during World War II, later made famous by John Ford and Herman Wouk.

A handler trusts her dog. A mountain holds them captive. A bond that will be tested by fire and ice. Maya Ruiz and her K-9 partner, Echo, are a legendary search-and-rescue team, their bond forged in the unforgiving peaks of the high Rockies. For Maya, a former army medic haunted by the losses she couldn’t prevent, the work is more than a job—it’s a reason to live. Echo is more than a dog; she’s the partner who rescued her handler first. But their well-honed skills are put to the ultimate test when a "Code One" alert shatters a perfect winter morning. A massive avalanche has ...

America is under attack! Bug Out! is the story of Frank and Jane, on the run from California in their Motor Home. In Bug Out! Part 9, Our friends take the fight to the enemy, while preparing to defend themselves against the evil former owners of the Kansas RV Park. Bug Out! Part 10 follows our group as they zero in on the enemy headquarters, while keeping darker enemies at bay. A former friend is now working with an evil serial killer. They stage a murder spree across three states as they plan for their ultimate attack in Kansas. The enemy is trying to cope with the new technology that ...

A joyful Noel… Levi Edwards grumpily donned the Santa suit, going undercover to take down the notorious drug lord that the department had been chasing for almost two years. This was all a perfect setup, a chance to slip in unnoticed, infiltrate the upper echelon, with no one asking questions. After all, who would ever suspect that the jolly ol’ elf was leading the covert sting operation? And one angry elf… Hope Espinoza couldn’t believe she was being coerced into being an elf at the corporate Christmas party. The obnoxious costume was over the top and not exactly how she wanted to ...

Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable memoir that takes us behind the scenes of the cataclysmic events of our age and allows us to see them through the eyes of one of America's most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters.

An ex-Army ranger needing a change, a local reporter writing a story on the academy, and a natural disaster that they both get trapped in. Marco Fernandez just finished up his last deployment with the Army. When his best friend offers him a job, he jumps at the opportunity to leave the stress of military life behind him and focus on training the next generation. That’s why he’s irritated when a smart and spunky reporter comes charging into his life, wanting to know way more about his past then he’s prepared to share. Susan Chandler knows that her feature on the elite search and rescue...

Their troubled pasts behind them, these powerful businessmen don’t need quirky women with complications. CEOs and secretaries, soldiers and rock stars. These four books bring you passion and tension, before delivering guaranteed happy ever afters! MASON She's a disowned heiress. He's an orphaned billionaire. When their jet crashes in the jungle, will surviving certain death lead to love? CEO, Mason Alexander shouldn't look at his cute secretary that way... but alone, lost in the jungle, with only each other to depend on, will survival lead to love? DAMON She’s an unemployed chef. He’s...

Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement reveals all of the eye-opening details of Clausen's investigation and is a damning account of massive intelligence failure. To this day, the story surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor stokes controversy and conspiracy theories. This book provides conclusive evidence that shows how the US military missed so many signals and how it could have avoided the events of that fateful day.

On the morning of April 26, 1986, Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill. In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry....

This audiobook tells the story of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States' reaction to the event.

Amid the constant rain of German bombs and the escalating violence of World War II, British parents by the thousands chose to send their children out of the country: the wealthy, independently; the poor, through a government relocation program called CORB. In September 1940, passenger liner SS City of Benares set out in a convoy of 19 ships sailing for Canada. On board were 90 CORB children, chaperones, and crew, along with paying passengers. When the war ships escorting the Benares to safe waters peeled off, a German submarine attacked and torpedoed the Benares.

An astonishing civil rights story from Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist Steve Sheinkin. On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks, critically injuring off-duty men in their bunks, and shattering windows up to a mile away. On August 9th, 244 men refused to go back to work until unsafe and unfair conditions at the docks were addressed. When the dust settled, fifty were charged with mutiny, facing decades in jail and even execution.

A minor seismic disturbance in a remote section of the Pacific causes barely a ripple of concern for Kai Tanaka, acting director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu. But when an airliner en route from LA to Sydney vanishes in the same location, Kai is the first to realize that a mysterious explosion has unleashed a series of massive waves destined to obliterate Hawaii. In just one hour, Kai will lose all he has ever known - including his wife and daughter - unless he can save them from nature's most destructive force.

Sailing across the Pacific, the battle-scarred heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis had just delivered a secret cargo that would trigger the end of World War II. Heading westward, she was sunk by a Japanese submarine. In 12 minutes, some 300 men went down with her. More than 900 other spent four horrific days and five nights in the ocean with no water to drink, savaged by a pitiless sun and swarms of sharks. Incredibly, no one knew they were there until a navy patrol plane accidentally discovered them. In the end, only 316 crewmen survived. How could this have happened - and why?

In December 1944, while supporting General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey neglected the Law of Storms, placing the mighty US Third Fleet in harm's way. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly every living survivor and rescuer, as well as many families of lost sailors, transcripts and other records from naval courts of inquiry, ships' logs, personal letters, and diaries, Bruce Henderson finds some of the story's truest heroes exhibiting selflessness, courage, and even defiance.