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  Glenn Miller: The Life and...

  Charles River Editors

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  Though it may be hard to fathom in the wake of Elvis Presley and popular rock bands like the Beatles, the early 20th century featured a burgeoning music sales industry that was dominated in ways that nobody would ever reach again, including the Fab 4. While Elvis and the Beatles had a combined 71 Top 10 hits over their lengthy careers, Glenn Miller had 16 records reach #1, and he compiled 69 Top 10 hits, all in the span of four years before he had turned 40. Like any music pioneer, Miller and his band were often criticized for not being true to the roots of the music they performed, even as they perfected a sound that captivated the country. In short order, Miller and his music influenced legends ranging from Benny Goodman to Louis Armstrong. 
  	Miller was the most popular big band leader in the United States when he walked away from his orchestra to enlist in the U.S. Army. World War II was raging, and Miller was determined to fulfill his patriotic duty, so he assembled a military orchestra to give fellow American servicemen a little taste of the homes they were missing. While based in the United Kingdom in 1944, the military orchestra was granted clearance to perform in Paris, which had been liberated from the Nazis just months before.  
  	Miller planned his own trip across the English Channel to prepare for a few days ahead of the orchestra’s arrival. Miller’s trip had already been postponed by cold, foggy and drizzly weather, but on December 15, 1944 the pilot chose not to let similar conditions delay it again. The plane took off at about 2:00 p.m. from the airstrip at Twinwood Farm, but it never made it to Paris. As Miller himself had once prophetically put it, “I don’t know why I spend my time making plans like this…. I have an awful feeling you guys are going to go home without me, and I’m going to get mine in some goddamn beat-up old plane!”  

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  Anne Frank - The Diary of a...

  Anne Frank

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  Anne Frank, it has been said, gave a face and a name to the horror of the Holocaust. This is her story. It relates how Anne, her family, and their friends hid in secret rooms—"the Annex"—in an Amsterdam warehouse for 25 months. Anne, just 13 when the family moved in and only 15 when the Gestapo at last broke down the doors of her secret world, found hope where there was only fear and the first blush of love when outside and all around there washed a sea of hate. 
  Wrote Ernst Schnable, a German writer who has researched Frank's life: "Out of the millions that were silenced, this voice no louder than a child's whisper has outlasted the shouts of the murderers and has soared above the voices of time."

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  Finding Family - My Search for...

  Richard Hill

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  Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA was a Global Ebook Awards gold medal winner and a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist. It is Richard Hill's true and intensely personal story of how he pieced together the long-kept secret of his own origins. This highly suspenseful book is a compelling saga of personal detective work that will appeal to anyone who loves a good mystery.But this isn't fiction. It's an engrossing account of an adoptee trying to reclaim the biological family denied him by sealed birth records. This fascinating quest, including the author's landmark use of DNA testing, takes listeners on an exhilarating roller-coaster ride and concludes with a twist that rivals anything Hollywood has to offer.

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  Find a Place for Me

  Deirdre Fagan

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  Find a Place for Me is a memoir about facing a marriage’s last act—a spouse’s death—as a couple united in mind and holding hands. Deirdre and Bob are married eleven years and have two young children when forty-three-year-old Bob is diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. ALS determines the journey their marriage will now take, but Bob and Deirdre are resolute in how they will traverse their remaining months as a couple. Chronicling Bob’s illness, Find a Place for Me is also the love story of a happy marriage filled with humor, honesty, and essential conversations. In this moving, tragic, and surprisingly funny book, Deirdre and Bob raise a glass to the life each of them has left while learning how to lovingly say goodbye.

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  Dream Believe Achieve

  Jonathan Rea

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  ‘If I had to lose my record to anyone, I couldn’t be happier that it was Jonathan. Family connections aside, there is nobody more talented, more determined or more deserving.’ – Carl Fogarty 
  Within the staggeringly dangerous and high-pressure sport of professional motorcycling, Jonathan Rea’s achievements are unprecedented. A legendary World Superbike Champion with 
  more race wins than any rider in history, Rea’s trailblazing success shows no sign of slowing down. 
  Now, for the first time, this remarkable sportsman tracks his life and career. Seemingly destined for the racing world, Jonathan grew up in the paddocks — his grandfather was the first sponsor of five-times World Champion Joey Dunlop and his dad was a former Isle of Man TT winner. He owned his first bike before his hands were big enough to reach the brakes. 
  But while racing may be in his blood, it is through sheer determination and relentless perseverance that Rea has gained huge victories in this ultra-competitive world. Topping several of the most prestigious motorcycling championships, he rules the sport — so much so that regulations are being introduced to curb his dominance. The fact that Rea has endured several potentially career-ending scrapes — including smashing his femur at the age of seventeen and being told that he would never race again — makes his achievements even more incredible. 
  ‘Dream. Believe. Achieve,’ is Rea’s mantra and in this gripping autobiography, we go behind the visor and into the mind of a man who has risen to the top of one of the most skilled and dangerous sports in the world. 
  In Dream. Believe. Achieve, Rea shares his personal journey in the extreme world of professional motorcycling, revealing the rigorous training and unwavering determination that has led him to become one of the best. His memoirs serve as an inspiring testament to his mantra and a captivating exploration of this high-stakes recreation. 
  For fans of Steve Parrish (Parrish Times), Michael Dunlop (Road Racer), John Mcguinness (Built for Speed), John Hopkins (Leathered), and Shane Byrne (Unshakeable).

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  We Will Not Cease

  Archibald Baxter

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  We Will Not Cease is the unflinching account of New Zealander Archibald Baxter's brutal treatment as a conscientious objector during World War I. 
  In 1915, when Baxter was 33, he was arrested, sent to prison, then shipped under guard to Europe where he was forced to the front line against his will. Punished to the limits of his physical and mental endurance, Baxter was stripped of all dignity, beaten, starved and left for dead by the New Zealand military. In the final attempt to discredit him authorities consigned him to a mental institution, an experience that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

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