All marriages have a breaking point. All families have wounds. All wars have a cost. . . .Like many couples, Michael and Jolene Zarkades have to face the pressures of everyday life children, careers, bills, chores even as their twelve-year marriage is falling apart. Then a deployment sends Jolene deep into harm's way and leaves defence attorney Michael at home, unaccustomed to being a single parent to their two girls. As a mother, it agonizes Jolene...

The late-twentieth-century descendants of anti-slavery emigrants worry about maintaining religious superiority over a rival family while launching a harassment campaign against a Wiccan newcomer, an effort that is challenged by a young man's military service.

Marine corporal Rick Sudder is home early from Iraq--his tour ended abruptly on the battlefield. The carefree boy is gone, replaced by a man who believes his future is bleak. Can the passion and commitment of a young woman who has never given up on him mend his broken body and shattered heart? As the people of Virgin River rally around Rick, another recent arrival tests the town's welcoming spirit. For a favorite son returned and an outsider looking...

Dogs have been part of the US military since World War II, and they are still leading patrols hunting for IEDs today. Frankel offers an exciting mix of on-the-ground reporting, her own hands-on experiences in the military working dog world, and a look at dogs' special abilities.--

"This is an account of the war in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division as it convoys north from Kuwait to Iraq's Tallil Air Base en route to night-and-day battles within the major city of Samawah and its bridges across the Euphrates. Karl Zinsmeister, a frontline reporter embedded with the 82nd, brilliantly conveys the careful planning and technical wizardry that go into today's warfare, even local firefights, and he brings to life the constant air-ground...

"It's the rule--always watch your fives and twenty-fives. When a convoy halts to investigate a possible roadside bomb, stay in the vehicle and scan five meters in every direction. A bomb inside five meters cuts through the armor, killing everyone in the truck. Once clear, get out and sweep twenty-five meters. A bomb inside twenty-five meters kills the dismounted scouts investigating the road ahead. Fives and twenty-fives mark the measure of a marine's...

Ignatius "Brother" Alderman, nearly twelve, promises to help his grandparents keep the family's Oregon ranch the same while his brothers are away and his father is deployed to Iraq, but as he comes to accept the inevitability of change, he also sees the man he is meant to be.

"No one knows where the Tufa came from, or how they ended up in the mountains of East Tennessee. When the first Europeans came to the Smoky Mountains, the Tufa were already there. Dark-haired and enigmatic, they live quietly in the hills and valleys of Cloud County, their origins lost to history. But there are clues in their music, hidden in the songs they have passed down for generations. ... Private Bronwyn Hyatt, a true daughter of the Tufa, has...

Twelve American women serving in the military share their gripping personal stories of combat in Iraq. In Iraq, the front lines are everywhere—and everywhere in Iraq, no matter what their job descriptions say, women in the U.S. military are fighting. More than 155,000 of them have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003—four times the number of women sent to Desert Storm in 1991. More than 430 have been wounded and over seventy killed—almost...

Two highly decorated Navy SEALs, now successful businessmen, demonstrate how to lead and win in business and in life with principles learned on the battlefield, in a revised edition that includes a new foreword, photo insert and Q-and-A section