Long Flight Home

Download or read book The Long Flight Home written by Alan Hlad and published by A John Scognamiglio Book. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A USA Today Bestseller Inspired by fascinating, true, yet little-known events during World War II, The Long Flight Home is a testament to the power of courage in our darkest hours—a moving, masterfully written story of love and sacrifice. It is September 1940—a year into the war—and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around the Epping Forest home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents to influenza as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons with Bertie. All her birds are extraordinary to Susan—loyal, intelligent, beautiful—but none more so than Duchess. Hatched from an egg that Susan incubated in a bowl under her grandfather’s desk lamp, Duchess shares a special bond with Susan and an unusual curiosity about the human world. Thousands of miles away in Buxton, Maine, young crop-duster pilot Ollie Evans decides to join Britain’s Royal Air Force. His quest brings him to Epping and the National Pigeon Service, where Susan is involved in a new, covert mission to air-drop hundreds of homing pigeons in German-occupied France. Many will not survive. Those that do will bring home crucial information. Soon a friendship between Ollie and Susan deepens, but when his plane is downed behind enemy lines, both know how remote the chances of reunion must be. Yet Duchess will become an unexpected lifeline, relaying messages between Susan and Ollie as war rages on—and proving, at last, that hope is never truly lost. “Hlad adeptly drives home the devastating civilian cost of the war.” —Booklist

Download or read book Long Flight Home written by Lainie Anderson and published by Wakefield Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First World War is over and air mechanic Wally Shiers has promised to return home to his fiancee, Helena Alford. But Wally never reckoned on charismatic fighter pilot Ross Smith, and an invitation to compete in the world's most audacious air race. A £10,000 prize has been offered for the first airmen to fly from England to Australia. Smith is banking on an open-cockpit Vickers Vimy, a biplane with a fuselage that looks ominously like a coffin. And who can resist a hero? Wally writes to Helena to say he won't be home for another year - and the love of his life is left holding her hand-stitched wedding dress ... Using war diaries, letters and Churchill Fellowship research from along the race route, Long Flight Home recreates one of the most important - and largely forgotten - chapters in world aviation history. Lainie Anderson's ambitious and moving novel is told through her narrator, Wally Shiers. The tale spans the decades and crosses the globe, and at his journey's end we're left peering down from an open cockpit on two beacons of truth. There is no heroism without honour. There is no legacy without love.

Download or read book Airplane Reading written by Christopher Schaberg and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Airplane Reading, Christopher Schaberg and Mark Yakich bring together a range of essays about air travel. Discerning and full of wonder, this prismatic collection features perspectives from a variety of writers, airline workers, and everyday travelers. At turns irreverent, philosophical, and earnest, each essay is a veritable journey in and of itself. And together, they illuminate the at once strange and ordinary world of flight. Contributors: Lisa Kay Adam • Sarah Allison • Jane Armstrong • Thomas Beller • Ian Bogost • Alicia Catt • Laura Cayouette • Kim Chinquee • Lucy Corin • Douglas R. Dechow • Nicoletta-Laura Dobrescu • Tony D’Souza • Jeani Elbaum • Pia Z. Ehrhardt • Roxane Gay • Thomas Gibbs • Aaron Gilbreath • Anne Gisleson • Anya Groner • Julian Hanna • Rebecca Renee Hess • Susan Hodara • Pam Houston • Harold Jaffe • Chelsey Johnson • Nina Katchadourian • Alethea Kehas • Greg Keeler • Alison Kinney • Anna Leahy • Allyson Goldin Loomis • Jason Harrington • Kevin Haworth • Randy Malamud • Dustin Michael • Ander Monson • Timothy Morton • Peter Olson • Christiana Z. Peppard • Amanda Pleva • Arthur Plotnik • Neal Pollack • Connie Porter • Stephen Rea • Hugo Reinert • Jack Saux • Roger Sedarat • Nicole Sheets • Stewart Sinclair • Hal Sirowitz • Jess Stoner • Anca L. Szilágyi • Priscila Uppal • Matthew Vollmer • Joanna Walsh • Tarn Wilson

Download or read book Steal Away Home written by Karolyn Smardz Frost and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For readers of The Underground Railroad, The Known World, Bound for Canaan and The Book of Negroes comes the harrowing story of fifteen-year-old escaped slave Cecelia Reynolds, who slips away to freedom in Canada only to return to her childhood home as a free woman many years later. “Karolyn Smardz Frost deftly situates Cecelia in history. Her evocative descriptions of landscapes and cityscapes capture the various times and places of Cecelia’s story.” —Winnipeg Free Press In this compelling work of narrative non-fiction, Governor General’s Award winner Karolyn Smardz Frost captures Cecelia’s epic story of courage. She was a teenager when she made her dangerous bid for freedom. Escape meant that she would never see her mother or brother again. She would be cut off from Fanny, the young mistress with whom she grew up, but who also owned her. This was a time when people could be property, and when a beloved father could be separated from his wife and children, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Cecelia found a new life in Toronto’s vibrant African-American expatriate community. There she fell in love with her dashing rescuer, and initiated a correspondence with her former owner that would endure for more than two decades. Widowed, she braved the Fugitive Slave Law to cross back into the United States. When she eventually returned to the Kentucky she had known as a child, she found her home much changed in the wake of war. Reunited with her mother, Cecelia also renewed her complicated relationship with her former mistress. After years apart, the two lived within a few blocks of each other until Fanny’s death. Smardz Frost’s impeccable research and vivid description takes the reader through the Civil War, the shameful backdrop of slavery and the very real and stirring tale of one woman’s struggle for freedom—and her return to her former home on her own terms, despite the risk involved.

Download or read book Home written by Marilynne Robinson and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glory Boughton has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with torment and pain. A troubled boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. He is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Reverend Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, beguiling, lovable and wayward, Jack forges an intense new bond with Glory and engages painfully with John Ames, his godfather and namesake. Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is arguably Marilynne Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

Download or read book The Long Flight Home written by Alan Hlad and published by A John Scognamiglio Book. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A USA Today Bestseller Inspired by fascinating, true, yet little-known events during World War II, The Long Flight Home is a testament to the power of courage in our darkest hours—a moving, masterfully written story of love and sacrifice. It is September 1940—a year into the war—and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around the Epping Forest home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents to influenza as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons with Bertie. All her birds are extraordinary to Susan—loyal, intelligent, beautiful—but none more so than Duchess. Hatched from an egg that Susan incubated in a bowl under her grandfather’s desk lamp, Duchess shares a special bond with Susan and an unusual curiosity about the human world. Thousands of miles away in Buxton, Maine, young crop-duster pilot Ollie Evans decides to join Britain’s Royal Air Force. His quest brings him to Epping and the National Pigeon Service, where Susan is involved in a new, covert mission to air-drop hundreds of homing pigeons in German-occupied France. Many will not survive. Those that do will bring home crucial information. Soon a friendship between Ollie and Susan deepens, but when his plane is downed behind enemy lines, both know how remote the chances of reunion must be. Yet Duchess will become an unexpected lifeline, relaying messages between Susan and Ollie as war rages on—and proving, at last, that hope is never truly lost. “Hlad adeptly drives home the devastating civilian cost of the war.” —Booklist

Download or read book All In written by Jamie Heaslip and published by Gill & Macmillan Ltd. This book was released on 2019-10-11 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For almost the duration of his professional career, during which he was a mainstay for Leinster and Ireland, the name Jamie Heaslip was synonymous with the No 8 jersey. An athletic and tireless presence at the base of the pack, outspoken both on and off the field, not to mention a captain for province and country, he was one of the leading lights of a generation that helped propel Irish rugby to previously uncharted heights. Written in partnership with Matt Cooper, All In is the story of Heaslip's thirteen years at rugby's frontline, as demanding and uncompromising a place as can be found in professional sport. From the euphoria and disappointment of life on the field to the major relationships that have helped shape the team – for better or worse – it's the most vivid portrait yet of life behind the scenes at Leinster and Ireland, and a compelling account of what it means to put your body on the line in pursuit of excellence.