A terrific story of human endurance. Admiral Richard Byrd is one of the great Polar explorers and is responsible for transforming Antarctic expeditions from the dangerous days of the heroic era to the comfort and safety available in modern Antarctic stations. Byrd organised several American expeditions to Antarctica and built the research station Little America in the Bay of Whales next to the remains of Roald Amundsens base Framheim. He did all this with little government support and paved the way for todays US Antarctic Program. In 1929 he became the first man to fly over the South Pole, and the first to see it since Scott left it in 1911. In 1933, frustrated by the limited meteorological observations he could make at his coastal station he determined to establish a second base far inland. So was Advance Base born. Initially to be manned over winter by three men, time and material constraints resulted in a sole occupant over five months of winter: Admiral Byrd himself. In this book we see the hopeful but wary Byrd descend slowly into despair as unknown to him toxic carbon monoxide gas from his heater begins to slowly kill him. After recovering from a coma he realises his predicament and tries to nurse his broken, poisoned body back to health. It is a harrowing tale as a bedridden and brain damaged Byrd tries to feed and water himself. He is forced to make the daily decision as to how long he can run his heater without further worsening his condition. Lying alone in the dark with only his thoughts for company he enters the darkest parts of the human psyche and somehow finds the strength to fight. All through this Byrd maintains his daily observations and his weekly radio contact with his colleagues at Little America. Tapping out morse code messages he hopes will disguise his desperate state and prevent a dangerous mid winter rescue.

This collection of tales is set against the background of the South Pacific, the endless ocean, the coral specks called islands, the coconut palms, the reefs, the lagoons, the jungles, and the full moon rising against the volcanoes.The tales are told by a young naval officer whose duties on an admiral's staff take him up and down the islands. He meets many people, both service men and the original inhabitants, and hears their stories - the remittance man who lived among the Japanese and, radioed their movements until one fatal and dramatic morning; Bloody Mary, the Tonkinese woman who introduced her daughter to a young Marine lieutenant; Emile de Becque, the French planter who fell in love with an American nurse; Tony Fry, the individualist who fought a very personal war in his own very effective way; Lieutenant Bill Harbison, who lived like a hero but turned out to be a louse; and the young enlisted man from Ohio who was going to pieces on one of the islands until a Sea Bee gave him a reason for living.Because Mr. Michener was there, he is able to reproduce exactly the mood and atmosphere of the early critical days of the Pacific War. Because, in addition, he has a lively imagination and inventive power, he has turned this raw material into stories that will be eagerly read for their dramatization of the greatest adventure of our generation.

The tragic end to James Bond’s last mission—courtesy of Ernst Stavro Blofeld—has left 007 a broken man and of little use to the British Secret Service. At his wit’s end, M decides that the only way to snap his best agent out of his torpor is to send him on an impossible diplomatic mission to Japan. Bond’s contact there is the formidable Japanese spymaster Tiger Tanaka, who agrees to do business with the West if Bond will assassinate one of his enemies: a mysterious Swiss botanist named Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. Shatterhand is not who he seems, however, and his impregnable fortress—known to the locals as the “Castle of Death”—is a gauntlet of traps no gaijin has ever penetrated. But through rigorous ninja training, and with some help from the beautiful and able Kissy Suzuki, Bond manages to gain access to Shatterhand’s lair. Inside lurks certain doom at the hands of 007’s bitterest foe—or a final chance to exact ultimate vengeance.ReviewA sensational imagination Sunday Times Instructive and entertaining Cyril Connolly About the AuthorIan Fleming was born in London on May 28, 1908. He was educated at Eton College and later spent a formative period studying languages in Europe. His first job was with Reuters News Agency where a Moscow posting gave him firsthand experience with what would become his literary bete noire—the Soviet Union. During World War II he served as Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence and played a key role in Allied espionage operations. After the war he worked as foreign manager of the Sunday Times, a job that allowed him to spend two months each year in Jamaica. Here, in 1952, at his home “Goldeneye,” he wrote a book called Casino Royale—and James Bond was born. The first print run sold out within a month. For the next twelve years Fleming produced a novel a year featuring Special Agent 007, the most famous spy of the century. His travels, interests, and wartime experience lent authority to everything he wrote. Raymond Chandler described him as “the most forceful and driving writer of thrillers in England.” Sales soared when President Kennedy named the fifth title, From Russia With Love, one of his favorite books. The Bond novels have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide, boosted by the hugely successful film franchise that began in 1962 with the release of Dr. No. He married Anne Rothermere in 1952. His story about a magical car, written in 1961 for their only son Caspar, went on to become the well- loved novel and film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Fleming died of heart failure on August 12, 1964, at the age of fifty-six.

The Nature of Love (Michael Joseph, 1953) was Bates's first published collection of novellas.It contains three stories, different in weight but similar in texture, drawing from rural landscapes and the sensitive, poignant studies of the people that bring them to life. Dulcima, dedicated to W. Somerset Maugham, is a tale of a simple girl in rural England whose manipulation of both an old widower and a young forest worker has tragic results. In 1971, EMI Productions released a film adaptation starring Carol White and John Mills. The Grass God is a literary portrait of Fitzgerald, a landowner who is unfeeling in the treatment of his tenants and his wife, who, whilst bumbling through a summer affair with a young beauty, gets a taste of his own medicine. Further afield, The Delicate Nature follows a young man to the Malaysian jungle to assist a plantation owner, but enters into an affair with his wife....

Following the success of the repackaged and retitled Higgins classic The Bormann Testament, we continue the action with Special Agent Paul Chavasse. Now his investigation into the murder of a gangland boss uncovers a deadly conspiracy that reaches throughout the world and leads to the doors of some very ruthless and powerful men-and they aren't about to let Chavasse interfere with their plans.

John Masters came to the United States following a military career with a Ghurka regiment on India's Northwest frontier and as a serving officer (ultimately brigadier) with Orde Wingate's Chindits in Burma. (See "Bugles and a Tiger" and "The Road Past Mandalay.")The story of how he becomes both an American and a best=selling novelist ("Bhowani Junction" was the first of a large number of books) makes for interesting reading.REVIEWMasters life changed from that of a professional soldier in the British Indian Army to that of a succesful noveslist and screenwriter. He also became an avid Giants (baseball) fan. His book is the best account of the process of Americanization and success that I've read. The third in a trilogy, it is a wonderful book.

Admirers of The Color Purple will find in these stories more evidenceof Walkers power to depict black womenwomen who varygreatly in background yet are bound together by what they share incommon.Taken as a whole, their stories form an enlightening,disturbing view of life in the South.

Mills & Boon are excited to present The Anne Mather Collection – the complete works by this classic author made available to download for the very first time! These books span six decades of a phenomenal writing career, and every story is available to read unedited and untouched from their original release. Six years ago, Julie's world had turned upside down; she had married Michael Pemberton and left England – and her secret love, Robert. Now Michael is dead, and Julie and her small daughter have come home again – only to learn that Michael has appointed Robert as the child's guardian. How can Julie bear to accept him as part of her life again? True, he's soon to be married to the so-suitable Pamela Hillingdon, but doesn't that only add to the agony? Especially when Julia is forced to admit her attraction to Robert is as wild and strong as ever...

Fadeout is the first of Joseph Hansen's twelve classic mysteries featuring rugged Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator who is contentedly gay. When entertainer Fox Olson's car plunges off a bridge in a storm, a death claim is filed, but where is Olson's body? As Brandstetter questions family, fans, and detractors, he grows certain Olson is still alive and that Dave must find him before the would-be killer does. Suspenseful and wry, shrewd and deeply felt, Fadeout remains as fresh today as when it startled readers more than thirty years ago. **

When the man rode into the town of Two Forks, there was trouble waiting for him. Trouble in the persons of five gun-happy hardcases who didn’t like drifters and were ready for a lead-slinging showdown to prove it.But the hardcases had picked the wrong man to tangle with. Few hombres who knew a really fast man when they saw one called down the man whose name was Waco.

Desert D'Or is the fashionable Californian resort where Hollywood's elite converge when they need a break. It is an incestuous hothouse of a town - a haven for manipulators, film stars, lovers, pimps, producers, whores, gamblers, scriptwriters and cheats. Into this nightmare world of depravity arrives Sergius O'Shaughnessy, recently discharged from the Air Force, traumatised by his ar experiences and trying to write the Great American Novel. But O'Shaughnessy's burning ambition begins to lose its edge; lured by greed and rules by weakness, he soon becomes disturbingly familiar with the dnagerous life of slick compromises and sexual follies... The Deer Park is a powerful and vigorous satire on Hollywood's excesses and corruption. Combining a savage imagination with a heightened documentary realism, Mailer paints an uncompromising and terrifying portriat of a decadent society lost in moral confusion and despair.