War Letters

When Beth Thompson’s only son, James, goes missing in action in Afghanistan, she is left with her prayers, hopes, fears... and letters. Mother and son have been writing since boot camp. James writes of his struggle to become a confident soldier and of his concern for his young wife and their unborn child. Beth, like any mom, praises her son’s courage even as she frets for his safety. Even after James disappears, Beth is comforted by a daily ritual of writing him about her feelings, faith, and attempts to maintain a normal life when nothing is really normal but the waiting.

Among the piles of obsolete farm and household implements, haystacks, dust, and debris abandoned in her historic barn, Katie Aldridge discovered a box containing the Civil War letters of Charles Freeman Biddlecom. Painstakingly transcribing and lightly editing more than 100 letters written by the soldier to his wife during his service, Ms. Aldridge resurrected the voice of the Civil War combat soldier. The tone and character of "Charlie's" detailed accounts of the war compelled Ms. Aldridge to find out more.  

In May 1861, Virginian Thomas Henry Carter raised an artillery battery and joined the Confederate Army. Over the next four years, he rose steadily in rank from captain to colonel, placing him among the senior artillerists in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. During the war, Carter wrote more than 100 revealing letters to his wife, Susan, about his service. His interactions with prominent officers - including Lee, Jubal A.Early, John B. Gordon, Robert E. Rodes, and others - come to life in Carter's astute comments about their conduct and personalities.

'Dear Mama, I am having a lovely time here. We play football every day here. The beds have no springs . . .' So begins the first letter that a nine-year-old Roald Dahl penned to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, under the watchful eye of his boarding-school headmaster. For most of his life, Roald...

Brought to you by Penguin. 63 rue de Monceau, Paris Dear friend, As you may have guessed by now, I am not in your house by accident. I know your street rather well. Count Moïse de Camondo lived a few doors away from Edmund de Waal's forebears, the Ephrussi, first encountered in his bestselling...

Brought to you by Penguin. In Monterey, on the California Coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday - one of those days that's just bad from the start. But Sweet Thursday is sunny and clear, a day when anything can happen. Returning to the scene of Cannery Row...

A delightfully inquisitive tour that explores the rich history and the subtle powers of fonts. Fonts surround us every day, on street signs and buildings, on movie posters and books, and on just about every product that we buy. But where do fonts come from and why do we need so many? Who is...

A selection of letters written home by a private soldier who served in Iraq, Palestine and other parts of the Middle East during the Second World War. Anthony Rawson was born in October 1919 and grew up in the family home in Watford. When war broke out in 1939 he was working as a gas fitter for the Watford and St. Albans Gas Company. He joined the army in June 1940 but because of his poor eyesight he was not classed as a combatant. Instead he became a fitter, later a vehicle mechanic in what was then the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and spent the next 5 years in the Middle East.

Brought to you by Penguin. Just after the iron curtain fell on Eastern Europe John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer, Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune. This rare opportunity took the famous travellers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad -...

New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor has joined with Heather Webb to create this unforgettably romantic novel of the Great War. August 1914. England is at war. As Evie Elliott watches her brother, Will, and his best friend, Thomas Harding, depart for the front, she believes—as...

"Fans of codebreakers, spies, and Cold War dramas will be entrapped by Reay's tale of courage, love, and honor set against the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall." - Booklist Starred Review Bestselling author Katherine Reay returns with an unforgettable tale of the Cold War and a CIA code breaker...

2005, London. Living alone in her basement flat, Calliope desperately misses the sun-soaked olive groves of the Greek island home she left more than sixty years ago. When the letter postmarked from Crete lands on her doorstep, she is shocked to the core by what it says. Her twin sister is alive: We need to talk about what happened. Now Calliope must confess her lifetime of secrets to her beloved granddaughter Ella. She needs Ella’s help…

Letters from Bud is the remarkable firsthand account of the harrowing air war in Europe as told by WW2 flight navigator and bombardier John “Bud” Brandenburg, in his letters home during the conflict, from 1944-45. With guts, wit, and grace, Brandenburg records his experiences with the daring “Koltun crew”, which flew 30 missions over Europe. Through numerous strokes of fate, the crew survived a run of missions with the “bloody” 492nd Bomb Group, a unit that endured an 80 percent casualty rate as the men faced down the seemingly unstoppable German Luftwaffe.

While not shying away from the complexities of combat and the scars it can leave behind, The Last Letter provides vivid insight into the bond shared by combat Marines, a bond that says they’ll fight for each other, they’ll die for each other, a bond that may very well last beyond death. Although this book is a fictional narrative, the experiences, guilt and emotions shared by the characters throughout the novel are based on real world applications from the author’s turbulent past.

In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten's capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform tablets, nearly four hundred in all, that included correspondence between the pharaohs and the mightiest powers of the day, such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Love, War, and Diplomacy tells the story of the Amarna Letters and the dramatic world of the Bronze Age they revealed.

A giant in American journalism in the vanguard of "The Greatest Generation" reveals his World War II experiences in this National Geographic book. More than 100 of Cronkite's letters from 1943-45 (plus a few earlier letters) survive. They reveal surprising and little-known facts about this storied public figure in the vanguard of "The Greatest Generation". They chronicle both a great love story and a great war story.

'A well-written and fascinating narrative about love and loss, courage and betrayal, the past and secrets, art and reproductions' Reader review, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'This is certainly a wow of a read . . . interesting, insightful, suspenseful' Reader review, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ CAN THE SEARCH...

Victory and defeat, love and loss are the prevalent realities of Letters from the Greatest Generation, a remarkable and frank collection of World War II letters penned by American men and women serving overseas. Here, the hopes and dreams of the greatest generation fill each minute, and their voices ring loud and clear. "It's all part of the game. But it's bloody and rough," wrote one soldier to his wife. "Wearing two stripes now and proud as an old cat with five kittens," marked another.

In August 1939, just days before World War II broke out in Europe, a Jewish man in Vienna named Alfred Berger mailed a desperate letter to a stranger in America who shared his last name. Decades later, journalist Faris Cassell stumbled upon the stunning letter and became determined to uncover the story behind it. How did the American Bergers respond? Did Alfred and his family escape Nazi Germany?

Brought to you by Penguin. his classic collection of short stories serves as the ideal introduction to Steinbeck's work. Set in the idyllic Salinas Valley in California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themeselves in the world, these stories reflect many of the...