1978 – a chance meeting on a remote military airbase between two Green Berets involved in the same operation leads to a partnership that will last over forty years. Four years after that meeting, Nick Brokhausen and Jeff Miller leave the service withing a few weeks of each other and begin an odyssey that takes them to dozens of countries on five continents. Along with a small coterie of fellow former Special Operations and intelligence community veterans like Penguini, Max, Reek, The Spider Woman and a score of others – some heroes and some villains - they undertake a variety of missions for the government, other governments, large multi-national corporations mostly in the aerospace or resource development industries, and occasionally just for suffering individuals who cannot find help anywhere else. In the process they lay the groundwork for an entire new industry of private military contractors. Two men sadly just a bit ahead of their time. Every episode in this book actually happened. Not always precisely as described herein, but close. Changes have been made sometimes to make the narrative flow more smoothly, some to obfuscate events that might be flirting with classification issues… Names have been changed, not always to protect the innocent. But the underlying story is, for the most part, the reality as they lived it.

Acclaimed author Richard Tood has a bad case of writer's block. When his publisher sends an attractive young editor to help him with his latest book, the inevitable happens. This chance meeting changes everyone's lives – in ways they never expected. But Richard's troubles are only beginning. Hearing voices in your head is rarely a good thing, and having an assassin walk into your life whenever he wants, is definitely bad news. Will Richard be able to get his head straightened out before things run away from him completely? A remarkable portrait of a modern midlife crisis, which combines the best aspects of historical and psychological fiction, THE GARFIELD CONSPIRACY is a superb novel by a major new voice in Irish fiction.

This is a new edition of Birthday Deathday & Other Stories by Padma Perera, first published by The Women's Press, England, 1985, with international reviews from the UK, USA, Europe, and the Commonwealth countries. Additional material now provides more oral history from the first four decades just before and after India's Independence, 1940s-1980s. The story "Doctor Salaam" was included in Salman Rushdie's Mirrorwork, an anthology of the best Indian fiction in English during the fifty years after India’s Independence.

Life, love, death, and laughs in a small American town. The second novel of the Darby Chronicles follows Ollie Jordan, a man with no education, no mentors, and a serious Freudian hang-up. A family history of poverty, stubborn pride, and a culture that runs contrary to mainstream society have robbed Ollie and his people of opportunity, even hope. They live by a culture of "succor and ascendancy." When Ollie is evicted from his shack, he breaks his drinking rules and heads out into the wilderness with his disabled son, Willow, literally chained to him. Father and son are doomed. How that doom plays itself out, as experienced by the disturbed but insightful Ollie Jordan, is what makes A Little More Than Kin unique in contemporary American literature. Hebert gives his rural underclass protagonist the depths of a tragic hero. Though A Little More Than Kin is action-packed and its prose is clean, hard, lyrical, and sometimes very funny, the book is at its heart an exploration into a brilliant mind that has laid waste to itself. This novel will appeal to readers who enjoy prose that explores the human psyche at its most perverse.

Life, love, death, and laughs in a small American town. His life had come to this: save a few deer from the jaws of dogs. He was a small man sent to perform a small task. Howard Elman is a man whose internal landscape is as disordered as his front yard, where native New Hampshire birches and maples mingle with a bullet-riddled washer, abandoned bathroom fixtures, and several junk cars. Howard, anti-hero of this first novel in Ernest Hebert's highly acclaimed Darby Chronicles, is a man who is tough and tender. Howard's battle against encroaching change symbolizes the class conflict between indigenous Granite Staters and citified immigrants with "college degrees and big bank accounts." Like the winter-weakened deer threatened by the dogs of March - the normally docile house pets whose instincts arouse them to chase and kill for sport - Howard, too, is sorely beset. The seven novels of Hebert's Darby Chronicles cover 35 years in the life of a small New England town as seen through the eyes of three families - the Elmans, the Salmons, and the Jordans - each representing a distinct social class. It all starts with The Dogs of March, cited for excellence in 1980 by the Hemingway Foundation (now the Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction).

Life, love, death, and laughs in a small American town. Part Falstaff, part King Lear, but all American, Howard Elman was a fifty-something workingman when he burst onto the literary scene in The Dogs of March, the first novel of the Darby Chronicles. Now in this, its seventh installment, the Darby constable is an eighty-something widower who wants to do "a great thing" before he motors off into the sunset. Maybe Howard achieves this goal, but he manages it in strange, wonderful, and dangerous ways. On his quest he's aided, abetted, hindered, and befuddled by his middle-aged children, his hundred-year-old hermit friend Cooty Patterson, a voice in his head, and the person he loves most, his grandson, Birch Latour. At 24, Birch has returned to Darby with his friends to take over the stewardship of the Salmon Trust and to launch a video game, Darby Doomsday. At stake is the fate of Darby. And the world? Maybe. Howard Elman's Farewell begins as a coming of (old) age story, morphs into a murder mystery, expands into a family saga, and in the end might just follow Howard Elman into the spirit world. This is a novel for people who like New England fiction with humor, pathos, and just a touch of magical realism. Howard Elman's Farewell establishes Howard Elman - mill worker, trash man, town cop - as the most fully developed working class character in American fiction.

Life, love, death, and laughs in a small American town. The struggle between the rural working class and the upper crust intensifies in this turning-point novel of the Darby Chronicles as Freddy Elman, son of the town trash collector, and Lilith Salmon, daughter of a prestigious family, embark on their ill-fated love affair. Seeing Darby through new eyes, Freddy comes to realize that "the kind of people who hunkered down among these tree-infested, rock-strewn hills" is "dying out, replaced by people with money, education, culture, people 'wise in the ways of the world. '" As that world increasingly intervenes, the lovers' attempt to bridge the chasm that divides their class-alienated families inevitably collapses in Hebert's tragic tale that echoes Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This is a book for anyone interested in local politics, privilege, and poverty, all embedded in a story of love and death in the woods and on the ledges of the Granite State.

Life, love, death, and laughs in a small American town. After almost fifteen years, Hebert has returned to this rich literary landscape for a new novel of the changing economic and social character of New England. Hebert's previous Darby book, Live Free or Die, recounted the ill-fated love between Freddie Elman, son of the town trash collector, and Lilith Salmon, child of Upper Darby gentility. At its conclusion, Lilith died giving birth to their son. As Spoonwood opens, Freddie, consumed by grief and anger and struggling with alcoholism, is not prepared to be a father to Birch. But as both his family and Lilith's begin to maneuver for custody of the child, Freddie embarks on a course of action that satisfies none of them. Once again, Hebert masterfully conveys the natural and social landscape of contemporary rural New England. Grounded in complex, fully realized characters, Spoonwood offers Hebert's most optimistic vision yet of acceptance and accommodation across class lines.

Life, love, death, and laughs in a small American town. A major character in earlier Darby novels, Estelle takes center stage in The Passion of Estelle Jordan. Presently she is sliding into late middle age, drawn to two lovers who could not be more different: the widowed farmer Avalon Hillary and a mysterious young punk Estelle calls Trans Am in honor of the car he drives. And there's a threat, not to Estelle - she can take care of herself - but to Noreen Cook, a younger woman Estelle sees as a version of her own secret, vulnerable self. Putting herself in Noreen's shoes to save her, Estelle may be in for way more than she bargained for. The Passion of Estelle Jordan, like that of Christ, is rife with sin, suffering, sacrifice, and perhaps redemption. The Passion of Estelle Jordan is for anyone going through a change of life.

Life, love, death, and laughs in a small American town. The institution of town meeting, the beauty of the landscape, and the enduring qualities of the architecture all give the New England town the power to shape the identity of its inhabitants - in a good way. This premise is put on trial - and to a vote - in Whisper My Name, the third novel in Hebert's Darby Chronicles. The story unfolds as seen through the eyes of three men: the reporter Roland LaChance, the farmer Avalon Hillary, and the founder of a land trust, Raphael "Reggie" Salmon. Magnus Mall, a national corporation, wants to buy the Hillary farm and transform the property into a mall to serve western New Hampshire and eastern Vermont. The aging Hillary is torn between the traditions of his family and "the thought of the money." LaChance is not only chasing down leads in his reportage on the mall - he's chasing down the story behind his own origins. Along the way he falls in love with Sheila "Soapy" Rayno, an aphasic girl from Darby whose origins are equally mysterious. As usual, the Jordan clan plays a pivotal role in this rousing tale of greed, power, and lust. This third novel in the Darby Chronicles will appeal to anyone interested in the clash of cultures in small-town America.

When the refugee boy, Kasir, appears in the little Swedish town of Klippsby, twelve-year-old Julia realises at once that something about her new classmate is a bit strange. But she doesn’t realise just how different he is until one fateful night when they are attacked by terrifying living shadows. Along with her little brother Edvin and an old vagrant called the Troubadour, they are forced to flee through a magical portal to Kasir's homeland. It is a world of boundless beauty, where art comes alive – but the shadows threaten to destroy all its wonders. While Julia and Edvin struggle with a new language, a new culture and unknown perils, they discover that they have a secret link to Kasir’s world. Perhaps they might even have the power to save it. Click here for a teachers' guide to using this book:https://www.casematepublishing.co.uk/pdfs/The_Darkenstar_teachers_guide.pdf

While Ireland (like much of the rest of the world) was in lockdown in Spring and Summer 2020, we scratched our heads and wondered what to do to help lift people's spirits. We decided to join forces with Irish Pensions & Finance and run a competition celebrating Irish people's love of a good story – and a good laugh. There were only two requirements: make it funny, and make it (fairly) short. We were overwhelmed by the response: we received hundreds of entries, from all over the island and points beyond, by people from all walks of life. There were only three winners - but we decided to gather the best stories into a book. And here they are – from the sublime to the ridiculous. Think Graham Norton's Big Red Chair to Samuel Beckett's dark humor – and all points in between. The result is: Brevity is the Soul: Wit from Locked-Down Ireland.

Ensign Ash Miller USNR, having survived the sinking of his first ship, is promoted and assigned to command one of the sleek new additions to "the splinter fleet," a 110-foot wooden submarine chaser armed with only understrength guns and depth charges. His task is to bring the ship swiftly into commission, weld his untried crew into an efficient fighting unit, and take his vessel to sea in order to protect the defenseless Allied merchant vessels which are being maliciously and increasingly sunk by German U-Boats, often within sight of the coast. Ash rises to the deadly challenge he faces, brings his crew of three officers and 27 men to peak performance, and meets the threats he faces with understated courage and determination, rescuing stricken seamen, destroying Nazi mines, fighting U-Boats, and developing both the tactical sense and command authority that will be the foundation upon which America's citizen sailors eventually win the war. During rare breaks in operations, provided for upkeep and overhaul, Ash enters a developing relationship with the spirited Claire Morris who, as he learns, embodies the peaceful ideal for which he has been fighting.

Summer 1942. Defeatism hangs in the air. Britain stands alone. Winston Churchill is determined to strike back and has ordered the formation of a special operations force, dubbed "Commandos", with the mission to "set Europe ablaze." U.S. Marine Captain Jim Cain and his Gunnery Sergeant Leland Montgomery are surprised to receive orders to the British Commando training center in the Scottish Highlands. There they are put through the brutal specialized training that will hone their fighting skills and physical endurance. Pitiless forced marches, dangerous live fire exercises and hazardous assault courses separate the men from the boys, while building a strong sense of brotherhood among the British soldiers and the two Marines. Lucky to be quartered in the spacious home of the Commandos' CO, Cain has the pleasure of meeting Loreena. The stunning auburn-haired daughter of the CO is secretive about her work in London. Before Cain can learn more about her, the training course is interrupted. He and the commando squad are sent on a special mission to destroy a German radar station on a Nazi-held island off the coast of France. The site is defended by a squad of second-rate garrison soldiers who are no match for the highly trained and motivated commandos. A reaction force of infantry, led by a blooded German combat veteran, joins the fight. The action is fierce and bloody and there are heavy losses on both sides. The surviving raiders are able to withdraw to Royal Navy motor torpedo boats, as a marauding squadron of Schnellboots (E-Boats) lies in wait. The Commandos: Set Europe Ablaze is rich in detail and military accuracy which makes the story "come alive" and enables the reader to easily visualize the characters, the settings and the action scenes.

In this 19th century Russian social novella, two contrasting characters - one a western-educated intellectual, the other a hidebound country squire - find themselves thrown together on a long cross country journey in a primitive but sturdy carriage - a tarantas. Their shared observations as the troubled panorama of the Russian countryside rolls past is the basis for this commentary on the country’s prospects for social change. Renowned translator Michal R. Katz offers the first new translation of this overlooked novella since the late 1800s, shortly after original publication.

In this collection of interconnected stories, the beautiful and ravaging forces of sea and land collide with the forces of human nature, through isolation and family, love and loss, madness and revelation. The stories follow the lives of two sisters and the people who come and go in their lives, much like the tides. Dominated by the tragic loss of a third sister at a young age, their family spirals out of control. We witness three stages of the sisters’ lives, each taking place on an island - in southwest Ireland, southern England, and the Bay of Naples. Beautifully and sparsely written, the stories deeply evoke landscape and character, and are suffused with a keen eye for detail and metaphor.