Four gripping novellas tied together by the changing of seasons. Hope Springs Eternal - "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption": An unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge...the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award nominee The Shawshank Redemption.

Alexander Grant is a little too good at a few too many things. Two dozen martial arts. Twice that many languages. Chess, the piano, sports, forging excused absences, you name it. He graduated high school top of his class 17 times. Of course, no one knows any of this. Not that he wants to go unnoticed. It’s just safer that way.

Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

From D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge and more, here is the authorized biography of one of the most celebrated paratroopers of Easy Company, Sergeant Shifty Powers, the legendary sharpshooter from the Band of Brothers.

When Luke Cardiff returns from college to his small family horse ranch in Missouri, he leaves Stella May, the girl he cares about, behind when he’s sent to Amarillo, Texas, to take care of family business. In the back of his mind, he’s always suspected there’s more to his horse-loving school teacher father than meets the eye. While in Amarillo, he discovers that his father’s past life was one of violence, murder, and mayhem - something Luke’s mother was never allowed to talk about.

This box set includes the first three books in Rachel Hatch thriller series: Drift, Downburst, and Fever Burn. Tightly woven story, deeply developed and endearing characters, and an exhilarating pace to keep you listening until the last word.

Hillary Jordan's mesmerizing debut novel won the Bellwether Prize for fiction. A powerful piece of Southern literature, Mudbound takes on prejudice in its myriad forms on a Mississippi Delta farm in 1946. City girl Laura McAllen attempts to raise her family despite questionable decisions made by her husband. Tensions continue to rise when her brother-in-law and the son of a family of sharecroppers both return from WWII as changed men bearing the scars of combat.

He was one the best Marine snipers in Vietnam. Today, 20 years later, all Bob Lee Swagger wants is to be left alone. But a shadowy military organization seduces him into one last mission for his country - unaware until too late that the game is rigged. The assassination plot is executed to perfection until Bob Lee Swagger, alleged lone gunman, comes out of the operation alive, the target of a nationwide manhunt, with his only allies a woman he just met and a discredited FBI agent.

Failed academic Frank Nichols and his wife, Eudora, have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family's old estate - the Savoyard Plantation - and the horrors that occurred there. At first, the quaint, rural ways of their new neighbors seem to be everything they wanted. But there is an unspoken dread that the townsfolk have lived with for generations. A presence that demands sacrifice.

I'm Staying with My Boys is a firsthand look inside the life of one of the greatest heroes of the Greatest Generation. Sgt. John Basilone held off 3000 Japanese troops at Guadalcanal after his 15-member unit was reduced to three men. At Iwo Jima he single-handedly destroyed an enemy blockhouse, allowing his unit to capture an airfield. Minutes later he was killed by an enemy artillery round. He was the only Marine in World War II to have received the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and a Purple Heart.

Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart and blood...and, possibly, their death.

In 1935, 10-year-old Alex Maki from Bainbridge Island, Washington, is disgusted when he’s forced to become pen pals with Charlie Lévy of Paris, France - a girl. He thought she was a boy. In spite of Alex’s reluctance, their letters continue to fly across the Atlantic - and along with them, the shared hopes and dreams of friendship. Until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the growing Nazi persecution of Jews force them to confront the darkest aspects of human nature.

The end is almost here, are you ready? A high-tech nightmare. A crippling attack on America and her infrastructure. Are humans in their final days? When a sudden, unexplained spasm of violence rocks the country from coast to coast, when our military is hijacked and the president can’t be found, the survivors will be left to wonder if this is the start of a new world war, or if this is the last chapter of humanity itself. Undercover DEA agent, Fire Dimas, is drowning in problems: an unrelenting job, a difficult marriage and a teenage daughter with suitors of the worst kind.

Now available as an audiobook, The Iron Orchard tells the story of a young Texan, Jim McNeely, who is desperate to make a name for himself in the oil fields of Texas. Told from the inside by a man who knew the oil fields intimately, it is a vibrant, brutal story of the men who labored, sweated, lusted, and gambled their money and spirits to pump oil out of the earth. It is the adventure of violent men among other violent men. And it is the story of perseverance and love in the midst of one of America’s most dramatic industries.

Oryan Jeckstadt is born into slavery - the result of an emperor who secretly punishes his enemies with a fate worse than death. He is thrust into a brutal, but wildly popular, sport with participants known as Centauri. Knowing his father’s freedom is at stake, he determines to be the best in the world. After being orphaned, Elesya Celeste trains as a Centauri. Constantly placed in Oryan’s shadow, she strives not just to outshine him, but to eclipse him.

Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops...and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town. In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its cham­pion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs.

Earl Swagger is tough as hell. But even tough guys have their secrets. Plagued by the memory of his abusive father, apprehensive about his own impending parenthood, Earl is a decorated ex-Marine of absolute integrity — and overwhelming melancholy. Now he’s about to face his biggest, bloodiest challenge yet. It is the summer of 1946, organized crime’s garish golden age, when American justice seems to have gone to seed for good.

Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart and blood...and, possibly, their death.

Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive, the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his own illusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye for detail, pitiless candor, and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life a modern classic.

Jackson Hunt wants nothing more than to be a professional monster tamer - skilled trainers who raise and battle magical creatures called Djinn. He longs for the day when he comes of age and can leave home to pursue his dreams of taming Djinn. Unfortunately for Jackson, dreams and reality don’t always coincide. To help his grandmother make ends meet, Jackson spends his days doing manual labor on a breeder’s ranch - just about as far removed from the bright lights and roaring crowds of the DBL (Djinn Battle League) as it gets.

Hillary Jordan's mesmerizing debut novel won the Bellwether Prize for fiction. A powerful piece of Southern literature, Mudbound takes on prejudice in its myriad forms on a Mississippi Delta farm in 1946. City girl Laura McAllen attempts to raise her family despite questionable decisions made by her husband. Tensions continue to rise when her brother-in-law and the son of a family of sharecroppers both return from WWII as changed men bearing the scars of combat.

The Ancient Egyptian gods have defeated all the other pantheons and claimed dominion over the earth, dividing it into warring factions. Lt. David Westwynter, a British soldier, stumbles into Freegypt, the only place to have remained independent of the gods’ influence. There, he encounters the followers of a humanist leader known as the Lightbringer, who has vowed to rid mankind of the shackles of divine oppression. As the world heads towards an apocalyptic battle, there is far more to this freedom fighter than it seems.

From "the master of alternate history" comes a new trilogy that reimagines a mid-20th century in which General MacArthur, without bothering to consult President Truman, detonates nuclear warheads in several Manchurian cities after China enters the Korean War. In his acclaimed novels of alternate history, Harry Turtledove has scrutinized the twisted soul of the 20th century, from the forces that set World War I in motion to the rise of fascism in the decades that followed.

At the age of 15, Dieter's blind devotion gets him promoted from Hitler Youth into the German army. Dieter's determined to prove his allegiance and bravery all costs. Spence, just 16, drops out of his Utah high school to begin training as a paratrooper. He's seen how boys who weren't much in high school can come home heroes, and Spence wants to prove to his friends and family that he really can be something.

"You have two days to pass your audition. You better pass it, feller. You’re joining the circus. Ain’t that the best news you ever got?" Delivered by a trio of psychotic clowns, this ultimatum plunges Jamie into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between Hell and Earth from which humankind’s greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place - peopled by the gruesome, grotesque, and monstrous - where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself.

Only a few nuclear weapons fell. But in the chaos of famine and plague, there existed a few pockets of order. The strongest of them was the state of Deseret. The climate has changed, and the lake has filled up. There, on the fringes, brave, hardworking pioneers are making the desert bloom again.

After America’s Second Civil War, the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies came to an agreement. According to their Bill of Life, human life may not be terminated from the moment of conception until the age of thirteen. But between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, the child may be gotten rid of by their parent through a process called “unwinding.”

Robert Prentice has spent all his life attempting to escape his mother's stifling presence. His mother, Alice, for her part, struggles with her own demons as she attempts to realize her dreams of prosperity and success as a sculptor. As Robert goes off to fight in Europe, hoping to become his own man, Richard Yates portrays a soldier in the depths of war striving to live up to his heroic ideals.

Alan Scott Haft provides the first-hand testimony of his father, Harry Haft, a holocaust victim with a singular story of endurance, desperation, and unrequited love. Harry Haft was a 16-year-old Polish Jew when he entered a concentration camp in 1944. Forced to fight other Jews in bare-knuckle bouts for the perverse entertainment of SS officers, Harry quickly learned that his own survival depended on his ability to fight and win. Haft details the inhumanity of the "sport" in which he must perform in brutal contests for the officers.

The Last Town on Earth centers on the inhabitants of a small logging town in Washington and what happens when they take drastic measures (quarantine) to try and protect themselves from the virulent and deadly flu epidemic of 1918. When a deserting WWI soldier demands sanctuary, events are set in motion that change the town forever.