Women in War is a stirring, raw, and profoundly inspiring collection of over twenty true stories about brave women who served and fought throughout history. Written by bestselling author and retired police officer David Yuzuk, this powerful narrative is the result of meticulous research and firsthand interviews, offering a unique and intimate look into the lives of military heroines. Step into the combat books of the courageous women who served from the steamy jungles of Vietnam to the arid deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. Facing overwhelming adversity and enduring unspeakable losses, these...

Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.

On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a woman of quiet daring, found herself in a desperate position. From the windows of her beloved Jeu de Paume museum, where she had worked and ultimately spied, she could see the battle to liberate Paris thundering around her. The Jeu de Paume, co-opted by Nazi leadership, was now the Germans’ final line of defense. Would the museum curator be killed before she could tell the truth—a story that would mean nothing less than saving humanity’s cultural inheritance?

When Nazi forces entered Kraków, Poland in 1939, unexpected and unresisted, Josef Lewkowicz's life became a nightmare overnight as he and his family were rounded up and sent to concentration camps across German-occupied territory. It wasn't long before Josef found himself face-to-face with SS kommandant Amon Goeth, whose brutality was made infamous by the film Schindler's List. As Josef struggled to survive the violence, horror, and degradations of one prison camp after another—he was kept alive only by his faith and his profound sense of justice.

At the start of WWII, the U.S. found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today’s CIA, was quickly formed—and, in an effort to fill its ranks with experts, the OSS turned to academia for recruits. Suddenly, literature professors, librarians, and historians were training to perform undercover operations and investigative work—and these surprising spies would go on to profoundly shape both the course of the war and our cultural institutions with their efforts.

On June 4, 1944, the course of World War II was forever changed. That day, a US Navy task force achieved the impossible—capturing a German U-Boat. Called Operation Nemo, it was the first seizure of an enemy ship in battle since the War of 1812, one of the greatest achievements of the US Navy and a victory that shortened the duration of the war. A deeply researched, fast-paced World War II narrative for the ages, Charles Lachman’s white-knuckled war saga and thrilling cat-and-mouse game is told through the eyes of the men on both sides of Operation Nemo.

In a sleepy German village, Allina Strauss’s life seems idyllic: she works at her uncle’s bookshop, makes strudel with her aunt, and spends weekends with her friends and fiancé. But it's 1939, Adolf Hitler is Chancellor, and Allina’s family hides a terrifying secret—her birth mother was Jewish, making her a Mischling. One fateful night after losing everyone she loves, Allina is forced into service as a nurse at a state-run baby factory called Hochland Home. There, she becomes both witness and participant to the horrors of Heinrich Himmler’s ruthless eugenics program.

József Debreczeni, a prolific Hungarian-language journalist and poet, arrived in Auschwitz in 1944; had he been selected to go “left,” his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the “lucky” ones, he was sent to the “right,” which led to twelve horrifying months of incarceration and slave labor in a series of camps, ending in the “Cold Crematorium”—the so-called hospital of the forced labor camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work awaited execution.

Paris, 1940 German tanks rumble through the streets of Paris, forcing frightened citizens to flee. But not everyone has the luxury to leave. Camille Lacroix, a chambermaid at the world-famous Hôtel Ritz, must stay to support her family back home in Brittany. Desperate to earn money, Camille also acts as a lady’s maid for longtime guest Vivian Miller, a glamorous American widow—and a Nazi sympathizer. Despite her distrust of the woman, Camille turns to Vivian when her friend Rachel Berman needs help getting out of Paris. It’s then that Camille discovers that Vivian is not what she seems.

In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom—among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen.

During a scorching summer in 1920s Provence, a young journalist, Joseph Adelaide, turns up at the farmhouse of reclusive artist Edouard Tartuffe, hoping to write an article about him. There, he meets Ettie, Tartuffe’s niece, who appears to do everything for her uncle—from cooking and cleaning to catering to his maniacal moods. Joseph is beguiled by where he finds himself, not just by this foreign place or Tartuffe himself, but by Ettie, who watches everything so quietly from the periphery.

On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a woman of quiet daring, found herself in a desperate position. From the windows of her beloved Jeu de Paume museum, where she had worked and ultimately spied, she could see the battle to liberate Paris thundering around her. The Jeu de Paume, co-opted by Nazi leadership, was now the Germans’ final line of defense. Would the museum curator be killed before she could tell the truth—a story that would mean nothing less than saving humanity’s cultural inheritance?

On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her forty-first birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirley—better known at that point by her outlaw sobriquet “Belle Starr”—was blown from her horse saddle and killed by a pair of shotgun blasts, delivered by an unseen assailant, only a few miles away from her home in the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma. Thus ended the life of one of the most colorful, authentic, and dangerous women in the history of the American West.

Portland, 1888. Amid the subterranean labyrinth of the notorious Shanghai Tunnels, a woman awakens in an underground cell, drugged and disguised. Celia soon realizes she’s a “Shanghaied” victim on the verge of being shipped off as forced labor, leaving behind those she loves most. Although well-accustomed to adapting for survival—being half-Chinese, passing as white during an era fraught with anti-Chinese sentiment—she fears that far more than her own fate hangs in the balance.

As he struggles to rekindle the faith of a guilt-ridden Wehrmacht veteran, a morose widow, and her grieving teenage son, Fr. Viktor Koch, C.P. is haunted by self-doubt. What is driving him to stay in the Third Reich? Is he following a higher plan, or the mystic compulsion of his German heritage? Exposed to American ideals, his parishioners grow restless under Nazi rule. Relying upon his ingenuity to keep them out of prison, Fr. Viktor solicits aid from an unlikely intercessor-the Nazi charity worker who confiscated his monastery for state purposes.

In a highly inventive style, Cockerell captures history as it unfolds, weaving together letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles, and interviews into a vivid account. Melting Point follows Zangwill and the Jochelmann family through two world wars, to London, New York, and Jerusalem—as their lives intertwine with some of the most memorable figures of the twentieth century, and each chooses whether to cling to their history or melt into their new surroundings. It is a story that asks what it means to belong, and what can be salvaged from the past.

From underground soldiers to intrepid spies, Women of War unearths the hidden history of the brave women who risked their lives to overthrow the Nazi occupation and liberate Italy. Using primary sources and brand new scholarship, historian Suzanne Cope illuminates the roles played by women while Italians struggled under dual foes: Nazi invaders and Italian fascist loyalists.

Priscilla Presley’s divorce from Elvis left his fans incredulous. How could she leave the man every woman wanted? From the outside, life in Elvis’s mansion looked glamorous and enviable, and in many respects, it was. But inside the mansion, her husband was constantly surrounded by a male entourage while at the gates, lines of beautiful women waited hopefully for an audience with the King. From the time she was seventeen years old, that life was all Priscilla had known.

They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses—all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they were denied the opportunity to fly for their country when the United States entered the Second World War. But Great Britain, desperately fighting for survival, would let anyone—even Americans, even women—transport warplanes. Thus, twenty-five daring young aviators bolted for England in 1942, becoming the first American women to command military aircraft.

We know what it was like to live in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022, the day of the cold-blooded killings. We know what the local police and FBI did right. And what they did wrong. We’ve learned so much about the four heartbroken families—the Mogens, Goncalves, Kernodles, and Chapins. And we have the backstory for Bryan Kohberger, brilliant grad student, loner, apparent incel. Now you are the jury. The evidence is in.

A memoir by the legendary proprietor of Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and Morandi, taking us from his gritty London childhood in the fifties to his serendipitous arrival in New York, where he founded the era-defining establishments the Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg, and Nell’s. Eloquent and opinionated, Keith McNally writes about the angst of being a child actor, his lack of insights from traveling overland to Kathmandu at nineteen, the instability of his two marriages and family relationships, his devastating stroke, and his Instagram notoriety.

Women in War is a stirring, raw, and profoundly inspiring collection of over twenty true stories about brave women who served and fought throughout history. Written by bestselling author and retired police officer David Yuzuk, this powerful narrative is the result of meticulous research and firsthand interviews, offering a unique and intimate look into the lives of military heroines. Step into the combat books of the courageous women who served from the steamy jungles of Vietnam to the arid deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. Facing overwhelming adversity and enduring unspeakable losses, these...

In 1889, while upholding Chinese exclusion, Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field characterized them as “strangers in the land.” Only in 1965 did America’s gates swing open to people like Luo’s parents, immigrants from Taiwan. Today there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States and yet the “stranger” label, Luo writes, remains. Drawing on archives from across the country and written with a New Yorker writer’s style and sweep, Strangers in the Land is revelatory and unforgettable, an essential American story.

1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. Free spirited, she refuses to be confined by societal norms. Instead, Eliza revels in exploring the golden fields and sparkling ponds of Mayfield, observing wildlife, and riding horses. But her halcyon days are cut short by the Great War, coastal storms, and unexpected challenges to Mayfield.

When Pamela Churchill Harriman died in 1997, the obituaries that followed were predictably scathing–and many were downright sexist. Written off as a mere courtesan and social climber, her true legacy was overshadowed by a glamorous social life and her infamous erotic adventures. Much of what she did behind the scenes–on both sides of the Atlantic–remained invisible and secret. That is, until now: with a wealth of fresh research, interviews and newly discovered sources, Sonia Purnell unveils for the first time the full, spectacular story of how she left an indelible mark on the world today.