Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins, a World War II Soldier

The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins, a World War II Soldier

by Walter Dean Myers

A seventeen-year-old soldier from central Virginia records his experiences in a journal as his regiment takes part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy and subsequent battles to liberate France.

Cassino: The Hollow Victory: The Battle for Rome January-June 1944

Cassino: The Hollow Victory: The Battle for Rome January-June 1944

The struggle to capture Monte Cassino, the impregnable heights barring the Allied advance on Rome in 1944, was the longest land battle fought in Western Europe in World War II and among the most costly. In four separate assaults over the course of the grim six-month epic, more than 105,000 men from the Allied armies and at least 80,000 Germans became casualties, and, between the attacks, the armies of both sides... (more)

The Final Solution

A Story of Detection

by Michael Chabon

Retired to the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, rumored to be a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African gray parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out -- a top-secret SS... (more)

No Exit and Three Other Plays

by Jean-Paul Sartre

4 plays about an existential portrayal of Hell, the reworking of the Electra-Orestes story, the conflict of a young intellectual torn between theory and conflict and an arresting attack on American racism.

The Razor's Edge

by W. Somerset Maugham

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of his spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brilliant characters - his fiancée Isabel whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliott Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. Maugham himself wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their... (more)

Oh, Johnny: A Novel

by Jim Lehrer

“ Call me Johnny. Oh Johnny Oh. That’s what my mom calls me. You can call me anything. But mainly call me a ballplayer. A center fielder. I’m good, and I’m going to be even better .”<pgs. 36,37> A talented athlete, Johnny Wrigley firmly believes that someday he will play major league baseball. But on the way to his dreams, Johnny finds his life unexpectedly taking a detour. In April 1944, Johnny is a newly... (more)

The Dead of Winter: A John Madden Mystery

The Dead of Winter: A John Madden Mystery

by Rennie Airth

The murder of a young Polish girl in wartime London puts John Madden on the trail of a ruthless hired killer On a freezing London night in 1944, Rosa Novak is brutally murdered during a blackout. The police suspect she was the victim of a random act of violence and might have dropped the case if former police investigator John Madden hadnÂ’t been the victimÂ’s employer. MaddenÂ’s old colleagues at Scotland... (more)

General Patton the Last CavalierWilliam Bancroft Mellor

General Patton the Last Cavalier

by William Bancroft Mellor

Steel Inferno : I Ss Panzer Corps in Normandy

Steel Inferno : I Ss Panzer Corps in Normandy

by Michael Reynolds

The classic work on the enemy side of Normandy--not the surprise invasion of the beaches, but the following weeks when German panzer divisions began arriving to throw the Allies back into the sea. Focuses on 1st SS Panzer Division and its "offspring," 12th SS Panzer, aka the Hitler Youth. A main selection of the Military Book Clubs in the US, the UK and Australia.

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Tags: 1944