This is the story of a ten year old (Albert) and his adventures and experiences during the five years of the second world war. Living in what was then a very unsophisticated and almost forgotten valley in the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire where the traditions and customs of the previous century were still very much in evidence the story shows how in many ways the war did little to intrude on the day to day activities of Albert and his friends. However, from time to time dramatic and sad events brought home to them that beyond their comparatively safe valley, death and destruction were taking place on an almost unimaginable scale.

Bittersweet, funny, and achingly honest, Five Summers is a story of friendship, love, and growing up that is perfect for fans of Ann Brashares' The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Judy Blume's Summer Sisters. Four best friends, five summers of camp memories Emma, Skylar, Jo, and Maddie have all come back to camp for a weekend of tipsy canoe trips to the island, midnight skinny dipping in the lake, and an epic game of capture the flag—boys versus girls. But the weekend isn't quite as sunwashed as they'd imagined as the memories come flooding back. . . . The summer we were nine: Emma was branded “Skylar’s friend Emma” by the infamous Adam Loring . . . The summer we were ten: Maddie realized she was too far into her lies to think about telling the truth . . . The summer we were eleven: Johanna totally freaked out during her first game of Spin the Bottle . . . The summer we were twelve: Skylar’s love letters from her boyfriend back home were exciting to all of us—except Skylar . . . Our last summer together: Emma and Adam almost kissed. Jo found out Maddie’s secret. Skylar did something unthinkable . . . and whether we knew it then or not, five summers of friendship began to fall apart. A young adult book with a friendship story that will last long after the last s'more is gone.

Love and heartache poems from a summertime traveller.

A "captivating and bittersweet" novel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Summer of '69: Their secret love affair has lasted for decades—but this could be the summer that changes everything (People). When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election. There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other? Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere—through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise—until Mallory learns she's dying. Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.

This book is written for my sons and is a patchwork of my thoughts, prayers, journal entries, and emails. These emails, etc. were written to family, friends, and the youth group students I have had the privilege of getting to know and love for the past 25 years. Some of the questions I get are about creation/evolution, the deity of Christ, the end times as well as personal issues such as sexual purity, and how to live a holy life. Part of the book is also about the journey God has brought me through in my personal life. My hope is that however God uses this book, that it pleases and glorifies Him.

With the discipline of a surgeon performing a critical operation, acclaimed storyteller Harry Mark Petrakis strips away layers of his nine decades of life to expose the blood and bone of a human being in his third memoir and twenty-fifth book, Song of My Life. Petrakis is unsparing in exposing his own flaws, from a youthful gambling addiction, to the enormous lie of his military draft, to a midlife suicidal depression. Yet he is compassionate in depicting the foibles of others around him. Petrakis writes with love about his parents and five siblings, with nostalgia as he describes the Greek neighborhoods and cramped Chicago apartments of his childhood, and with deep affection for his wife and sons as he recalls with candor, comedy, and charity a writer's long, fully-lived life. Petrakis recounts the near-fatal childhood illness, which confined him to bed for two years and, through hours of reading during the day and night, nurtured his imagination and compulsion toward storytelling. A high school dropout, Petrakis also recalls his work journey in the steel mills, railroad depots, and shabby diners of the city. There is farce and comedy in the pages as he describes the intricate framework of lies that drove his courtship of Diana, who has been his wife of sixty-nine loving years. Petrakis shares his struggles for over a decade to write and publish and finally, poignantly describes the matchless instant when he holds his first published book in his hands. The chapters on his experiences in Hollywood where he had gone to write the screenplay of his best-selling novel A Dream of Kings are as revealing of the machinations and egos of moviemaking as any Oliver Stone documentary. Petrakis's individual story, as fraught with drama and revelation as the adventures of Odysseus, comes to an elegiac conclusion when, at the age of ninety, he ruminates on his life and its approaching end. With a profound and searing honesty, this self-exploration of a solitary writer's life helps us understand our own existences and the tapestry of lives connecting us together in our shared human journey.