"A German Red Cross nurse joins the world's first guide dog training school for the blind and begins a quest to show a Jewish pianist who was blinded on the battlefield that life is worth living"--

A USA Today Bestseller Inspired by fascinating, true, yet little-known events during World War II, The Long Flight Home is a testament to the power of courage in our darkest hours—a moving, masterfully written story of love and sacrifice. It is September 1940—a year into the war—and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around the Epping Forest home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents to influenza as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons with Bertie. All her birds are extraordinary to Susan—loyal, intelligent, beautiful—but none more so than Duchess. Hatched from an egg that Susan incubated in a bowl under her grandfather’s desk lamp, Duchess shares a special bond with Susan and an unusual curiosity about the human world. Thousands of miles away in Buxton, Maine, young crop-duster pilot Ollie Evans decides to join Britain’s Royal Air Force. His quest brings him to Epping and the National Pigeon Service, where Susan is involved in a new, covert mission to air-drop hundreds of homing pigeons in German-occupied France. Many will not survive. Those that do will bring home crucial information. Soon a friendship between Ollie and Susan deepens, but when his plane is downed behind enemy lines, both know how remote the chances of reunion must be. Yet Duchess will become an unexpected lifeline, relaying messages between Susan and Ollie as war rages on—and proving, at last, that hope is never truly lost. “Hlad adeptly drives home the devastating civilian cost of the war.” —Booklist

A stunning visual exploration of the power and behavior of light across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Light allows humans to see things around us, but we can only see a sliver of all the light in the universe, also known as the electromagnetic spectrum. Renowned science communicators Kim Arcand and Megan Watzke bring the entire spectrum to life and present the subject of light as never before. Organized along the order of the electromagnetic spectrum--from Radio waves to Gamma rays--each chapter focuses on a different type of light. From ultraviolet light, used in microscopy to image plant cells and bacteria, to X-rays, which let us peer inside the human body and view areas around black holes in deep space, Arcand and Watzke show us all the important ways light impacts us. With hundreds of stunning full-color photographs, including new images from the James Webb Space Telescope, Light is a joy to read and browse.

An examination and exploration into the research of near-death experiences with supporting research in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, and sociology.

P M H Atwater knows what it's like to die. And the experience so changed her life that she has devoted years to researching the phenomenon of the Near-Death Experience. From her own encounter with life-after-death and from interviews with hundreds of others, she presents this remarkable and reassuring vision into a world beyond the one we know: What it feels like to die; What awaits us after we see the light; Why many who are rescued from death don't want to come back; Why some people encounter hellish experiences; How life changes after a Near-Death Experience and much more!