Caught in the middle of an ongoing war, Jet Jones, a robot made to look like a boy and built for battle, discovers that there is more to him than he ever could have imagined, sending him on a journey to learn what is means to be both hero and human.

Made to look like a boy, but built for battle, Jet Jones is a robot caught in the middle of an ongoing war. While trying to save countless lives, Jet discovers there is more to him than he could have imagined. His experiences in the war set him on a journey to learn what it means to be both hero and human.

"Young Roman Taylor struggles to keep his family's small farm afloat as the countryside heals from a devastating world war. And when a boy with a jetpack, Jet Jones, suddenly crash lands into their barn, Roman believes the secrets of this visitor's past may be the key to their survival. But Jet, a robot made to look like a boy but actually built for battle, has brought more than even he knows to the farm and Roman may learn that some secrets are best left untold"--Page 4 of cover.

This grimly realistic depiction of army life follows a trio of idealists as they contend with the regimentation, violence, and boredom of military service. Incited past the point of endurance, the soldiers respond with rancor and murderous rage. This powerful exploration of warfare's dehumanizing effects remains chillingly contemporary.

The mid nineteen fifties saw the introduction of Junior Regiments within the British Army. Boys as young as fifteen could make a life changing decision, and with their parents' consent, undertake theoretical and practical tests to leave home and become a Junior Soldier. Almost every Regiment in the Army had a Junior Regiment attached to them, the Marines at Deal in Kent; the Junior Infantry at Shorncliffe, also in Kent, the Para's, the Royal Signals, the Gunners and so on and so on... In the winter of 1970 I was approaching school leaving age with no idea what to do with my future, until I stopped briefly to talk to a boy in a uniform on an Army recruiting stand, and I went home hooked. At the age of fifteen and five months I left home to become a Junior Leader for two years in the Royal Engineers (The Sappers) at Old Park Barracks, Dover, Kent. I passed out from Dover to adult service in August 1973 to join a Royal Engineers Field Squadron in Germany (BAOR - The British Army of the Rhine) and on that day I felt ten feet tall. This book is dedicated to all kids of all Junior Regiments who took that gigantic step and won through. It wasn't easy, in fact at times it was damn hard going, I'm sure more than a few kids, at times would have broken down in tears, especially through the first thirteen weeks. But your room mates were in the same boat so you worked together and you got through all the crap. These Junior Regiments no longer exist in the form they did in the fifties, sixties, seventies or eighties. They have been replaced by the AFC (The Army Foundation Collage) an amalgamation of Regiments and Corps, training together. No doubt the style and method of training has also changed; this may in some case be not such a bad thing. However this book takes us back to the early seventies and my personnel story as a Junior Soldier a Junior Sapper.

NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES STARRING JEFF DANIELS AND MAURA TIERNEY An American voice reminiscent of Steinbeck – a debut novel on friendship, loyalty, and love, centering on a murder in a dying Pennsylvania steel town, from the bestselling author of THE SON. Isaac is the smartest kid in town, left behind to care for his sick father after his mother dies by suicide and his sister Lee moves away. Now Isaac wants out too. Not even his best friend, Billy Poe, can stand in his way: broad-shouldered Billy, always ready for a fight, still living in his mother's trailer. Then, on the very day of Isaac's leaving, something happens that changes the friends' fates and tests the loyalties of their friendship and those of their lovers, families, and the town itself. Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust is an extraordinarily moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence, and the power of love and friendship to redeem us. 'A startlingly mature and impressive debut' KATE ATKINSON 'Darkly disturbing and darkly compelling' PATRICIA CORNWELL 'Written with considerable dramatic intensity and pace' COLM TÓIBÍN 'A masterpiece. The best book to come out of America since The Road' CHRIS CLEAVE

“Remarkable. . . . Iweala never wavers from a gripping, pulsing narrative voice. . . . He captures the horror of ethnic violence in all its brutality and the vulnerability of youth in all its innocence.” —Entertainment Weekly (A) The harrowing, utterly original debut novel by Uzodinma Iweala about the life of a child soldier in a war-torn African country As civil war rages in an unnamed West-African nation, Agu, the school-aged protagonist of this stunning novel, is recruited into a unit of guerilla fighters. Haunted by his father’s own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander. While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started—a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family, still intact. As he vividly recalls these sunnier times, his daily reality continues to spin further downward into inexplicable brutality, primal fear, and loss of selfhood. In a powerful, strikingly original voice, Uzodinma Iweala leads the reader through the random travels, betrayals, and violence that mark Agu’s new community. Electrifying and engrossing, Beasts of No Nation announces the arrival of an extraordinary writer.