In 1944, eighteen-year-old Bernadette (Bryd) Thompson leaves her Iowa home and attends training camp for the Women Airforce Service Pilots in Sweetwater, Texas, where she hones her flying skills and befriends women of different backgrounds.

The seventh book in the popular adult fiction series, "An American Family Portrait, The Victors" follows the path of a new generation of the Morgan family. Four siblings are caught up in the events of World War II, and each will handle the challenge differently. Nat, Walt, Alex, and Lily must face life's worst before they find out what it really means to be "the victors".

Life doesn’t give do-overs. She’s sure of it. But then she goes home again. Josie Mitchell’s sister Laurel thinks she’s come home to pitch in with the apple harvest and save the family orchard. Her brother-in-law Nate thinks she’s there to talk the overworked, very pregnant Laurel into finally selling the family business. The orchard’s new manager Grady Mackenzie just thinks she’s trouble with a capital T. They’re all right . . . and all wrong. Because no one really knows what drove Josie from home in the first place. Why she’s never come home before, even for her own father’s funeral. Why she pushes herself so hard . . . and what she’s running from. And nobody, not even Josie, is prepared for the surprising new fruit she’ll find on her last trip home.

From New York Times bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons comes a bittersweet and finely wrought story of friendship, family, and Charleston society. At twelve, Emily Parmenter knows alone all too well. Left mostly to herself after her beautiful young mother disappeared and her beloved older brother died, Emily is keenly aware of yearning and loss. Rather than be consumed by sadness, she has built a life around the faded plantation where her remote father and hunting-obsessed brothers raise the legendary Lowcountry Boykin hunting spaniels. It is a meager, narrow, masculine world, but to Emily it has magic: the storied deep-sea dolphins who come regularly to play in Sweetwater Creek; her extraordinary bond with the beautiful dogs she trains; her almost mystic communion with her own spaniel, Elvis; the dreaming old Lowcountry itself. Emily hides from the dreaded world here. It is enough. And then comes Lulu Foxworth, troubled daughter of a truly grand plantation, who has run away from her hectic Charleston debutante season to spend a healing summer with the quiet marshes and river, and the life-giving dogs. Where Emily's father sees their guest as an entrée to a society he thought forever out of reach, Emily is at once threatened and mystified. Lulu has a powerful enchantment of her own, and this, along with the dark, crippling secret she brings with her, will inevitably blow Emily's magical water world apart and let the real one in—but at a terrible price. Poignant and emotionally compelling, Sweetwater Creek draws you into the luminous landscape of the Lowcountry, with characters that will linger long after you've turned the last page.

This inside look at the White House's animal residents features a rollicking, rhyming verse for each commander-in-chief's pets, accompanied by cool facts, presidential stats, and laugh-out-loud cartoon art. John Quincy Adams kept an alligator in the bathtub, while Thomas Jefferson's pride and joy was his pair of bear cubs. Andrew Jackson had a potty-mouthed parrot, and Martin Van Buren got into a fight with Congress over his two baby tigers. First daughter Caroline Kennedy's pony Macaroni had free reign over the White House. But the pet-owning winner of all the presidents was Theodore Roosevelt, who had a hyena, lion, zebra, badger, snake, rats, a nippy dog that bit the French ambassador, and more!

By early 1941, the war raged in Europe and Great Britain stood alone against the aerial might of Nazi Germany. Although much of the Royal Air Force's pilot training program had been relocated to Canada and other Dominion countries, the need for pilots remained acute. The British looked to the United States for possible assistance. Passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941 allowed for the training of British pilots in the United States and the formation of British Flying Training Schools. These unique schools were owned by American operators, staffed with American civilian instructors, supervised by British Royal Air Force officers, utilized aircraft supplied by the U.S. Army Air Corps, and used the RAF training syllabus. Within these pages, Tom Killebrew provides the first comprehensive history of all seven British Flying Training Schools located in Terrell, Texas; Lancaster, California; Miami, Oklahoma; Mesa, Arizona; Clewiston, Florida; Ponca City, Oklahoma; and Sweetwater, Texas. The first British students arrived in a still-neutral United States in June 1941. Many had never been in an airplane (or even driven an automobile), but they mastered the elements of flight, attended ground school classes, were introduced to the mysteries of the Link trainer and instrument flight, and then ventured out on cross country exercises. Students began night flying with the natural apprehension associated with taking off into a black sky, aided by only a few instruments, a flickering flare path, and limited ground references. Some students failed the periodic check flights and had to be eliminated from training, while others were killed during mishaps and are buried in local cemeteries. Those who finished the course became Royal Air Force pilots. But the story of the British Flying Training Schools is more than the story of young men learning to fly. These young British students would also forge a strong and long-lasting bond of friendship with the Americans they came to know. This bond would last not only during training, but would continue throughout the war, and still exist long after the end of the war.