Blindfold And Alone

Three hundred and fifty-one men were executed by British Army firing squads between September 1914 and November 1920. By far the greatest number, 266 were shot for desertion in the face of the enemy. The executions continue to haunt the history of the war, with talk today of shell shock and posthumous pardons. Using material released from the Public Records Office and other sources, the authors reveal what really happened and place the story of these executions firmly in the context of the military, social and medical context of the period.

From the author of The Blazing World, “a work of dizzying intensity…eloquent and vivid” (Don DeLillo), about a young Midwestern woman who finds herself entangled in intense circumstances—physical, cerebral, and existential—when she moves to New York City. Iris Vegan, a young, impoverished graduate student from the Midwest, finds herself entangled with four powerful but threatening characters as she tries to adjust to life in New York City. Mr. Morning, an inscrutable urban recluse, employs Iris to tape-record verbal descriptions of objects that belonged to a murder victim. George, a photographer, takes an eerie portrait of Iris, which then acquires a strong life of its own, appearing and disappearing without warning around the city. After a series of blinding migraines, Iris ends up in a hospital room with Mrs. O., a woman who has lost her mind and memory to a stroke, but who nevertheless retains both the strength and energy to torment her fellow patient. And finally, there is Professor Rose, Iris’s teacher and eventually her lover. While working with him on the translation of a German novella called The Brutal Boy, she discovers in its protagonist, Klaus, a vehicle for her own transformation and ventures out into the city again—this time dressed as a man.

An award-winning journalist’s extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two years—a revelatory memoir about war, human nature, and endurance that’s “the best of the genre, profound, poetic, and sorrowful” (The Atlantic). In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young Syrians—who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives—and they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a blindfold—a grime-stained scrap of fabric—that was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal. Now, Padnos recounts his time in captivity in Syria, where he was frequently tortured at the hands of the al Qaeda affiliate, Jebhat al Nusra. We learn not only about Padnos’s harrowing experience, but we also get a firsthand account of life in a Syrian village, the nature of Islamic prisons, how captors interrogate someone suspected of being CIA, the ways that Islamic fighters shift identities and drift back and forth through the veil of Western civilization, and much more. No other journalist has lived among terrorists for as long as Theo has—and survived. As a resident of thirteen separate prisons in every part of rebel-occupied Syria, Theo witnessed a society adrift amid a steady stream of bombings, executions, torture, prayer, fasting, and exhibitions, all staged by the terrorists. Living within this tide of violence changed not only his personal identity but also profoundly altered his understanding of how to live. Offering fascinating, unprecedented insight into the state of Syria today, Blindfold is “a triumph of the human spirit” (The New York Times Book Review)—combining the emotional power of a captive’s memoir with a journalist’s account of a culture and a nation in conflict that is as urgent and important as ever.

In Thailand, a bomb destroys a tourist spot while two North Korean terrorists casually walk away from the site to plan the next phase of their plot against the United States. In Washington, CIA analyst Hugh Rincon catches the chatter about something big being planned along the Pacific rim, and his best agent says its linked to the Thailand blast. Now Hugh is beginning to connect the dots between missing radioactive material, a SCUD missile sold on the black market, and a Russian ship sailing toward the Alaskan coast...but the Administration refuses to heed his warning. In the Bering Sea, Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth is on routine patrol. On board is Hugh's estranged wife, executive officer Sara Lange. Sara and her ship are Hugh's only hope for stopping the terrorists...if she's willing to believe her ex-husband's story and risk her own career--and her crew's lives--to hunt down a death ship....

The issue of military executions during the war has always been controversial and embargoes have made it difficult for researchers to get at the truth. Now these two writers give us a vast amount of information. They show that trials were grossly unfair and incompetent. Many of the condemned men had been soldiers of exemplary behaviour, courage and leadership but had cracked under the dreadful strain of trench warfare. This acclaimed book is the authority on this shameful saga.

"First published in Japan in 2000 by Hakusensha Inc., Tokyo"--Colophon.

A playboy divorce lawyer’s new intern is about to lose her innocence in this scorching hot contemporary romance. Brad De Luca is used to getting whatever and whomever he wants. The premier divorce attorney in town, he’s a playboy who’s bedded half the city—including his own clients. And when the newest intern at his firm poses a challenge, his seductive prowess goes into overdrive. Pre-law student Julia Campbell is fresh off a failed engagement and happy with her new independence. Even if she hadn’t been warned away from Brad at every turn, she’d know he was bad news. The last thing she needs is a man who could destroy her job prospects, not to mention her innocence. But before she knows it, the incorrigible charmer has her under his spell. His deviant tastes plunge her deep into a forbidden world of sexual exploration . . . but her heart may not survive the fall.

2015 Goodreads Choice Award Semifinalist for Best Debut

Stunning psychic science thriller by the bestselling author of X-Files: Ground Zero and X-Files: Ruins.

A high school girl has the power to see glimpses of the future. Now she must learn how to live in a world of people "blindfolded" to everything but the present.