war

We Rule the Night caught me completely off guard with its immersive fantasy historical fiction world and narrative of fierce women. People who like the concepts of living aircraft, military, wartime, and magic will enjoy this. There is also the idea of traitors thrown into the mix. This fighter-pilot fantasy is a bit more of a slow burn.  I wasn't sure how I would react to this wartime fantasy setting, but I love how Bartlett used it and the intensifying pace to point out the flaws both in her world and our real world. It still has action elements to it, but it also has women pilots training

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Virginia Brackett has won the open category of our writing contest on the theme of WOMEN'S VOICES with "Mrs. Cross".

Virginia Brackett, Professor Emeritus of English, retired in 2016 from Park University where she directed the Honors Academy and received varied teaching and service awards, including Faculty Member of the Year, 2013 for Exceptional Services to Student Veterans. She served as a discussion facilitator for the 2017 NEH-funded initiative for veterans and their families, Planting the Oar. Brackett serves on the Kansas City

Don't be fooled by the opening battle scene and continuous conflict that drives the story into thinking this is a simple action book. It's tense and fast-paced, yes, but it is also full of moral, psychological, interpersonal, and political conflict. It is a book whose external action deeply considers complicated internal issues.

In my review of the first book in the series, I wrote: This is a gripping, thoughtful, powerful story, one deserving of many thoughtful readers interested in considering how a nation might very easily come apart as seen through the eyes of a young man during his

Imagine that food is scarce, money is even scarcer, education is not an option for women and freedom of anything - speech, religion, choice - no longer exists. This is Afghanistan in the 1990s, the world in which Fereiba now lives and she is desperately seeking a way out. She grew up in a better time where she was able to go to school, teach and live a respectable but free life. She recounts her childhood and growing up in a middle-class family while remembering her first love and how heartbroken she was when he married her sister. But now she is married herself to a wonderful man who supports

Maisie Dobbs' first case as a private detective is not what she expected nor wanted. But in the spring of 1929 in her new London office her first client walks through her door and asks for her assistance with a love triangle. Maisie, who was born into a working class family, is aware of her status and sex and is trying to make her mark in the detective world and so takes on the case as professionally as she possibly can. She has an inherent intuition about people and situations as well as a skill for attention to detail which she honed through years of reading, attending university and finally

On a day like any other day, the Others arrived. Their mothership lit up the sky and the human race was forever changed. The Others came in waves taking away electricity, bringing upon the world a plague, sending out evil drones to take care of the survivors, and now, they have taken on the form of humans. The idea of trust (or lack thereof) and the depths that humans will sink to survive are constantly replayed over and over through the actions of the multiple protagonists that Yancey introduces in the story. We meet the main protagonist, Cassiopeia “Cassie” Sullivan when she is at her lowest

Confession #1: I shy away from Science Fiction.

Confession #2: I checked this out because the audiobook was readily available... 

Confession #3: And maybe because there was a lot of buzz about the movie.

And you know what? I liked it. A lot. So much that I immediately started listening to another book in the series because I couldn't compel myself to finish my weekend housework unless my mind was in the universe of Ender Wiggin.

Admittedly, it took awhile getting used to young children conversing in such a mature tone, but the characters drew me in. Ender is unrealistically pure, a type of

Just as powerful as Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds, The Farther Shore is the story of what happens to our military men and women when we send them to hostile countries for reasons no one really understands.

Joshua Stantz is monitoring the bombing of a city in Somalia when things go horribly wrong. And they continue to go wrong, for how could they go anything but wrong? As Stantz and his company make their way across the warring city, searching for the army that has abandoned them, the reader is given a clear view into the hearts and minds of men thrown into a multitude of conflicts with no

Based in Roman Egypt, Agora is about a female professor and philosopher, Hypatia, who teaches young men about science. Encouraged by her father, she surrounds herself with information in the great library of Alexandria and is constantly testing new scientific theories. She is quite content to live her life researching but several men would like to marry her, including Orestes, one of the disciples that she teaches, and Davus, her slave. Love, however, is not the only thing that Hypatia has to worry about. Although their world seems calm and peaceful, an uprising by Christians begins to brew

The War of 1812 is one of the “forgotten wars” of the United States. It is, however, the conflict that helped to create the nation we have and provided the inspiration to our national anthem. In Through the Perilous Fight, Steve Vogel skillfully weaves together a narrative highlighting an eight week period of Washington D.C.’s history. Despite poor decisions, bad tactics, and the demoralizing burning of the city, the United States managed to survive and end the war that came very close to destroying the fledgling country. The only thing that I would have added is a back story to the War of

In Sebastian Junger’s latest non-fiction adventure War, the author spends parts of 15 months embedded with American soldiers in one of the deadliest locations in Afghanistan.  This is not a history of Afghanistan, not a commentary on US foreign policy, or a romanticized look at combat.  Politics and culture are far removed from the daily lives of the young men Junger observes and emotionally bonds with in the Korengal Valley.  Junger did almost everything with the 2nd Battalion: he patrolled with them, went through fire fights, ate military rations, interviewed them during the down times, and