Before The Big Rains

The twins destiny was decided by an age-old tradition long before they were born, but it was somehow altered through the application of wisdom and intellect by human intervention. The abnormal in society was normalised by custodians of tradition and the rule of customary law, councillors, and respected village elders vested with authority and the power to decide and act. Giving the twins a lifeline and letting them live when they should have been killed without any second thought about who their father is amounted to nepotism and infringed on the right of the one whose destiny was decided in an unorthodox way. This was an unforgivable violation of an ancestral practice, a grave transgression with dire consequences which pitted brother against brother, paving a path of dark hatred, witchcraft, and ultimately, murder in the guise of darkness with no witnesses. With the chiefs wife barren, leaving the clan without a leader, the throne without an heir was apparent and the inheritance shone brighter and larger in the direction of the perpetrator. If Makgabeng was destined to be in Seras hands, then the gods had surely erred in their judgement. How could they have sacrificed Paramount Chief Thaga at the altar of conspiracy, greed, and corruption? Would Lefa live to see the day and his rightful throne?

CBS camera-man Mike Marriott was on the last plane to escape from Danang before it fell in the spring of 1975. The scene was pure chaos: thousands of panic-stricken Vietnamese storming the airliner, soldiers shooting women and children to get aboard first, refugees being trampled to death. Marriott remembers standing at the door of the aft stairway, which was gaping open as the plane took off. "There were five Vietnamese below me on the steps. As the nose of the aircraft came up, because of the force and speed of the aircraft, the Vietnamese began to fall off. One guy managed to hang on for a while, but at about 600 feet he let go and just floated off--just like a skydiver.... What was going through my head was, I've got to survive this, and at the same time, I've got to capture this on film. This is the start of the fall of a country. This country is gone. This is history, right here and now." In Tears Before the Rain, a stunning oral history of the fall of South Vietnam, Larry Engelmann has gathered together the testimony of seventy eyewitnesses (both American and Vietnamese) who, like Mike Marriott, capture the feel of history "right here and now." We hear the voices of nurses, pilots, television and print media figures, the American Ambassador Graham Martin, the CIA station chief Thomas Polgar, Vietnamese generals, Amerasian children, even Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers. Through this extraordinary range of perspectives, we experience first-hand the final weeks before Saigon collapsed, from President Thieu's cataclysmic withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum, (Colonel Le Khac Ly, put in command of the withdrawal, recalls receiving the order: "I opened my eyes large, large, large. I thought I wasn't hearing clearly") to the last-minute airlift of Americans from the embassy courtyard and roof ("I remember when the bird ascended," says Stuart Herrington, who left on one of the last helicopters, "It banked, and there was the Embassy, the parking lot, the street lights. And the silence"). Touching, heroic, harrowing, and utterly unforgettable, these dramatic narratives illuminate one of the central events of modern history. "It was like being at Waterloo," concludes Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. "It was so important, so historical. And today it is still very obvious that we Americans have not recovered from Vietnam....Nothing else in my lifetime was as important as that--as important as Vietnam."

A seductive memoir of a life-changing affair during a time of revolution as it unfolds over a decade and across three continents, surprising both lovers with the power and urgency of love.

Looking to rebuild after a painful divorce, Alexandra Fuller turns to her African past for clues to living a life fully and without fear. A child of the Rhodesian wars and daughter of 2 deeply complicated parents, Alexandra Fuller is no stranger to pain. But the disintegration of Fuller's own marriage leaves her shattered. Looking to pick up the pieces of her life, she confronts the tough questions about her past, about the American man she married, and the family she left behind in Africa. A breathtaking achievement, Leaving Before the Rains Come is a memoir of such grace and intelligence, filled with such wit and courage, that it could only have been written by Alexandra Fuller. Leaving Before the Rains Come begins with the dreadful first years of the American financial crisis when Fuller's delicate balance--between American pragmatism and African fatalism, the linchpin of her unorthodox marriage--irrevocably fails. Recalling her unusual courtship in Zambia--elephant attacks on the first date, sick with malaria on the wedding day--Fuller struggles to understand her younger self as she overcomes her current misfortunes. Fuller soon realizes that what is missing from her life is something that was always there: the brash and uncompromising ways of her father, the man who warned his daughter that "the problem with most people is that they want to be alive for as long as possible without having any idea whatsoever how to live." Fuller's father--"Tim Fuller of No Fixed Abode" as he first introduced himself to his future wife--was a man who regretted nothing and wanted less, even after fighting harder and losing more than most men could bear. Leaving Before the Rains Come showcases Fuller at the peak of her abilities, threading panoramic vistas with her deepest revelations as a fully grown woman and mother. Fuller reveals how--after spending a lifetime fearfully waiting for someone to show up and save her--she discovered that, in the end, we all simply have to save ourselves. An unforgettable book, Leaving Before the Rains Come is a story of sorrow grounded in the tragic grandeur and rueful joy only to be found in Fuller's Africa.

A romantic, heart-wrenching tale of love against the odds from the Number One Sunday Times bestselling author 1930, Rajputana, India. Since her husband's death, 28-year-old photojournalist Eliza's only companion has been her camera. When the British Government send her to an Indian princely state to photograph the royal family, she's determined to make a name for herself. But when Eliza arrives at the palace she meets Jay, the Prince's handsome, brooding brother. While Eliza awakens Jay to the poverty of his people, he awakens her to the injustices of British rule. Soon Jay and Eliza find they have more in common than they think. But their families - and society - think otherwise. Eventually they will have to make a choice between doing what's expected, or following their hearts. . .

A Special Operations “fixer” for Homeland Security, U.S. Marine General Ray Hauser, teams up with Air Force Special Agent Sunny Hicks to recover a stolen GAU-8, the Gatling-gun like nose cannon of the military’s most destructive gunship, the A-10 Warthog. The weapon fires three thousand rounds a minute, each round’s explosive power equal to a stick of dynamite. Attached to a flatbed trailer, parked near Los Angeles traffic at rush hour, three thousand people could die within police response time. Ray has another, more personal incentive to find those who stole the horrific weapon. His wife, Alissa, went missing years ago investigating a similar theft inside the same Arizona desert. If he can solve the GAU-8 case, there’s a chance he can discover what happened to his presumably dead wife, even catch her killers. But that stolen Gatling-gun-like cannon also holds special attraction for Jessie Maris, unhappy wife of the weapon’s chief thief, Nolan Maris, a career criminal who plans to sell the GAU-8 for half a million. Jessie has been abused all her life, especially by the judge in a Family Court case many years ago. When her husband Nolan keeps her in the dark about his plans, then physically beats her, Jessie goes on a rampage that leads her and the GAU-8 to an old abuser and a crowd of innocents. Can Hicks and Hauser stop her? U.S. Special Operations never dealt with a battered, over-the-edge woman like Jessie before.

As a young girl, Rosamond is sent to Shropshire to escape the Blitz. Here, in the countryside, she forms a close bond with her older cousin, Beatrix, a young woman haunted by anger and resentment. Sixty years later, just before her death, Rosamond records her memories on cassettes, addressing them to a distant cousin—a near stranger-named Imogen. As Gill, her beloved niece, listens to these tapes, a heart—stopping family saga is revealed. In this masterful portrait of three generations of woman, Jonathan Coe exposes the profound reserves of hope and loss within the lives of ordinary woman.