Blood In The Forest

With original research and interviews with survivors, a journalist reveals the brutal yet forgotten battles in Latvia during the final months of WWII. While the eyes of the world were on Hitler’s bunker, more than half a million men fought six cataclysmic battles in the fields and forests of Western Latvia known as the Courland Pocket. Just an hour from the capital Riga, German forces bolstered by Latvian Legionnaires were trapped with their backs to the Baltic. Forced into uniform by Nazi and Soviet occupiers, Latvian fought Latvian – sometimes brother against brother. Hundreds of thousands of men died for little territorial gain in unimaginable slaughter. When the Germans capitulated, thousands of Latvians continued a war against Soviet rule from the forests for years afterwards. An award-winning documentary journalist, Vincent Hunt travels through the modern landscape gathering eye-witness accounts, piecing together the stories of those who survived. He meets veterans who fought in the Latvian Legion, former partisans and a refugee who fled the Soviet advance to later become President, Vaira Vike-Freiberga. A survivor of the little-known concentration camp at Popervale details his escape from a death march and subsequent survival in the forests with a Soviet partisan group - and a German deserter. With detailed maps and expert contributions alongside rare newspaper archives, photographs from private collections and extracts from diaries translated from Latvian, German and Russian, Hunt assembles a ghastly picture of death and desperation in a nation both gripped by war and at war with itself.

'A bloody page-turner' Mail on Sunday They call him Felix. A lost soldier without a memory and now a brutal battle to win. For fans of Bernard Cornwell, Simon Scarrow, Ben Kane and Conn Iggulden, a spectacular debut where honour and duty, legions and tribes clash in bloody, heart-breaking glory . . . AD 9. Fifteen thousand battle-hardened Roman legionaries strike deep into dense forest. Awaiting them are deadly, hostile Germanic tribes. In a clearing they find twelve massacred and strung-up legionaries. Is this a threat, or a warning? There is just one bloodied, broken survivor. He has no idea who he is. Only that he is a soldier. And now he must fight. As the legions are mercilessly cut down, the nameless soldier joins a small band of survivors trapped in the forest. If they fight together they have a slim chance of staying alive. But whose side is the soldier on? And is it the right one? 'Gives Rome's legionaries a contemporary voice - brutal, audacious and fast paced' Anthony Riches, author of Empire series 'Historical fiction written by a real war veteran who knows all there is to know about blood and bonding in battle. An earthy and powerful read' Sport 'Blood and guts, but also a clever exploration of the moral ambiguity of war and loyalty to a flag' Mail on Sunday

This is the rugged story of Jack Gilliam, a third-generation logger who, in the wake of a junk-bond Wall Street takeover of Oregon forests, becomes the timber war's first world famous casualty. Gilliam then becomes its most coveted pawn, as timber bosses, environmental protesters, cut-throat news reporters and politicians from county commissioners to the President, crawl over each other to profit from his tragedy.

A NYT Book Review Best Historical Fiction Book of the Year "The Singing Forest blends thought-provoking reflections on the moral reckoning of war crimes with ... a young woman’s attempts to decode her eccentric professional and personal families."—Alida Becker, New York Times In attempting to bring a suspected war criminal to justice, a lawyer wrestles with power, accountability, and her Jewish identity. In a quiet forest in Belarus, two boys stumble across a long-kept secret: the mass grave where Stalin’s police secretly murdered thousands in the 1930s. The results of the subsequent investigation have far-reaching effects, and across the Atlantic in Toronto, Leah Jarvis, a lively, curious young lawyer, finds herself tasked with an impossible case: the deportation of elderly Stefan Drozd, who fled his crimes in Kurapaty for a new identity in Canada. Leah is convinced of Drozd’s guilt, but she needs hard facts. She travels to Belarus in search of witnesses only to find herself asking increasingly complex questions. What is the relationship between chance, inheritance, and justice? Between her own history—her mother’s death, her father’s absence, the shadows of her Jewish heritage—and the challenges that now confront her? Beautiful and wrenching by turns, The Singing Forest is a profound investigation of truth and memory—and the moving story of one man’s past and one woman’s determination to reckon with it.

I have to hide who I am… Fiona No one can know I’m a vampire. I can’t – I won’t – be that weird chick on campus who likes biting people and pretends to be a vampire. But I am one. A new one, without a clue. And I’m so hungry. I want – I need – to feed. But I only want to do that if someone is willing. How on earth do I that? How can I be who I am, and get what I need to live? And what will happen to me if I don’t? Gabriel I have to hide my secret from Fiona. When she finds out the truth, I will change in her eyes. Forever. I may lose her. I may lose what she means to me. It’s only a matter of time before she finds out. Every moment I delay telling her is another moment I have with her. And it’s another moment someone else could tell her instead. How do I tell her, when I could lose her forever? Blood and Forest is a paranormal vampire romance. It’s the second book in the Blood and Forest series, but can be read as a standalone.

The definitive guide to the therapeutic Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, or the art and science of how trees can promote health and happiness Notice how a tree sways in the wind. Run your hands over its bark. Take in its citrusy scent. As a society we suffer from nature deficit disorder, but studies have shown that spending mindful, intentional time around trees--what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing--can promote health and happiness. In this beautiful book--featuring more than 100 color photographs from forests around the world, including the forest therapy trails that criss-cross Japan--Dr. Qing Li, the world's foremost expert in forest medicine, shows how forest bathing can reduce your stress levels and blood pressure, strengthen your immune and cardiovascular systems, boost your energy, mood, creativity, and concentration, and even help you lose weight and live longer. Once you've discovered the healing power of trees, you can lose yourself in the beauty of your surroundings, leave everyday stress behind, and reach a place of greater calm and wellness.

Daughter of the Forest is a testimony to an incredible author's talent, a first novel and the beginning of a trilogy like no other: a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love. Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of the Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac. But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift. To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known, and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss, and terror. When she is kidnapped by enemy forces and taken to a foreign land, it seems that there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all that she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once. Juliet Marillier is a rare talent, a writer who can imbue her characters and her story with such warmth, such heart, that no reader can come away from her work untouched. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

'A bloody page-turner' Mail on Sunday They call him Felix. A lost soldier without a memory and now a brutal battle to win. For fans of Bernard Cornwell, Simon Scarrow, Ben Kane and Conn Iggulden, a spectacular debut where honour and duty, legions and tribes clash in bloody, heart-breaking glory . . . AD 9. Fifteen thousand battle-hardened Roman legionaries strike deep into dense forest. Awaiting them are deadly, hostile Germanic tribes. In a clearing they find twelve massacred and strung-up legionaries. Is this a threat, or a warning? There is just one bloodied, broken survivor. He has no idea who he is. Only that he is a soldier. And now he must fight. As the legions are mercilessly cut down, the nameless soldier joins a small band of survivors trapped in the forest. If they fight together they have a slim chance of staying alive. But whose side is the soldier on? And is it the right one? 'Gives Rome's legionaries a contemporary voice - brutal, audacious and fast paced' Anthony Riches, author of Empire series 'Historical fiction written by a real war veteran who knows all there is to know about blood and bonding in battle. An earthy and powerful read' Sport 'Blood and guts, but also a clever exploration of the moral ambiguity of war and loyalty to a flag' Mail on Sunday