Death Of A Hero

Ranger Will's past is revealed in this story from the New York Times bestselling Ranger's Apprentice. Halt reveals to Will the story behind his parents' deaths and how he came to live at the Castle Redmont Ward.

One of the great World War I antiwar novels—honest, chilling, and brilliantly satirical Based on the author's experiences on the Western Front, Richard Aldington's first novel, Death of a Hero, finally joins the ranks of Penguin Classics. Our hero is George Winterbourne, who enlists in the British Expeditionary Army during the Great War and gets sent to France. After a rash of casualties leads to his promotion through the ranks, he grows increasingly cynical about the war and disillusioned by the hypocrisies of British society. Aldington's writing about Britain's ignorance of the tribulations of its soldiers is among the most biting ever published. Death of a Hero vividly evokes the morally degrading nature of combat as it rushes toward its astounding finish. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Epitaph for Maqbool Sherwani is the harrowing true story of a poet who was crucified by wild Pathan terrorists sent to capture Kashmir, a few days after the Maharaja’s accession to free India in 1947. Rising above the dangers of his return to his hometown, Baramula, on the behest of Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah and his patriotic council, who had preferred liberty in secular Indian rather than join Pak theocracy, Maqbool Sherwani goes through terror, unleashed by mercenary guerillas, to face nightmare of loot and killing of the invaders. Betrayed by the greedy little men who have succumbed to lure of money and power, he is caught after a chase, to face his tormentors. He is shot after a mock trial and leaves behind a tender letter to his sister about his belief in future of the struggle for hope against despair. This short novel has been called by an eminent critic as one of Mulk Raj Anand’s “highest achievements†.

John Robinson presents the compelling journey from youth to middle age in this study of the spiritual and psychological realities of male midlife.

Captain Robert Nairac was a brilliantly successful undercover operative in the British Army, with a string of intelligence coups in the war against the IRA. But, until this book, the nature of his operations and the story of his betrayal and murder have remained shrouded in mystery. John Parker - author of a bestselling official history of the Special Boat Section - has obtained unprecedented co-operation from very senior Army sources, and from Nairac's friends and family, to reveal the truth behind the secret war in Northern Ireland - and the ferocious rivalry between MI5 and MI6 that contributed to Nairac's death. This book is a tribute to the heroism of Nairac and all those in Northern Ireland who gave their lives in the battle against terrorism.

In a style that is more detective story than conventional biography, Williams explores the multiple narratives of Cook's death. In short, Williams examines the story of Cook's progress from obscurity to fame and, eventually, to infamy--a story that, until now, has never been fully told.

"The Hero died twenty years ago but her death still haunts one young reporter. Now, on the anniversary of her death, the reporter digs in to find out the truth about what really happened."--Page 4 of cover

A memoir of motorcycles and muscles, of obsession and grief, and of a young man who learned how to stay alive through literature. At just forty-seven years old, William Giraldi’s father was killed in a horrific motorcycle crash while racing on a country road. This tragedy, which forever altered the young Giraldi and devastated his family, provides the pulse for The Hero’s Body. In the tradition of Andre Dubus III’s Townie, this is a deep-seeing investigation into two generations of men from the working-class town of Manville, New Jersey, including Giraldi’s own forays into obsessive bodybuilding as a teenager desperate to be worthy of his family’s pitiless, exacting codes of manhood. Lauded by The New Yorker for his “unrelenting, perfectly paced prose,” Giraldi writes here with daring, searing honesty about the fragility and might of the American male. An unflinching memoir of luminous sorrow, a son’s tale of a lost father and the ancient family strictures of extreme masculinity, The Hero’s Body is a work of lasting beauty by one of our most fearless writers.