Flyboy S Fancy

Debbie White visited River’s End Ranch over Christmas to spend time with her daughter, and she fell in love with the place. When she realizes there’s a job open in her chosen field, she jumps at the chance to move there. As the director of the Kids’ Korral, she has a lot to do to get it ready to open before one of the daughters of the family has her baby. She can’t let her focus be derailed by a handsome pilot who she meets on her first day of work. Frank Watson, baseball cap collector and retiree of the US Air Force, is the official pilot of River’s End Ranch. In his late forties, he’s never married and isn’t sure he would ever want to. When he first meets Debbie, all his plans for life change. Suddenly he can see himself as a family man. Can he convince Debbie that it’s time for her to move on with a relationship? Or will she continue to be alone?

Tommy Riley and his friends are growing up among the men and machines of a key Air Force Base in the middle of the Cold War. One day, the boys sneak into a top-secret reconnaissance bomber, switch on the radio, and overhear a commie plan that is so diabolical . . .

Narrated by Adam Oney from his hospital bed in a burn unit, Sam Michel’s first novel centers around two boys, one black, the other white. They meet as eight-year-olds on an Air Force base in the Nevada desert where they share the bond of wanting to fly, like Adam’s father in his Phantom F-4 fighter. The boys navigate their childhood through fixed constellations of race and class as Adam loses his father to martinis and his fabled past, his mother to Reverend Marsh. He also faces losing Mike’s friendship, and very nearly loses his life. Throughout it all, Adam is buoyed by his talent for happiness and the strength of his flyer’s heart.

What if we could travel back in time to save our heroes from painful deaths? What if we could rewrite history to protect and reward the innocent victims of injustice? In Alfredo Véa’s daring new novel, one man does just that, taking readers on a series of remarkable journeys. Abandoned as a child, brooding and haunted as an adult, Simon Vegas, “the Mexican Flyboy,” toils for years to repair a time machine that fell into his hands in Vietnam. With the help of his friend, eccentric Hephaestus Segundo, Simon uses the device to fly through time. Wherever acts of human cruelty take place, in the past or in the present, the machine lets him lift the suffering away and deliver them to a utopian afterlife. Blending magical realism, science fiction, history, and comic-book fantasy, The Mexican Flyboy swoops readers from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the vineyards of Northern California, from Ethel Rosenberg’s execution to Joan of Arc’s pyre, in a tale of justice, trauma, regret, and redemption. The dead pass through the narrative in a parade at once heartbreaking and hopeful, among them Vincent van Gogh and Malcolm X, Ernest Hemingway and Amadou Diallo. But the living—Simon’s pregnant wife, Elena, his old friend Ezekiel Stein, prisoner Lenny Hudson—all throw doubt onto Simon’s story. Is Simon truly a “magus,” transporting martyrs to a shared community in paradise? Or is he just a man broken by loss, guilt, and the trauma of war, hopelessly lost in an illusion of his own making? Crossing genres and blending comedy with tragedy, Alfredo Véa imagines a world where we can rewrite our pasts and heal the wounds inflicted by history. Inviting comparisons to the work of James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges, Junot Díaz and Michael Chabon, this powerful book is like nothing else you have ever read.

2043 A.D.: The Ngumi War rages. A burned-out soldier and his scientist lover discover a secret that could put the universe back to square one. And it is not terrifying. It is tempting...

In dramatic writing and numerous archival and contemporary photos, this accessible and lively coffee-table book tells the story of the small prairie city with the big, big reputation.Despite its odd name - or maybe even partially because of it - Moose Jaw has had a history that is rich beyond that of most of its sister prairie cities. This new and comprehensive book charts the events that make up both the city's history and its mythology: the infamous River Street red-light district; the time half the police force threw the other half in jail; the coming of the air force training base. And, of course, those mysterious tunnels.Extensive interviews with Moose Jaw people who were witness to many of its historical highlights give the book a conversational immediacy. Numerous photos from past and present, along with reproductions of letters, posters, handbills and interesting documents, present the visual record to complement the text.