Hawk Rising

Early morning and a ruffle of feathers, A shadow gliding through the backyard. High above your house Father Hawk circles, sharp eyes searching for prey. From the front porch, you watch. Swoosh! He dives after chipmunks, crows, sparrows, squirrels. Screech! The sun sets low in the sky. What’s for dinner? A father red-tailed hawk hunts prey for his family in a suburban neighborhood in this thrilling, fierce, and gorgeous nonfiction picture book, Hawk Rising, illustrated by Caldecott medalist Brian Floca.

Thousands in the Western world have sought a brighter life through the practice of Eastern meditation. While many have experienced a deeper sense of calm, most have never experienced the enlightenment promised by these methods. Through witty, entertaining anecdotes, Hawk Rising shares the secret to understanding, observing, and then managing a calming approach that softens, but does not stifle the desire for achievement. John Cowan has spent his lifetime learning within the worlds of spirituality and motivational psychology and offers an innovative method derived from the Buddhist system that effectively reduces anxiety through meditation and visualization. Cowan teaches through exercises and personal stories that viewing the imagination as part of the here and now will end frustration and increase the ability to begin each day with renewed power and confidence. Anyone interested in remaining in the hustle and bustle of the world and still achieving a new level of inner-peace will benefit from his explorations of the sources of anxiety, its causes, and how to develop a method for being usefully anxious while living a free, active, and creative life.

Early morning and a ruffle of feathers, A shadow gliding through the backyard. High above your house Father Hawk circles, sharp eyes searching for prey. From the front porch, you watch. Swoosh! He dives after chipmunks, crows, sparrows, squirrels. Screech! The sun sets low in the sky. What’s for dinner? A father red-tailed hawk hunts prey for his family in a suburban neighborhood in this thrilling, fierce, and gorgeous nonfiction picture book, Hawk Rising, illustrated by Caldecott medalist Brian Floca.

At the end of a winter-long journey into manhood, Little Hawk returns to find his village decimated by a white man's plague and soon, despite a fresh start, Little Hawk dies violently but his spirit remains trapped, seeing how his world changes.

“Black Hawks Rising” tells the story of the formation and deployment of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) in March 2007. Initially confined to peacekeeping within the Mogadishu enclave, it transformed into a peace-making mission. Many - including the author, who predicted the mission was DOA (Dead on Arrival) - gave the mission little chance of success. As a fighting force, however, AMISOM took on the Somali insurgents in 2010; expelled them from Central Mogadishu on Saturday, 6 August 2011; and expanded control of territory under the Somali Government in the succeeding years to most of Somalia. The opening chapters of the book take the reader behind the scenes to highlight the inconsistent - and sometimes disastrous - US policy in the Horn of Africa generally, and in Somalia (specifically dating back to the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s). Under President George Bush, the US strongly and vigorously opposed deployment of regional African troops in Somalia - instead sponsoring Somali factions to fight against each other and, when that flopped, egged on Ethiopia to invade Somalia in December 2006, which caused the rise of violent insurgency that spilled across borders. Young jihadists streamed from the heart of USA to fight the invaders. To clean up the mess, the Bush administration finally supported the deployment of regional troops. Black Hawks Rising captures intimately the stories of the men and women who made up AMISOM: their triumphs, setbacks and victories. The spotlight focuses on the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), whose Herculean efforts supported by Burundi National Defence Forces (BNDF) - and later the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF), Forces Armées Djiboutiennes (FAD), Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) and Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF) - were pivotal to the success of the mission. Their dedication, professionalism, ideological commitment, hard work and humanity turned Somalia from a wasted nation to one with hope for peace, stability and a better future for the Somali people. Like Heru - the Hawk-God of Ancient Egypt - AMISOM’s new breed of African peace-warriors have demonstrated the capacity to work across borders regionally, continent-wide and globally to help resolve conflicts whenever and wherever they arise - protecting lives and property, and preventing genocides before they happen.

It's the 60s during the Cold War, and Corporal Andy Hill is posted to RAF West Sanby as part of the technical team evaluating the new British surface to air missile programme, Red Hawk. While there, however, he has higher-authority additional orders to covertly investigate systems and personnel involved in the programme and to close down security weaknesses which had already resulted in leaked information to the Russians. In doing this, Corporal Hill goes up against an old enemy, the Russian, Major Garasov, whose desire for personal revenge is frustrated by Andy's successes in foiling KGB attempts to gain vital knowledge needed to enable Soviet control of the Red Hawk. Corporal Hill's budding romance has to take second place as he remains steadfast in his duty to his country and he never wavers until the job is done.

Scott Russell Sanders reveals how the pressure of the sacred breaks through the surfaces of ordinary life-a life devoted to grown-up children and aging parents, the craft of writing, and the natural world. Whether writing to his daughter and his son as each prepares to get married, or describing an encounter with a red-tailed hawk in whose form he glimpses his dead father, or praising the disciplines of writing and carpentry and teaching, Sanders registers, in finely tuned prose, the force of spirit.

Quests are overrated All his life, Prince Rupert thrilled in the glorious exploits of his royal ancestors. Finally embarking on his own heroic journey, Rupert realizes there’s a lot the minstrels leave out of their songs. On the hunt for a mythical dragon, besieged by demons, and navigating the cursed Darkwood with a smart-mouthed unicorn, Rupert is becoming somewhat disenchanted with legends. But even if he succeeds, peril awaits, because the king never intended for his spare heir to return from this fool’s errand. Now, with the help of a few unusual allies, Rupert must make up the story as he goes--outmaneuvering assassins, thwarting the voracious spread of the Darkwood, and grappling with rumors of a powerful evil’s return. Rupert may not be the hero Forest Kingdom wanted, but at this rate, he’s the only one they’re going to get. New York Times bestselling author Simon R. Green’s trademark wit and genre-twisting narrative sparkles in Blue Moon Rising, the first book of The Forest Kingdom series.