Kirjahaku

An aviation adventure novel by Paul Berge, akin to Bootleg Skies. Set in 1937, protagonist, Kate Strauss--pilot--is flat broke and about to lose her one-biplane airline to the bank, when an offer arrives to make a few semi-honest bucks flying for the Mob. Hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do...especially when all the male pilots turn down the job. Tough times demand tougher characters, and Kate Strauss is tough enough to beat the Great Depression and all other obstacles trying to keep her from the sky.

This easy-to-read aviation book is ideal for student pilots with no flight background who wish to gently immerse themselves in flight training. It's ideal for private and sport pilots to brush up on the aero basics before a biennial flight review (BFR). Flight and ground school instructors will appreciate the Private Pilot Beginner's Manual (for Sport Pilots too) as the ultimate guide for introducing or reviewing aeronautical basics without scaring off future, or returning, pilots with overly technical dissertations. You'll laugh, you'll fly, you'll refer back to it throughout your flying life.

Los Angeles, 1936, broke, hungry and without wings. Like many Depression-era tramps, Jake Hollow is drawn to California's siren call. Unlike other hobos, he carries a telegram from an old buddy, inviting Jake to live the dream at rainbow's dead end, flying for the movies. As Jake rides the rails into L.A., the East Coast Mob, led by Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, arrives in style to stake its claim on the City of Angels. With Prohibition repealed, mobsters turn to expanding illegal gambling operations in Southern California. To avoid the law they can't bribe, the casinos are loaded onto old steamships and anchored outside the three-mile limit off the coast. What's illegal on land is vaguely legit offshore. As the money rolls in on the tide it carries the bodies of those who don't play by the rules-Mob rules, Hollywood rules. And Jake Hollow rarely plays or flies by the rules.

Picture a fence. On one side stand wingless adults with stunted imaginations. On the other are kids of all ages who know that physical barriers can't keep freed minds down. Aeromancy, by Paul Berge, takes sides and flies the reader across a landscape of dreams unlocked during his lifetime or two of flight. Ninety-one short stories present the irrational passion of those who inhabit the small airports where real aviation lives. The characters are outcasts, aeromantics who shun perceived reality and, instead, casually lift into the sky where there are no limits to an open-cockpit mind. You'll taxi old taildraggers across Midwestern grass airfields and challenge a lover to a Biplane Dual above the Hawaiian Islands. On a small airport along California's Monterey Bay, you'll meet a man, a dog, and a woman who flies into their lives to show that the spirit of life is free to anyone who falls in love. Aeromancy takes you to the other side of the airport fence. If you're already there, it's reminder just how lucky we pilots are..

At 18, Paul Berge, author of Muzzy, Niland Corner, Bootleg Skies, and Aeromancy, volunteered for the Army during the Vietnam War to avoid college. As with all veterans, he had to survive Basic Training, which was intimidating and painful but ultimately damn silly. On the positive side, they let him shoot up shit with machine guns, which is way better than college. A-5-2 takes the reader from civilian to soldier via institutional absurdity unimaginable outside the Twilight Zone but routine inside the military. Welcome to Alpha Company, 5th Battalion, 2nd Basic Combat Infantry Brigade: A-5-2. Childhood ends now....

December 16, 1960. Vice President Richard M. Nixon, having lost the recent election to Joe Kennedy's kid, slips out of Washington, DC and into an alternate dimension. Based on true events, two Time vectors intersect above New York City. United Airlines Flight 826 is minutes away from landing at New York's Idlewild Airport, while TWA Flight 266 heads for LaGuardia, when holiday plans are abruptly cancelled when the two airliners merge in space and Time. But it was almost Christmas, and no one wants sad TV, so the final Ike and Mamie Eisenhower Christmas Special with Perry Como goes on as scheduled. All seems right with the world, despite something going weirdly wrong with Time. The Cold War was closing the books on planet Earth, when Aunt Charlotte-in sensible shoes-meets Nixon aboard the last of the overnight sleeper trains, wherein they find love and set out to save humanity with help from Charlotte's six-year-old nephew, Muzzy. This is the fourth novel by Paul Berge, a pilot and retired FAA air traffic controller. Muzzy explores the insanely amusing possibilities of messing with Time. There might be a quiz, but cheating is encouraged.