Bill Howard

Between July and October 1940, in what became known as the Battle of Britain, a nation held its breath while the pilots of the Royal Air Force battled Hitler's Luftwaffe in the skies above England. A huge number of airmen lost their lives in this hard-fought episode and in the four years of air campaigns that followed, and those who survived faced terrifying risks; as Prime Minister Winston Churchill put it, 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few'. In this beautifully illustrated tribute to 'The Few', Bill Howard catalogues the objects which were essential to every wartime pilot, from the superstitious good-luck charm to the parachute on which his life might have depended and a wealth of other poignant items relating to his day-to-day existence during the air war against the Nazis.

What began as a simple scouting mission evolved into a full-scale battle when a regiment of Union soldiers unexpectedly encountered a detachment of Confederate cavalry. Three months after the Civil War's first important battle at Manassas in 1861, Union and Confederate armies met again near the sleepy town of Leesburg. The Confederates pushed forward and scattered the Union line. Soldiers drowned trying to escape back to Union lines on the other side of the Potomac River. A congressional investigation of the battle had long-lasting effects on the war's political and military administration. Bill Howard narrates the history of the battle as well as its thorny aftermath.

Rick Wade's father is hospitalized after a heated confrontation, and Rick knows that there is more to it than just a health issue. But someone (or someones) doesn't want him snooping around, and is willing to kill the detective to keep him from discovering the truth. Meanwhile, the agency is in search of a lost woman, but drugs, assault, and a shell-shocked witness make this case one of the toughest the Rick Wade Detective Agency has ever faced. Things are changing, and no matter who survives, you can guarantee that everything will be different from now on. Enjoy A Time to Die, the final book in the Rick Wade: Investigations series.