Bruce McCandless

Iron and Fire is a newly recovered firsthand account of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific war, told by a Medal of Honor–winning officer who fought from Pearl Harbor through Okinawa. Offering an unfiltered view of combat at sea—its decisions, costs, and consequences—the memoir preserves the lived experience of naval warfare through one of the most punishing operational tempos in American history. In 1941, the fire of war met the iron of duty, and a generation of heroes was born. Iron and Fire is the newly discovered World War II memoir of Bruce McCandless—a Medal of Honor recipient, career naval officer, and firsthand witness to the U.S. Navy’s most punishing campaigns in the Pacific. Written by an officer who fought from the opening moments of the war through its final battles, this recently recovered account offers an unfiltered view of the naval war in the Pacific. McCandless was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when the fleet burned and the United States was thrust into global war. From that day forward, he served aboard the heavy cruiser USS San Francisco (CA 38), which became one of the most decorated ships of the war, and later commanded the destroyer, USS Gregory (DD 802). The memoir follows a relentless operational tempo—from the uncertain weeks after Pearl Harbor through the grinding campaigns that carried American forces across the Pacific. McCandless captures both the strategic scope and human cost of the war at sea. The narrative traces his path from a childhood shaped by naval service, through the U.S. Naval Academy, and into sustained combat. He fought in convoy operations, night surface engagements, and survived the violence of Cape Esperance and Guadalcanal. As the war progressed, he went on to help force Japanese withdrawals from Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians and faced kamikaze attacks during the bloody invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Following the war, McCandless continued his naval career until he retired in 1952 at the rank of Rear Admiral. Dictated later in life to his daughter as wartime injuries took their toll and set aside for many years, this remarkable firsthand account offers a unique and authentic voice that, like those of E.B. Sledge or William Leckie, echoes across time.

Star Bound is a book for anyone who wants to learn about the American space program but isn’t sure where to start. First and foremost, it’s a history-short, sweet, and straightforward. From rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard’s primitive flight tests in 1926 through the creation of NASA, from our first steps on the moon to construction of the International Space Station and planning a trip to Mars, readers will meet the people and projects that have put the United States at the forefront of space exploration. Along the way, they’ll learn: • How the United States beat the Soviets to the moon • Why astronauts float in space (Hint: It’s not for lack of gravity!) • How fast rockets have to go to stay in orbit around Earth • How we can “look back in time” through a space telescope With technology evolving and humanity’s understanding of the universe expanding, we are entering an exciting period of space exploration. Authored by two veteran space writers with unique insights into the topic, Star Bound offers up the story of Americans in space with a focus on the cultural and societal contexts of the country’s most important missions rather than engineering and technical minutiae. Vibrant, positive, and humorous, Star Bound is packed with facts and stories for novice space fans. And sprinkled in with the history are lists of the greatest space songs, books, movies, and more-all designed to make space exploration accessible to even the casual reader.

These poems meet us where we are in the realm of the familiar world and then transport us into a space of emotional suspension. It's as though we're levitating. The poem ends, and we're still held midair. I love it when poems force us to reckon with gravity in this way.Katelin Kelly, Poet and Programs Manager, Austin Public Library FoundationAll of This Is Ours is not a long book, but it covers a wide range of emotion, human experience, and thoughtful reflection, with a certain subtle elegance of language that brings the reader directly into the emotional experience. Bruce McCandless III keeps his emotions just under the surface of the poem, not expressing them directly to the reader but showing the sensations, the actions, and the movements associated with those emotions, drawing the reader in and giving us a sense of sharing the feeling itself. Because the author does not speak too directly about his emotions, but lets the sensations permeate the poems instead, we can feel with him the aching desire to pull into oneself after a breakup in "Aversion," or the odd combination of intimacy and strangeness in "The Hook-Up," or the combination of devoted love and fear of loss that is parenthood in "Ghosts." All of This Is Ours is a wry, tender set of poems on an array of topics, written with an appealing subtlety and a gift for the rhythms of the English language.Indie ReaderIn All of This Is Ours, Bruce McCandless III is at his intellectual best, the fierce power of his wit shining through in funny yet terrifying poems as he confronts his own masculinity and thirst for competition. The poet works with equal ease in form and free verse and ends with tender homilies, in which his daughter figures prominently: " w]alking back / through stars as / thick as snow.... she says all of this is ours."Robin Scofield, Author of Flow, Southwest Book of the Year

Beatrice at Bay is the second Beatrice McIlvaine Adventure, a story that follows the soft-spoken and somewhat telekinetic Beatrice as she grows up in a world of increasingly sophisticated threats. The saga started with Beatrice and the Basilisk, a modern-day fairy tale that resonated unexpectedly with readers young and old. Beatrice was twelve then. She's fifteen now, and facing different challenges: a potential step-father; her own immense but unwelcome powers; the weird kids from the Academy; and-possibly most importantly-the end of the world as we know it. Can Beatrice channel her troubling destructive energies in the service of something greater than herself? Who can she trust at a beautiful school for gifted kids that isn't quite what it seems? And what's with this Lester White Bull kid creeping on her Instagram account, anyway? Clocking in at 25,000 words, a combination of "Stranger Things" and Pippi Longstocking, Beatrice at Bay is a fast, funny, exciting read for anyone with a hard head and a kind heart-kids, that is, between the ages of ten and seventy-four.

An ancient curse. An army of the dead. A vengeful spirit that has walked the world since before the deserts died. They all come together in Libya in 1805, when a makeshift army of foreign mercenaries and U.S. Marines sets off across North Africa to rescue three hundred American sailors imprisoned by the King of Tripoli. In this haunted land, the Realm of the Hidden, the expedition is soon beset by a series of brutal and mysterious murders--at first apparently random, but becoming progressively more purposeful and troubling. Private Lemuel Sweet, a young New Englander, chronicles the hardships he and his companions endure on their march west over the sands of the Sahara. Looming ahead of them is the threat of combat in a hostile nation. But worse is the creeping suspicion Sweet feels that one of the men leading the expedition is not what he pretends to be, and that supernatural forces are at work that could mean death for him and his fellow Marines before a single shot is fired. Death...or worse.

Six Heroes. Two Worlds. One Chance.Except for the fact that he's been chased out of this corner of the galaxy by demons he helped to create, formerly famous comic book artist Danny Ramirez is a lot like you and me: disillusioned, depressed, often profane. Unfortunately, Danny soon finds that his new home in Ythedra is under attack by the same forces besieging Earth. A dark spirit of unimaginable powers is leading an army of monsters and murderers north to enslave the last free peoples of the Ninelands. Someone's going to have to act like a hero, and maybe it's Danny himself-even if it means picking up a sword instead of his pen. He'll have some help from a grizzled infantry commander, a burly, down-on-his-luck petty thief, an exotic warrior princess, and an irascible but dangerous blue troll from a cave kingdom far to the north. Together they make a formidable fighting force. But time is running out, and salvation for Danny Ramirez may mean saying so long to his dream of returning to a world he realizes he loves after all.

12-year-old Beatrice McIlvaine has a problem. It's not sixth grade math. It doesn't involve boys. This problem is bigger than that, and it has a nasty bite. As Beatrice steels herself to fight a threat to the precarious existence she leads with her single mother and a troubled little brother, she finds she's not alone after all. A modern parable about love, family, and killing giant flying reptiles, Beatrice and the Basilisk is short (8,000 words) but not entirely sweet. There's a lesson in there somewhere. If you can see through the dismal night sky, and beyond those dangerous teeth...BOOK ONE OF THE BEATRICE MCILVAINE ADVENTURE SERIES. BOOK TWO, BEATRICE AT BAY, IS AVAILABLE NOW

It's 1911. Someone, or something, is leaving the good citizens of East Texas's Ochiltree County savagely mutilated and drained of blood. Slow-talking Sheriff Reeves Duncan needs to put an end to the murders, and soon. But it won't be easy. This is the Big Thicket, dark and brooding, haunted by racial tensions and economic despair. Fortunately, Sheriff Duncan can count on the assistance of an undersized but tough-as-rawhide Texas Ranger, two physicians, a mechanical wunderkind, and a soft-spoken idiot savant who knows the sloughs and baygalls of the Thicket like his own backyard. This league of unimpressive gentlemen is about to be tested by the cunning and ferocity of an enemy that walks by night--and the tentacles of a desperate sectarian plot that threatens the very survival of the human race. Cover design by Shaun Venish.