From the bestselling author of The White Donkey, a heartbreaking and visceral graphic novel set against the stark beauty of Afghanistan's mountain villages that examines prejudice and the military remnants of colonialism. In this hotly anticipatednew work from Maximilian Uriarte, creator of the popular Terminal Lance comics and The White Donkey, tells a "thrillingly cinematic" (Publishers Weekly) story of the personal cost of war and the power of human connection. Lapis Lazuli is a rich blue semiprecious gemstone found deep in the Sar-i-sang mountains of Afghanistan's Badakhshan province. For thousands of years it has sustained the nearby mining villages, whose inhabitants lived peacefully in the mountainous landscape--until the Taliban, known in the region as the Horsemen, came to seek the riches stored deep beneath the earth. Taliban rule has turned the stone into a conflict mineral, as they steal and sell it for their own gain. At the behest of the fledgling Afghan government, seeking to wrest back control of the province, United States Marines are sent into the mountains. A platoon led by their eager and naive commander, First Lieutenant Roberts, and a stoic, fierce squad leader, Sergeant King, must overcome barriers of language and culture in this remote region to win the locals' trust, and their freedom from Taliban rule. Along the way, they must also wrestle with their demons--and face unimaginably difficult choices. A sweeping yet intimate story about brutality, kindness, and the remnants of colonialism, Battle Born: Lapis Lazuli is an epic saga from the voice of a new generation of military veterans.

The extraordinary debut collection from the Guggenheim Award-winning author of the forthcoming Gold Fame Citrus Winner of the 2012 Story Prize Recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2013 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award Named one of the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35" fiction writers of 2012 Winner of New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award NPR Best Short Story Collections of 2012 A Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and Time Out New York Best Book of the year, and more . . . Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it. Her characters orbit around the region's vast spaces, winning redemption despite - and often because of - the hardship and violence they endure. The arrival of a foreigner transforms the exchange of eroticism and emotion at a prostitution ranch. A prospecting hermit discovers the limits of his rugged individualism when he tries to rescue an abused teenager. Decades after she led her best friend into a degrading encounter in a Vegas hotel room, a woman feels the aftershock. Most bravely of all, Watkins takes on - and reinvents - her own troubled legacy in a story that emerges from the mayhem and destruction of Helter Skelter. Arcing from the sweeping and sublime to the minute and personal, from Gold Rush to ghost town to desert to brothel, the collection echoes not only in its title but also in its fierce, undefeated spirit the motto of her home state.

The much-anticipated finale to Amie Kaufman's epic middle-grade trilogy Though Anders and his friends have delayed a war between the ice wolves and scorch dragons, their mission isn't over. With adults on both sides looking for them, they've sought refuge in Cloudhaven, a forbidden stronghold created by the first dragonsmiths. The ancient text covering Cloudhaven's walls could be the key to saving their home -- if only the young elementals could decipher it. To make matters worse, Holbard is in ruins and its citizens are reeling. Many have been forced into bleak camps outside the city, and food is running short. To rebuild Vallen, Anders, Rayna, and their allies must find a way to unite humans, ice wolves, and scorch dragons before they lose their last chance. In the final book of international bestselling author Amie Kaufman's sensational adventure series, Anders and Rayna must put everything on the line -- and the price of peace may hit closer to home than they could've ever imagined. AWARDS Shortlisted - 2021 Sara Douglass Book Series Award PRAISE FOR SCORCH DRAGONS: 'I found a satisfying fantasy world like none I have read before - one in which dragons and wolves take human form and have magical powers. One of the strengths of this book is the exploration of the idea that truth is a matter of perspective - that there are two (or more) sides to every story. There is no clear enemy, the conflict arises from the tension between the dragons and the wolves, and the reader can empathise with both sides, even though many of the adults in the story cannot ... This is a great book for middle-grade readers 8-12.' - Reading Time PRAISE FOR ICE WOLVES: 'An engaging world and cliffhanger ending leave readers wanting more' -- Kirkus, starred review 'Engaging to the end' -- Books+Publishing 'you'll wind up on the edge of your seat, unable to put it down' -- New York Times bestseller Meagan Spooner 'A thrilling, nonstop adventure' -- New York Times bestseller Shannon Messenger

Patrick McLanahan is back — and this time he faces his most difficult challenge. He must pull together a team of aggressive, maverick young pilots to face a world on the brink of massive nuclear conflict. It begins with a joint U.S.-Japanese-South Korean mock bombing raid. But the South Korean fighter pilots don't stick to the script. Instead, they race across the border into North Korea to support a massive people's revolt against the Communists. Virtually overnight, the fledgling United Korea is the world's newest nuclear power, igniting a fuse that threatens to blow Asia apart and trigger World War III. Only McLanahan has the top-secret aviation technology and the brash young heroes to stop the coming inferno — if he can get them to stop fighting each other and start fighting as a team before the world is reduced to cinders!

Don't miss the first-ever young adult fiction novel based on the megahit Halo video game series! Saskia, Dorian, Evie, and Victor aren't exactly friends at their small high school on the middle-of-nowhere colony world of Meridian. Each has their own problems, from absent parents to supporting their family, getting into a good college to making the next hit holo-film. But those problems were nothing next to the threat now facing their world: The alien alliance known as the Covenant is laying siege to Meridian, for reasons that aren't so easily explained. With their village in flames, the four teens find themselves stuck aboveground, locked out of the town shelter where the rest of the survivors are gathered. Together, Saskia, Dorian, Evie, and Victor are thrust into battle with nothing but a few scavenged weapons and an injured Spartan, one of the UNSC's super-soldiers. What's forged from the destruction will determine the fate of Meridian, and tilt the battle for humanity's survival.

The high-octane sequel to Outbreak! James and Connor face increasing hardships that will leave them with two choices: give up or become battle born! After the events in Nebraska, the Andderson brothers continue their trek northward, joined by Emmett and the girls. The group makes their way through Wyoming to meet up with Tank, the brothers’ best friend from a time before the apocalypse. They’re delayed when they stumble upon a school full of over a hundred survivors—most of them children. While Connor disagrees with James’s choice to help them, he follows his brother’s lead as a series of drastic events makes James the unspoken leader of the large group. Responsibility weighing heavily on James’s shoulders, they resume their journey north to rendezvous with Tank. Zombies become the least of their concerns as the group faces a new enemy hell-bent on their destruction. When the situation goes from bad to worse, the brothers are confronted with the horrible reality that no matter how prepared you are, at the end of the world, death is always right around the corner.

The struggle for power heats up in book two of this heart-stopping adventure series about siblings with magical shapeshifter powers, from New York Times bestselling author Amie Kaufman. After the fateful battle between the ice wolves and the scorch dragons, Anders and his twin sister, Rayna, have been reunited. But there's no time to celebrate. The temperature all over Vallen is starting to drop. And Anders quickly learns that the wolves have stolen a weather-altering artifact called the Snowstone, and every dragon, including Rayna, is now in danger. Desperate to broker peace, Anders enlists the help of a few new flame-breathing friends to stop the wolves' next plan of attack. Together, these former rivals must go on a dangerous quest to find the scattered pieces of the Sun Scepter, the only artifact that can counteract the Snowstone. Because if either device goes unchecked, all hope for a truce will be lost.

The war rages on in the next installment of the first-ever official YA series based on the megahit Halo video games! It's been three months since the colony world of Meridian was invaded by the alien alliance known as the Covenant. Under the close watch of the military, Evie, Dorian, Saskia, and Victor have been put into an accelerated training program with ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence. And to the teens' surprise, ONI has a mission for them: Return to their hometown on Meridian and monitor the Covenant's efforts to retrieve an ancient Forerunner artifact of untold power. But what seems like a simple job quickly spirals out of their control. With the artifact at risk of falling into Covenant hands, the stakes are raised, and ONI tasks the teens and their team of militia fighters with extracting the artifact for study. After a series of missteps with command costs the militia more than half their fighting forces, the teens take matters into their own hands. Their journey will take them far behind enemy lines, into the heart of the war zones on Meridian.Don't miss this official, original young adult novel, the sequel to Halo: Battle Born!

Author of an extraordinary string of New York Times bestselling novels, Dale Brown is the undisputed master of the aerial techno-thriller. Filled with explosive adventure, unforgettable characters, and authentic technology set against political scenarios so real they often anticipate world events, each of Dale Brown's novels is a major event. Now he returns to the airspace only he can truly call his own, in a blockbuster novel about a world on the brink of World War III and a new generation of brash young heroes... Patrick McLanahan is back. The veteran navigator-bombardier and brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force has been sent to a B-1B Lancer unit in Nevada to develop and train a tactical strike unit designed to seek out and destroy enemy missiles. He has his pick of the most aggressive Type A personalities in the flying game, though it may take years to pull this bunch of mavericks together to fight as a team. Then time runs out. The fragile peace in Asia is shattered when what was supposed to be a joint U.S.-Japan-South Korea mock bombing raid turns lethal. Instead of hewing to the script, South Korean fighter-bombers streak north to destroy several North Korean command-and-control, special forces, and secret police centers in support of a massive people's revolt against the Communist regime. To the world's surprise, the raids are a complete success. The North Korean military surrenders. The borders are thrown wide open and the United Republic of Korea is born. But this United Korea is also the world's newest nuclear power. It refuses to destroy thousands of captured nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, which it sees as potent protection against the massive threat of China to its north. Vowing never again to be anyone's puppet, it is ready to defy the United States and even attack China in order to preserve its sovereignty. Thus begins a conflict that threatens to embroil all of Asia. Enter McLanahan's raw, audacious team. Sent into the fray both to protect United Korea and to stop it from touching off World War III, Patrick's small but potent hunter-killer bomber force has the world's newest, most powerful nonnuclear weapon at its disposal--if its aces ever stop fighting each other long enough to start fighting the enemy.... Relentlessly paced, filled with the you-are-there feel of supersonic flight, Battle Born delivers the technology, action, and drama that Brown fans savor. It is this marvelous storyteller's most exciting and satisfying novel yet.

In the seven stories and novella of Minimal Damage, veterans search for dignity in a civilian life that has no need for men who were soldiers. Finding themselves psychically scarred, in crisis, on the fringes of society, or in battle with their memories, these men are living "like warts on America's ass." The characters range from the enigmatic Mr. K, who runs a reality television show and once led an escape from a Korean pow camp, to the doomed Billy Debecki, who regains his dignity in the last minutes of his life by remembering that he once willingly risked his life to save an enemy soldier. In one story, a man who was never a soldier finds a path toward reconciliation with his brother, a former Marine. In another, a man recalls becoming a soldier by watching the humanity of a fellow recruit disintegrate in basic training. In the novella "Snake Boy," a homeless Vietnam vet is kidnapped by a snake-handling evangelist. In proper, upstanding lives and lost, drifting ones, the depth of damage is never immediately apparent for these men. In war, chance, luck, and arbitrary timing conspire to determine a soldier's fate. As civilians, the same uncontrollable forces influence who finds a place in society and who is doomed to keep searching. With emotion, humor, and clarity, Barnes creates characters who show us what it is to live with the trauma of having experienced combat. The fractured souls and lives of these men remind us that the damage doesn't remain on the battlefield. Western Literature Series.