This gritty oral chronicle records with poignant and often disturbing immediacy both the bloody sixteen-day Battle of Wake Island and the forty-four months of hell that followed it. One of the first military engagements in World War II, the battle for this tiny, strategically located atoll in the Pacific began on December 8, 1941, just five hours after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It ended on December 23, when the marines—despite diminished forces, incapacitated fighter planes, and no communications—strove to stem an overwhelming Japanese invasion until their commanding officers ordered them to surrender. No sooner had the surviving marines—the author’s eighteen-year-old brother among them—laid down their arms than they were stripped and bound. For two days they sat naked in the hot sun; at night they shivered in the cold. For the next three weeks they slogged in the ruins of their bombed-out camp. They were then jammed into the hold of the ship that would take them to prison camps in China and Japan, where they would endure the cruelest indignities and grimmest tortures until their liberation in August 1945. Hell Wouldn’t Stop tells their often horrific, frequently heroic, and unforgettable if long-forgotten World War II story.

'Tis the season to be wary... Christmas is coming and all is far from calm in Pointe Judah, Louisiana. Newcomer Christian DeAngelo--Angel to his friends--is at his wit's end trying to manage Sonny, the hotheaded nineteen-year-old everyone believes is his nephew. In fact, Sonny is the orphaned son of a notorious mob boss, a protected witness...and Angel's responsibility. Angel has been commiserating with Eileen Moggeridge, whose lonely son Aaron has latched on to Sonny and gotten into deeper trouble than ever. But nothing could prepare Angel and Eileen for the boys' latest crisis: as they are horsing around in the swamp one afternoon, a shot rings out. Aaron is hit, but was the bullet meant for Sonny? Suddenly, goodwill toward men is in short supply and Angel doesn't know who's more dangerous: the hoodoo mystic with an eerie hold over the boys, the hit man roaming the bayou or Eileen's volatile ex-husband, Chuck.

I finally have everything I've always wanted: I'm part of a team with my brother and best friend, I'm spending my free time on missions hunting down evil monsters, and I'm about to turn nineteen, the age we fully come into our power. Hell, I even get to hang out with my favorite hellhound, Ralph, on my downtime. But it all still just feels empty, pointless even. Guilt is a b*tch. After last month's disaster, the members of Team Six abandoned Guild Headquarters, leaving me alone to deal with the crippling shame for my part in the events that night. And I can't say that I blame them. If I could, I'd run away from all of this pain too. Attacks on campus mixed with dreams that leave me feeling more exhausted than refreshed, have me yearning for our simple life back home in the cabin and wishing that we never joined The Guild at all. Losing focus when I'm supposed to be hunting down all the things that go bump in the night doesn't instill much confidence in my friends either. If I want to secure an official spot on a team, I need to snap out of my grief and become the protector I've always dreamed of becoming. And I need to do it quickly. Attacks are happening in record numbers and the fate of our world as we know it is quite literally on our shoulders. Just when I'm starting to put the pieces of my life back together, Atlas and his team come barreling back into town to stir everything up again. Six is just as alluring as ever, only now I know their big secret. The question is, do I follow my gut and protect them, or do I do what I've been trained to do and never look back? My family and The Guild may have trained me well when it comes to decapitating monsters, but they didn't train me for the one thing more difficult in this line of work...figuring out who exactly I can trust. ◆◆◆Dreams of Hell is Book Three in The Protector Guild series and it does end on a cliffhanger. Max's story is a slow-burn why choose / poly / reverse harem urban fantasy series. Get ready for action, spice, and intrigue.◆◆◆

***2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER*** ***THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER*** Winner of the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize Finalist, 2022 Chautauqua Prize Finalist, Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing Shortlist, 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Shortlist, 2022 Maya Angelou Book Award Shortlist, 2022 Carnegie Medal Longlist A Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! An Ebony Magazine Publishing Book Club Pick! One of Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fiction | One of Philadelphia Inquirer's Best Books of 2021 | One of Shelf Awareness's Top Ten Fiction Titles of the Year | One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books | One of NPR.org's "Books We Love" | EW’s "Guide to the Biggest and Buzziest Books of 2021" | One of the New York Public Library's Best Books for Adults | San Diego Union Tribune—My Favorite Things from 2021 | Writer's Bone's Best Books of 2021 | Atlanta Journal Constitution—Top 10 Southern Books of the Year | One of the Guardian's (UK) Best Ten 21st Century Comic Novels | One of Entertainment Weekly's 15 Books You Need to Read This June | On Entertainment Weekly's "Must List" | One of the New York Post's Best Summer Reading books | One of GMA's 27 Books for June | One of USA Today's 5 Books Not to Miss | One of Fortune's 21 Most Anticipated Books Coming Out in the Second Half of 2021 | One of The Root's PageTurners: It’s Getting Hot in Here | One of Real Simple's Best New Books to Read in 2021 An astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. As these characters’ stories build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America. Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably told, with characters who burn into your mind and an electrifying plot ideal for book club discussion, Hell of a Book is the novel Mott has been writing in his head for the last ten years. And in its final twists, it truly becomes its title.

For Dutton Caliber's American War Heroes series, the riveting true account of the Battle of Tarawa, an epic World War II clash in which the U.S. Marines fought the Japanese nearly to the last man. In November 1943, the men of the 2d Marine Division were instructed to clear out Japanese resistance on the Pacific island of Betio, a speck at the end of the Tarawa Atoll. When the Marines landed, the Japanese poured out of their underground bunkers—and launched one of the most brutal and bloody battles of World War II. For three straight days, attackers and defenders fought over every square inch of sand in a battle with no defined frontlines, and where there was no possibility of retreat—because there was nowhere to retreat to. It was a struggle that would leave both sides stunned and exhausted, and prove both the fighting mettle of the Americans and the fanatical devotion of the Japanese. Drawn from new sources, including participants’ letters and diaries and exclusive firsthand interviews with survivors, One Square Mile of Hell is the true story of a battle between two determined foes, neither of whom would ever look at the other in the same way again.

The shattered SheVa Nine is rising from its smoking ashes to fight against the ravening Posleen hordes and save the interior of the Cumberland Plateau.

Supernatural fantasy’s greatest anti-hero goes back to hell! In Aloha from Hell, the ruthless avenger, a.k.a. Stark, finds himself trapped in the middle of a war between Heaven and Hell. Perfect for fans of Jim Butcher, Warren Ellis, Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison, and Simon R. Green. Once again all is not right in L.A. Lucifer is back in Heaven, God is on vacation, and an insane killer mounts a war against both Heaven and Hell. Stark’s got to head back down to his old stomping grounds in Hell to rescue his long lost love, stop an insane serial killer, prevent both Good and Evil from completely destroying each other, and stop the demonic Kissi from ruining the party for everyone. Even for Sandman Slim, that’s a tall order. And it’s only the beginning.

Bobby Dollar has a problem or four of epic proportions. Problem one: his best friend Sam has given him an angel's feather that also happens to be evidence of an unholy pact between Bobby's employers and those who dwell in the infernal depths. Problem two: Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell, wants to get his claws on the feather at all costs, but particularly at all cost to Bobby . Problem three: Bobby has fallen in love with Casimira, Countess of Cold Hands, who just happens to be Eligor's girlfriend. Problem four: Eligor, aware of Problem three, has whisked Casimira off to the Bottomless Pit itself, telling Bobby he will never see her again unless he hands over the feather. But Bobby, long-time veteran of the endless war between above and below, is not the type of guy who finds Hell intimidating. All he has to do is toss on a demon's body, sneak through the infernal gates, solve the mystery of the angel's feather, and rescue the girl. Saving the day should just be a matter of an eon or two of anguish, mutilation and horror. If only it were that easy.

One of popular music’s most prolific and creative composers, Elvis Costello has written songs in every conceivable genre: pop, reggae, rock, country, funk, soul and jazz, but also for full orchestras and string quartets. What you may not have noticed is that a surprising number of these songs are crime stories—not mere nods toward unsavory events featuring questionable characters, but complete tales of murder and violence told in verse. Costello’s song titles alone confirm one of his preferred themes: “Accidents will Happen,” “American Gangster Time,” “Bullets for the Newborn King,” “Coal-Train Robberies,” “The Final Mrs. Curtain,” “Hetty O’Hara Confidential,” “Kinder Murder,” “My Thief,” “Shabby Doll,” “Shot with His Own Gun,” “That’s How You Got Killed Before” and “Watching the Detectives,” among them. His album titles include “Blood & Chocolate,” “Brutal Youth,” “National Ransom” and “When I Was Cruel.” You can just imagine the so-called pulp mysteries of the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s bearing identical titles accompanied by lurid, evocative cover art. In Brutal & Strange, contemporary masters of crime fiction dig into Costello’s catalogue for inspiration. The marriage of Costello’s themes and these award-winning authors’ creativity will seem an inevitable match when you experience the results. Whether it’s Meg Gardiner and “Complicated Shadows,” Catriona McPherson and “Tramp the Dirt Down,” Alex Segura and “I Want You”, Mark Billingham and “Our Little Angels” or many other virtuoso interpretations, the stories match the composer’s high standards and suggest there’s even more stirring beneath the surface of his songs. In his “Everyday I Write the Book”—explored here by Gar Anthony Hayward—Costello portrays an author as sinister, controlling and vengeful. That’s not to say the authors who contributed to Brutal & Strange are anything of the kind. But you will find their questionable characters engaged in unsavory events. One imagines Costello himself would approve.

All freelance Tunneler Miles Franco wants is a bit of freedom and a couple of bucks to rub together. So when the cops haul him downtown for smuggling people between worlds, he’ll take any chance he can get to stay out of the pen. And funnily enough, the cops have just the job for him. A mysterious interdimensional drug lord is staking his claim on Miles’ city, and the cops need Miles’ expertise to cut off the drug lord’s supply before it starts the biggest gang war in the city’s history. But snooping around in gang business is a dangerous job in a town where everyone’s on the take and the gangsters play for keeps. And there are a lot of ways a nosy Tunneler can disappear. Raw, insane, and hard-boiled as hell, The Man Who Crossed Worlds is a violent fever-dream for those who like their urban fantasy to kick them in the teeth.