Of the 38 Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) confirmed or presumed dead in World War II, only one—Gertrude "Tommy" Tompkins—is still missing. On October 26, 1944, the 32-year-old fighter plane pilot lifted off from Mines Field in Los Angeles. She was never seen again. Seized by the Sun is the story of a remarkable woman who overcame a troubled childhood and the societal constraints of her time to find her calling flying the fastest and most powerful airplane of World War II. It is also a compelling unsolved mystery. Born in 1912 to a wealthy New Jersey family, Gertrude's childhood was marked by her mother's bouts with depression and her father's relentless search for a cure for the debilitating stutter that afflicted Gertrude throughout her life. Teased and struggling in school, young Gertrude retreated to a solitary existence. As a young woman she dabbled in raising goats and aimlessly crisscrossed the globe in an attempt to discover her purpose. As war loomed in Europe, Gertrude met the love of her life, a Royal Air Force pilot who was killed flying over Holland. Telling her sister that she "couldn't stop crying, so she focused on learning to fly," Gertrude applied to join the newly formed Women's Air Force Service Pilots. She went on to become such a superior pilot that she was one of only 126 WASPs selected to fly fighter planes. After her first flight in the powerful P-51 Mustang, her stutter left her for good. Gertrude's sudden disappearance remains a mystery to this day. Award-winning author Jim Ure leads readers through Gertrude's fascinating life; provides a detailed account of the WASPs' daily routines, training, and challenges; and describes the ongoing search for Gertrude's wreck and remains. The result of years of research and interviews with Gertrude's family, friends, and fellow WASPs, Seized by the Sun is an invaluable addition to any student's or history buff's bookshelf.

Outpirating the pirates with one of the most interesting men alive: Max Hardberger recounts his adventures repossessing ships and sneaking them out of lawless, third-world countries, often under threat of death or imprisonment. His journeys lead him from corrupt ports in the Caribbean to the ice-bound docks of Vladivostok. His adventures in rescuing ships pit him against a rogue's gallery of antagonists, including Haitian rebels, modern-day Caribbean pirates and Russian mobsters. • Capt. Max Hardberger uses every trick, tool and tactic at his disposal to right wrongs and out-pirate pirates in this action-packed expose of the seedy underworld of international shipping. As a professional ship extractor, he risks death and imprisonment in dangerous third-world ports to steal ships from modern buccaneers and corrupt governments and deliver them back to their rightful owners. In the course of his adventures, he's had to outwit resourceful crime families, subdue armed soldiers, and turn the tables on clever con artists. He's escaped imprisonment in Venezuela and avoided death at the hands of the Russian mafia. Because Max shuns the use of force, the ingenious methods he must use to accomplish his missions are the stuff of legend he's employed a witch doctor in Haiti, tricked armed guards off a ship in Honduras, and rented a brothel in Mexico, all to thwart the designs of ship-thieves. Seized! is an intense, fast-paced window on the underbelly of ocean shipping, where all power comes from the barrel of a gun, and the only law is the law of survival. -- "Max Hardberger, maritime repo man extraordinaire ... Using a combination of ingenuity, stealth and good old-fashioned derring-do, he has made his name retaking vessels which have been hijacked or which, through local corruption, are impounded by authorities hungry for bribes." • -- Sunday Express • "With most people, the longer you spend talking to them, the more normal they appear. With Hardberger, the reverse applies. Just when you think you've heard it all, he comes up with something wilder ... Over the years, he's distracted crews with prostitutes and witch doctors, bribed officials to look the other way, conned Russian mobsters and hidden from naval radar by riding out thunderstorms at sea; he's even taken a 10,000-tonne freighter out of Haiti while the 2004 revolution was going on around him." • -- Guardian • "Required reading, fascinating. Maritime Repo Man Hardberger does it tough; his life is flown by the seat of his pants, or shipped, much like his profession ... This book delivers." • -- Paul Carter, bestselling author of Don't Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs and This Is Not A Drill • "In this heart-stopping account of his work recovering stolen (or otherwise illegally-seized) ships from 'hellhole' ports, commercial captain Hardberger proves himself tough as a tank and articulate as a poet ... [He] has a seafarer's gift for atmospheric storytelling, layering details to create a sense of place, history, and foreboding ... Hardberger's escapades make undeniably fun reading." • -- Publishers Weekly • "One of the strengths of Hardberger's book is his prose, which is lucid, entertaining and dramatic." • -- Daniel Sekulich, author of Terror on the Seas: True Tales of Modern Day Pirates

noneAs I was working on the cover, looking at the photos of what our brain neurons look like, I began to think it looked like one of my favorite games, Asteroids, when your goal was to destroy the asteroids before they destroyed your spaceship. That was 30 years ago. I thought how funny it would be to paint into the cover picture a space ship like that to see if anyone would notice it, but the more I thought about it, the more it made me laugh. So I designed my own game in my imagination station and drew them out here for you to enjoy, Ill call it Seizuroids with the goal to destroy all the meteorites called, fear, stress, anxiety, worry, depression, loneliness, and anger before it hits the brain, causing a seizure and destroying all the electrical neutrons. Laughter truly is the best medicine.

The Moon, Father Forest, Great Fish of the Sea, and North Wind help a maiden rescue her true love from a troll princess in a faraway kingdom.