Physical therapist Jennifer Wade is unable to put the pieces of her life back together again after her Navy pilot fiancé dies in a plane accident. Flyer Paul Davis, her fiancé's best friend, feels responsible for the tragedy. When Jennifer and Paul must work together two years after the accident, they are stunned by their mutual attraction. They share a pained past, yet their current chemistry is undeniable. But this is a relationship that cannot be. Jennifer needs stability for herself and her deceased fiancé's baby, and Paul must focus on getting fit and back in the cockpit. When Paul is offered the position of his dreams, they both need to decide if love can ever be enough.

Unfolding from the bygone era of 1950s Las Vegas through the turbulent decades that followed, this epic novel examines the universal search for identity and reward in a world where the good life always seems out of reach. The streets of early Las Vegas are a tough place for a boy to grow up. Pete Elkins is fatherless, living in a cramped apartment with his mother, a party-girl with a penchant for falling in love with the wrong kind of man; and his older sister, who has grown up too fast from trying to parent both her brother and their reckless mother. Pete is headed for serious trouble when he is befriended by Willy Bobbins, a casino owner with a murky past and even murkier business practices. But Willy is also deeply compassionate and wise, and he soon becomes a surrogate father for the lonely Pete. Gradually, Pete becomes involved with Willy’s troubled family and comes to know both the scope of his mentor’s power and the depth of his vulnerabilities.

As only the third fighter pilot to become leader of the Blue Angels, Raleigh E. “Dusty” Rhodes helped develop the most famous aerobatics team ever formed. From POW to Blue Angel tells his story—a fast-paced drama teeming with action and human interest and capturing the initiative and tenacity of a true American hero. Jim Armstrong has drawn on extensive interviews and Dusty’s scrapbooks and flight logs to produce a rare account of the Blue Angels in the late 1940s. Readers will experience the stress of practice and the exhilaration of air shows as Armstrong takes them inside Dusty’s cockpit during the era when the Blues first found fame, perfecting their trademark formations and maneuvers. This book is also a moving account of the degradation that Rhodes suffered for three years as a prisoner of war, and includes his rare, ground observer’s view of the firebombings of Tokyo and Yokohama. Armstrong poignantly captures Dusty’s return to a changed postwar America, and also recounts his tour as a fighter pilot in Korea. From POW to Blue Angel is an intimate story of service and survival that will carve a place in naval aviation history—and inspire all who keep their eyes skyward.

As only the third fighter pilot to become leader of the Blue Angels, Raleigh E. “Dusty” Rhodes helped develop the most famous aerobatics team ever formed. From POW to Blue Angel tells his story—a fast-paced drama teeming with action and human interest and capturing the initiative and tenacity of a true American hero. Jim Armstrong has drawn on extensive interviews and Dusty’s scrapbooks and flight logs to produce a rare account of the Blue Angels in the late 1940s. Readers will experience the stress of practice and the exhilaration of air shows as Armstrong takes them inside Dusty’s cockpit during the era when the Blues first found fame, perfecting their trademark formations and maneuvers. This book is also a moving account of the degradation that Rhodes suffered for three years as a prisoner of war, and includes his rare, ground observer’s view of the firebombings of Tokyo and Yokohama. Armstrong poignantly captures Dusty’s return to a changed postwar America, and also recounts his tour as a fighter pilot in Korea. From POW to Blue Angel is an intimate story of service and survival that will carve a place in naval aviation history—and inspire all who keep their eyes skyward.

Traces the history of the Navy's elite pilot group, and discusses their aircraft and the types of manuevers they perform at air shows.

The Lucky Loadmaster is an action packed book. It does not matter whether you are with the airmen in Vietnam, the first night of TET or just reading about the author's hair raising childhood adventures. Sometimes growing up and learning defensive moves in a small middle North Carolina town can be interesting. For the first time, a book written that is about the honest daily occurrences and multiple battles of a real airman in Vietnam. These were battles like others, in which people died and others became heroes. Battles in which crews looked death in the face multiple times each day, flying into places without the security of arms or cover, the stress of actual war. Tom Stalvey's wishes to enlist and study at the great Air Force electronics schools at the time, did not come to pass, instead he was assigned to the very élite and extremely dangerous rolls of an enlisted aircrew member. The courses these young men completed were at the considered complete college courses equal to obtaining a degree in a matter of months. The duty aboard the Lockheed C-130 Hercules as a Weight and balance Technician or Loadmaster was and still is essential. He was destined to end up in Vietnam. after two and a half years of training and protocol Only a slight recess was given these airmen as these young men were handed the keys to three fourths of a C-130 aircraft. Most of them averaged 22 years of age. Trained at doing their jobs by the book they soon learned that doing so in Vietnam could cost time and lives. Great at modifying plans on the run, many were awarded our nation's highest war time decorations. Laugh out loud as you follow a young boy into what must have been The start of The Lucky Loadmaster's ironic heavenly inspired protection and cry for the pain of his broken body!

Do you want to know when Duke Ellington was king of The Cotton Club? Have you ever wondered how old Miles Davis was when he got his first trumpet? From birth dates to gig dates and from recordings to television specials, Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler have left no stone unturned in their quest for accurate, detailed information on the careers of 3.300 jazz musicians from around the world. We learn that Duke Ellington worked his magic at The Cotton Club from 1927 to 1931, and that on Miles Davis's thirteenth birthday, his father gave him his first trumpet. Jazz is fast moving, and this edition clearly and concisely maps out an often dizzying web of professional associations. We find, for instance, that when Miles Davis was a St. Louis teenager he encountered Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie for the first time. This meeting proved fateful, and by 1945 a nineteen-year-old Davis had left Juilliard to play with Parker on 52nd Street. Knowledge of these professional alliances, along with the countless others chronicled in this book, are central to tracing the development of significant jazz movements, such as the "cool jazz" that became one of Miles Davis's hallmarks. Arranged alphabetically according to last name, each entry of this book chronologically lists the highlights of every jazz musician's career. Highly accessible and vigorously researched, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz is, quite simply, the most comprehensive jazz encyclopedia available.

A chronicle of the life of the acclaimed Broadway actress traverses five decades in show business and reveals her personal challenges involving her heritage and her father's alcoholism.