From the first landings at Casablanca straight through to the crossing of the Elbe River and V-E Day, this book tells the gripping story of the European theater of operations battles of World War II that American soldiers, sailors, and airmen took part in and of the strategy behind them. The book's core is its account of such famous and dramatic episodes as the landings in North Africa, Kasserine Pass, Salerno and Anzio; D-day; the liberation of Paris; the Battle of the Bulge; the crossing of the Rhine; and the race across Germany.

Loren did not ask for the dagger at her waist. She did not ask to be born to cruel parents. And she did not ask to be drawn into a conflict that threatens more harm than she can possibly imagine. After 15 years of toil, when her dreams of adventure have very nearly died out, a spark arrives to rekindle them. A half-glimpsed coat of blue, dodging through the trees of the Birchwood. A wizard. A fugitive. Escape.

1940, World War II. The Nazis have crushed Europe, and Hitler launches a massive aerial assault with the Luftwaffe against the heavily outnumbered British RAF. The fate of civilization teeters in the balance. Johnnie Shaux, a Spitfire fighter pilot, must summon up the fortitude to fly into a battle where death is all but inevitable, and continue to do so until the inevitable occurs. Eleanor Rand, a brilliant fighter command mathematician, studies the control room map constantly tracking the ebbs and flows of the conflict, and sees the glimmerings of a radical breakthrough.

In 1893 Norwegian zoologist Fridtjof Nansen set sail for the North Pole in the Fram, a ship specially designed to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crushing pressures, and travel north with the sea's drift. Experts said that such a ship couldn't be built and that the mission was tantamount to suicide. Farthest North, first published in 1897 to great popular appeal, is the stirring first-person account of the Fram and her historic voyage. Nansen tells of his expedition's struggle against snowdrifts, polar bears, scurvy, and the endless polar night.

Summertime, 1935. On a lake near Berlin, a young man is out sailing when he glimpses a woman reclining in the prow of a passing boat. Their eyes meet—and one of history’s greatest conspiracies is born.