Forty years ago this week, on August 14, 1973, US bombing activities in Cambodia—in support of Lon Nol’s forces fighting the Communist Khmer Rouge—ceased at midnight in accordance with the Congressional ban resulting from the passing of the Case-Church Amendment earlier that summer.

This legislation ended 12 years of combat in Indochina and prohibited further US combat activity in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, unless the president secured Congressional approval in advance. Although the US did continue to provide military equipment and economic support to the South Vietnamese government, the Case-Church Amendment effectively ended direct US military involvement in the Vietnam War. 

More than a decade later, William Broyles, drafted when he was a twenty-four-year-old student at Oxford University, found himself flooded with emotion during the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and decided to return to Vietnam to confront what he’d been through. In this gripping memoir, Broyles, a former marine, tries to make sense of the war. 

No American before or since has gone so deeply into the other side: the enemy side. Broyles interviews dozens of Vietnamese, from the generals who ran the war to the men and women who fought it. He moves from the corridors of power in Hanoi—so low-tech that the plumbing didn’t work—to the jungles and rice paddies where he’d fought. He meets survivors of American B-52 strikes and My Lai, and grieves with a woman whose son was killed by his own platoon. Along the way, Broyles also explores the deep bonds he shared with his own comrades, and the mystery of why men love war even as they hate it. Previously published as Brothers in Arms, this edition includes a new preface by the author, excerpted below.

Praise for William Broyles: 

“I read Goodbye Vietnam when I was seventeen and about to join the Corps....This is an essential piece of American combat literature. Broyles captures the dizzying highs and crushing lows of small unit warfare, the camaraderie, the sacrifice, and the long trippy road home toward some kind of inner peace for the individual soldier. Read it. Read it. Read it.” — Anthony Swoffard, Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles

“A first-rate piece of work, infused with an ideal American common decency and common sense.” — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“A book as important as this…called for an author young enough to have fought in Viet Nam, lucky enough and cool enough to survive, brave enough to go back and face his old foes and able to write well enough to capture the paradoxes, terrors and beauty of that land and its abominable war.” — Norman Mailer

Goodbye Vietnam by William Broyles {Excerpt}

As my mother always says, cooking is therapeutic. Glass of red wine in one hand, spatula in the other, delicious smells slowly rising from the pots on the stove . . . I really must agree. Sometimes it seems like there’s nothing more relaxing than digging your fingers into soft, floury dough, or taking a sneaky taste of that irresistible brownie batter.

The slower pace of summer is the perfect time to sharpen your cooking skills. Take on a new project like French cuisine or gourmet baking on those lazy summer evenings. You’ll gain a new talent, and you’ll have hours of fun doing it!

Jacques Pépin New Complete Techniques by Jacques Pépin

A veteran in the culinary world, Jacques Pépin guides you through every stage of the cooking process. The step-by-step photographs make it feel like he is right there in the kitchen with you, helping you along. Pépin doesn’t just give you mouthwatering recipes to follow, he goes a step further, showing you, for example, how to eviscerate a chicken. You can finally fulfill your secret longing to butcher a whole chicken with ease! Try impressing guests with this Stuffed Veal.

New Complete Techniques by Jacques Pepin [Excerpt] by OpenRoadMedia

Bake It Like You Mean It  by Gesine Bullock-Prado

It’s time to retire the Betty Crocker cake mixes; whipping up homemade icing or printing intricate designs on a cake is much more fulfilling. In Bake It Like You Mean It, Gesine Bullock-Prado offers exciting recipes such as My Big Fat Creamsicle Meringue Moment, and useful tips such as how to use stencils to decorate a cake. This recipe is for a showstopping layer cake:

Bake It Like You Mean It by Gesine Bullock-Prado [Excerpt] by OpenRoadMedia

Sugar Baby by Gesine Bullock-Prado

Nothing puts you in a good mood like sugary sweets. In Sugar Baby, Bullock-Prado focuses on all the different ways to transform sugar into candies, cakes, pastries, and more. The following recipe uses agave nectar, a sweetener from Mexico that is one-and-a-half times sweeter than table sugar, yet has a much lower glycemic index. This cake is absolutely delicious, if the name doesn’t already imply it:

Sugar Baby by Gesine Bullock-Prado [Excerpt] by OpenRoadMedia

Riso: Undiscovered Rice Dishes of Northern Italy by Gioietta Vitale with Lisa Lawley

Rice is often thought of as a side dish instead of the main attraction. In Riso, Gioietta Vitale challenges that stereotype using the skills she learned in her home city of Milan. She shows how rice can be used in soups, salads, risotto, and desserts. If you get a thrill out of taking on a challenge and getting your hands a little dirty, the recipe below is perfect:

Riso by Gioietta Vitale [Excerpt] by OpenRoadMedia

Coquilles, Calva, and Crème by Gerry Dryansky with Joanne Dryansky

Gerry Dryansky (also known as G. Y. Dryansky) is the senior European correspondent for Condé Nast Traveler. A New Yorker living in Paris, his adoration for other cultures is infectious, especially in this meticulous book boasting so much more than recipes. Dryansky shares his adventures in France while bringing French cuisine to life. Cassoulet is a famously hearty French delicacy; if you thought Seafood Risotto was a challenge, wait until you read this recipe. Picky eaters, beware: It involves a pig’s shin and knuckle!

Coquilles, Calva & Creme by Gerry Dryansky [Excerpt] by OpenRoadMedia

Don’t miss out on The Essentials: A Selection of National Book Award Finalists & Winners published by Open Road Media. From August 6 – 19, we are offering the chance to win an ereader filled with all forty-four Essential ebooks! Follow the link listed below to enter the sweepstakes.  

In honor of The Essentials, we are featuring excerpts from twelve ebooks included in the collection. This is a great opportunity to explore new-to-ebook titles by authors such as Mary McCarthy (The Group), Susan Straight (Highwire Moon), Jessica Hagedorn (Dogeaters), Elizabeth Benedict (Slow Dancing) and more! 

Take a sneak read of the twelve Essential excerpts: http://www.scribd.com/collections/4323908/The-Essentials

Enter to win all forty-four ebooks & a Kobo Arc Tablet: http://www.openroadmedia.com/essentials

Often called the American Agatha Christie, author Mary Roberts Rinehart is one of the United States’s most admired mystery writers. Born in Pittsburgh in 1876, Rinehart began writing fiction in her spare time while training as a nurse, until a stock market crash compelled her to turn to writing to make ends meet. With her first two novels, The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909), Rinehart propelled into national fame. Her 1920 mystery The Bat, which features a costumed criminal, was cited by comic book master Bob Kane as the inspiration for his "Batman." Noted for introducing popular phrases such as “the butler did it” into the English vernacular, Rinehart established herself as a deft and imaginative author whose catalog of classic “whodunit” mysteries have stood the test of time.

Originally published in 1930, Rinehart’s The Door shows that even those closest to you may not be trustworthy. Elizabeth Bell had grown quite familiar with routine, having spent much of her years presiding over her peaceful and organized household. With no immediate family and a few servants at her beck and call, Miss Bell spends the majority of her time engrossed with lethal crimes and the diabolical motivations behind them—that is, until her cousin Judy arrives, and a guilty pleasure soon becomes Miss Bell’s reality.

In no time, cousin Judy transforms Miss Bell’s household dynamics with her youthful vivaciousness, but the good times come to a startling halt when Sarah Gittlings, Miss Bell’s family nurse, is found brutally murdered. When police evidence reveals that the murderer resides within Miss Bell’s own estate, haunting thoughts of the homicidal lunatic running amok are only intensified. Uncertain of who to trust, and knowing there can only be one ruler of her manor, Miss Bell must become a sleuth in her own right to stop the tyranny of a slayer lurking right under her nose.

To learn more about Mary Roberts Rinehart, visit her author page here.

It's Friday! Time for another installment in our romp through Helen Gurley Brown's 1965 classic, Sex and the Office. The definitive, comprehensive guide to working life for an entire generation of women, Sex and the Office offered advice on how to deal with your boss, manage office politics, and make the most of personal and professional opportunities in the office. Want to know what it was really like to be the girl in a Mad Men–style workplace? Read on—for this week's excerpt from  Sex and the Office!

ONE OF THE LOVELY things that can happen to a girl in an office every day is lunch. Lunchtime is fraught with possibilities! There’s all that lovely eating … vitella con riso in little al fresco Italian restaurants, winter steak-sandwich lunches in chop houses all dark and tweedy and huggy-bear, French haute cuisine the marvelous week before Christmas when everything’s sparkly and champagne-y.

Aside from all the good eating during lunch, you could also be asked to get married, to go merry-go-round riding, to accompany a housing developer on a trip to see what develops or to help somebody steal documents out of the front office. Lunchtime can also be a quiet time of meditation … while you knit up messy ravels from the night before.

Lunches with men are surely some of the best experiences of a girl’s work life. Those lunches alone could be the reason any woman should want to hold a job. We’ll get to the boy-girl lunches in a moment. First let’s talk about girl lunches.

My idea of an absolutely nothing way to spend a lunch hour with girl-pals from your office is in a mediocre, noisy, stale-smelling, second-rate restaurant. True, there are some great inexpensive restaurants but they probably aren’t handy to your office, so you wind up in the hash-house where you still can’t get out with a tab of less than four dollars, the management isn’t very friendly and some of the things you get to eat wouldn’t have passed muster in the galley of the Bounty.

On certain fiendish days you and your girl friends need to be soothed by icy martinis, of course, and waited on hand and foot for morale purposes. In that case go to the restaurant, but make it a good one while you’re at it—for man-reasons as well as morale reasons. And take one—not five—dashing girl friends with you. You may find the foyer so crowded you’ll get to cluck-clucking with strange dreamboats about the service. You may get seated in an alcove next to some of them or one may drop his overcoat on you in passing. Anything can happen, but not with five other girls.

Unless you have a definite, special lunch date or unless fellows and girls are going together and it’s to be party-like, I think it’s much smarter to bring your lunch from home than to go to a dismal eating place practically ever. Home-lunch can be delicious glamor-girl fodder instead of junk. You can enjoy deep-down quiet visiting with your friends and save enough money to spend Christmas in Jamaica.

Do I hear even a peep of approval? Of course not! The only things I hear probably are deep, nasty growls of contempt! It seems to me girls who ought to be bringing their lunches most bring them least. A brown paper bag is supposed to be degrading—like the scarlet “A” on Hester’s sweater.

I think this is just plain silly! Many people who could afford twenty dollars a day at the poshest establishment bring their lunch regularly because the food is better and the office atmosphere more relaxing. George Cukor, the elegant director of My Fair Lady, totes a beautiful little picnic hamper to work every day in the back of his Rolls Royce and dines elegantly on cold pheasant, foie gras and Dom Perignon 1951. (At least I’ve been told this by people who know him.)

Rather than out and out bring lunch from home, some girls prefer making forays to the catering truck—figure it saves their image. How misguided can you be? Catering-truck stuff says far worse things about you than the brown paper bag fare I have in mind (which people will be hovering in your office just to watch you unpack). Besides, the chuckwagon food is often wretched eating and expensive. As one fastidious Detroit secretary (after my own heart) says, “I’d rather eat dog biscuits than any of Kiss-Me-Katerer’s (her company’s catering truck) mealy hamburgers, cold-cream pies or hot dogs on wet cotton buns.” (She’s right about the dog biscuits. They’re formulated for nutrition and aren’t a bit bad.)

“Kiss-Me has hard-boiled eggs,” she concedes, “but they’re twelve cents apiece, $1.44 a dozen, and I, for one, am not going to pay those prices, nor thirty-five cents for their twenty-five-cent cartons of cottage cheese.”

No, you may not have a hamburger and malt sent up from the drugstore either! The tab is ninety-nine cents plus tip, and with the exception of the teeny-tiny piece of hamburger, you’re only putting expensive junk into you. For the same money, you can bring a lunch from home that’s good for you and delicious. You can even do it for a quarter of the money. After lunch is consumed, there are a dozen uplifting things to do during the rest of your lunch hour. (We’ll list them.)

It’s true some companies don’t have a very good place for girls to eat. In one company I worked for my desk blotters used to curl up like snails from having so many tomatoes and peaches peeled on top of them. They would reach the saturation point, curl up and die! Another sufferer told me she wasn’t supposed to eat lunch at her desk because of working for a wheel, but because of working for a wheel she couldn’t get away from it. Consequently, whenever she heard footsteps during lunch, she slammed everything into the bottom desk drawer, then tried to get the mayonnaise, lettuce, meat loaf and tomato back into sandwich form after the visitors left. (Cake icing she ate right off the side of the drawer with a spoon.)

Another friend told me about sticking some cottage cheese in the back of a drawer for later consumption and then forgetting about it. Ten days later the whole department was gamy, but nobody knew what it was—only that the smell got worse when Priscilla was at her desk (presumably opening her cottage-cheese drawer to get things out). Finally, when the whispers got so loud Priscilla couldn’t ignore them, she went on a thorough search and found her cottage cheese busily making penicillin. If your company has no decent place for you to lunch, I suggest you stroll to the park in nice weather or eat in the back of an automobile. Very cozy and private. . . .

            Click for more Sex and the Office by Helen Gurley Brown

Today, August 18, marks the forty-eighth anniversary of Operation Starlite, the first major clash of the Vietnam War. On this day, regiment fought regiment on the Van Tuong Peninsula near the new Marine base at Chu Lai. The American side fought with three battalions of Marines under the command of Colonel Oscar Peatross, a hero of two previous wars. Their opponent was the 1st Viet Cong Regiment commanded by Nguyen Dinh Trong, a veteran of many fights against the French and the South Vietnamese. Codenamed Operation Starlite, this action was a resounding success for the Marines and its result was cause for great optimism about America’s future in Vietnam.

Otto J. Lehrack’s  The First Battle: Operation Starlite and the Beginning of the Blood Debt in Vietnam, is a graphic account of the fight’s unfolding. The battle is seen from the mud level by those who were at the point of the spear. Marine participants from private to colonel were interviewed during the book’s research phase. But this is not just another war story told exclusively from the American side. In researching the book, the author talked with and walked the battlefield with men who fought with the 1st Viet Cong Regiment. All were accomplished combat veterans years before the US entry into the war.

Readers are planted squarely in America in 1965, the year that truly began the long American involvement. Operation Starlite sent the Vietnam War into news headlines across the nation and into the minds of Americans, where it took up residence for more than a decade.

The First Battle also takes a look at the ongoing conflict between the US Army and the US Marines about the methodology of the Vietnam War. With decades of experience with insurrection and rebellion, the Marines were institutionally oriented to base the struggle on pacification of the population. The Army, on the other hand, having largely trained to meet the Soviet Army on the plains of Germany, opted for search-and-destroy missions against Communist main force units. The history of the Vietnam War is littered with many “what if’s.” This ongoing internal conflict may be the biggest of them.

The First Battle by Otto J. Lehrack {Excerpt}

In May 2010, Open Road published its first ebook from its first author, William Styron. Today, we publish and copublish just over four thousand ebooks from more than five hundred authors.

We are excited to have NewSpring Capital join us on the Open Road and look forward to much success.

RADNOR, PA – August 19, 2013 – NewSpring Capital, a family of private equity funds providing growth and expansion capital, announced today that NewSpring Growth Capital III, the firm’s dedicated technology and business services growth equity fund, led an $11.0 million Series C equity financing in Open Road Integrated Media, Inc. (“Open Road”) with an $8.0 million investment. Existing investors—Kohlberg Ventures, Azure Capital, and Golden Seeds—joined NewSpring in the financing.

Open Road, a digital publisher and multimedia content company, published its first ebook in May 2010. Three short years later, the company publishes and markets just over four thousand ebooks from more than five hundred authors. Open Road’s growing backlist catalog includes literary fiction from authors such as Pat Conroy, Alice Walker, Iris Murdoch, Michael Chabon, and James Jones, as well as writers across a wide variety of verticals and genres, including Pearl S. Buck, Dorothy L. Sayers, Virginia Hamilton, John Jakes, and Octavia E. Butler. The company also works with independent publishers to digitally publish and market their ebooks, both backlist and frontlist titles. In addition, Open Road’s E-riginals publishes a selection of original works. Open Road continuously markets its authors through a proprietary online marketing platform.

“As we continue to build Open Road into the premier digital publishing and marketing company, we welcome NewSpring Capital with all its experience in the digital space,” said Jane Friedman, Open Road’s cofounder and chief executive officer. “With their support and with the continued backing of existing investors Kohlberg Ventures, Azure Capital, and Golden Seeds, Open Road is the company that is looking to the future. It will become the model for the twenty-first century publishing and digital media company.”

Mike DiPiano, managing general partner of NewSpring, who now joins Open Road’s board of directors, said, “There is huge disruption in the publishing industry as business models are rapidly evolving and ebooks are becoming a greater share of overall trade book sales. Open Road, as a digital publisher of ebooks with a focus on the vast number of backlist titles, is perfectly poised to deliver value to its authors, as its marketing approach uniquely focuses on authors as brands and systematically creates authentic connections between the authors and the reader. Jane and her talented team have developed a proven, scalable publishing and marketing platform and we are excited to join the company in its future trailblazing in the industry.”

Are you feeling a little restless now that summer is entering its final stretch? Us, too. It’s only normal to feel some wanderlust in the late summer months. But what to do if you’re not one of the lucky ones who is able to jet away on a vacation? We’ve got two words for you: armchair travel.

Escape to Italy, India, Spain, Yemen, and other striking locations with travelogues from famed travel writer Norman Lewis. Browse the collection here and immerse yourself in far away cultures without ever leaving your favorite reading nook. (It’s much comfier than an airplane seat, anyway.)

And just for fun, here are some of our favorite Lewis quotes — use the links below each to share on Facebook or Twitter!

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Carol Burnett has been quoted as saying, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” We think that sentiment fits perfectly with DEROS Vietnam author, Doug Bradley’s most recent behind-the-scenes-in-Vietnam piece, shared with us in honor of National Tell A Joke Day:

We Vietnam GIs pretty much thought the joke was on us for being in Vietnam in the first place. Still, humor was one of our most essential survival mechanisms, and there was always something to laugh (or cry) about in Vietnam.

One anecdote that has stayed with me was passed on by one of my fellow U.S. Army Information Office colleagues. We were both stationed at Long Binh, South Vietnam, in February 1971when the generals decided to invade Laos and show the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong just how tough and determined the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN), now responsible for most of the ground combat, had become.

The U. S. Army was to provide logistical, aerial, and artillery support to the operation. My buddy Mike was covering the campaign for our Army newspaper and was being provided special helicopter access to the Laotian fighting. He was preparing to board a Loach helicopter with two stateside reporters. With three journalists on board, the brass assigned the ARVN’s best chopper pilot to transport them.

“Colonel Tran fly you hisself,” the Vietnamese translator told them. “He berry good pywlot. He nick name ‘Lucky Lindy.’”

Mike and the other two reporters glanced skeptically at one another, loaded their gear on the Loach, and boarded.  The meticulously dressed Col. Tran, complete with a flowing scarf, approached the Loach accompanied by an aide with a map. The two conferred, and then Col. Tran took out a large wax pencil and drew the directions on the windshield of the helicopter.

Airborne, it soon occurred to the good colonel that from his vantage point in the cockpit the directions were backwards. Rather than land or ask for help, he tried stretching his neck outside the Loach to decipher the directions, barely missing three trees, two helicopters, and one RPG. Concerned for their safety, Mike and the other reporters were screaming for the Colonel to turn back. But the intrepid pilot kept trying to read the backwards directions! Eventually, the guy from the Kansas City Star shook Col. Tran so hard that the diminutive pilot nearly fell out of the Loach. He got the message and flew back to base camp.

Waiting for the three reporters was the same Vietnamese translator. “Why you back so soon?” he asked the group. “’Lucky Lindy’ our best pilot, no?

The other journalist, an old hand from Saint Paul, piped up: “We just changed his nickname to ‘Wrong Way Corrigan,’” pointing to the directions on the chopper windshield.

The translator smiled, the three reporters went in search of another ride, and “Wrong Way” Tran was nowhere to be found.

Download an excerpt of Doug Bradley's DEROS Vietnam: Dispatches from the Air-Conditioned Jungle.

It's almost the end of summer. Whether you're celebrating or sad, we have five ebooks on sale that will help you stay cozy on these cooler nights.

She Came Back by Patricia Wentworth ON SALE

Anne Jocelyn has been dead for some time. She and a friend were killed trying to escape the first German assault on France; her husband, Phillip, survived to bring back her body for burial, after which he joined the war against the monsters who slaughtered his wife. That was three years ago, and now Anne Jocelyn has returned to England. Looking and talking exactly like Phillip’s wife, she insists that he mistook her friend’s body for her own, and buried it by mistake. After three years hiding from the Nazis, she has finally escaped to come back to him. He doesn’t believe her, but she doesn’t care. As far as she’s concerned she is Anne Jocelyn, and the dead woman’s riches are her own. Only the brilliant Maud Silver will be able to divine who should be believed.

Murder on the Blackboard by Stuart Palmer ON SALE

Anise Halloran is young to be teaching school, and much too pretty, but third-grade teacher Hildegarde Withers is not the sort to condemn a coworker just because she wears high heels. When she overhears nine-year-old Buster Jones spreading rumors about Miss Halloran being sweet on the principal, Miss Withers orders the schoolyard quarterback to write discipline on the chalkboard one hundred times. Miss Withers finds Anise in the cloakroom, her head bashed in, and her high heels strewn across the floor. She sends Buster to fetch Inspector Piper, the hard-nosed detective whom she occasionally assists with murder inquiries, but by the time he arrives, the body has vanished. There is a killer inside the elementary school, and Buster Jones is not the only person whom Miss Withers will have to teach a lesson about discipline.

Murder on Cue by Jane Dentinger ON SALE

Struggling actress Jocelyn “Josh” O’Roarke just got a real offer. Well, something resembling a real offer. Her old friend Austin Frost has written a play for Broadway and cast the glamorous Harriet Weldon as the lead. Not wishing to leave his old friend Josh behind, he has invited her to be Harriet’s understudy. The role of understudy is a difficult one—and it becomes even more so when Harriet turns up dead and the police name Josh their prime suspect. With the NYPD breathing down her neck, Josh must find the people responsible while ensuring that the show will go on.

Ten tales of married life: happy, sad, and blood-soaked

Sweet, Savage Death by Jane Haddam ON SALE

The nation’s most famous romance authors are often so over-the-top that they could star in their own work. Catty, eccentric, and vain, they live to make each other miserable—and Patience McKenna does all she can to stay out of their line of fire. Too smart for her own genre, she writes romance novels to pay the rent and investigates stories to stay sane. Now the romance wars are about to hit her on the home front. A few nights before the start of the annual American Writers of Romance conference, Pay comes home to find her apartment locked from the inside. When the police break down the door, they stumble onto Julie Simms, literary agent to the leading lights of romance, lying dead on the floor. When the conference convenes, Pay asks: Which of her colleagues has traded make-believe passion for real-life murder?

What’s a burger without a side of fries? A gin and tonic without a wedge of lime? A racy romance novel without a serial killer lurking in the shadows?

If you, like us, enjoy a little suspense with your love story or a dash of romance in your futuristic fantasy epic, then we have the infographic for you. You can find the interactive version here.

Whether you’re in the mood for a genre-specific pick or are ready to mix it up a bit, this Kissers, Killers, and Chimeras Venn diagram has everything you might need, with top picks in romance, mystery, and sci-fi/fantasy—and all sorts of entertaining combinations in between.

Best of all, you can grab each of these ebooks for just $1.99 from August 20 to August 26 at participating ebook retailers. We have a sneaking suspicion you might not be able to stop at just one.

As the end of summer approaches and we brush that last bit of sand off our feet, it means it’s time to swap the beach bags for backpacks. But don’t worry; we have the remedy to help prevent your summer smile from turning into a fall frown. Help your kids ease back into the school year with our children’s and young adult ebooks starting at $0.99 through September 9. We have something for kids of every age—and adults, too! While you’re shopping for the kids, be sure to check out our ebooks for teachers and parents, because everyone deserves something special to kick off the new school year.

Picture Books

Sammy Spider’s First Day of Schoolby Sylvia A. Rouss and Katherine Janus Kahn

Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friendby Mélanie Watt

Franklin Goes to Schoolby Brenda Clark and Paulette Bourgeois

Show and Tell by Robert Munsch

Browse more picture books here.

Early Readers 

Funny Boy Meets the Airsick Alien from Andromeda by Dan Gutman

Lulu and the Duck in the Park by Hilary McKay

Browse more early-reader ebooks here.

Middle Grade

Dark Waters of Hagwood by Robin Jarvis

The Wizard of Washington Squareby Jane Yolen

The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown by Betsy Byars

The Boxcar Children: Schoolhouse Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazonsby Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris

Browse more middle-grade ebooks here.

Young Adult

Gallows Hill by Lois Duncan

Below the Root by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Switchers by Kate Thompson

The Winter Prince by Elizabeth Wein

Browse more young adult ebooks here.

Teachers and Parents

Chicken Soup for the Mother of Preschooler’s Soul by Chicken Soup for the Soul

Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soulby Chicken Soup for the Soul

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soulby Chicken Soup for the Soul

Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Teachers by Chicken Soup for the Soul

Browse more ebooks for teachers and parents here.

There’s no bond quite like that of a father-daughter relationship. Through thick and thin, whether three or three thousand miles away, a father will always remember his daughter’s effect on his life; after all, what could be a greater learning experience than raising a child? In critically acclaimed author James Morrow’s celebrated novel Only Begotten Daughter, a recluse discovers the answer firsthand—with a divine twist.

For Murray Katz, miracles come few and far between. A celibate lighthouse keeper, Katz is well accustomed to his life of solitude on the Jersey Shore. When a routine stop at a reproductive research center becomes anything but ordinary, however, Katz’s life of isolation soon becomes a thing of the past.

Julie. Her name is Julie—Katz’s newborn daughter, that is. Not just any girl, Julie’s arrival comes with a higher purpose: She is the messiah, equipped with supernatural talents reminiscent of her celestial and more famous half brother, Jesus. While learning to harness her abilities to heal the blind, walk on water, and raise the dead, among other things, Julie also experiences mortal struggles when searching for her own identity, heritage, and happiness in the midst of doing her righteous duty. Her voyage of self-discovery literally leads Julie to hell and back, where she encounters temptation from an ever-persuasive devil, confronts opposition head on from neo-Christian zealots, and attempts to seek the truth in a warped, futuristic New Jersey.

Time is ticking; will Julie embrace her unconventional role as savior before the world, caught in a web of madness, ventures to the brink of no return?

Winner of the 1991 World Fantasy Award and lauded as a “rich, intelligent tour de force” by the New York Times Book Review, Only Begotten Daughteris an enlightening and thought-provoking fantasy with plenty of unexpected turns to keep you guessing what author James Morrow has up his sleeve. Written with stimulating prose and witty satire, Only Begotten Daughteris a must-read for any fan of speculative fiction.

What would you do if the man who murdered your family got away?

A young couple is bringing their newborn baby home from the hospital for the first time. They strap the child into the car seat, exhausted but excited, ready to begin their new life with three, instead of only two. They climb into the car, hold hands over the armrests, and put the car in drive.

But things don’t happen that way. In an instant, the family is destroyed, leaving only one very small survivor—Thorn—and the killer runs free.

In James W. Hall’s Under Cover of Daylight,nineteen years after the death of his parents, struck by a drunk driver on the way home from the hospital, Thorn is a troubled teen living in the Florida Keys with his adoptive mother, Kate Truman. Tortured by the fact that his parents died while the killer continues to live free, Thorn hunts down the driver and takes revenge. Years later, at thirty-nine, he’s haunted by his deeds, and spends his days making fishing lures and bumming around the Keys. But when Kate, a local activist, suddenly turns up dead, Thorn decides to hunt down the killers himself and seek revenge once more.

James W. Hall has written more than ten Thorn novels. He’s known for writing big, audacious thrillers full of bold ideas and tons of action while maintaining an intimate connection to his characters. The New York Times calls him a “master of suspense,” and bestselling thriller writer Michael Connelly has said that Hall’s “people and places have more brushstrokes than a Van Gogh.” 

More often than not, Hall’s novels take place in South Florida and have an underlying ecological theme. “I love Florida,” Hall says in an interview in January Magazine, “and I hate to see it hijacked by those who see it simply as a buck-making machine.” 

Like Carl Hiaasen, Jonathon King, and John D. MacDonald, Hall, through his Thorn novels, tells of a wild new Florida—rife with drugs, sex, violence, corruption, crime, and so much more. In a New Yorker article about Florida crime fiction, Adam Gopnik quotes Dave Barry, another Florida crime author, as saying that the genre is full of “South Florida wackos,” whom Gopnik describes as “all heavily armed, all loquacious, all barely aware of one another’s existence,” who “blunder through petty crime, discover themselves engaged in actual murder, and then move in unconscious unison toward the black comedy of a violent climax.”

On this scale, Hall’s Thorn fits right in—the dark, haunted, and isolated Thorn must sift through the “South Florida wackos” to find the criminals who destroy the people he loves. Often, they are petty thieves only looking to make quick money, but who are used as pawns in a much larger scheme of corruption.

Start with James W. Hall’s first two Thorn mysteries, Under Cover of Daylight and Tropical Freeze, or check out more Florida crime here.

Well this week just flew by! It's Friday (again)—and time for Sex and the Office Summer Fridays: our romp through Helen Gurley Brown's 1965 cult classic, Sex and the Office. The definitive, comprehensive guide to working life for an entire generation of women, Sex and the Office offered advice on how to deal with your boss, manage office politics, and make the most of personal and professional opportunities in the office. Find out what it was really like to be a working girl "back in the day". Read on—for this week's excerpt from Helen Gurley Brown's iconic  Sex and the Office!

MANY AN “EXPERT” ADVISES working girls to keep make-up to a bare minimum. An office, they say, isn’t the place to razzle and it isn’t the place to dazzle, and the only thing to smell like is a bar of Fels Naptha (no Nuit de Longchamps, Joy, or any of that nonsense). Well, I’m convinced the experts must all be left-at-home wives who, if they had their way, would also have office girls wear shrouds and nettles. Of course you don’t keep your make-up at the office to a bare minimum! For the love of heaven an office is where the men are!

Men like girls to look natural. Of course they do, but that doesn’t mean truly natural—eyebrows strolling straight across the nose-bridge or not showing up anywhere (some girls don’t have any, poor darlings). Au naturel would mean saffron-colored skin, mop-water colored hair … really, I can’t go on!

Advising a girl to keep her make-up to a bare minimum is usually hooked in with that nonsense about letting your beautiful soul shine through—especially if you are a plain girl. Fooling with make-up is supposed to be only for narcissistic beauties. The truth is, a plain girl frequently has a wretchedly unattractive soul but her soul takes on luster when she uses make-up or has her nose fixed or puts on her wig. I know all about what fixing can do for the average girl. When I’m on a television show in my padded bra, capped teeth, straightened nose, Pan-Cake, false eyelashes and wig I may not be natural, but I’m absolutely glorious!

If you want to feel princessy and have things happen to you at the office, I suggest you wear plenty of make-up but put it on naturally. (I’ll tell you how.) If you are only dabbing on the merest dab of powder and daubing on the merest daub of lipstick to wear to work, you should face it. You’re hiding out! You’re afraid to be a beauty! Wearing make-up does put you “on” all right. Men notice you, men strike up conversations with you, and men even get the idea you’re interested in them and they respond. You can’t lie low and be squashy and safe and comfortable and unnoticed the way an un-made-up girl can.

All right, how do you get the “naturally” beautiful look that men love? You get it by using a foundation, make-up, two kinds of rouge, lipstick, eye shadow, eye liner, eyebrow pencil, mascara and powder. And I’m going to tell you right now how to use them “naturally.”

HOW TO DO A PERFECT MAKE-UP JOB 

This is the works. From beginning to end. It was taught to me by Jane Rasché at the Max Factor make-up salon in Hollywood, where I have often seen Jane and her boss, Hal King, transform the faces of fifty-year-old frumpy ladies into quite pretty faces, as well as take ten years off of celebrities! If you’re just a regular plain girl, these particular techniques can make you radiant.

Perhaps you feel you can’t handle the entire procedure every day before you go to the office. (I don’t see why not. You could get up at 5:00 A.M. and go to bed right after sundown!) It is possible to get in most of the steps every morning but just not do them as painstakingly as if you had lots of time.

1. Start with a clean face. Liquid cleansers are great. Cold cream has to melt on your face to get to the stage liquid cleanser is when you pour it from the bottle. That makes cold cream slower. Soap and water are thorough but soapy … and drying.

2. Pat on a lotion or astringent. This feels nice; that’s the main thing you can say about it. It is also supposed to close pores, and you don’t want to go running around with your pores open! Of course you don’t.

3. Put on a moisturizer (I’ll tell you about a great inexpensive one in a minute). The moisturizer is said to keep the moisture in your face all day, and I’m sure if it does that, that’s good. I really don’t know. Anyway, it makes your face creamy-smooth to start putting your make-up on top of, and a moisturizer feels nice to your skin, too.

4. Put on your favorite make-up (liquid, cake, whatever). Smooth it over your face everywhere. Don’t be a scaredy cat about under the eyes. That area’s part of your face too. The idea is to smooth on a second skin. Blend the make-up down to just below the jaw-line, not clear over the throat.

5. If you have heavy shadows under your eyes, use Max Factor’s Erace over this area. Choose one shade lighter than your own skin tone because you want to lighten the shadows. Also use Erace on nose-to-mouth lines.

6. Dab fluid rouge high on cheekbones just under eyes. Blend it across these bones with your fingers and down just a little on the cheeks, but don’t have a lot of rouge in the fleshy part of your cheeks unless your face is very full. Rouge causes shadows and will make you look sunken-cheeked if placed too low.

7. Now powder over everything with translucent powder. Your make-up will have supplied the color for your face. Powder over lips and eyelids too because this sets your make-up. If you use loose powder, transfer it to a bottle with holes in the top and shake it out onto a puff or cotton ball. Powder lashes too. All powdered? Brush powder from your face with a powder brush.

8. Draw a ribbon of eye shadow from the inner corner of your eye to the outer edge, tilting the shadow up just a bit at the outer corner so your eyes won’t look droopy. Stroke the shadow close to the lashes. Shadow looks best on most girls when it goes up over only half the lid. You can experiment with it all the way up to the eyebrow, however, and look at yourself.

If your eyes are deep set, a light shade of eye shadow—pale blue or green—will bring your eyes out to meet the man who’s looking at you. If your eyes aren’t sunk in very deeply, a darker shade of eye shadow will give them depth. If you use shadow from a tube, powder over it to set the color. Powdered eye shadow from a bottle is already “set.”

9. Use a tiny brush to outline your eyes with eye liner. Start from the center of the upper lid and, staying fiercely close to the lash, draw a line to the outer corner of the eye. Then go back and fill in from the center of the lid to the inner eye. Use the side of the brush to do this—you’ll get in trouble trying to use the very tip. When the brush is practically dry, line your lower lashes. You want only a breath of color for a shadowy effect. Go under the lashes, dear. Don’t daub on top of them.

Fluid eye liner which comes in a little bottle usually dries up rather quickly. Max Factor’s Black Pan-Cake is great for eye liner and doesn’t. Moisten an eye-liner brush with water and just run it over the cake of Black Pan-Cake as though it were mascara. One cake—$1.50 plus tax—should last easily a lifetime. I sometimes brush on eyebrows with it instead of using a pencil. Any Max Factor counter should be able to order Black Pan-Cake for you if they don’t carry it. (No, this company doesn’t pay me.)

10. This is the point where you put on false eyelashes if you’re wearing them. The secret to putting them on without trauma is to get just the merest whisper of a line of the glue across the top edge of the lash. After the lashes are on, line the upper eyelid again with liner. Just paint right over the strips of lash—it won’t hurt them.

11. With a razor blade sharpen your eyebrow pencil to a wedge-shape (not round like from the pencil sharpener). Now draw tiny little strokes that look like hairs to fill out your eyebrows. The part of the brow closest to the nose should be the lowest point. The very center of your eye is the highest—you can go a little heavy with pencil there. Then pencil on out to the outer edge of the eye. You can lift a little at the edge if you like. Never curve the brow downward or you’ll look like a beagle.

All eyebrow pencils are good as far as I know, but I’m mad about a pencil you buy in the stationery store—an Eagle Chemi-seal #315 veri-black. The color is actually a soft charcoal grey that’s very flattering to brunettes. The pencils are seventy-five cents for a box of a dozen. Six girls could go in together and own two pencils apiece for just thirteen cents a girl.

12. Apply mascara. Brush it on top of the lash as well as under the lash and add mascara to false lashes too. It combines fake and real to look all-real.

I think a regular big eyebrow brush about half the size of a toothbrush (instead of the teeny-tiny brush that come with the product) is best for applying mascara. I also like cake mascara because you can work up a really good case of eyelashes! While you do one eye, the other lashes will dry from their application. You can do as many as six applications to each eye if you want to build really beautiful lashes (and get to work at twelve noon!). A working-girl friend of mine washes everything off her face but mascara and leaves her “lashes” on from one month to the next. “You protect your nails with three coats of polish,” she says. “Why not your lashes?” She may have a point. Anyway, it’s fun to go to bed with big, black fringy Elizabeth Taylor eyelashes when you’re used to seeing yourself with naked Elizabeth I eyes at bedtime.

13. Put on your lipstick. Since “colorless” lips are chic, you may want to outline your lips with a darker shade—and use a brush, for goodness sake—then fill in with a lighter shade. If your mouth goes down at the corners, give it a bit of a lift with a tiny upward line of your brush. You know all about drawing in a completely different mouth than the one you own—beefing up here, minimizing there. Of course you do!

14. For the royal coup to make you look like a glowing angel, dust cheekbones ever so lightly—but lightly—with dry rouge stroked on with a powder brush. Try it! It looks heavenly.

15. Lily gilding: If you are not using Erace or another product to cover under-eye smudges and they still seem to show a bit through your make-up, take a 5/8? brush, dip it in your make-up foundation and paint lightly over the shadows. Do you realize what a wicked woman you are? You are painting your face—and is it ever fun and flaw-hiding!

16. Final Touch! Dampen a small silk sponge with water and gently pat it all over your face. This gives you an alive little glow no matter how much make-up you’re wearing … voilà, the natural look!

These instructions work with anybody’s cosmetics. As a matter of fact, I find it hard to buy bad ones, including those from the dime store. I won’t bore you with any more of my personal choices. I will tell you about just one that does the work of at least three so that you can save maybe twenty dollars a year. A little jewel called Lubri-Derm (made by Texas Pharmacal Company and usually located in the drugstore) is a hand and body lotion, a great moisturizer (as good as any high-priced ones I’ve ever used) to go under make-up, and can also be worn overnight as a light night cream. A roomy pint bottle is about $2.50.

I was going to give you a recipe for making your own cold cream to keep in your desk drawer. After assembling all the ingredients and locking myself in the kitchen for three days, I got a yield of one tiny jar, two scorched palms, and I don’t know how many naughty oaths to my record for a cash outlay of $3.89. Obviously it wasn’t worth it! I am jotting down the recipe for a dandy mask, however, that will send you radiant and wantable to the office if you use it the night before.

Sex and the Office: Lunch with "the Girls"

Sex and the Office: Love Your Boss

For more Sex and the Office (and the recipe for Helen's own "dandy mask"). . . .

This Monday is Women's Equality Day, a commemoration instituted in 1971 to celebrate the certification of the 19th amendment back in 1920. That amendment—originally drafted by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1878—took more than 40 years of tireless work by the women's suffrage movement to get from writing to law. 

As we celebrate the immense impact of those suffragettes, it is important to remember that the work they started is not yet complete. The modern women's movement continues to battle for full equality today and it is up to our generation to build upon the work of past leaders.

With that in mind, we compiled a few of our favorite works by a few of our favorite feisty female writers that we hope will inspire you. As Alice Walker said, "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

A literary sensation when first published in 1973, Fear of Flying established Erica Jong as one of her generation’s foremost voices on sex and feminism. 

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem

A bestselling first collection of humorous and insightful essays by a luminary of the women’s liberation movement.

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir

In de Beauvoir’s second major essay, the renowned French philosopher illustrates the ethics of Existentialism by outlining a series of “ways of being.”

Female Friends by Fay Weldon

A smart novel that speaks for a generation of women struggling to find their place in a male-dominated world

The Erotic Silence of the American Wife by Dalma Heyn

Shocking and revelatory, The Erotic Silence of the American Wife is a groundbreaking guide to understanding marriage—and its unspoken effects on women’s and men’s relationships

Ahead of Time by Ruth Gruber

The early life and trailblazing career of one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable female journalists

Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown

A spirited manifesto that puts women—and what they want—first, capturing the exuberance, optimism, and independence that have characterized the lives of so many contemporary American women.

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker

Walker’s collection of early nonfiction serves as the manifesto of a young artist—and an illuminating self-portrait

The Group by Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy’s bold and brilliant bestselling novel about the lives of eight upper-middle-class friends—an unabashed look at marriage, motherhood, career, and sexuality for women in interwar America.

Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck’s remarkable account of the life of Tzu Hsi, the magnetic and fierce-minded woman from humble origins who became China’s last empress

A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays by Alix Kates Shulman

Witty, stirring, and poignant, A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays illustrates how each generation, in Shulman’s words, “can do no more than add its bit to the endless river of consciousness and change.”

You Gotta Have Girlfriends by Suzanne Braun Levine

An inspiring and eye-opening affirmation of the power of female friendship in the second half of life.

Motherhood by Erma Bombeck

A look at one of the toughest jobs on earth, from the woman who perfectly captures life’s humor and heart.

Here at Open Road, we find many a role model in our authors—but with yellow school buses crowding the streets and school supplies flying off the shelves, it is only appropriate to highlight a writer who truly exemplifies the model student: James L. W. West III.

As a senior in college, the inquisitive West was completing his undergraduate thesis on the novel The Confessions of Nat Turnerby William Styron and found that he had a number of questions he was unable to answer. Intrepid scholar that he was, West was not satisfied with this lack of knowledge and took it upon himself to find answers. He composed a list of questions and sent them to Styron. While West doubted that such a prestigious author would ever write back to a lowly undergraduate, a few days later he received a detailed response to every single one of his questions.

West’s dedication to and admiration for Styron’s writings provided him the opportunity not only to meet Styron but also to pen Styron’s authorized biography, William Styron, A Life. Retaining the perceptiveness, curiosity, and rigorous habits of his school days, West created a biography that provides valuable insight into the life and works of a giant of American literature.

Check out the clip below for even more information on West’s friendship with the incredible William Styron.

The United States Marine Corps is among the most lasting institutions in America, though few understand what makes it so strong and how that understanding can be applied effectively in today’s world. In this insightful and thoroughly researched book, Julia Dye explores the cadre of noncommissioned officers that make up the Marine Corps’s system of small-unit leadership.

To help us better understand what makes these extraordinary men and women such effective leaders, Dye examines the fourteen leadership traits embraced by every NCO. And while these qualities—including judgment, enthusiasm, determination, bearing, and unselfishness—are exemplified by men like Terry Anderson, the former Marine sergeant who spent nearly seven years as a hostage in Beirut, John Basilone, a hero of the Pacific front in World War II, and others, we all can—and should—employ these same small unit leadership qualities in our daily lives.

Download an excerpt from this extraordinary chronicle, in which Dye interviewed Anderson and dozens of other marines, mining a trove of NCO heroes who comprise the Marine Corps’s astonishing legacy, from its founding in 1775 to the present day.

Watch this exclusive video with Julia Dye and small unit leadership from Open Road Media. 

The topic of healthcare reform is a hot button issue—and one this writer does not wish to publicly debate. Setting the reform conversation aside for a moment let's, instead, turn to a more fundamental and decades-long conundrum: Does a doctor have the right to play God? 

Sometimes? Never? It depends? Who knows? 

In Ward 402, Dr. Ronald Glasser's "powerful documentary novel", which the New York Times Book Review deemed "good and exciting writing, a medical intern faces the harsh realities of his profession, the overwhelming highs and lows for which medical school was unable to prepare him and the struggle to find an answer to this very difficult question. 

In the Foreword to Ward 402, Dr. Glasser notes: 

This is as difficult a time for medicine as it is one of achievement. Despite all the successes a kind of leery feeling parallels the public applause, a suspicion that in making things better some things have been made worse, that in learning more too much has been forgotten.

I finished medical school much the same as any other medical student—eager, confident, sure that a year of internship would be all I needed to put the whole thing together. I was wrong. My internship was not the end I expected it to be, but a wrenching beginning.

It had never occurred to me when I was in school that as a physician there would be anything I’d have to face which was not covered in my classes, anything my professors had not yet worked out, or at least would not have warned us about. Becoming an intern was like passing through a curtain into a world that had never been mentioned, a world I was quite unprepared for.

Ready for hearts and lungs and kidneys, I was confronted with a whole person. In the midst of all the familiar precision, of laboratory values and X-rays, suddenly there were human concerns: grief and heartache, personal problems, economics, distrust, fears, and even anger. So seemingly well turned out, with all of science to draw on, I found myself stumbling; all of us were, with only our own strengths and weaknesses to get us through. . . . 

For more from Dr. Glasser, watch this exclusive video from Open Road Media.

Ward 402 by Ronald J. Glasser, MD {Excerpt}

In this video, watch as authors Jonathan Lethem and Robert Silverberg discuss the great strides that Sturgeon made in the science fiction and fantasy genre, pushing against societal conformity and leaving behind a rich legacy of works that were light-years ahead of their time.

Sturgeon's award-winning titles include More Than Human, The Dreaming Jewels, Some of Your Blood, andTo Marry Medusa.