Fiction

Title: Onishiwan, 1945
Author: David Andrew Westwood
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewer: Terry Shoptaugh

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B008ZFFYVW

Too old for the draft, Gil Rossiter spends his days in a basement of a Seattle newspaper typesetting articles about the war. His wife, a Japanese American, is incarcerated with her family in a Wyoming internment camp, her ethnicity the reason for his lack of advancement to reporter.

Meanwhile, Ray Ingersoll has been sent back Stateside for sentencing, after shooting Japanese prisoners on Iwo Jima. Because he has an otherwise exemplary record, the authorities decide to assign him guard duty at the same internment camp. But Ray has been damaged more than just physically by the fighting, and he brings his hatred of the enemy to his new job.

When one of the paper’s combat correspondents is killed, Gil is offered the chance to finally write for the paper, but on what will become the arena for the last battle of WWII, the Japanese-held island of Okinawa.

Gil flies out, and follows a unit of Marines around the island until they are stopped at the hideous battle for the south. He watches as one after another of his new colleagues is killed. But there is a larger destiny in store for Gil, one that affects his wife back home..

Title: Dog Soldier Moon
Author: McKendree R. Long lll
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewer: Bonnie Toews

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1930584407

In this sequel to his novel, No Good Like It Is, McKendree Long continues the saga of Dobey Walls and Jimmy Boss Melton during the three years following the Civil War. In Dog Soldier Moon, a great crime decimates the tiny Panhandle community of Canadian Fort, twisting relationships and putting Dobey and the Boss on a trail of retribution and frontier justice, yet unaware that they are targets of two Pinkerton teams. Black Kettle, Meotzi, the 'Boy General' Custer, and J.B. Hickok flesh out the cast in this all new classic tale.

Title: Mead's Trek
Author: Tom Gauthier
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewer: John Monteith

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0984663800

Marine Corps Major Amos Mead, a lawyer by education and a Special Agent for the FBI by trade, is recruited as an agent in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in early 1943. His latest mission: Assess the level of cooperation among the factions conducting the war against the Empire of Japan in the Asian Theater of Operations. Known only to a few, additional orders direct Major Mead to seek out a powerful Asian leader and investigate the possibility of the Vice President of the United States being involved in secret negotiations with Vietnamese Communists for a post-war alliance.

En route to his assignment, unexpected life-threatening events befall Mead's team. The mission then takes on a new urgency—one of survival. Mead and his team are forced onto a trek in an enemy infested jungle that will test the limits of their mental toughness and physical endurance.

Title: Ghosts of Babylon
Author: R. A. Mathis
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Cathryn J. Prince

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1478130091

Set against a backdrop of escalating terror, Ghosts of Babylon is a fast-paced military thriller that features an intense, gritty, and powerful cast of characters. In a desperate attempt to salvage both his career and a wrecked personal life, archaeologist Stuart Knight volunteers to serve in Iraq as a translator, but his real objective is to get his hands on Babylon's ancient treasures. Once on the ground, he meets Captain Allen, a battalion intelligence officer determined to catch Al-Khayal, the insurgent who blew off his leg and annihilated his entire crew with an IED.

Entangled in the grisly web of Allen's private war, Knight's quest for redemption turns into a struggle for survival with deadly enemies on both sides of the wire. Stuart soon finds himself staring into the face of terror, his own mortality, and an evil as old as Babylon itself.

Title: Mistletoe, Merriment, and Murder
Author: Sara Rosett
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Betsy Beard

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0758269218

.Super organizer Ellie Avery could really use some Christmas cheer when Gabrielle Matheson, a grinchy professional rival, sets up shop in the same small Georgia town. But before the halls are even halfway decked with holly, someone uses Ellie's terrifically tasteless white elephant swap gift as ...a murder weapon! Ellie's now a suspect. Besides playing Mrs. Santa for her Air Force pilot husband and their two kids, shielding her eyes from the garishly over-decorated house down the street, and helping a client who's a hardcore hoarder, Ellie also has to solve this ho-ho-homicide ...and find a killer who wishes her a very deadly Christmas.