Thirty years in the making, Marlantes's epic debut is a dense, vivid narrative spanning many months in the lives of American troops in Vietnam as they trudge across enemy lines, encountering danger from opposing forces as well as on their home turf. Marine lieutenant and platoon commander Waino Mellas is braving a 13-month tour in Quang-Tri province, where he is assigned to a fire-support base and befriends Hawke, older at 22; both learn about life,...

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice-- not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys--best friends--are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that...

This depicts the men of Alpha Company. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she...

Bob Lee Swagger, a Vietnam veteran, must face his demons from the past when a sniper interrupts his idyllic life in Idaho with his family.

Frustrated by the war in Vietnam, an Army private lays down his rifle and begins to walk from the jungles of Vietnam to the streets of Paris.

A collection of stories, several on group behavior. The story, Low Men in Yellow Coats, deals with the way group behavior can affect people for the worse, the title story is on a college woman who saves a fellow student from such behavior, while in Blind Willie a man atones for group behavior in the Vietnam War.

A teenager left on his own travels west in a kit car he built himself, and along the way picks up two Vietnam veterans, who take him on an eye-opening journey.

College student Joe Talbert has to interview a stranger and write a brief biography for an English class. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer on medical parole. Unable to reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict, Joe--with the help of Lila, his skeptical neighbor--throws himself into uncovering...

Special Agent Nick Memphis enlists the help of retired Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger to unravel a sophisticated conspiracy involving the deaths of four famed '60s radicals--a conspiracy that would require the highest level of warcraft by the most superb special operations professionals.

"Married for only three weeks before her husband was called to serve, radio newswoman Keely Preston wonders how she will deal with the loss if he is not among recently located Vietnam MIAs--men who have been missing for thirteen years."--