"From Homer Hickam, the author of the #1 bestselling Rocket Boys adapted into the beloved film October Sky, comes this astonishing memoir of high adventure, war, love, NASA, and his struggle for literary success.
Homer Hickam's memoir Rocket Boys and the movie adaptation October Sky have become one of the most popular stories in the world, inspiring millions to pursue a better life. But what happened to Homer after he was a West Virginia rocket boy? In his latest memoir, Homer recounts his life in college where he built the world's biggest, baddest game cannon, fought through some of the worst battles in Vietnam, became a scuba instructor, discovered sunken U-boats, wrote the definitive account of a World War II naval battle, befriended Tom Clancy, made a desperate attempt to save the passengers of a sunken river boat, trained the first Japanese astronauts, taught David Letterman to scuba dive, helped to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, wrote his number one bestselling Rocket Boys, and was on set during the making of October Sky. Although told with humor and wit, Hickam does not shy away from the pain and hardship endured and the mistakes he made during the tumultuous decades since his life in the town he made famous—Coalwood, West Virginia."
"Can their love survive the difference in their circumstances?
Song Hawkins is a beautiful, tough, but lonely New York City businesswoman who thinks she's met the man of her dreams in Cable Jordan, the superintendent of a West Virginia coal mine. But soon after they impulsively marry, Song realizes they're in big trouble. She can't imagine life outside of New York, and Cable has no intention of leaving his beloved town of Highcoal.
Song's visit to the little mining community only makes things worse. It looks like the marriage is over. But in a shocking turn of events, Song realizes it's up to her to put on the red helmet of the new coal miner and descend into the deep darkness. There she faces her greatest challenge with choices and courage that will forever impact the life of Cable and the entire town.
- Sweet and thoughtful contemporary read
- Stand-alone novel
- Book length: 86,000 words
- Includes discussion questions for book clubs"
"A sixteen-year-old must battle his way across a thousand miles of deadly lunar terrain and face genetically altered super warriors in his quest to recover an astonishing object that will alter the lives of everyone on the moon . . . and beyond.
It's the 22nd Century. A tough, pioneering people mine the moon produce energy for a desperate, war-torn Earth. Sixteen-year-old Crater Trueblood loves his job as a Helium-3 miner. But when he saves a fellow miner, his life changes forever. Impressed by his heroism, the owner of the mine orders Crater to undertake a dangerous mission. Crater doesn't think he can do it, but he has no choice. He must go.
With the help of Maria, the mine owner's frustrating but gorgeous granddaughter, and his gillie-a sometimes insubordinate clump of slime mold cells-Crater must fight both human and subhuman enemies to complete his mission.
New York Times bestselling author Homer Hickman (Rocket Boys) will take you on a hold-your-breath adventure across the moon, and you'll never look at the night sky the same way again.
- The first installment of the Helium-3 series
- Book #1: Crater
- Book #2: Crescent
- Book #3: Crater Trueblood and the Lunar Rescue Company
- Book length: 75,000 words"
"Las memorias best seller que inspiraron la película Cielo de Octubre, Rocket Boys es una autobiografía poderosa y una historia luminosa de la vida en la década de 1960, del amor de una madre y del temor de un padre, de un grupo de jóvenes que soñaban con lanzar cohetes al espacio… y de hacer realidad los sueños.
Así comienza la maravillosamente entretenida y extraordinaria autobiografía de la vida de «Sonny» Homer Hickam, Jr. en Coalwood, Virginia Occidental, un pueblo miserable donde lo único que importaba era la minería de carbón y el fútbol americano. El segundo hijo introspectivo del superintendente de la mina y de una madre decidida a alcanzar una vida mejor para su hijo, Sonny se unió a un grupo de inadaptados para quienes el futuro parecía incierto.
Pero en 1957, luego de haber visto el satélite soviético Sputnik cruzar el cielo de los Apalaches, Sonny y sus amigos adolescentes tomaron el futuro en sus manos, cambiando sus vidas y su ciudad para siempre. Recordando una carrera distinguida en la NASA que hizo realidad los sueños de su niñez, Hickam relata la historia de su juventud, llevando a los lectores a la vida de aquel pueblo minero y las de los muchachos que encarnaron sus tensiones y sus sueños. Con la ayuda -y en ocasiones los obstáculos- de los habitantes de Coalwood, los jóvenes aprendieron no solo a convertir escombros de minería en cohetes que surcaban los cielos, sino que encontraron esperanza en una ciudad en la que el progreso pasaba desapercibido.
Una autobiografía única, Cielo de octubre es a la vez una crónica inspiradora de triunfo y una historia luminosa del amor de una madre, los temores de un padre y la vida de un joven. Con la sencilla gracia de un narrador por naturaleza, Homer Hickam capta a la perfección un momento en el cual un pueblo agonizante, una familia dividida y una banda de adolescents soñadores se atrevieron a mirar más allá de sus diferencias y a fijar sus objetivos en las estrellas... y vieron un futuro que la nación estaba apenas empezando a imaginar."
"'Ich oder der Alligator!' Keinen Tag länger will Homer Hickam der Ältere sein Badezimmer mit einem bissigen Reptil namens Albert teilen. Als der Bergwerksarbeiter seiner Frau ein Ultimatum stellt, muss Elsie lange überlegen. Schließlich ist ein Leben ohne Alligator doch sinnlos. Wie alles hier in Coalwood, West Virginia. Die ganze trostlose Stadt liegt unter einer schwarzen Staubschicht begraben. Und selbst vor ihrer Ehe hat die Große Depression keinen Halt gemacht. Trotzdem fällt Elsie die Entscheidung - unter einer Bedingung: Sie müssen Albert nach Hause bringen. Zurück nach Florida. In einem alten Buick. Mit Alligator auf dem Rücksitz - 'Liebevoller kann man eine verrückte Geschichte nicht erzählen.' - Elke Heidenreich"
"Una historia emocionalmente evocadora acerca de un hombre, una mujer y un caimán es un emotivo tributo al amor, del autor best seller del New York Times de las galardonadas memorias Rocket Boys: la base de la película Cielo de Octubre. Elsie Lavender y Homer Hickam (el padre del autor) eran compañeros de clase en la secundaria en los campos de carbón de West Virginia, graduándose justo cuando comenzaba la Gran depresión. Cuando Homer pidió le propuso matrimonio, Elsie partió para Orlando donde congenió con un actor bailarín llamado Buddy Ebsen (sí, ese Buddy Ebsen). Pero cuando Buddy se mudó para Nueva York, los sueños de Elsie de una vida con él se hicieron trizas, y eventualmente regresó a los campos de carbón, y se casó con Homer. Insatisfecha como esposa de un minero, Elsie recordaba sus despreocupados días con Buddy cada día debido a su inusual regalo de boda: un caimán llamado Albert al que crió en el único baño que había en la casa. Cuando Albert asustó a Homer al agarrarle los pantalones, le dio a Elsie un ultimátum: «¡Yo o ese caimán!». Después de pensarlo un poco, Elsie llegó a la conclusión de que había una sola cosa que hacer: llevar a Albert a casa. Este es el relato divertido, dulce y a veces trágico de una joven pareja y un caimán especial en una loca aventura de mil millas de distancia. Contado con la calidez y el sencillo encanto que hizo de Rocket Boys un querido best seller, el divertido relato de Homer Hickam es el mejor testamento a esa extraña y maravillosa emoción que de modo inadecuado llamamos amor."
"‘Must-read… A funny yet tragic tale of a husband and wife’s car journey across the US with Albert the alligator in tow. Yes, really.’ Marie Claire
A journey of a thousand miles. With an alligator on the back seat. And John Steinbeck as a passenger.
This is a tale where everything is true,except the bits that are made up.
In 1930s America, the Great Depression made everyone’s horizons smaller, and Elsie Lavender found herself back where she began, in the coalfields of West Virginia.
She had just one memento of her halcyon days – a baby alligator named Albert.
Then one day, her husband’s stoical patience snapped and Elsie had to choose between Homer and Albert.
She decided that there was only one thing to do: they would carry Albert home to Florida.
And so began their odyssey – a journey like no other, where Elsie, Homer and Albert encountered everything from movie stars and revolutionaries to Ernest Hemingway and hurricanes in their struggle to find love, redemption,
and a place to call home.
From the bestselling author of Rocket Boys–the basis of the movie October Sky–comes a long-awaited prequel. Big Fish meets The Notebook in this novel about a man, a woman, and their alligator."
"Crater Trueblood has to rescue his ex-girlfriend . . . and the entire human race.
Maria Medaris - gorgeous, powerful, and high-maintenance - is the 21-year-old matriarch of the most powerful family on the moon. When she is kidnapped by green-lipped, gene-splicing scientists, Maria's only hope turns out to be the very man she once spurned: Crater Trueblood.
Crater and the Lunar Rescue Company must rescue Maria before she joins forces with the lunatics who have taken her hostage and aim to make her queen.
Turns out more than Maria is at stake: The planet Earth, majestically rising over the lunar horizon, is in the crosshairs of an asteroid engineered by Maria's abductors. If Crater can't stop it, all humanity on Earth will be destroyed.
The fate of two worlds hangs in the balance . . . and the clock is ticking."
"She was born to kill, born to die. Crescent is a crowhopper — a genetically modified mercenary programmed for ruthless warfare. When she’s taken prisoner by Crater Trueblood instead of being killed in battle, she thinks it’s a disaster. Crater is weary of war. He’s a miner, not a soldier. He’d rather be mining Helium-3 than battling the infernal crowhoppers. But after he captures Crescent and brings her to Moontown, he’s surprised how much he enjoys her company. When she’s falsely accused of murder, he becomes an outlaw to help her escape. The unlikely pair escape into the “big suck” and wind up trekking with a caravan of mining pioneers toward a lunar ghost town called Endless Dust. To survive, they must do more than navigate the beautiful, desolate moonscape and battle a persistent band of crowhoppers sent to capture or kill them. They must decide what — and who — is truly worth fighting for."
"It's fall, 1959, and Homer "Sonny" Hickam and his fellow Rocket Boys are in their senior year at Big Creek High, launching handbuilt rockets that soar thousands of feet into the West Virginia sky. But in a season traditionally marked by celebrations of the spirit, Coalwood finds itself at a painful crossroads.
The strains can be felt within the Hickam home, where a beleaguered HomerSr. is resorting to a daring but risky plan to keep the mine alive, and his wife Elsie is feeling increasingly isolated from both her family and the townspeople. And Sonny, despite a blossoming relationship with a local girl whose dreams are as big as his, finds his own mood repeatedly darkened by an unexplainable sadness.
Eager to rally the town's spirits and make her son's final holiday season at home a memorable one, Elsie enlists Sonny and the Rocket Boys' aid in making the Coalwood Christmas Pageant the best ever. But trouble at the mine and the arrival of a beautiful young outsider threaten to tear the community apart when it most needs to come together. And when disaster strikes at home, and Elsie's beloved pet squirrel escapes under his watch, Sonny realizes that helping his town and redeeming himself in his mother's eyes may be a bigger-and more rewarding-challenge than he has ever faced.
The result is pure storytelling magic- a tale of small-town parades and big-hearted preachers, the timeless love of families and unforgettable adventures of boyhood friends-that could only come from the man who brought the world Rocket Boys"
"A renegade rocket man haunted by his past. A beautiful daredevil who thinks she can do it all -- until she finds herself on the adventure of her life. A death-defying mission so risky, so audacious, that no one would try it...unless the fate of the world depended on its success.
Thirty years after man's first lunar landing, retired NASA engineer Homer Hickam, Jr., offers a brilliantly imagined, endlessly entertaining return to space adventure in his spectacular first novel, Back to the Moon.
Jack Medaris doesn't 'borrow' the space shuttle Columbia to be a hero or a villain. A man of science driven by the memory of the woman who once inspired him, Jack risks his life, his name, and everything he has, to sidetrack the shuttle and take it on an unscheduled detour to the moon, where the secrets of his past -- and the future of the world -- await him. But when the meticulously plotted launch goes fatally wrong, and payload specialist Penny High Eagle further complicates Jack's plan, he must confront unforeseen challenges both in space and on the ground.
Writing with the detail and intelligence that only an insider could, Hickam takes us to places few have ever seen, strapping us into the cockpit of the shuttle and hurtling us into orbit and beyond. From the crackling tension of mission control to the savage emptiness of deep space, from the massive rocket engines capable of generating millions of pounds of thrust to the tiny killing machines awaiting a bygone era's orders to unleash their high-tech fury, here are the sights and science of space as you've never seen them before. A no-holds-barred joyride of a thriller, Back to the Moon confirms that Homer Hickam is a master storyteller like no other."
"Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my hometown was at war with itself over its children, and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives....And I didn't know that the enthalpy decrease in a converging passage could be transformed into jet kinetic energy if a divergent passage was added. The other boys discovered their own truths when we built our rockets, but those were mine.
So begins Homer 'Sonny' Hickam, Jr.'s extraordinary memoir of life in Coalwood, West Virginia -- a hardscrabble little company town where the only things that mattered were coal mining and high-school football. The son of the mine's superintendent and a mother determined to push her son to a better life, Sonny fell in with a group of misfits for whom the future looked uncertain. But in 1957, after watching the Soviet Satellite Sputnik streak across the sky, Sonny and his teenage friends took their future into their own hands, changing their lives and their town forever.
Looking back after a distinguished NASA career that fulfilled his boyhood ambition, Hickam shares the story of his youth, taking listeners into the life of the little mining town and the boys who came to embody both its tensions and its dreams. With the help -- and sometimes hindrance -- of the people of Coalwood, the Rocket Boys learn not only how to turn mine scraps into rockets that soar miles into the heavens, but how to find hope in a town that progress is passing by.
In this uniquely American memoir, Homer Hickam beautifully captures a moment when a dying town, a divided family, and a band of teenage dreamers dared to set their sights on the stars -- and saw a future that the nation was just beginning to imagine."
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![[German] - Albert muss nach Hause - Die irgendwie wahre Geschichte eines Mannes, seiner Frau und ihr Audiobook](https://covers.audiobooks.com/images/covers/large/9783961090013.jpg)
![[Spanish] - Albert vuelve a casa: La historia, en cierto modo real, de un hombre, su esposa y su cai Audiobook](https://covers.audiobooks.com/images/covers/large/9780718090067.jpg)
