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.

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.

Big Fish meets The Notebook in this emotionally evocative story about a man, a woman, and an alligator that is a moving tribute to love, from the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning memoir Rocket Boys–the basis of the movie October Sky.

Elsie Lavender and Homer Hickam (the father of the author) were high school classmates in the West Virginia coalfields, graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen (yes, that Buddy Ebsen). But when Buddy headed for New York, Elsie’s dreams of a life with him were crushed and eventually she found herself back in the coalfields, married to Homer.

Unfulfilled as a miner’s wife, Elsie was reminded of her carefree days with Buddy every day because of his unusual wedding gift: an alligator named Albert she raised in the only bathroom in the house. When Albert scared Homer by grabbing his pants, he gave Elsie an ultimatum: “Me or that alligator!” After giving it some thought, Elsie concluded there was only one thing to do: Carry Albert home.

Carrying Albert Home is the funny, sweet, and sometimes tragic tale of a young couple and a special alligator on a crazy 1,000-mile adventure. Told with the warmth and down-home charm that made Rocket Boys a beloved bestseller, Homer Hickam’s rollicking tale is ultimately a testament to that strange and marvelous emotion we inadequately call love.

Las memorias best seller que inspiraron la pelicula Cielo de Octubre, Rocket Boys es una autobiografia poderosa y una historia luminosa de la vida en la decada de 1960, del amor de una madre y del temor de un padre, de un grupo de jovenes que sonaban con lanzar cohetes al espacio… y de hacer realidad los suenos.

Asi comienza la maravillosamente entretenida y extraordinaria autobiografia de la vida de <> Homer Hickam, Jr. en Coalwood, Virginia Occidental, un pueblo miserable donde lo unico que importaba era la mineria de carbon y el futbol 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 unio a un grupo de inadaptados para quienes el futuro parecia incierto.

Pero en 1957, luego de haber visto el satelite sovietico 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 suenos de su ninez, 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 suenos. Con la ayuda –y en ocasiones los obstaculos– de los habitantes de Coalwood, los jovenes aprendieron no solo a convertir escombros de mineria en cohetes que surcaban los cielos, sino que encontraron esperanza en una ciudad en la que el progreso pasaba desapercibido.

Una autobiografia unica, Cielo de octubre es a la vez una cronica 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 perfeccion un momento en el cual un pueblo agonizante, una familia dividida y una banda de adolescents sonadores se atrevieron a mirar mas alla de sus diferencias y a fijar sus objetivos en las estrellas… y vieron un futuro que la nacion estaba apenas empezando a imaginar.

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

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

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.

It’s 1943 and the Americans and Japanese are fighting a deadly war in the hot, jungle-covered volcanic islands of the South Pacific. The outcome is in doubt, and now a terrible blow has fallen on American morale. Lieutenant David Armistead, a Marine Corps hero and cousin of the president of the United States, is missing and some say he’s gone over to the enemy. All that’s known for certain is he was last seen heading north into Japanese-held islands, taking with him the beautiful, young native wife of a colonist who heads up the local militia and is swearing revenge. Something must be done before Allied unity falls apart.

Coast Guard Captain Josh Thurlow and his ragtag crew are given the assignment to find Armistead, though not necessarily to bring him back alive. Recruited in the hunt is a tormented and frail PT-boat skipper nicknamed Shaffy, who’s also known by another name: John F Kennedy. When Josh is stranded in the jungles of New Georgia with a mysterious, sensual woman who has a tendency to chop off men’s heads, it’s up to Kennedy to come to the rescue and complete the mission. To procure a gunboat, however, he first has to play high-stakes poker with a young naval supply officer called Nick, who happens to be the best gambler in the South Pacific. Nick has another name, too: Richard M. Nixon.

The adventures of these hot-blooded characters wind tighter and tighter until a fiery, climatic day when Joe Gimmee, a local holy man with some peculiar ideas on how to acquire treasure from the gods, has promised a miracle. The one he produces is remarkable, and will change the lives of everyone who watches it unfold. Based solidly on historical facts with echoes of James A. Michener, The Ambassador’s Son is a thrilling tale of the South Pacific and adventure fiction at its finest.

Homer Hickam is the #1 New York Times best-selling author whose life inspired the critically acclaimed film October Sky. In The Coalwood Way he returns to his childhood home of Coalwood, West Virginia for an inspiring memoir about growing up in a town that’s slowly fading away. Homer and his close buddies, who call themselves the Rocket Boys, are high school seniors in 1959. Their rocket building experiments amaze the locals, thanks to top-quality moonshine for fuel, “liberated” materials, and Homer’s self-taught understanding of higher math. But no matter how brilliant their experiments are, they can do little to help preserve Coalwood’s way of life. With the coal mine on its last legs, prospects for the town are unpredictable at best. For anyone who’s ever dreamed of greatness or wondered what an uncertain future might bring, this book will seem warmly familiar. Frank Muller’s affectionate narration captures both the spirit of ambition and the spectre of gloomy prospects.

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

Life on the ranchlands of Montana comes with more than its share of trouble. The unique people who live and work on this untamed stretch of today’s American West expect it-and some of them even enjoy it. One of them is Mike Wire, a former homicide detective who once worked the decadent hills and valleys of Hollywood. Having enough of the violence of the big city, Mike has retreated to a far corner of civilization to spend his days running the Square C Ranch and pining for Jeanette Coulter, its spirited and iron-fisted owner.
But Mike is soon to learn terrible things can happen beneath Montana’s big skies, too. The badlands are home to more than just horses, cattle, cowboys, and laid-back rattlesnakes. Just beneath the surface are the bones of a dinosaur family that could make a fortune for whoever gets to them first. When a paleontologist and his attractive young assistants arrive at the Square C to dig, Mike senses trouble is clinging to them like Montana mud. Once discovered, those bones won’t stay buried, and not everyone hunting for them is doing it in the interest of science.
When a murderer begins to stalk the dinosaur hunting grounds, Mike has to combine the lessons he learned in Los Angeles with those of the Montana prairie to protect the people and the land he has come to love.

The year is 1943 and World War II in the Pacific rages on, with Americans engaged in desperate battles against a cunning enemy. Coast Guard Captain Josh Thurlow is on hand at the invasion of Tarawa, as the U.S. Navy begins the grand strategy of throwing her marines at island after bloody island across the Pacific.

As blood colors the waters around Tarawa, Josh flounders ashore through a floating graveyard of dead men and joins the survivors, determined to somehow wrest victory from disaster. Critically wounded, Josh expects to die. Instead, Sister Mary Kathleen, a young Irish nun, nurses him back to health, and then shanghais Josh, sidekick Bosun Ready O’Neal, and three American marines to a group of beautiful tropical islands invaded by a brutal Japanese warlord. Josh and his little band must decide whether to help the Sister fight the battle she demands, return to Tarawa and the “real” war, or settle down in the romantic splendor of the South Seas.

Hickam expertly weaves the adventures of these hot-blooded characters tighter and tighter until the Sister’s secrets and sins are finally revealed during a horrific battle in the lair of the warlord. With an incredible eye for historical detail and the talent of a master storyteller, Homer Hickam delivers another tour de force.

On the outer banks of the Carolinas in 1941, fishermen and a few lonely sailors constitute the human population. Dominating the rough yet beautiful landscape is the majestic Killakeet Lighthouse, run for generations by the Thurlow family. But Josh Thurlow, the lighthouse keeper’s son, has forsworn his heritage to become the commander of a small Coast Guard patrol boat. Tortured by twenty years of guilt for losing his brother at sea, Josh still searches for him, even while a looming wolf pack of German U-boats threatens to decimate the shipping lanes off the coast. One of the U-boats is captained by a hardened Nazi, Otto Krebs. But Captain Krebs may bring ashore more than the war – he may also have the answer to Josh Thurlow’s quest.

On the outer banks of the Carolinas in 1941, fishermen and a few lonely sailors constitute the human population. Dominating the rough yet beautiful landscape is the majestic Killakeet Lighthouse, run for generations by the Thurlow family. But Josh Thurlow, the lighthouse keeper’s son, has forsworn his heritage to become the commander of a small Coast Guard patrol boat.

Tortured by twenty years of guilt for losing his brother at sea, Josh still searches for him, even while a looming wolf pack of German U-boats threatens to decimate the shipping lanes off the coast. One of the U-boats is captained by a hardened Nazi, Otto Krebs. But Captain Krebs may bring ashore more than the war – he may also have the answer to Josh Thurlow’s quest.