The Kapillan of Malta by Nicholas Monsarrat
          Kapillan is the Maltese word for priest. When, on the first day of the war against Italy in 1940, Father Salvatore went with his sacristan to the catacombs that were to shelter his flock in the terrible years of aerial bombardment ahead, he took with him his ancient altar stone as a symbol of his faith: faith in God and in the indomitable spirit of the Maltese people.
          He was a man of complex allegiances: to his mother, the Baroness Santo-Nobile in her palazzo on the heights of Valetta; to the simple people in his care; to his sister and to his beautiful young niece so soon to suffer the joys and agonies of wartime love; even to his brother-in-law, a known Italian sympathizer…
          His strength, like Malta’s faltered but never broke. To this extent his story is Malta’s, a story of human courage, and endurance, and final victory

La Balsa by Vital Alsar
          The voyage by sea from Ecuador to Australia traverses some 8600 miles of the most treacherous weather in the world. Yet four men and a cat, led by the cheerful Spaniard, Vital Alsar, determined to make the journey on a crude balsa wood craft. Courageous men, their tribulations make hair raising and sometimes hilarious reading.

The Shadow of the Falcon by Ewan Clarkson
          The peregrine falcon inhabits distant, desolate places, safe – so it might be thought – from the insidious spread of human civilisation. Today, however, no living thing is safe from man’s meddling, and Ewan Clarkson, in this vivid story of Freya the falcon and her mate Frika, paints a picture of the imperilled world about us that is both poignant and ultimately hopeful.

The Tower by Richard Martin Stern
          This is the incredible suspense novel that inspired the famous movie The Towering Inferno staring Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway and William Holden. The World Communications Center is a glittering skyscraper that is fatally flawed in its design, compromised through dubious means. On opening night the building’s systems fail spectacularly and the structure descends into violence and chaos, trapping the VIP guests of a gala opening celebration. It is up to the assembled governors and mayors, millionaires, government officials and ambassadors to find common cause if they are ever to survive the tower. Master storyteller Richard Martin Stern has crafted a six-hour thrill ride that leaves adrenal glands empty and jaws unhinged – The Tower is a suspense classic that is not easily forgotten. 
          "The Tower by Richard Martin Stern is one of the tightest suspense novels I have ever read. Packing the entire action of a full-length novel into less than five hours is a major technical accomplishment, to say nothing of delineating nearly a dozen major characters so that the reader is agonizingly concerned with their fate up to the last lines of the book. More than that, the author has managed to infuse life into a mighty building to the point where the reader actually feels the pain of its death throes, as if the suffering were his own."