In Venice, during the spring of 1866, it is the last month of the Austrian occupation of the Veneto. The Italian government has forged a pact with Prussia, and another war of liberation in the ongoing Risorgimento is imminent. Countess Livia Serpieri, unloved by her collaborator-husband but sympathetic to the cause of freedom espoused by her patriotic cousin Roberto, meets Austrian officer Franz Mahler as she begs him to call off a duel with Roberto....

"Twenty years in his future, Miyamoto Usagi faces a menace from Mars! It will take all the considerable fortitude, ingenuity, and heroism that Usagi and his loved ones can muster to combat the fearsome extraterrestrial war machines and halt the alien invasion"--

In the spring of 1974, Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese army made world headlines when he emerged from the Philippine jungle after a thirty-year ordeal. Hunted in turn by American troops, the Philippine police, hostile islanders, and successive Japanese search parties, Onoda had skillfully outmaneuvered all his pursuers, convinced that World War II was still being fought and that one day his fellow soldiers would return victorious. This...