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"Blending elements of reportage, memoir, and incantation, Flight of the Diamond Smugglers is a stunning investigation into the role of carrier pigeons in South African diamond smuggling. Nearly every town along South Africa's infamous diamond coast has been deemed "overmined." Before the area fully becomes a series of abandoned outposts, journalist Matthew Gavin Frank drives from Oranjemund, Namibia to the De Beers mining towns of Alexander Bay, Porth...

When seven-year-old Ali's greedy pet steals cherries from the wicked Sultan for whom his father keeps carrier pigeons, Ali is given three days to find 600 new cherries or his father will be thrown into the deep, dark oubliette. Includes facts about carrier pigeons and the sultan on whom this story is based, as well as an excerpt from "In Praise of Books" by al-Jahiz.

"In October 1918, during World War I, nearly seven hundred American soldiers were trapped behind enemy lines with no prospect of rescue. Allied troops did not have access to their location, and every attempt at communication provoked more casualties. Their only hope -- to dispatch a trained messenger pigeon to reach help miles away. This unforgettable story celebrates courage and determination in its most vulnerable form. Cher Ami's fearless flight...

While Rebecca Rubin helps her building's ailing superintendent take care of his homing pigeons, she puzzles over what to do with the Christmas centerpiece her teacher insisted she make but which has no place in her Jewish home.

The fascinating, untold story of how British intelligence secretly used homing pigeons as part of a clandestine espionage operation to gather information, communicate, and coordinate with members of the Resistance to defeat the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II. Between 1941 and 1944, British intelligence dropped sixteen thousand homing pigeons in an arc across Nazi-occupied Europe, from Bordeaux, France to Copenhagen, Denmark, as part...

"It is September 1940-a year into the war-and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around the Epping Forest home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents to influenza as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons with Bertie. All her birds are extraordinary to Susan-loyal, intelligent, beautiful-but none more so than Duchess. Hatched from...

Valiant and his feathered friends take to the sky to prove as they work their way into the Royal Air Force during World War II. Together this rag-tag squadron of carrier pigeons engages in an aerial adventures at a spitfire pace. From the first bumbling day of basic training through the final feather-raising mission, the flock of friends swoop their way toward victory. How, against the odds and an evil German falcon, Valiant is called upon for a...