During the Sago Mine accident, Homer Hickam was asked by miners’ families to give the keynote remarks at their memorial services.  Perhaps reflecting upon that tragedy, the creator of October Sky has crafted a new novel about a New Yorker turned coal miner’s wife.  Former businesswoman Song Hawkins is just beginning to adjust to the quirks of rural life in Highcoal when she is forced to put on the Red Helmet of a novice miner to save her husband and his beloved town.  Red Helmet examines sacrifice in relationships with Hickam’s trademark humor.  Red Helmet was published by Thomas Nelson Books.

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The Far Reaches
by Homer Hickam

At the outset of The Far Reaches, the year is 1943 and World War II in the Pacific rages on, with Americans engaged in desperate battles against a cruel and cunning enemy. Coast Guard Captain Josh Thurlow is on hand at the invasion of Tarawa, as the United States Navy begins the grand strategy of throwing her marines at island after bloody island across the Pacific. But nothing goes as planned as young Americans go up against determined, fanatical defenders who revel in snipers, big guns and human wave attacks compressed onto tiny battlefields from which there is no escape save death.

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, edge-of-your-seat writing, and the talent of a master storyteller, Homer Hickam delivers another page-turning tour de force.

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The Ambassador's Son
by Homer Hickam

Captain Josh Thurlow teams up with PT Boat commander Jack Kennedy on a devil-may-care mission in the South Pacific.

They had two weeks to accomplish a mission no soldier should ever have to do. They were going after one of their own – David Roosevelt Armistead, a hero up for the Medal of Honor and an ambassador’s son, who was now missing in the thick, jungled climes of the Solomons.

So while American forces blast away at one god-forsaken Pacific atoll after another, Coast Guard captain Josh Thurlow must make a desperate venture north into Japanese-held islands.

With echoes of James Michener, The Ambassador’s Son is the much-anticipated sequel to the bestselling The Keeper’s Son and adventure fiction at its finest.

"The Ambassador's Son is the reason I love to read. It takes you to a place where propellers and tides and bullets decide men's fates, and you feel like you're sweating along with the heroes and villains. Homer Hickam is a good writer that I'd probably read anything that he put out, but this adventure made me feel like a kid again." --Rick Bragg, bestselling author of All Over But the Shoutin'

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The Keeper's Son
by Homer Hickam

In 1941, Killakeet Island of the wind-swept Outer Banks of North Carolina is home to a tiny, peaceful population of fishermen, clam stompers, oyster rakers, and a few lonely sailors of the Coast Guard. Dominating the glorious, raw beauty of the little island is the majestic Killakeet Lighthouse, which for generations has been the responsibility of one family, the Thurlows.

However, Josh Thurlow, the Keeper's son, has forsworn his heritage to become the commander of the Maudie Jane, a small Coast Guard patrol boat operating off Killakeet. Josh is still tortured by guilt, seventeen years after losing his baby brother at sea. Then his life is complicated by the arrival of the beautiful Dosie Crossan, who has journeyed to lonely Killakeet to escape the outside world and perhaps find a purpose in life. While Josh's heart is stirred by the often-vexing Dosie, he continues his search for his brother, even after a wolfpack of German U-boats arrives to soak the island's beaches with blood and oil.

The Keeper's Son is a rousing, romantic tale of the power of the human heart forever searching for redemption.

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We Are Not Afraid
by Homer Hickam

Today, fear affects even the strongest of us. Sometimes it's immediate, caused by a sense of imminent danger-the kind we felt after terrorists destroyed the magnificent World Trade Center, tore a giant wound in the Pentagon and killed thousands of people. But sometimes fear becomes a normal way of life. In his best-selling memoir October Sky (aka Rocket Boys), Hickam introduced us to the rugged town of his youth, Coalwood, West Virginia, and the people who took on the hazardous and often brutal enterprise of coal mining. To survive and prosper, these people relied on an approach to living that would get them through hard times with an almost unnatural resilience. Over a lifetime, they learned to take on these attitudes: We are proud of who we are. We stand up for what we believe. We keep our families together. We trust in God but rely on ourselves. These attitudes are summed up in the Coalwood Assumption: WE ARE NOT AFRAID. Through poignant memories of his youth, best selling author Homer Hickam helps lead you beyond fear to find the courage and strength to live more happily and look toward to future with optimism.

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Sky of Stone
by Homer Hickam

In the summer of ‘61, Homer “Sonny” Hickam, a year of college behind him, was dreaming of sandy beaches and rocket ships. But before Sonny could reach the seaside fixer-upper where his mother was spending the summer, a telephone call sends him back to the place he thought he had escaped, the gritty coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. There, Sonny’s father, the mine’s superintendent, has been accused of negligence in a man’s death - and the townspeople are in conflict over the future of the town.

Sonny’s mother, Elsie, has commanded her son to spend the summer in Coalwood to support his father. But within hours, Sonny realizes two things: His father, always cool and distant with his second son, doesn’t want him there ... and his parents’ marriage has begun to unravel. For Sonny, so begins a summer of discovery - of love, betrayal, and most of all, of a brooding mystery that threatens to destroy his father and his town.

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The Coalwood Way
by Homer Hickam

From the #1 bestselling author of October Sky comes this rich, unforgettable tale. With the same dazzling storytelling that distinguished his first memoir, Homer Hickam takes us deeper into the soul of his West Virginia hometown at a moment when its unique way of life is buffeted by forces of time and change.

It is fall 1959. Homer “Sonny” Hickam and his fellow Rocket Boys are in their senior year at Big Creek High, and the town of Coalwood finds itself at a painful crossroads.

The strains can be felt within the Hickam home, where Homer Sr. struggles to save the mine, and his wife, Elsie, is feeling increasingly isolated from both her family and the townspeople. Sonny, despite a blossoming relationship with a local girl, finds his own mood darkened by an unexplainable sadness.

Then, with the holidays approaching, trouble at the mine and the arrival of a beautiful young outsider bring unexpected changes in both the Hickam family and the town of Coalwood ... as this luminous memoir moves toward its poignant conclusion.

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October Sky
by Homer Hickam

A New York Times #1 bestseller and Universal feature film, now available on DVD and home video!

It was 1957, the year Sputnik raced across the Appalachian sky, and the small town of Coalwood, West Virginia was slowly dying. Faced with an uncertain future, Homer Hickam nurtured a dream: to send rockets into outer space. The introspective son of the mine's superintendent and a mother determined to get him out of Coalwood forever, Homer fell in with a group of misfits who learned not only how to turn scraps of metal into sophisticated rockets, but how to sustain their hope in a town that swallowed its men alive. When the boys began to light up the tarry skies with their flaming projectiles and dreams of glory, Coalwood, and the Hickams, would never the same.

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Torpedo Junction
by Homer Hickam

SLAUGHTER AT SEA - JUST MILES FROM U.S. SOIL!

In 1942 German U-boats turned the shipping lanes off Cape Hatteras into a sea of death. Cruising up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard, they sank 259 ships, littering the waters with cargo and bodies. As astonished civilians witnessed explosions from American beaches, fighting men dubbed the area "Torpedo Junction." And while the U.S. Navy failed to react, a handful of Coast Guard sailors scrambled to the front lines. Outgunned and out-maneuvered, they heroically battled the deadliest fleet of submarines ever launched. Never was Germany closer to winning the war.

In a moving ship-by-ship account of terror and rescue at sea, Homer Hickam chronicles a little-known saga of courage, ingenuity, and triumph in the early years of World War II. From nerve-racking sea duels to the dramatic ordeals of sailors and victims on both sides of the battle, Hickam dramatically captures a war we had to win - because this one hit terrifyingly close to home.