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The Agency (A Jed Walker Series Novel #5)
by James PhelanIt's 2005, and Jed Walker has just entered the CIA. After a distinguished ten years within Air Force special ops, he's re-upped to avoid a desk job. But his first job will move the front line far closer to home--his first mission is stateside. New Orleans, pre-Katrina. Walker is sent on a mission by Harold Richter, CIA field operations legend and trainer of agents provocateur. The task he sends Walker on is a one-way ticket--survive and succeed at all costs. Walker is an off-the-grid, solo, deniable asset. But Walker soon finds out he's not alone. There's a British Agent in place, a savvy MI6 operator named Steph Mensch, and she's been tracking a super-yacht of Russians from Miami to the Big Easy. They're there to buy--and the asking price is huge. Soon, our spies learn that they must work together, and their missions become one and the same. When Steph is taken hostage, the case blows up: no one is who they seem, and soon Walker must take steps that will betray The Agency in order to do what's right for the nation. In a high-stakes game where the winner takes all, he must succeed. But at what cost?Then Walker learns the Russians are there to buy something that was stolen from them during the Russian war in Afghanistan. Walker knows if he doesn't succeed, it's not only Steph and him that will suffer--failure will result in an epic act of global terrorism.As Katrina comes to town to forever change a city and a country, it's clear to Walker that his life as a spy has the potential to shape global events. From Langley to Louisiana, Washington to Moscow, The Agency moves like a hurricane through a treacherous landscape of double crosses, false identities, and enemies old and new.
Defending the Motherland: The Soviet Women Who Fought Hitler's Aces
by Lyuba VinogradovaPlucked from every background, and led by an N.K.V.D. Major, the new recruits who boarded a train in Moscow on 16th October 1941 to go to war had much in common with millions of others across the world. What made the 586th Fighter Regiment, the 587th Heavy-bomber Regiment and the 588th Regiment of light night-bombers unique was their gender: the Soviet Union was creating the first all-female active combat units in modern history.Drawing on original interviews with surviving airwomen, Lyuba Vinogradova weaves together the untold stories of the female Soviet fighter pilots of the Second World War. From that first train journey to the last tragic disappearance, Vinogradova's panoramic account of these women's lives follows them from society balls to unmarked graves, from landmark victories to the horrors of Stalingrad. Battling not just fearsome Aces of the Luftwaffe but also patronising prejudice from their own leaders, women such as Lilya Litvyak and Ekaterina Budanova are brought to life by the diaries and recollections of those who knew them, and who watched them live, love, fight and die.
No Picnic on Mount Kenya: The Story Of Three P. O. W's Escape To Adventure
by Felice BenuzziIn the shadow of Mount Kenya, surrounded by the forests and creatures of the savannah, life drags interminably for the inmates of POW Camp 354. Confined to an endless cycle of boredom and frustration, one prisoner realizes he can bear it no longer.When the clouds covering Mount Kenya part one morning to reveal its towering peaks for the first time, Felice Benuzzi is transfixed. The tedium of camp life is broken by the beginnings of a sudden idea--an outrageous, dangerous, brilliant idea.Not many people would break out of a POW camp and trek for days across perilous terrain before climbing the north face of Mount Kenya with improvised equipment, meager rations, and a picture of the mountain on a tin of beef as their most accurate guide. Fewer still would break back into the camp on their return.This is the remarkable story of three such men--a powerful testament to the human spirit of rebellion and adventure--reissued in a deluxe edition featuring Benuzzi's own watercolor paintings of the expedition and a final chapter that has never before appeared in English.
Why 1914?
by Derek RobinsonIn Why 1914?, Derek Robinson--trained as a historian, shortlisted for the Booker Prize--applies his novelist's skills to asking how and why Europe hurried into such a massive disaster. He captures a world of kings and Kaisers, generals and infantrymen. None of them knew what a big European war meant. All the combatant nations assumed it would be short, and each expected to win. The roots of such folly began in the nineteenth century. Robinson traces the earliest warning signs, leading to a sudden crisis and an impulsive war that went massively wrong from the start. This book is the ideal introduction to the key question of the Great War: why did Europe explode?
Toploader
by Ed O'LoughlinIn a novel compared by some reviewers to Catch-22 for its mix of humor and outrage, this brilliant send-up of modern military adventurism is an insightful and darkly comic anti-war masterpiece. Its setting is the Embargoed Zone (or "Easy"), headquarters to the coalition of western allies, somewhere in the Middle East.Spying inside the Easy is expensive and hazardous, and the "terrorist" double agent known as Cobra needs his wages paid in cash in order to survive. But his down-at-heels spymaster from the occupying forces, one Captain Smith, is broke and forced to pay his agent in kind--with a top-loading washing machine pilfered from the American compound. When it turns out that this piece of clothes-washing technology is in fact a critical piece of military hardware essential to the allied war effort, a frantic scramble to retrieve the device is unleashed.Packed with unforgettable characters--including a resourceful teenage girl from the occupied territory, an intrepid local reporter navigating the Easy in search of the truth, an egotistical western blogger with delusions of relevance, a hapless drone pilot with an itchy trigger finger, and at least one very unfortunate donkey--Toploader is a savage and hilarious indictment of remote-control warfare and imperialism by proxy.
Between the Wars: 1919-1939
by Philip ZieglerAt the end of 1918 one prescient American historian began to write a history of the Great War. "What will you call it?" he was asked. "The First World War" was his bleak response. In Between the Wars Philip Ziegler examines the major international turning points - cultural and social as well as political and military - that led the world from one war to another. His perspective is panoramic, touching on all parts of the world where history was being made, giving equal weight to Gandhi's March to the Sea and the Japanese invasion of China as to Hitler's rise to power. It is the tragic story of a world determined that the horrors of the First World War would never be repeated yet committed to a path which in hindsight was inevitably destined to end in a second, even more devastating conflict.
Avenging Angels: Young Women Of The Soviet Union's Wwii Sniper Corps
by Lyuba VinogradovaBeginning in 1942, with the Eastern Front having claimed the lives of several million Soviet soldiers, Stalin's Red Army began drafting tens of thousands of women, most of them in their teens or early twenties, to defend against the Nazi invasion. Some volunteered, but most were given no choice, in particular about whether to become a sniper or to fill some other combat role.After a few months of brutal training, the female snipers were issued with high-powered rifles and sent to the front. Almost without exception, their first kill came as a great shock, and changed them forever. But as the number of kills grew, many snipers became addicted to their new profession, some to the point of becoming depressed if a "hunt" proved fruitless.Accounts from the veterans of the female sniper corps include vivid descriptions of the close bonds they formed with their fellow soldiers, but also the many hardships and deprivations they faced: days and days in a trench without enough food, water, or rest, their lives constantly at risk from the enemy and from the cold; burying their friends, most of them yet to leave their teenage years; or the frequent sexual harassment by male officers.Although many of these young women were killed, often on their first day of combat, the majority returned from the front, only to face the usual constellation of trials with which every war veteran is familiar. Some continued their studies, but most were forced to work, even as they also started families or struggled to adjust to life as single parents. Nearly all of them were still in their early twenties, and despite the physical and mental scars left by the war, they had no time for complaints as the Soviet Union rebuilt following the war.Drawing on original interviews, diaries, and previously unpublished archival material, historian Lyuba Vinogradova has produced an unparalleled quilt of first-person narratives about these women's lives. This fascinating document brings the realities and hardships faced by the Red Army's female sniper corps to life, shedding light on a little-known aspect of the Soviet Union's struggles against Hitler's war machine.
Raoul Wallenberg: The Heroic Life And Mysterious Disappearance Of The Man Who Saved Thousands Of Hungarian Jews From The Holocaust
by Ingrid CarlbergAn Honorary Citizen of the United States and Canada, and designated as one of the Righteous among the Nations by Israel, Raoul Wallenberg was a modest envoy to Hungary whose heroism in Budapest at the height of the Holocaust saved countless Jewish lives, and ultimately cost him his own.A series of unlikely coincidences led to the appointment of Wallenberg, by trade a poultry importer, as Sweden's Special Envoy to Budapest in 1944. With remarkable bravery, Wallenberg created a system of protective passports, and sheltered thousands of desperate Jews in a special "international ghetto" created in collaboration with other neutral countries. As the war drew to a close, his invaluable work almost complete, Wallenberg voluntarily went to meet with the Soviet troops who were relieving the city. Arrested as a spy, Wallenberg disappeared into the depths of the Soviet system, never to be seen again.In this definitive biography, noted journalist Ingrid Carlberg has carried out unprecedented research into all elements of Wallenberg's life, narrating with vigor and insight the story of a heroic life, and navigating with wisdom and sensitivity the truth about his disappearance and death.
Swordland
by Edward Ruadh ButlerBeneath the warhorses' hooves, a nation will fall. A tale of war, death, lust, and scheming, set in the starkly beautiful landscapes of medieval Ireland and Wales. Robert FitzStephen is a warrior down on his luck. Arrogant, cold, but a brilliant soldier, FitzStephen commands a castle - yet although his mother was a princess his father was a lowly steward. When a Welsh rebellion brings defeat and a crippling siege, his highborn comrades scorn him, betraying him to the enemy. A hostage of his cousin, Prince Rhys, FitzStephen is disgraced, seemingly doomed to a life of obscurity and shame. Then King Diarmait arrives ... Diarmait is the ambitious overlord of an Irish kingdom. Forced to flee by the High King of Ireland, he seeks to reclaim his lands by any means possible - and that includes inviting the Normans in. With nothing left to lose - and perhaps a great deal to gain - FitzStephen agrees to lead the Irishman's armies, and to drive Diarmait's enemies from his kingdom. His price? Acceptance, perhaps ... or perhaps a kingdom of his own? Butler's debut novel, Swordland is a powerful, impeccably researched story of medieval Celtic life, of the loves, losses, and hatreds of some of the most important figures in Irish and British history.
Tales of War
by Lord DunsanyThese artistic, subtle, little sketches of the war with a fairy-story elusiveness to them interpret, in a few pages, more than many books do. They tell of the soldiers' longings, his horror of war, the memories of springtime at home, and even descent to a delight in the work of the kaiser's barber.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
by T. E. LawrenceWhen T. E. Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' first appeared in 1922 it was immediately recognized as a literary masterpiece. In writing his extraordinary account of the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918 and his own role in it, T. E. Lawrence sealed his place in history and legend as Lawrence of Arabia. Widely regarded as the last great romantic war story and described by Winston Churchill as one of "the greatest books ever written in the English language," it conveys a world of wonders, written in the same committed fashion that Lawrence applied to his duties in Syria, this is a towering achievement of both autobiography and military history, as well as a first-rate adventure story. 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' is a must read.
The March of the Ten Thousand
by XenophonStranded deep in enemy territory, the Spartan general Clearchus and the other Greek senior officers were subsequently killed or captured by treachery on the part of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. Xenophon, one of three remaining leaders elected by the soldiers, played an instrumental role in encouraging the Greek army of 10,000 to march north across foodless deserts and snow-filled mountain passes towards the Black Sea and the comparative security of its Greek shoreline cities.
The Stainless Steel Rat and The Misplaced Battleship
by Harry HarrisonIt's more than a little careless to lose a battleship, even in interstellar space. Enter Slippery Jim diGriz, better known as the Stainless Steel Rat, the fastest talking con-man in the galaxy. Jim will need to go undercover to find the missing battleship and make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. A fast paced comical science fiction romp!
The K-Factor
by Harry HarrisonThey were losing the planet. The first of the frontier worlds wanted its independence. There was a traitor in their midst and it was up to Neel to find him and stop a nuclear war.
A Silver Lining
by Catrin CollierAt sixteen, Rachel O'Brian finds herself alone in the world and accepts a home with an old friend of her father's, but she is unprepared for his wife's malice and cannot guess at the secret which feeds the woman's hatred. The younger Maxwells welcome Rachel to their Ayrshire farm, especially Ross, but he too has earned Gertrude Maxwell's spite. When Ross disappears Rachel is dismayed to find herself destitute and expecting his child. Not until past secrets are revealed can the two find each other again.
All That Glitters
by Catrin CollierCornish smuggler Devlin 'Devil' Varcoe braves winter weather and revenue men to fetch the contraband on which Porthinnis depends for survival. Drawn to Jenefer Trevanion, whose father finances the smuggling operation, Devlin is seduced by beautiful wild-child Tamara Gillis. When fire destroys her home, Jenefer is forced to work in the pilchard cellars. Meanwhile, craving Tamara for himself, Thomas Varcoe plots murder to rid himself of the brother he hates. Rejected by Devlin, a pregnant Tamara is pressured to marry Thomas. Finally recognising the love he never felt he deserved, Devlin is on his way home after successfully undertaking a secret mission when a once-in-a-lifetime storm faces him with a terrible choice.
Beggars and Choosers
by Catrin CollierIt had long been her dream to discover what had happened to the rest of her family. Her mother and uncle had managed to get out alive - but what of the others who'd disappeared? But how do you find out what happened nearly seventy years ago, in a city with a different name, in a country that no longer exists? Could there really be anything left? And if there was, could - would - a Russian really help her to find it?
Broken Rainbows
by Catrin CollierThe third novel in the Long Road to Baghdad series, a vivid, moving, historically accurate account of a conflict between Eastern and Western Empires. 1916, Mesopotamia. The Turks order prisoners from the siege of Kut to march the hundreds of miles to Baghdad. The men are weak from starvation after the five-month siege, with many suffering from dysentery and diseases. They have no medical supplies - and then the hot weather begins... Hundreds of men die on the march, the stragglers killed by Arab tribesmen; those too ill to move are left behind to die. Soon, though, the tide of war turns, and eventually the British march victorious into Baghdad. Having taken control of Mesopotamia, the British find they do not have the resources to govern it. What will be the country's fate? Meanwhile, the POWs who survived imprisonment re-enter an uncertain world - among them John Mason, his health ruined and future unsure. His old friend Charles Reid is more optimistic as love blossoms. But nothing is clear-cut anymore ...Harry Downe remains with his Bedouin wife's tribe: how much of his past does he truly remember? His journalist brother Michael seeks answers amidst the ruins of war as, for their friends and comrades, the struggle to survive goes on despite the conflict's end.
Finders and Keepers
by Catrin CollierThe first instalment of Catrin Collier's The Tsar's Dragons tells the epic historical saga based on the true story of how John Hughes, a lowborn, illiterate Welshman, founded Russia's iron industry on the steppes of the Ukraine. In 1869 John Hughes travelled to Russia at the invitation of Tsar Alexander II to build an ironworks and instigate the industrialization of Russia. Not everyone welcomes John and the Tsar's plans. Necessity forces Count Nicholas Beletsky to sell John land, although he abhors 'dirty' industry and is furious when son Alexei reveals his ambition to become an engineer. The Jews, who live apart in their shtetl, refuse to believe that John's plans will halt the persecution of their race. The Cossacks in the village of Alexandrovka, soon to be swallowed by John's new town, queue to sell John their land and coal mines that have been worked in the same primitive fashion or centuries. Undeterred, John signs up workers in Wales, but not all leave in search of fortune. Some, like brother and sister Richard and Anna Parry, are running to escape violence. Will they, and John's right-hand man Glyn, find the peace they search for in John's visionary new town?
Hearts of Gold
by Catrin CollierDecember 1915. Following heavy casualties, General Townsend withdraws his exhausted troops to the town of Kut Al Amara, Iraq. His orders - to engage as many Turkish troops as possible in a siege situation. A relief force is hastily assembled, among them Charles Reid, Tom Mason, and Michael Downe, for each of whom the advance is personal. Charles returns to the country where he lost the love of his life. Tom's brother John, an army surgeon, awaits execution. Michael's brother Harry, an army intelligence officer, is missing, having never returned from his last mission. Short of everything except the sick and wounded, reduced to eating their horses, the column is repeatedly thrown against the might of the Turkish guns as they wonder if they will ever see home and their wives again. For the women in their lives, the strain reaches breaking point as they wait for news from the front. As the death toll rises, the British War Office faces the unthinkable: defeat for Townsend and his 10,000 men.
Homecoming
by Catrin CollierDr Grace Harper has loved the stories of Robin Hood ever since she first saw them on TV as a girl. Now, with her fortieth birthday just around the corner, she's a successful academic in Medieval History, with a tenured position at a top university. But Grace is in a bit of a rut. She's supposed to be writing a textbook on a real-life medieval gang of high-class criminals - the Folvilles - but she keeps being drawn into the world of the novel she's secretly writing - a novel which entwines the Folvilles with her long-time love of Robin Hood - and a feisty young girl named Mathilda, who is the key to a medieval mystery... Meanwhile, Grace's best friend Daisy - who's as keen on animals as Grace is on the Merry Men - is unexpectedly getting married, and a reluctant Grace is press-ganged into being her bridesmaid. As Grace sees Daisy's new-found happiness, she starts to re-evaluate her own life. Is her devotion to a man who may or may not have lived hundreds of years ago really a substitute for a real-life hero of her own? It doesn't get any easier when she meets Dr Robert Franks - a rival academic who Grace is determined to dislike but finds herself being increasingly drawn to...
Long Road to Baghdad
by Catrin CollierWhen Alexei Beletsky brings John Hughes news of an impending pogrom planned by Misha, a captain in the Cossack regiment, he conceals more than he tells him. Engaged to a Jewess, Ruth, Alexei is aware that Captain Misha Razin has been motivated by more than the age-old hatred of the Cossacks for the Jews. Misha is in love with Alexei's cousin Sonya, but Sonya has already given her heart to a Jew, who dare not declare his love for a Christian because he cannot bear the prospect of being shunned by his people and his religion. John, Glyn, Richard, and Alexei enlist the assistance of the local orthodox priest, Father Grigor, and the commandant of the Cossacks. They devise a plan - one which they hope will avoid a massacre. But can they dissuade Misha and save an entire community, or will blood run in the streets of the shtetl as it has done so many times before?
Magda's Daughter
by Catrin CollierIn contrast to those who joined wagon trains to seek their fortune in the American West, John Hughes and his workers trek east. Shipping the machinery needed for his ironworks across the steppe by bullock train, Hughes heads for the land he's bought from Count Beletsky, who has no time for either foreigners or industry. Beletsky is at odds with his wilful, forward-thinking son, Alexei, who is protected by his quick-witted grandmother, the Dowager Catherine Ignatova. Nearby is the Cossack village of Alexandrovka, where men hew coal out of shallow pits, and a Jewish shtetl, home to Nathan Kharber, a doctor forced to return to his village by the death of his parents. To Nathan's horror, he discovers his sister Ruth has fallen in love with Alexei. He knows, as they do, that if their love is discovered both risk being ostracized, if not killed, by their communities. The trek from the port of Taganrog to the immigrants' new home is long, onerous, and beset by problems when the autumn rains begin. Fighting mud and disease, Hughes's party are escorted by the Tsar's Cossack soldiers. There, on the journey, Alexei discovers it is not only the civilian Cossacks he and Ruth need to fear, but an entire regiment hell bent on wiping Jews from the face of the earth ...
Past Remembering
by Catrin CollierJack-Knifed' is the first novel featuring DCI Martin Phelps and his team, based in the world-famous and vibrant Cardiff Bay. Mark Wilson, a decent, well-liked gay man, lives alone in a beautiful house in Cardiff. One Saturday evening, his closest friends go to his house for an evening of drinks and catching-up. Finding no answer, the concerned friends break in - to a horrific murder scene. For Mark Wilson has been brutally, sadistically murdered in his own home. As DCI Phelps investigates, Mark's traumatic early life is revealed. Was his killer someone from his past? Was his sexuality a motive? What about his violent, homophobic father - a man who has already killed more than once ... Meanwhile, Mark's estranged sister Amy broods on the hatred she has for her brother, blaming him for turning their father into a killer. As she sinks further in to the depths of drug addiction, who's to say what her next move will be? As the body count rises, Phelps and his sergeant, Matt Pryor, soon realise they are on the trail of a serial killer ...
Poppies at the Well
by Catrin CollierJosephine Anderson, youngest of the immense Anderson clan, has an itch to travel and to put some distance between herself and Piney Woods, Louisiana, and she is determined to scratch it with a stint as a traveling actor for a murder mystery dinner show. With Beatrice Becklaw in the pilot's seat, the troupe of four amateur actors hit the circuit - and hit the end of the tour when a real dead body stops the show. Jo's fondness for Miss Bea is the impetus to find out just who ruined the tour, and the person she least suspects is the one she needs to watch. Set in the beautiful mountains of Colorado, Becklaw's Murder Mystery Tour is proof that sometimes the confines of the family compound is the best place to be, nutty family and all.