5ive Guys FC

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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

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Carissa Véliz

An Economist BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
As the data economy grows in power, Carissa Véliz exposes how our privacy is eroded by big tech and governments, why that matters and what we can do about it. 
 
The moment you check your phone in the morning you are giving away your data. Before you've even switched off your alarm, a whole host of organisations have been alerted to when you woke up, where you slept, and with whom. As you check the weather, scroll through your 'suggested friends' on Facebook, you continually compromise your privacy. 
 
Without your permission, or even your awareness, tech companies are harvesting your information, your location, your likes, your habits, and sharing it amongst themselves. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you. Even when you've explicitly asked them not to. And it's not just you. It's all your contacts too. 
 
Digital technology is stealing our personal data and with it our power to make free choices. To reclaim that power and democracy, we must protect our privacy. 
 
What can we do? So much is at stake. Our phones, our TVs, even our washing machines are spies in our own homes. We need new regulation. We need to pressure policy-makers for red lines on the data economy. And we need to stop sharing and to adopt privacy-friendly alternatives to Google, Facebook and other online platforms. 
 
Short, terrifying, practical: Privacy is Power highlights the implications of our laid-back attitude to data and sets out how we can take back control. 
 
If you liked The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, you'll love Privacy is Power because it provides a philosophical perspective on the politics of privacy, and it offers a very practical outlook, both for policymakers and ordinary citizens.

Privacy is Power

Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data

Bill Browder

'An unburdening, a witness statement and a thriller all at the same time ... electrifying.' The Times 
 
I have to assume that there is a very real chance that Putin or members of his regime will have me killed some day. If I'm killed, you will know who did it. When my enemies read this book, they will know that you know. 
 
 
A Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. A true-life thriller by one of Putin's Most Wanted. 
 
In November 2009, the young lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death by eight police officers in a freezing cell in a Moscow prison. His crime? Testifying against Russian officials who were involved in a conspiracy to steal $230 million of taxes. 
 
Red Notice is a searing exposé of the whitewash of this imprisonment and murder. The killing hasn't been investigated. It hasn't been punished. Bill Browder is still campaigning for justice for his late lawyer and friend. This is his explosive journey from the heady world of finance in New York and London in the 1990s, through battles with ruthless oligarchs in turbulent post-Soviet Union Moscow, to the shadowy heart of the Kremlin. 
 
With fraud, bribery, corruption and torture exposed at every turn, Red Notice is a shocking political roller-coaster. 
__________________ 
 
Reads like a classic thriller, with an everyman hero alone and in danger in a hostile foreign city ... but it's all true, and it's a story that needs to be told.' Lee Child 
 
'A shocking true-life thriller.' Tom Stoppard 
 
'A riveting account... it is a powerful story and Browder tells it skilfully.' The Washington Post

Red Notice

A True Story of Corruption, Murder and how I became Putin’s no. 1 enemy

A True Story of Corruption, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice

Evan Ratliff

‘Meth, murder and pirates: the coder who became a crime boss. A world that lurks just outside of our everyday perception, in the dark corners of the internet we never visit’ – Wired 
 
The Mastermind tells the incredible true story of Paul Le Roux, the frighteningly powerful creator of a twenty-first century cartel, and the decade-long global manhunt that finally brought his empire to its knees. 
 
Le Roux’s business evolved from an online prescription drug network into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. All tied together with encryption programs so advanced that government agencies were unable to break them. 
 
Tracing Le Roux’s vast wealth and his shadowy henchmen around the world, award-winning journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate network. His investigation reveals a dark parable of ambition and greed, and exposes a new age of crime in which a reclusive entrepreneur can build an empire in the shadows of our networked world.

The Mastermind

The hunt for the World's most prolific criminal

Craig Unger

THE EXPLOSIVE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'A bombshell.' Daily Mail 
 
'Damning, terrifying and enraging.' The Spectator 
 
House of Trump, House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House. 
 
It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin’s long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and associates had ensnared Trump in over more than two decades of shady business associations. 
 
As Unger traces Donald Trump's sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world, House of Trump, House of Putin, reveals the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. Examining Russia's phoenixlike rise from the ashes of the post-Cold War Soviet Union, Unger reveals its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower, and how such ambitions came to compromise the president. 
 
Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be in the White House. This essential book is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today’s world.

House of Trump, House of Putin

The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia

James Fergusson

Shortlisted for the British Academy Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2018. 
 
'A SERIOUSLY NECESSARY BOOK.' ROWAN WILLIAMS, FORMER ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY 
 
'A MUST READ.' MIQDAAD VERSI, MUSLIM COUNCIL OF BRITAIN 
 
'A COMPELLING AND COMPASSIONATE SURVEY OF BRITISH ISLAM.’ THE GUARDIAN 
 
'A TIMELY BOOK.' BARONESS WARSI 
 
'HUGELY IMPORTANT.' PETER OBORNE 
 
'HEARTENING.' DAVID ANDERSON QC 
 
In this groundbreaking book, James Fergusson travels the length of Britain to explore our often misunderstood Muslim communities, and to experience life on both sides of our increasingly segregated society. 
 
The face of Britain is changing. The Muslim population has more than doubled over the last twenty years, and is projected to do so again over the next twenty. A societal shift of this size and speed has inevitably brought growing pains, with the impact on our communities becoming ever more profound – as well as painful, because in the eyes of many, Islam has a problem: the extremist views of a tiny minority, which, when translated into action, can result in catastrophic violence. 
 
The danger of this extremist threat - or our response to it - is that we are collectively starting to lose faith in the cultural diversity that has glued our nation together for so long. Our tolerance of others, so often celebrated as a ‘fundamental British value,’ is at risk. 
 
In this groundbreaking book, James Fergusson travels the length of Britain to evaluate the impact these seismic shifts have had on our communities. With the rise of nationalist movements, growing racial tensions and an increasingly out of touch political elite, what does it mean to be a Muslim in Britain? What is life like on both sides of this growing religious divide? And what can we do to heal the fractures appearing in our national fabric? 
 
Al-Britannia, My Country is a timely and urgent account of life in Britain today, a call to action filled with real-life experience, hard truths and important suggestions for our future.

Al-Britannia, My Country

A Journey Through Muslim Britain

Tamer Elnoury

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
The gripping true story of the undercover agent risking his life to fight terrorism 
 
Their aim was to kill as many people as possible. 
His mission was to stop them. 
 
A terrorist plot to kill hundreds of innocent people. 
An undercover agent posing as a wealthy Al-Qaeda sympathiser. 
A race against time to gain the terrorists’ trust and bring them down. Before it’s too late… 
In the aftermath of 9/11, long-time undercover FBI agent Tamer Elnoury joined an elite counterterrorism unit. Its mission: to infiltrate terror cells, gain detailed knowledge of their networks and bring them successfully to justice. Writing under a pseudonym, Tamer Elnoury here tells the hair-raising true story of life undercover, risking his life to keep us safe.

Terrorist Hunter

Jack Ewing

A shocking exposé of Volkswagen’s fraud by the New York Times reporter who covered the scandal. 
 
Updated with a New Afterword by the Author. 
 
When news of Volkswagen’s clean diesel fraud first broke in September 2015, it sent shockwaves around the world. Overnight, the company long associated with quality, reliability and trust became a universal symbol of greed and deception. Consumers were outraged, investors panicked, the company embarrassed and facing bankruptcy. 
 
As lawsuits and criminal investigations piled up, by August 2016 VW had settled with American regulators and car-owners for $15 billion, with additional fines and claims still looming. 
 
In Faster, Higher, Farther, Jack Ewing rips the lid off the scandal. He describes VW’s rise from “the people’s car” during the Nazi era to one of Germany’s most prestigious and important global brands, touted for being “green.” He paints vivid portraits of Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch and chief executive Martin Winterkorn, arguing that their unremitting ambition drove employees, working feverishly in pursuit of impossible sales targets, to illegal methods. 
 
With unprecedented access to key players and a ringside seat during the course of the legal proceedings, Faster, Higher, Farther reveals how the succeed-at-all-costs culture prevalent in modern boardrooms led to one of corporate history’s farthest-reaching cases of fraud—with potentially devastating consequences. 
 
As the future of one of the world’s biggest companies remains uncertain, this is the extraordinary story of Volkswagen’s downfall.

Faster, Higher, Farther

The Inside Story of the Volkswagen Scandal

Greg Mitchell

Read the incredible true story of the daring escapes from East Berlin. 
 
 'A story with so much inherent drama.' The Guardian 
 
 'One of the great untold stories of the Cold War.' Alex Kershaw, author of Avenue of Spies 
_______________ 
 
 In the summer of 1962, the year after the construction of the Berlin Wall, a group of young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture and even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the Wall. 
 
 As Greg Mitchell's riveting narrative unfolds we meet a host of extraordinary characters who demonstrate astonishing courage in the face of adversity: the legendary cyclist who became East Berlin's most wanted man; the tunneller who had already served four years in the East German gulag; the young East Berliner who escapes with her baby, then marries one of the tunnellers; an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English Channel; and the Stasi informer who betrays them all. 
 
Capturing the spirit of a divided Berlin and celebrating the subversive power of ordinary people in desperate circumstances, The Tunnels is an exhilarating real-life thriller with themes that reverberate today. 
 _________________ 
 
 'A stark reminder that barriers can never cut people off entirely but only succeed in driving them underground.' New York Times

The Tunnels

The True Story of Tunnel 29 and the Daring Escapes Under the Berlin Wall

The Untold Story of the Escapes Under the Berlin Wall

John Nixon

A riveting, revealing and news-making account of the CIA's interrogation of Saddam, written by the CIA agent who conducted the questioning. 
 
 In December 2003, after one of the largest, most aggressive manhunts in history, US military forces captured Iraqi president Saddam Hussein near his hometown of Tikrit. Beset by body-double rumors and false alarms during a nine-month search, the Bush administration needed positive identification of the prisoner before it could make the announcement that would rocket around the world. 
 At the time, John Nixon was a senior CIA leadership analyst who had spent years studying the Iraqi dictator. Called upon to make the official ID, Nixon looked for telltale scars and tribal tattoos and asked Hussein a list of questions only he could answer. The man was indeed Saddam Hussein, but as Nixon learned in the ensuing weeks, both he and America had greatly misunderstood just who Saddam Hussein really was. 
 Debriefing the President presents an astounding, candid portrait of one of our era’s most notorious strongmen. Nixon, the first man to conduct a prolonged interrogation of Hussein after his capture, offers expert insight into the history and mind of America’s most enigmatic enemy. After years of parsing Hussein’s leadership from afar, Nixon faithfully recounts his debriefing sessions and subsequently strips away the mythology surrounding an equally brutal and complex man. His account is not an apology, but a sobering examination of how preconceived ideas led Washington policymakers—and Tony Blair's government —astray. Unflinching and unprecedented, Debriefing the President exposes a fundamental misreading of one of the modern world’s most central figures and presents a new narrative that boldly counters the received account.

Debriefing the President

The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein

Alan Johnson

Winner of the Parliamentary Book Award, best memoir by a Parliamentarian, 2016 
 
From the condemned slums of Southam Street in West London to the corridors of power in Westminster, Alan Johnson’s multi-award-winning autobiography charts an extraordinary journey, almost unimaginable in today’s Britain. This third volume tells of Alan’s early political skirmishes as a trades union leader, where his negotiating skills and charismatic style soon came to the notice of Tony Blair and other senior members of the Labour Party. 
As a result, Alan was chosen to stand in the constituency of Hull West and Hessle, and entered Parliament as an MP after the landslide election victory for Labour in May 1997. But this is no self-aggrandizing memoir of Westminster politicking and skulduggery. Supporting the struggle of his constituents, the Hull trawlermen and their families, for justice comes more naturally to Alan than do the byzantine complexities of Parliamentary procedure. But of course he does succeed there, and rises through various ministerial positions to the office of Home Secretary in 2009. 
In The Long and Winding Road, Alan’s characteristic honesty and authenticity shine through every word. His book takes you into a world which is at once familiar and strange: this is politics as you’ve never seen it before…

The Long and Winding Road

Martin Pearce

'I cannot think of a better biography of a spy chief' 
Richard Davenport-Hines, The Spectator 
 
Sir Maurice Oldfield was one of the most important British spies of the Cold War era. A farmer’s son from a provincial grammar school who found himself accidentally plunged into the world of espionage, Sir Maurice was the first Chief of MI6 who didn’t come to the role via the traditional public school and Oxbridge route. 
 
Oldfield was the voice of British Intelligence in Washington at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of JFK, and was largely responsible for keeping the UK out of the Vietnam War. Working his way to the top of the secret service, he took on the job of rebuilding confidence in the British Secret Service in the wake of the Philby, Burgess and Maclean spy scandals. 
 
This is the fascinating life story, told in detail for the first time, of a complex, likable character as well as a formidable intelligence chief.

Spymaster

The Life of Britain's Most Decorated Cold War Spy and Head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield

Richard Murphy

'A brief but crucially important book' 
Marcus Chown 
 
In The Joy of Tax, tax campaigner Richard Murphy challenges almost every idea you have about tax. For him, tax is fundamentally about the ideas that shape the sort of society we want to live in, not technicalities. His intention is to demonstrate that there is indeed a joy in tax, and by embracing it we can create a fairer society and change the world for the better. 
 
Tax has been a feature of human society for a very long time. Almost no one gives tax a good press even though, as Richard Murphy argues, it has been fundamental to the development of democracy the world over. Whilst we may not like tax very much, in contrast it is clear that we really do like the public services which governments provide. So much so, in fact, that for most of the last 300 years, people have been more than happy for governments to run deficits by spending more than they raise in taxation. 
 
 2008 apparently changed all that. The issues of debt, deficits, cuts and austerity have dominated the political agenda ever since. Virtually every aspect of the government's finances and how to rearrange them in the forlorn hope of balancing the books has been discussed in great detail. Despite that, there has been almost no real discussion during this period about what tax is for and how it contributes to the creation of the society we aspire to.

The Joy of Tax

Joby Warrick

**WINNER of the PULITZER PRIZE for NON-FICTION 2016** 
 
In a thrilling dramatic narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread to become the world's greatest threat. 
 
 When the government of Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners in 1999, it little realized that among them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist mastermind and soon the architect of an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East. In Black Flags, an unprecedented character-driven account of the rise of ISIS, Joby Warrick shows how the zeal of this one man and the strategic mistakes of Western governments led to the banner of ISIS being raised over huge swathes of Syria and Iraq. 
 
 Zarqawi began by directing terror attacks from a base in northern Iraq, but it was the allied invasion in 2003 that catapulted him to the head of a vast insurgency. By falsely identifying him as the link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, Western officials inadvertently spurred like-minded radicals to rally to his cause. Their wave of brutal beheadings and suicide bombings persisted until American and Jordanian intelligence discovered clues that led to a lethal airstrike on Zarqawi’s hideout in 2006. 
 
 His movement, however, endured. First calling themselves al-Qaeda in Iraq, then Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, his followers sought refuge in unstable, ungoverned pockets on the Iraq-Syria border. When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, and the rest of the world largely stood by, ISIS seized its chance to pursue Zarqawi’s dream of an ultra-conservative Islamic caliphate. 
 
 Drawing on unique high-level access to global intelligence sources, Warrick weaves gripping, moment-by-moment operational details with the perspectives of diplomats and spies, generals and heads of state, many of whom foresaw a menace worse than al Qaeda and tried desperately to stop it. Black Flags is a brilliant and definitive history that reveals the long arc of today’s most dangerous extremist threat.

Black Flags

The Rise of ISIS

Frederick Forsyth

FREDERICK FORSYTH HAS SEEN IT ALL. AND LIVED TO TELL THE TALE… 
At eighteen, Forsyth was the youngest pilot to qualify with the RAF. 
At twenty-five, he was stationed in East Berlin as a journalist during the Cold War. 
Before he turned thirty, he was in Africa controversially covering the bloodiest civil war in living memory. 
Three years later, broke and out of work, he wrote his game-changing first novel, The Day of the Jackal. He never looked back. 
Forsyth has seen some of the most exhilarating moments of the last century from the inside, travelling the world, once or twice on her majesty’s secret service. He’s been shot at, he’s been arrested, he’s even been seduced by an undercover agent. 
But all the while he felt he was an outsider. This is his story.

The Outsider

My Life in Intrigue

John Man

Saladin remains one of the most iconic figures of his age. As the man who united the Arabs and saved Islam from Christian crusaders in the 12th century, he is the Islamic world’s preeminent hero. Ruthless in defence of his faith, brilliant in leadership, he also possessed qualities that won admiration from his Christian foes. He knew the limits of violence, showing such tolerance and generosity that many Europeans, appalled at the brutality of their own people, saw him as the exemplar of their own knightly ideals. 
 
 But Saladin is far more than a historical hero. Builder, literary patron and theologian, he is a man for all times, and a symbol of hope for an Arab world once again divided. Centuries after his death, in cities from Damascus to Cairo and beyond, to the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, Saladin continues to be an immensely potent symbol of religious and military resistance to the West. He is central to Arab memories, sensibilities and the ideal of a unified Islamic state. 
 
 In this authoritative biography, historian John Man brings Saladin and his world to life in vivid detail. Charting his rise to power, his struggle to unify the warring factions of his faith, and his battles to retake Jerusalem and expel Christian influence from Arab lands, Saladin explores the life and the enduring legacy of this champion of Islam, and examines his significance for the world today.

Saladin

The Life, the Legend and the Islamic Empire

Dan Waddell

Adolf Hitler despised cricket, considering it un-German and decadent. And Berlin in 1937 was not a time to be going against the Fuhrer’s wishes. But hot on the heels of the 1936 Olympics, an enterprising cricket fanatic of enormous bravery, Felix Menzel, somehow persuaded his Nazi leaders to invite an English team to play his motley band of part-timers. 
 
That team was the Gentlemen of Worcestershire, an ill-matched group of mavericks, minor nobility, ex-county cricketers, rich businessmen and callow schoolboys – led by former Worcestershire CC skipper Major Maurice Jewell. Ordered ‘not to lose’ by the MCC, Jewell and his men entered the 'Garden of Beasts' to play two unofficial Test matches against Germany. 
 
Against a backdrop of repression, brutality and sporadic gunfire, the Gents battled searing August heat, matting pitches, the skill and cunning of Menzel, and opponents who didn't always adhere to the laws and spirit of the game. The tour culminated in a match at the very stadium which a year before had witnessed one of sport's greatest spectacles and a sinister public display of Nazi might. 
 
Despite the shadow cast by the cataclysmic conflict that was shortly to engulf them, Dan Waddell's vivid and detailed account of the Gentlemen of Worcestershire's 1937 Berlin tour is a story of triumph: of civility over barbarity, of passion over indifference and hope over despair.

Field of Shadows

The English Cricket Tour of Nazi Germany 1937

Wes Davis

In the bleakest years of the Second World War when it appeared that nothing could slow the advance of the German army, Hitler set his sights on the Mediterranean island of Crete, the ideal staging ground for domination of the Middle East. But German command had not counted on the strength of the Cretan resistance or the eccentric band of British intelligence officers who would stand in their way, conducting audacious sabotage operations in the very shadow of the Nazi occupation force. 
 
The Ariadne Objective tells the remarkable story of the secret war on Crete from the perspective of these amateur soldiers who found themselves serving because, as one of them put it, they had made 'the obsolete choice of Greek at school'. John Pendlebury, a swashbuckling archaeologist with a glass eye and a swordstick; Xan Fielding, a writer who would later produce the English translations of books like Bridge on the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes; Sandy Rendel, a future Times reporter, who prided himself on a disguise that left him looking more ragged and fierce than the Cretans he fought alongside; and Patrick Leigh Fermor, the future travel-writing luminary who, as a teenager in the early 1930s, walked across Europe, a continent already beginning to feel the effects of Hitler's rise to power. 
 
Having infiltrated occupied Crete, these British gentleman spies teamed with Cretan partisans to carry out a cunning plan to disrupt Nazi manoeuvres, culminating in a daring, high-risk plot to abduct the island’s German commander. In this thrilling and little known episode of Second World War history, Wes Davis paints a brilliant portrait of some extraordinary characters and tells a story of triumph against all the odds.

The Ariadne Objective

Patrick Leigh Fermor and the Underground War to Rescue Crete from the Nazis

Genghis Khan is one of history's immortals: a leader of genius, driven by an inspiring vision for peaceful world rule. Believing he was divinely protected, Genghis united warring clans to create a nation and then an empire that ran across much of Asia. 
 
Under his grandson, Kublai Khan, the vision evolved into a more complex religious ideology, justifying further expansion. Kublai doubled the empire's size until, in the late 13th century, he and the rest of Genghis’s ‘Golden Family’ controlled one fifth of the inhabited world. Along the way, he conquered all China, gave the nation the borders it has today, and then, finally, discovered the limits to growth. 
 
Genghis's dream of world rule turned out to be a fantasy. And yet, in terms of the sheer scale of the conquests, never has a vision and the character of one man had such an effect on the world. 
 
Charting the evolution of this vision, John Man provides a unique account of the Mongol Empire, from young Genghis to old Kublai, from a rejected teenager to the world’s most powerful emperor.

The Mongol Empire

Genghis Khan, his heirs and the founding of modern China

John Sweeney

North Korea is like no other tyranny on earth. It is Orwell’s 1984 made reality. 
 
The regime controls the flow of information to its citizens, pouring relentless propaganda through omnipresent loud speakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line and the gulag awaits. State spies are everywhere, ready to punish disloyalty and the slightest sign of discontent. 
 
You must bow to Kim Il Sung, the Eternal Leader and to his son, Generalissimo Kim Jong Il. Worship the dead and then hail the living, the Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. 
 
North Koreans are told their home is the greatest nation on earth. Big Brother is always watching. 
 
Posing as a university professor, award-winning BBC journalist John Sweeney travelled undercover to gain unprecedented access to the world’s most secret state. Drawing on his own experiences and his extensive interviews with defectors and other key witnesses, North Korea Undercover pulls back the curtain, providing a rare insight into life there today, examining the country’s troubled history and addressing important questions about its uncertain future. 
 
Sweeney’s highly engaging, authoritative account illuminates the dark side of the Hermit Kingdom and challenges the West’s perception of this paranoid nationalist state.

North Korea Undercover

Dan Jellinek

As protestors around the world risk their lives in pursuit of democracy, in the UK the word has never seemed so tarnished. Surveys regularly show our politicians are not liked, not trusted and not wanted. Voter turnout is shockingly low, and episodes such as the MPs’ expenses scandal serve to confirm the opinion that public officials are all as bad as each other. 
 
So what is the answer? 
 
Lighting the way through the corridors of power, Dan Jellinek provides a unique and accessible guide to democracy in Britain, explaining how its elements work – from national and local government to free speech, the internet and the rule of law – and the role that we, the public, need to play to keep the wheels turning. 
 
Illustrated by Harry Venning (Clare in the Community, Hamlet), People Power's mission is not only to explain but to galvanise and engage people in a positive way. If you want to know how your small actions can bring about big changes, how you can improve your lot and the lives of others, then you must read this book. Stand up and be counted. The power is in your hands.

People Power

A user's guide to democracy

Robin Harris

Margaret Thatcher is one of the most iconic politicians of the twentieth century. With the possible exception of Winston Churchill, no other Prime Minister has had such an impact on modern British history. Like it or not, her radical social and economic policies have made Britain the country it is today. Without Margaret Thatcher there could have been no New Labour, no Tony Blair and no David Cameron. 
 
Now Robin Harris, for many years Thatcher's speechwriter, trusted adviser and the draftsman of two volumes of her autobiography, has written the defining book about this indomitable woman. He tells her extraordinary life story, from humble beginnings above her father's grocer's shop in Grantham, her early days as one of the first women in Westminster who became known as 'Thatcher milk-snatcher' during her days in the Ministry for Education and then as Prime Minister. We follow her through the 'Winter of Discontent', the tribulations of the miners' strike and the Falklands War. And Harris writes a stunning account of her exit from power and tells of her life after number 10.

Not for Turning

The Complete Life of Margaret Thatcher

The Life of Margaret Thatcher

The history of the Conservative party has, extraordinarily, rarely been written in a single volume for the general reader. There are academic multi-volume accounts and a multitude of smaller books with limited historical scope. But now, Robin Harris, Margaret Thatcher's speechwriter and party insider, has produced this authoritative but lively history book which tells the whole story and fills a gaping hole in Britain's historiographical record. 
 
Taking as his starting point the larger than life personalities of the Conservative Party's leaders and prime ministers since its inception, Robin Harris's book also analyses the interconnected themes and issues which have dominated Conservative politics over the years. The careers of Peel, Disraeli, Salisbury, Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Heath, Thatcher, Major, Hague and Cameron together amount to an alternative history of Britain since the early nineteenth century. 
 
This landmark book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in history or politics, or anyone who has ever wondered how Britain came to be the nation it is today.

The Conservatives - A History

Mark Henderson

Whether we want to improve education or cut crime, to enhance public health or to generate clean energy, we need the experimental methods of science - the best tool humanity has yet developed for working out what works. Yet from the way we're governed to the news we're fed by the media we're let down by a lack of understanding and respect for its insights and evidence. In The Geek Manifesto Mark Henderson explains why and how we need to entrench scientific thinking more deeply into every aspect of our society. A new movement is gathering. Let's turn it into a force our leaders cannot ignore. 
This edition includes an appendix: 'A Geek Manifesto for America' by David Dobbs.

The Geek Manifesto

Why science matters

Mary Main

Maria Eva Duarte de Peron was born in poverty in 1919 and died of cancer in 1952, at the age of 33, the richest and most powerful woman in Argentina. Her story is one of the most fantastic in history. Driven by a compelling ambition, she made her way to Buenos Aires and set about becoming an actress. In a very short time she had climbed to the top of Argentina's military-social ladder until at last she met Colonel Juan Peron -and her climb took a new direction. 
 
Here is the story of 'Evita' and how her rise to power became an almost unbelievable account of intrigue, bloodshed, and pure chicanery. Her multimillion-dollar tour of Europe; her setting up of the Eva Peron Foundation whereby she cornered the market on clothes, toys, books, groceries, imported drugs, medical equipment, and housing; her impassioned campaign speeches; her shameless flaunting of jewels and clothes in the very faces of her worshipping 'shirtless ones' - these are but a few of the facets of her incredible career that are described in detail. 
 
There was a fatal fascination about Eva Peron that remains, even after her death - an aura of evil that has become a legend.

Evita: The Woman With The Whip

Anthony Summers

Robbyn Swan

Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan have written the definitive account of 9/11. The shockwaves of the September 11, 2001 attacks in America reverberate to this day. Though Osama Bin Laden has been killed, questions remain. What exactly happened? Could 9/11 have been prevented? How and why did so much acrimony and misinformation arise from the ashes of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a quiet field in Pennsylvania? And what has yet to be revealed? 
 
The Eleventh Day, written with access to thousands of recently released official documents, is updated for this edition – and reports on a development which the former chairman of Congress' 9/11 probe describes as the ‘most important in years’.

The Eleventh Day

Robert Hutchison

To the outside world, Opus Dei's stated intention is 'to remind all people that they are called to holiness, especially through work and ordinary life'. But with an elite membership of 80,000 and tentacles reaching around the globe, this secretive sect within the Catholic Church has far greater potential influence. 
 
In recent years it has come under criticism from within the Catholic Church and from authorities in the countries where it operates, revealing a more sinister intention: to confront Islam on the world's spiritual battlefields, by whatever means necessary. 
 
Their Kingdom Come demonstrates how Opus Dei has forged an unholy alliance with the Mafia, secular powerbrokers and highly placed prelates, with the result that Christian values are being threatened by the malign influences of power politics and big money. 
 
Opus Dei's command council runs an immense intelligence network and a vast multinational conglomerate, preparing for what the organisation regards as Christendom's inevitable showdown with radical Islam...

Their Kingdom Come

Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei

Southern Afghanistan in the early 1990s was in even greater chaos than it is now. The Russians, who had occupied the country throughout the 1980s, were long gone. The disparate ethnic and religious leaders who had united to eject the invaders - the famous mujaheddin - were at each others' throats. For the rural poor of Kandahar province, life was almost impossible. 
 
On 12 October 1994 a small group of religious students decided to take matters into their own hands. Led by an illiterate village mullah with one eye, some 200 of them surrounded and took Spin Boldak, a trucking stop on the border with Pakistan. From this short and unremarkable border skirmish, a legend was born. The students' numbers swelled as news of their triumph spread. The Taliban, as they now called themselves - taliban is the plural of talib, literally 'one who seeks knowledge' - had a simple mission statement: the disarmament of the population, and the establishment of a theocracy based on Sharia law. They fought with a religious zeal that the warring mujaheddin could not match. 
 
By February 1995, this people's revolt had become a national movement; 18 months later Kabul fell, and the country was effectively theirs. James Fergusson's fascinating account of this extraordinary story is be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the situation in Afghanistan, now and for the future...

Taliban

the history of the world’s most feared fighting force

Benjamin R Barber

JIHAD VS. MCWORLD is an essential text for anyone who wants to understand the challenges facing us after the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and in light of the current conflict in the Middle East. In a groundbreaking work, political scientist Benjamin R. Barber offers a penetrating analysis of the central conflict of our times: consumerist capitalism versus religious and tribal fundamentalism. These diametrically opposed but intertwined forces are tearing apart - and bringing together - the world as we know it, undermining democracy and the nation-state on which it depends. On the one hand, capitalism on the global level is rapidly dissolving the social and economic barriers between nations, transforming the world's diverse populations into a blandly uniform market. On the other hand, ethnic, religious, and racial hatreds are fragmenting the political landscape into smaller and smaller tribal units. JIHAD VS. MCWORLD is the term that Barber has coined to describe the powerful and paradoxical interdependence of these forces. In this important book, now more timely than ever before, he explores the alarming repercussions of this potent dialectic and in his new introduction sketches a democratic response to terrorism.

Jihad Vs McWorld

Andy Hayman

Margaret Gilmore

Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, CBE, QPM, was in overall command of the UK's national counter-terrorism offensive, at the centre of every major terrorist investigation - overt and covert - of the past five years. He handled the Metropolitan Police's response to 7/7 and dealt with the politically explosive murder of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko. 
 
Based at New Scotland Yard, in charge of thousands of Special Branch and counter-terrorism officers in the UK and across the globe, deciding strategy, working directly with the Prime Minister with a budget of £500 million, Hayman is able to give unprecedented insight into key top-level crisis meetings he attended with intelligence chiefs and political leaders worldwide. 
 
In an inspirational and at times heart-breaking account, he describes how he led a dedicated team of men and women, committed to protecting the UK from dangerous enemies. Hayman lived through the pain and soul-searching when terrorists did succeed - and the pride when intelligence officers prevented attacks. 
 
Andy Hayman leaves no holds barred in his analysis of the way law enforcers tackle terrorism. He outlines his radical blueprint for the future to protect the public, in the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games and beyond. 
 
If you thought you knew the stories behind the news, this book will make you think again.

The Terrorist Hunters

Sean O'Callaghan

In 1988 IRA terrorist Sean O'Callaghan walked into a Tunbridge Wells police station and gave himself up. Two years later, in a Belfast courtroom, he pleaded guilty to all charges of which he was accused and received a sentence of 539 years. Since being a teenager he had been an active member of the IRA and had risen to be the head of their Southern Command. He was responsible for two murders and many terrorist attacks. He was a linchpin of the organization. 
 
But in 1996, he was released from prison by royal prerogative. For fourteen years he had been the most highly placed informer within the IRA and had fed the Irish Garda with countless pieces of invaluable information. He prevented the assassination of the Prince and Princess of Wales at a London theatre, he sabotaged operations, explained strategy and caused the arrests of many IRA members. He has done more than any individual to unlock the code of silence that governs the IRA's members, and has in effect made it possible to fight the war against the terrorists. Under constant threat of IRA revenge, he now works ceaselessly for peace in Ireland. As he says, 'I hope to use the time available to me now to tell the truth about the IRA. I will go on doing that for as long as it takes. 
 
The Informer is Sean O'Callaghan's story. It is the story of a courageous life lived under the constant threat of discovery and its fatal consequences. It is the story of a very modern hero, who is not without sin but who has done and is continuing to do everything in his power, and at whatever personal cost, to atone for the past.

The Informer

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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