Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Derek Flory

Blanche Le Fleur

Sybil Le Fleur

When Sybil and Blanche Le Fleur were growing up in idyllic Burma in the 1920s and '30s, little did they realise the changes and challenges that they would face during their lives. With the death of first their mother and then their father, they had to cope with enormous personal tragedy, including the loss of all their family wealth. Then the Japanese bombed Rangoon on 23 December 1941. Sybil managed to get out of the city, but there was no way for her to return to her sister, or even to know if Blanche was still alive, as the death toll was so high. 
 
While Sybil escaped from Burma and settled in Scotland after marrying a Scottish soldier, Blanche lived for over three years under Japanese occupation. After leaving for India in 1958, Blanche made a new life while still thinking of and praying for her sister. Decades later, a chance set of circumstances led to the discovery by Sybil's son that Blanche was alive and living in India. 
 
Torn Apart is the heart-rending, inspirational account of how the Le Fleur sisters lived separate lives for more than 65 years before an emotional reunion brought them together again in 2007.

Torn Apart

How Two Sisters Found Each Other After Sixty-Five Years

David Lister

Hugh Jordan

A mindless sectarian psychopath or a loyalist folk hero who took the war to the IRA's front door? The name Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair is synonymous with a killing spree by loyalist terrorists that took Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war. 
 
From humble beginnings as a rioter and glue-sniffer on Belfast's Shankill Road, Adair rose through the ranks of the outlawed Ulster Freedom Fighters to head its merciless killing machine, 'C Company'. Surrounded by a group of trusted friends, his reign of terror in the early 1990s claimed the lives of up to 40 Catholics, picked out at random as Adair's hitmen roamed Belfast. Determined to lead from the front, his men even fired a rocket at Sinn Fein's headquarters, writing themselves into loyalist mythology and embarrassing the IRA in its republican heartland. Its desperate attempts to kill Adair culminated in October 1993, when a bomb on the Shankill Road, intended for the loyalist godfather, claimed the lives of nine Protestant civilians. 
 
Mad Dog: The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C Company' describes in graphic detail Adair's criminal empire and an egomaniac's bloody war against Catholics and anybody else who got in his way. Adair's friends and enemies talk for the first time about the murders he ordered, his sordid personal life, and his attempts - ultimately disastrous - to become Northern Ireland's supreme loyalist figurehead.

Mad Dog

The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C Company'

Alan Barker

In the early hours of 30 April 2003, twelve armed and uniformed officers accompanied by four plain-clothes detectives burst into Alan Barker's house. They stayed for hours, turning over rooms, seizing documents, impounding computers, files and anything else that interested them. The family were treated as terrorist suspects, the operation resembling so many others in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. But Alan Barker was and is no terrorist. In fact, he has spent his adult life fighting terrorism on the streets of his native province. 
 
 Barker belonged to the Special Branch, the RUC's elite unit dedicated to fighting the IRA, the INLA and loyalist terrorists. He gives a gripping insider's account of life on the frontline and demonstrates how the RUC used sophisticated listening devices and informants, including the notorious supergrass Raymond Gilmour, in their fight to gain the upper hand. 
 
 After nearly 30 years of loyal service, Barker retired angry and disillusioned about what he views as the government's capitulation to the terrorists. This is the book that Downing Street and the Northern Ireland Office don't want you to read. It is a story of courage under fire, guile, Le Carré-esque plots and treachery.

Shadows

Inside Northern Ireland's Special Branch

Chris Anderson

A cult figure among loyalists, despised and feared by nationalists, Billy 'King Rat' Wright is reputed to have been involved in a number of sectarian murders before he himself was shot dead by republican gunmen inside the Maze 
Prison in 1997. 
 
Wright became involved with loyalist paramilitaries at the age of 16, and in the early 1990s he emerged as the UVF commander in the Mid-Ulster area. The Billy Boy documents Wright's role in the Drumcree dispute of 1995-96 and his split from the UVF, recounting how he ignored both a death threat and an order to leave Northern Ireland, only to remain in Portadown and form the Loyalist Volunteer Force. It covers Wright's trial and subsequent imprisonment for a crime it has been claimed was set up by the State; recounts the circumstances of his killing inside a top-security prison; and investigates the allegations of State collusion in Wright's death. 
 
Terrifically gripping and often disturbing, The Billy Boy is an exhaustive account of a notorious figure of the Troubles, whose life and death were surrounded by controversy and political debate.

The Billy Boy

The Life and Death of LVF Leader Billy Wright

Beginning with the death of legendary IRA figure Sean South of Garryowen on New Year's Day 1957, the book describes the background to what we have now come to call 'the troubles' and paints vivid portraits of the major players whose actions sparked the violence that erupted on the streets of Belfast and Derry in the summer of 1969. Throughout the decades of bloodshed, paramilitary leaders on both sides of the political divide continued to search for more so-called legitimate targets. Milestones in Murder charts how more and more innocent people were unwittingly drawn into the conflict against their will. It examines the killings which marked new lows in the republican/loyalist terror war, from the bombing of pubs and clubs to the advent of 'human bomb' couriers. It revisits the horrific murders of the Shankhill Butchers, exclusively revealing exactly who leader Lennie Murphy's accomplices were. This, amongst other revelations, will piece together several parts of the Irish warfare jigsaw for the first time. The book also covers the more recent murder of the author's colleague Martin O'Hagan, an act which sent shock waves through a battle-hardened media in Northern Ireland. O'Hagan was the first journalist in Ireland to lose his life at the hands of the paramilitaries and his death pushed the parameters of slaughter to new limits.

Milestones in Murder

Defining Moments in Ulster's Terror War

Nicholas Davies

Following the revelations of the secret conspiracy between British Military Intelligence and the gunmen of the Ulster Defence Association in Ten-Thirty-Three, Nicholas Davies now dramatically reveals the evidence and facts that the Sir John Stevens Inquiry is still trying to establish regarding links between the security services and loyalist terrorist groups.In Dead Men Talking, Davies exclusively details the covert killing operations planned, organised and carried through by the RUC Special Branch and MI5, as well as by the British Army's covert intelligence organisation, the Force Research Unit. He provides new evidence on the killings that were authorised at the highest level of MI5 and the British Government, and carried out by loyalist terror groups. Davies also reveals the existence of a hitherto unknown secret intelligence unit operating under MI5 and examines its role in the government's undercover operation. Davies traces the work carried out by the legendary 'Steak Knife', the British super-spy who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Provisional IRA and passed their secrets to MI5 over a 30-year period. For the first time, Davies gives details of Steak Knife's extraordinary life, reveals some of the Provo bombings and shootings which he thwarted, and details vital secrets he passed to British Intelligence. Dead Men Talking uncovers the true story of the murder of Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane, of UDA gunman William Stobie and the subsequent murders of others allegedly involved. Dead Men Talking uncovers the true story of the murder of Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane, of UDA gunman William Stobie and the subsequent murders of others allegedly involved.

Dead Men Talking

Collusion, Cover-Up and Murder in Northern Ireland's Dirty War

James Mackay

The most charismatic figure to emerge during the struggles for the independence of Ireland was undoubtedly Michael Collins. This remarkable biography, which draws on much hitherto unpublished material, charts the dramatic rise of the country boy who became head of the Free State and the commander-in-chief of the army.

Michael Collins

A Life

Amnesty International

Inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which starts memorably with Article 1: we are all born free and equal, Freedom is an enthralling anthology of short stories by some of the world's top writers. 
 
Most of the stories have been written especially for this anthology by a renowned array of internationally acclaimed writers, including Paulo Coelho, Yann Martel, AL Kennedy, Ali Smith, Amit Chaudhuri, Ariel Dorfman, Helen Dunmore, Marina Lewycka, Walter Mosley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, James Meek, Kate Atkinson, David Mitchell, Hector Aguilar Camin, Ishmael Beah, Boris Akunin, Alice Pung and Banana Yoshimoto. 
 
Each acclaimed contributor has chosen one of the thirty UDHR rights as the basic inspiration for his or her story, and the result is an anthology that contains a complete mix of thoughtful, serious, funny and thrilling stories that provide some completely unexpected takes on the issue of human rights. 
 
Published in association with Amnesty International, Freedom is an eclectic collection that will prompt readers to engage imaginatively with what human rights mean for all of us.

Freedom

Short Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Peter Kellner

Democracy is Britain's gift to the world. Most of the ideas and ideals that have shaped the world's democracies can be traced back to arguments and reforms that first erupted here. 
 
Democracy tells the thousand-year story of the bitter battles over those arguments and reforms, in the words of those who shaped our democracy, fought for it and resisted it. It includes the major documents of the past millennium, such as the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, and the speeches of the big beasts of the democratic jungle, such as Thomas More, Cromwell, Wilberforce, Gladstone and Churchill, as well as the contributions made to the democracy struggle by rebels, poets, satirists and novelists, from Shakespeare and Burns to Dickens and Orwell. 
 
Also featured are many important documents that have been rescued from obscurity, such as a speech that a prominent twentieth century MP was barred from delivering: he wanted to argue why he should not be expelled from the House of Commons. 
 
Democracy covers not just the constitution and the law, but debates over free speech, slavery, empire, the death penalty and Europe, and includes key events in England's relations with Scotland, Wales and Ireland. 
 
This remarkable chronicle is guaranteed to inform, educate and inspire.

Democracy

1,000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty

John Beasant

Oman is one of the world’s most secretive countries,ruled with absolute authority by the Sultan. All information is strictly controlled by the State: British Prime Minister Edward Heath once said that the story of the 1970 Palace Coup and the events that followed would ‘not be told in our lifetime’. 
 
 Following ten years’ residency in the country a senior member of Sultan Qaboos's Family suggested that John Beasant write a political history of Oman that would to some extent rehabilitate the maligned name of former Sultan Said, who was deposed in the 1970 Coup. 
 
In 'Oman' Beasant catalogues a nature of exploitation woven through all manner of political and commercial interests and casts light on the dark practices so often involved in the sale of arms to Middle Eastern states and illustrates the political use to which the sale of ‘black gold’ - oil - can be put. 
 
 Oman is a parable of our times, detailing rivalry and intrigue between people in high places. It is one of the most dramatic tales in Arab history: a chronicle of personal price, rapacious greed and undiluted lust for power.

Oman

The True-Life Drama and Intrigue of an Arab State

Adam Robinson

A zealous freedom-fighter who has galvanised Islamic fundamentalists worldwide into a fighting force capable of toppling evil western civilisation. A simple man, pious, upstanding and principled; the moral leader of the faithful. This is the image that Osama bin Laden wishes to project to the world. Now, for the first time, Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of the Terrorist blows the lid off the inside story. The first real insight into the life of the renegade phophet of the apocalypse reveals a past laced with prostitutes, hedonism, and lengthy periods of alcohol abuse. Beneath the self-styled propaganda is a hypocrite whose personal mission is nothing less than the destruction of the United States and her allies in the name of Islam. This is the man who deftly manipulates the institutions he claims to despise in order to further his own ends; who condemns depravity while keeping a hand in the opium and heroin trade. With new information provided by members of his family, the book traces the roots of his dicontent, exploring his privileged childhood riven by jealousies and family polotics. It paints the picture of a youth desperately seeking acceptance and a man whose need for attention and adulation set him upon an unbelievable course.

Bin Laden

Behind the Mask of the Terrorist

Anthony Shaffer

Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer was part of a secret detachment of the US Army known as the 'Jedi Knights'. In Operation Dark Heart, he reveals for the first time, and in amazing detail, the otherwise secret world of black operations and clandestine intelligence plots conducted by the Western allies in an alien terrain against often undefinable enemies. 
 
This book is a gripping and compulsive insight into the espionage world and into a complex labyrinth of agencies that do not like to share secrets. It is also the true and moving story of a twenty-first-century warrior. 
 
Please note that sensitive information in this book has been redacted in accordance with the requests of US intelligence agencies.

Operation Dark Heart

Spycraft and Special Operations on the Front Lines of Afghanistan

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