Confused Bastards


Manav Vigg - 2016
    Strugglingwith their own inner conflicts as well as the cruel world outside, they decide toshow the world their true potential. To make it big. But how?They become the voice of the nation by starting up an online platform wherepeople can upload unabashed, unapologetic videos, venting out their angstagainst people, politics, bosses, lovers, taboos, or just about anything. Even thefounders themselves.The platform spreads like wild fire. But when has fire doused without burning afew!Confused Bastards is not just a witty, gritty, fast-paced journey of three friends,it’s also an intolerant story for a tolerant country!

Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories


Agatha Christie - 1999
    There's a bonus, a story not seen for more than 70 years!'My name is Hercule Poirot and I am probably the greatest detective in the world.' The dapper, moustache-twirling little Belgian with the egg-shaped head, curious mannerisms and inordinate respect for his own 'little grey cells' has solved some of the most puzzling fictional crimes of the century. Appearing in Agatha Christie's very first novel in 1920 and her very last in 1975, Hercule Poirot became the most celebrated detective since Sherlock Holmes, appearing in 33 novels, a play, and these 51 short stories. These short stories provide a feast for hardened Agatha Christie addicts as well as those who have grown to love the detective through his many film and television appearances. This edition also includes Poirot in "The Regatta Mystery, "an early version of an Agatha Christie story not published since 1936!Some may dispute whether "all" is the correct word. Several Poirot short stories have earlier, alternate, or expanded versions, and we shouldn't forget the dozen or so not here; they were re-purposed into the 1927 novel "The Big Four." Others appeared under different titles. Most importantly, "Hercule Poirot The Complete Short Stories" will delight newcomers to Christie's famous detective, as well as those who just want to remember how good their read was the first time around.The stories in order are: (1) The Affair at the Victory Ball, (2) The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan, (3) The King of Clubs, (4) The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim, (5) The Plymouth Express, (6) The Adventure of The Western Star, (7) The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor, (8) The Kidnapped Prime Minister, (9) The Million Dollar Bond Robbery, (10) The Adventure of the Cheap Flat, (11) The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge, (12) The Chocolate Box, (13) The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb, (14) The Veiled Lady, (15) The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly, (16) The Market Basing Mystery, (17) The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman, (18) The Case of the Missing Will, (19) The Incredible Theft, (20) The Adventure of the Clapham Cook, (21) The Lost Mine, (22) The Cornish Mystery, (23) The Double Clue, (24) The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, (25) The Lemesurier Inheritance, (26) The Under Dog, (27) Double Sin, (28) Wasps' Nest, (29) The Third-Floor Flat, (30) The Mystery of the Spanish Chest, (31) Dead Man's Mirror, (32) How Does Your Garden Grow? (33) Problem at Sea, (34) Triangle at Rhodes, (35) Murder in the Mews, (36) Yellow Iris, (37) The Dream, (38) The Labours of Hercules, the Foreword, (39) The Nemean Lion, (40) The Lernean Hydra, (41) The Arcadian Deer, (42) The Erymanthian Boar, (43) The Augean Stables, (44) The Stymphalean Birds, (45) The Cretan Bull, (46) The Horses of Diomedes, (47) The Girdle of Hyppolita, (48) The Flock of Geryon, (49) The Apples of the Hesperides, (50) The Capture of Cerberus, and (51) Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds.Librarian's note: this entry is for the collection, "Hercule Poirot The Complete Short Stories." Entries for each of the individual stories can be found elsewhere on Goodreads.

Outlaws


George V. Higgins - 1987
    For nearly a decade they avoided capture, until justice final triumphed in the wake of a brutal mass murder in downtown Boston. But for the killers' families, the police, the obsessed young Assistant D.A., and the city itself, the nightmare was far from over. . . it had only just begun.

Island Reich


Jack Grimwood - 2021
    As Britain braces itself for invasion, ex-Tommy and safecracker Bill O'Hagan is glad to have escaped the battlefield. But when a job goes wrong, he finds himself forced to serve his country once more.A former king.Spurned by his government and fearing for his life, the Duke of Windsor flees to Portugal with the woman for whom he abdicated the throne, Wallis Simpson. As a web of Nazi trickery threatens to ensnare him, his fate and the fate of Britain rest on one man.The fate of a nation in their hands . . .Dropped on an occupied Channel Island without backup, Bill must crack an enemy safe and get its contents to safety. Failure will devastate any hope Britain has of winning the war.But with the layers of deception and intrigue drawing ever more tightly around them, Bill and the Duke both learn they aren't the only players in this game.And Berlin - which has the Duke in its own sights - is plotting its greatest move yet . . .

The Asylum


Debra Meller - 2020
    Her infant son, already dead, lies on her chest still clinging to his mother.On the morning that is Patty found, she is not expected to survive but is taken to hospital where she eventually recovers. But, severely emotionally disturbed, Patty soon finds herself a patient at Hillside Asylum. There, Patty’s condition deteriorates, and the staff and doctors perform unnecessary experimental procedures on their patient.But when someone from Patty’s past learns about her incarceration, they vow to get her out. And those responsible for the abuse will be made to suffer . . .

Stealing the Future: An East German Spy Story


Max Hertzberg - 2015
    After forty years of communist rule it's time for change in the GDR.Direct democracy, citizen's movements and de-centralization are changing the political landscape.But when a politician's crushed body is found a constitutional crisis erupts.Former dissident, Martin Grobe, is caught up in an investigation that points towards the KGB, the Stasi and the West Germans—but is it really the start of a putsch against the new GDR, or just a murder?

Blood in the Forum: A Novella of Ancient Rome (The Marius Scrolls Book 2)


Vincent B. Davis II - 2019
    Betrayal. Assassination. Rome, 133 b.c. Gaius Marius is back from war in the West. They fought for the peace and prosperity of Rome, but the legions return to find the Eternal City far less peaceful and prosperous than they had hoped. People are starving, homelessness abounds, war after war has overtaxed the legions. And the revolutionary tribune, Tiberius Gracchus, thinks he has a solution for everything. Political parties are developing, the people are up in arms, the senate is enraged. And Tiberius is at the center of it all. Before Marius has a chance to reacclimate to civilian life, he’s thrust into this political upheaval in Rome. His allegiances are put to the test as Rome is almost brought to the brink of civil war. For the first time in the history of the Republic, blood will be shed in the forum.

The Naked Heart


Jacqueline Briskin - 1987
    I promise you that."As she watched the Nazis murder her father, beautiful, aristocratic Gilberte de Permont made the terrible promise that would shatter her innocence and force her to choose between her best friend, American Ann Blakely, and the man both of them loved. From war-torn Paris to New York's chick fashion world, Ann and Gilberte would become women competing for success, fighting for the same man - and sharing a monstrous secret. One of them would realize all her dreams. And one would face the shocking consequences of obsessions raging in...The Naked Heart

Libra


Don DeLillo - 1988
    Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.

Don't Tell The Governor


Ravi Subramanian - 2018
    Somewhere on the India-Nepal Border, a car full of passengers swerves off a highway and plunges into a valley, its trunk full of cash. In the UK, a Bollywood starlet wins Big Survivor, the most popular reality TV show in the country. In Panama, Central America, a whistle-blower at a law firm brings down billionaires across the globe. And in India, a new RBI Governor is appointed. Aditya Kesavan is dynamic, charismatic and ambitious. And he's been handed the reins of the RBI on a platter. His only job: to make sure he doesn't rock the boat. But, unknown to him, the wheels have begun to turn, as the country heads towards the biggest financial event in modern Indian history. And Governor Kesavan is about to carry out the most brazen act of his life - and, perhaps, his most foolish. Will he be able to pull himself out of the mess he has got into or will he have to surrender to the manipulative forces behind the scenes? Running desperately out of time, the Governor must set things right.

The Season to Be Wary


Rod Serling - 1967
    Winner of six Emmys (he was nominated nine times), two Sylvania Awards, on Peabody Award, and one Christopher Award for his teleplays, Serling came as close as anyone to dominating an era that abounded with talented men. His plays "Requiem for a Heavyweight" and "Patterns" are usually the first items on the lips of television aficionados reminiscing about the good old days. Yet as television changed, Rod Serling kept pace. He became producer and chief writer for the famous "Twilight Zone" series. These bizarre and fantastic adventures into the occult and demonic were without doubt one of the most creative, imaginative and successful enterprises in the history of television.Now Rod Serling has applied his prodigious writing talents to a new medium: one in which he is perhaps destined to make his greatest mark. The three novellas that compromise THE SEASON TO BE WARY betray the skillful hand of a master storyteller and prose stylist. Fired with a savage yet disciplined irony, paced with deliberate cadence that rises to a starting denouement, each story explores the theme of a terrible vengeance delivered for terrible deeds performed.In "The Escape Route," ex-Gruppenfuehrer Joseph Strobe - ex-deputy assistant commander of Auschwitz, ex-confidant of Heinrich Himmler - putters about his little rathole in Buenos Aires chewing over the good times he had breaking Jews. Yet his snug little world is turned upside down b the capture of Adolf Eichmann, and Strobe soon finds himself on the wrong end of a terrifying hunt."Color Scheme" recounts the life and times of the great King Connacher, racist and rabble-rouser, who makes his living on the stump, preaching the lynching gospel, only to find himself one summer evening the victim of an extraordinary case of mistaken identity.In "Eyes," Miss Claudia Menlo, who in her fifty lifeless years has been denied nothing that she wanted - except her sight - manipulates people with the same purposeful indifference with which she fondles the expensive bric-a-brac in her lavishly cluttered dwelling. Yet her insistant will is brutally thwarted by the one set of circumstances she cannot control.Serling has infused these simple, forceful tales with an extraordinary richness of character and detail. There is, for example, the Prussian officer Gruber, who cannot stomach the pigs like Strobe he helped create and with whom he is forced to share his guilt. And there is Indian Charlie Hatcher, the most memorable portrait of a burned-out prizefighter since Serling's own justly famous Mountain Rivera.The power, the drive, the complexity and subtlety of these novellas mark Rod Serling as one of the most important and graceful fiction writers. Mr. Serling is a graduate of Antioch College and lives in Southern California with his wife and two children.

The Berlin Deception


Jeffrey Vanke - 2011
    The Gestapo is closing in. On foot, by train, even on water, Becker is running and gunning for his life ... and for the world. Hitler's Third Reich is rearming and planning for war. Churchill wants to stop him, but only Becker's report can reverse the British mood of appeasement. Cornered by the Gestapo, desperate to save his German collaborator Maria, Becker has mere days to ward off double disaster...

A Matter of Honor


Jeffrey Archer - 1986
    A disgraced British colonel bequeaths a mysterious letter to his only son. But the moment Adam Scott opens the yellowing envelope, he sets into motion a deadly chain of events that threatens to shake the very foundations of the free world.Within days, Adam's lover is brutally murdered and he's running for his life through the great cities of Europe, pursued not only by the KGB, but by the CIA and his own countrymen as well. Their common intent is to kill him before the truth comes out. While powerful men in smoke-filled rooms plot ever more ingenious means of destroying him, Adam finds himself betrayed and abandoned even by those he holds most dear.When at last he comes to understand what he is in possession of, he's even more determined to protect it, for it's more than a matter of life and death-it's a matter of honor.

Liberation


Imogen Kealey - 2020
    Soldier. Spy. Leader. Her name is Nancy Wake.To the Allies, she was a fearless freedom fighter, a special operations legend, a woman ahead of her time. To the Gestapo, she was a ghost, a shadow, the most wanted person in the world.But at first, Nancy Wake was just another young woman living in Marseilles and recently engaged to a man she loved. Then France fell to the Nazi blitzkrieg. With her appetite for danger, Nancy quickly finds herself drawn into the underground Resistance standing up to Nazi rule. Gaining notoriety as the White Mouse, with a 5-million-franc bounty hanging over her head, Wake rises to the top of the Nazi's Most Wanted list--only to find her husband arrested for treasonous activity under suspicion of being the White Mouse himself.Narrowly escaping to Britain, Wake joins the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and parachutes into the Auvergne, where she must fight for the respect of some of the toughest Resistance fighters in France. As she and her maquisards battle the Nazis, their every engagement brings the end of the war closer--but also places her husband in deeper peril.A riveting, richly imagined historical thriller, LIBERATION brings to life one of World War II's most fascinating unsung heroines in all her fierce power and complexity. This is the story of one of the one of the war's most decorated women, told like never before.

Spies Of Jerusalem


Colin Smith - 2013
    A land of conflict. And a land of spies.As World War One rages on the killing fields of Flanders, another battle is playing out in the Holy Land.British forces invade a stronghold of the Ottoman Empire, fighting German officers, Arab conscripts and Turkish troops.But as the British armies advance, the Germans suspect they have a traitor within their ranks.An agent - code-named Daniel - is transmitting messages to the British from the heart of the German headquarters.If they can't stop him, the war will be lost.But as the Germans dig deeper, they discover an espionage ring called Nili made up of Zionist Jews supporting the British.They begin close in on the ring.But will they ever unearth the true identity of Daniel?And what is the true purpose of the organisation known as Nili?In this gripping novel, Colin Smith interweaves the stories of British Tommies, German officers and Jewish nationals.In a tale of intrigue and espionage the hunt for Daniel turns into a race against time, as the British prepare to meet the Austrian troops on the brutal battlefield at Huj.'Spies of Jerusalem' brilliantly blends fact with fiction in a novel that will appeal to fans of Alan Furst and and John Le Carre.