The Righteous Spy


Merle Nygate - 2018
    BUT WHO IS THE REAL ENEMY? Eli Amiram is Mossad’s star spy runner and the man responsible for bringing unparalleled intelligence to the Israeli agency. Now, he’s leading an audacious operation in the UK that feeds his ambition but threatens his conscience.The British and the Americans have intel Mossad desperately need. To force MI6 and the CIA into sharing their priceless information, Eli and his maverick colleague Rafi undertake a risky mission to trick their allies: faking a terrorist plot on British soil.But in the world of espionage, the game is treacherous, opaque and deadly... A twisting international spy novel, The Righteous Spy is an intriguing tale of espionage that portrays a clandestine world in which moral transgressions serve higher causes. A must-read for fans of Homeland, Fauda and NCIS, it will also appeal to readers of Charles Cumming and John le Carré. 'Intriguing and atmospheric. Merle Nygate is a writer to watch' - Charles Cumming'A tense, compelling thriller, The Righteous Spy combines the high drama of a spy story with a clear-eyed telling of the grubby compromises and betrayals that are the reality of agents’ lives. With vividly drawn characterisation and a gripping plot, I couldn’t put it down' - Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange'Relentless - goes where le Carré fears to tread. Merle Nygate’s characters, their tradecraft and their dramas leap off the page in a spy tale that is as gripping as it is authentic' - Martin Fletcher, author of Promised Land'Gripping from the start, The Righteous Spy is a must read for fans of fast paced and intelligent thrillers' - Leigh Russell, author of the million-copy selling DI Geraldine Steel series

The Tale of Two Nazanins


Nazanin Afshin-Jam - 2012
    In 2006, she had just signed her first record deal and, after placing as first runner-up for Miss World, was a sought-after fashion model and icon within the Iranian dissident community. But one afternoon, she received an email that would change the course of her life. The subject of that email—a Kurdish girl named Nazanin Fatehi—was facing execution in Iran, as punishment for stabbing a man who had tried to rape her. Afshin-Jam quickly came to Fatehi's defence, striding into the world of international diplomacy and confronting the dark side of the country of her birth, with its honour killings, violence against women and state-sanctioned executions of children. While Fatehi languished in prison, experiencing conditions so deplorable she attempted to end her own life, Afshin-Jam worked desperately on the campaign to save her. The Tale of Two Nazanins weaves together the lives of two women—one leading a life of opportunity, the other living in abject poverty—and a fight for justice that, if only for a moment, brought the Iranian regime to its knees. An inspiring story about the bonds of sisterhood, this extraordinary book speaks to the power of every individual to foster positive change in the world.

The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland


Karl E. Meyer - 2003
    In The Dust of Empire, Karl E. Meyer examines the present and past of the Asian heartland in a book that blends scholarship with reportage, providing fascinating detail about regions and peoples now of urgent concern to America: the five Central Asian republics, the Caspian and the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and long-dominant Russia. He provides the context for America's war on terrorism, for Washington's search for friends and allies in an Islamic world rife with extremism, and for the new politics of pipelines and human rights in an area richer in the former than the latter. He offers a rich and complicated tapestry of a region where empires have so often come to grief—a cautionary tale.

On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist


Clarissa Ward - 2020
    . . From Russia to China to Syria, [she] navigate[s] the most intense of human experiences while finding the tools to stay emotional."--Lynsey Addario, author of It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and WarThe recipient of multiple Peabody and Murrow awards, Clarissa Ward is a world-renowned conflict reporter. In this strange age of crisis where there really is no front line, she has moved from one hot zone to the next. With multiple assignments in Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan, Ward, who speaks seven languages, has been based in Baghdad, Beirut, Beijing, and Moscow. She has seen and documented the violent remaking of the world at close range. With her deep empathy, Ward finds a way to tell the hardest stories. On All Fronts is the riveting account of Ward's singular career and of journalism in this age of extremism.Following a privileged but lonely childhood, Ward found her calling as an international war correspondent in the aftermath of 9/11. From her early days in the field, she was embedding with marines at the height of the Iraq War and was soon on assignment all over the globe. But nowhere does Ward make her mark more than in war-torn Syria, which she has covered extensively with courage and compassion. From her multiple stints entrenched with Syrian rebels to her deep investigations into the Western extremists who are drawn to ISIS, Ward has covered Bashar al-Assad's reign of terror without fear. In 2018, Ward rose to new heights at CNN and had a son. Suddenly, she was doing this hardest of jobs with a whole new perspective.On All Fronts is the unforgettable story of one extraordinary journalist--and of a changing world.

The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World


Peter Frankopan - 2018
    Today, they lead to Beijing.'When The Silk Roads was published in 2015, it became an instant classic. A major reassessment of world history, it compelled us to look at the past from a different perspective. The New Silk Roads brings this story up to date, addressing the present and future of a world that is changing dramatically.Following the Silk Roads eastwards, from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, The New Silk Roads provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. In an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the Western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads since 2015, where ties have been strengthened and mutual cooperation established.With brilliant insight, Peter Frankopan takes a fresh look at the network of relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the Silk Roads today, assessing the global reverberations of these continual shifts in the centre of power - all too often absent from headlines in the West. This important - and ultimately hopeful - book asks us to reassess who we are and where we are in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihood depend.

Afganistan, The Bear Trap: The Defeat Of A Superpower


Mohammad Yousaf - 1992
    It is nothing less than the true, if fantastic, account of how Pakistan and the USA covertly controlled the largest guerrilla war of the 20th Century, dealing to the Soviet Russian presence in Afghanistan a military defeat that has come to be called 'Russia's Vietnam'.This compelling book, put together with great skill by the military author, Mark Adkin, is essential reading for anyone interested in the truth behind the Soviets' Vietnam, and the reasons why, to this day, the war in Afghanistan still drags on despite the victory that the Mujahideen were denied when the Soviets withdrew.

Stalingrad: The Battle that Shattered Hitler's Dream of World Domination


Rupert Matthews - 2012
    The relentless and unstoppable German advances that had seen the panzers sweep hundreds of miles into Russia was finally brought to a halt. The elite German 6th Army was first fought to a standstill, then surrounded and forced to surrender.Over 1.5 million people lost their lives during the six months of fighting, many of them civilians caught up in the campaign. For the first time in the war, the German army had been defeated on the field of battle. Before Stalingrad the Russians never won; after Stalingrad they could not lose.This book looks at the titanic struggle that ended in the total destruction of the second city of the Soviet Union, the greatest battle the world has ever seen.

The Betrayers


David Bezmozgis - 2014
    When he refuses to back down from a contrary but principled stand regarding the West Bank settlements, his political opponents expose his affair with a mistress decades his junior. He and the fierce young Leora flee the scandal for Yalta, where, in an unexpected turn of events, he comes face-to-face with the former friend who denounced him to the KGB almost 40 years earlier.In a mere 24 hours, Kotler must face the ultimate reckoning, both with those who have betrayed him and with those whom he has betrayed, including a teenage daughter, a son facing his own ethical dilemmas in the Israeli army, and the wife who stood by his side through so much.In prose that is elegant, sly, precise, and devastating, David Bezmozgis has rendered a story for the ages, an inquest into the nature of fate and consequence, love and forgiveness.

Where the West Ends


Michael J. Totten - 2012
    Totten returns with a masterpiece of travel writing and history in this journey through thirteen nations--all but two formerly communist--just beyond the edge of the West where few casual travelers venture.His work as an independent foreign correspondent takes him deep into the field beyond the sensational headlines, from his hilariously miserable road trip with his best friend to Iraq and to the Wild West of Albania, the most bizarre country in Europe; from the killing fields in Bosnia and Kosovo to a Romania haunted by the ghosts of its communist past; from the front lines in the Caucasus during Russia's invasion of Georgia to the otherworldly post-Soviet disasterscape in Ukraine.Where the West Ends is high-octane adventure writing at its finest and is Michael J. Totten's most entertaining work written to date.

The Third Daughter


Talia Carner - 2019
    Desperate, her father leaps at the opportunity to marry Batya to a worldly, wealthy stranger who can guarantee his daughter an easy life and passage to America. Feeling like a princess in a fairytale, Batya leaves her old life behind as she is whisked away to a new world. But soon she discovers that she’s entered a waking nightmare. Her new “husband” does indeed bring her to America: Buenos Aires, a vibrant, growing city in which prostitution is not only legal but deeply embedded in the culture. And now Batya is one of thousands of women tricked and sold into the oldest profession in the world.As the years pass, Batya forms deep bonds with her “sisters” in the brothel as well as some men who are both kind and cruel. Through it all, she holds onto one dream: to bring her family to America, where they will be safe from the anti-Semitism that plagues Russia. Just as Batya is becoming a known tango dancer,  she gets an unexpected but dangerous opportunity—to help bring down the criminal network that has enslaved so many young women and has been instrumental in developing Buenos Aires into   a major metropolis.A powerful story of finding courage in the face of danger, and hope in the face of despair, The Third Daughter brings to life a dark period of Jewish history and gives a voice to victims whose truth deserves to finally be told.

The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 1974
    Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum. "The greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever leveled in modern times." --George F. Kennan "It is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late twentieth century." --David Remnick, The New Yorker "Solzhenitsyn's masterpiece. ... The Gulag Archipelago helped create the world we live in today." --Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History, from the foreword

Works of Nikolai Gogol


Nikolai Gogol - 1966
    To find each work in the anthology, you must go to the "Go To" section of your Nook, and then select "Chapter." It might get a blank screen--if it does, then hit the page forward button and the work will appear. Nikolai Gogol is considered the fathern of modern Russian realism; collected here are his best known works.Works include:Dead SoulsThe Inspector-GeneralTaras Bulba, et. al

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of our Times


George Crile - 2003
    In the early 1980s, a Houston socialite turned the attention of maverick Texas congressman Charlie Wilson to the ragged band of Afghan "freedom fighters" who continued, despite overwhelming odds, to fight the Soviet invaders. Wilson, who sat on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee, managed to procure hundreds of millions of dollars to support the mujahideen. The arms were secretly procured and distributed with the help of an out-of-favor CIA operative, Gust Avrokotos, whose working-class Greek-American background made him an anomaly among the Ivy League world of American spies. Avrakotos handpicked a staff of CIA outcasts to run his operation and, with their help, continually stretched the Agency's rules to the breaking point. Moving from the back rooms of the Capitol, to secret chambers at Langley, to arms-dealers' conventions, to the Khyber Pass, this book presents an astonishing chapter of our recent past, and the key to understanding what helped trigger the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and ultimately led to the emergence of a brand-new foe in the form of radical Islam.

The Trial: A History, from Socrates to O. J. Simpson


Sadakat Kadri - 2005
    A brilliantly engaging writer, Kadri journeys from the silence of ancient Egypt's Hall of the Dead to the clamor of twenty-first-century Hollywood to show how emotion and fear have inspired Western notions of justice-and the extent to which they still riddle its trials today. He explains, for example, how the jury emerged in medieval England from trials by fire and water, in which validations of vengeance were presumed to be divinely supervised, and how delusions identical to those that once sent witches to the stake were revived as accusations of Satanic child abuse during the 1980s. Lifting the lid on a particularly bizarre niche of legal history, Kadri tells how European lawyers once prosecuted animals, objects, and corpses-and argues that the same instinctive urge to punish is still apparent when a child or mentally ill defendant is accused of sufficiently heinous crimes. But Kadri's history is about aspiration as well as ignorance. He shows how principles such as the right to silence and the right to confront witnesses, hallmarks of due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, were derived from the Bible by twelfth-century monks. He tells of show trials from Tudor England to Stalin's Soviet Union, but contends that no-trials, in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, are just as repugnant to Western traditions of justice and fairness. With governments everywhere eroding legal protections in the name of an indefinite war on terror, Kadri'sanalysis could hardly be timelier. At once encyclopedic and entertaining, comprehensive and colorful, The Trial rewards curiosity and an appreciation of the absurd but tackles as well questions that are profound. Who has the right to judge, and why? What did past civilizations hope to achieve through scapegoats and sacrifices-and to what extent are defendants still made to bear the sins of society at large? Kadri addresses such themes through scores of meticulously researched stories, all told with the verve and wit that won him one of Britain's most prestigious travel-writing awards-and in doing so, he has created a masterpiece of popular history.

Apples Are from Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared


Christopher Robbins - 2008
    Few would guess that Kazakhstan—a blank in Westerners' collective geography—turns out to be diverse, tolerant, and surprisingly modern, the country that gave the world apples, trousers, and even, perhaps, King Arthur.Christopher Robbins enjoyed unprecedented access to the Kazakh president while crafting this travelogue, and he relates a story by turns hilarious and grim. He finds Eminem-worship by a shrinking Aral Sea, hears the Kazakh John Lennon play in a dusty desert town, joins nomads hunting eagles, eats boiled sheep's head (a delicacy), and explores some of the most beautiful, unspoiled places on earth. Observant and culturally attuned, Robbins is a master stylist in the tradition of travel writing as literature, a companion to V. S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux.