Sid, a young computer scientist who is passionate about his profession, yearns to also serve his country. Helped by his professor, Sid accepts a job at the CIA where he can do both. But the forces of avarice and ideology conspire into the design of an industrial sabotage, which thrusts Sid into a desperate adventure he surely didn't sign up for. His first job out of college takes him to India on a seemingly simple CIA assignment. But nothing is what it seems in the world of espionage. The web spread by a ruthless Washington lobbyist engulfs a Silicon Valley executive, an ideologue in the Pentagon, and a military general in the third world. Will Sid and his college sweetheart survive the web they are caught in?
“To paraphrase a line from the movie Jerry McGuire, ‘This book had me from “Hello.”’...powerful..."—Rose Hooper, The Sylva Herald The Montserrat volcano forces an international drug lord from his home, setting in motion a chain of events that leads through boat explosions; mid-air plane conflagrations; chases through rush hour streets of Atlanta and Chicago; back-alley machine gun killings and the works of one of the world’s best sociopathic hit-men. Brian Withers wants to live his life quietly, teaching college, but the FBI and the drug ring both find him an attractive cover for gathering information. Brian and his wife Susannah are pulled constantly deeper into a world they never envisioned…purely by accident. A wealthy Chicago widow is determined to spend her fortune tracking down and killing those who had a hand in the drug death of her teen son. A bag lady covers the underside of Chicago to arrange a death. A Greek fisherman whose wife is dying an expensive death, an escaped murderer who would kill again with ease, a retarded man who doesn’t know the evil he is assisting; all come together on the Panhandle coast of Florida, Carrabelle, Apalachicola and Panama City. So skillfully plotted and propelling the reader needs to clear his calendar for the next three days before reading the first page.
A covert agent’s memoir of three perilous missions in Nazi-occupied Paris, told with “unconditional honesty” (Kirkus Reviews). At first, John Goldsmith’s services were consistently refused. But in 1942, he was recruited into Buckmasters F Section of the Special Operations Executive—and his wartime exploits would be remarkable. His faultless French and upbringing in Paris were to prove invaluable. After intensive training he was parachuted into France for the first of his three missions. His adventures included crossing the Pyrenees, sabotage, forming his own circuits, being captured by the Gestapo, a daring escape, and black-marketeering. In 1944, he was advisor to the Maquis guerrillas in the Mont Ventoux area, where they fought the Germans in pitched battles and won. In this candid autobiography, he vividly recounts his dramatic and dangerous World War II adventures.
1942- THE RACE IS ON TO CREATE THE ATOMIC BOMB. James Nessheim has gone back to college and thinks he has left his life as a spy behind. But the covert nuclear programme at the University of Chicago has been infiltrated by an enemy agent, and Nessheim is persuaded by the FBI to help track him down. At the same time, an old flame re-enters Nessheim's life and he finds himself falling in love. But can it be coincidence that she appears just as he becomes a special agent again? Nessheim's personal and professional lives grow dangerously intertwined as he struggles to protect the war's deadliest secret - and work out who he can trust.
It's the summer of 1940. When a much loved brother, a Hurricane pilot, is reported missing, his sister decides to investigate. The story moves from the south of England to occupied France, and back again.
In the Anthropocene, the fact that human activity is enmeshed with the existence and actions of every kind of other being is inescapable. As a result, the planetary ecological crisis has brought forth an urgent need to rethink understandings of human action. One response holds that the transformations necessary to tackle today’s crises will emerge from the distinctive capacity of human beings to transcend their environment. Another school of thought calls for seeing action as composite, produced by distributed networks of human and nonhuman agents. Yet the first of these is open to charges of human exceptionalism, while the second, according to its critics, lacks effective political traction. Martin Crowley argues that a new conception of political agency is necessary to break this impasse. Engaging with thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Bernard Stiegler, and Catherine Malabou, Crowley proposes an original account of agency as both distributed and decisive. Challenging the prevailing view of agency as exclusively human, he explores how a politics that incorporates nonhuman agency can intervene in the real world, examining timely issues such as climate-related migration and digital-algorithmic politics. A major intervention into ongoing debates in posthumanism, political ecology, and political theory, Accidental Agents reshapes our understanding of political agency in and for a more-than-human world.
Milo had read about magic before. He knew that kids in stories sometimes found magic in secret drawers or hidden away in attics, and he had always hoped that if he were to find magic, it would appear in the form of a mysterious silver coin or a doorway to an enchanted world. But when magic came to Milo Speck, it came in the form of a sock. "Figures," said Milo. So begins Milo's adventure through a clothes dryer into Ogregon, a land populated with hungry ogres, dino-sized turkeys, kids needing rescue, and--Milo's dad? What's his regular-old salesman father doing in Ogregon? In fact, what's Milo doing there? But the answers must wait--because the top priority for all non-ogres is escape. Well, after Milo thwarts the dastardly plot that threatens to make kids everywhere into ogre snack food. But how can a small boy in the very big world of Ogregon possibly do that?
'Alan Judd's special magic is to mix contemporary events as they break over our heads with the codes and crafts of the secret world on whose special traits he is always uncannily up to date' Peter Hennessy 'Plotting in the best le Carré tradition' Mail on Sunday 'A well researched plot, intelligent prose and topicality' Spectator From the author of Legacy, now a major BBC Film, and The Kaiser's Last Kiss comes a brilliant new novel for fans of John le Carre, Mick Herron and Charles Cumming. Brexit looms and Charles Thoroughgood, Chief of MI6, is forbidden for political reasons from spying on the EU. But when an EU official volunteers the EU’s negotiating bottom lines to one of his officers, Charles has to report it. Whitehall is eager for more but as the case develops Charles realises that it may not be quite what it appears. At the same time, he finds he has a family connection with a possible terrorist whom MI5 want checked out. In both cases, Charles is forced to become his own agent, seeking what he really does not want to find. 'Charles Thoroughgood, Chief of MI6, keeps the flame of true espionage burning brightly in a contemporary Brexit operation as political correctness threatens to close in on his freewheeling profession - authentic, clever and wonderfully entertaining' Sir Richard Dearlove, ex-Chief of MI6 Authoritative and packed with in-depth knowledge, Accidental Agent is a gripping new spy thriller from a master of the genre. ‘Judd infuses his writing with insider knowledge’New Statesman 'Wonderful. One of the best spy novels ever' Peter Hennessey on Legacy 'Belongs to the classic tradition of spy writing' Guardian 'Judd has an infallible grasp of intelligence'Spectator
Schoolboy turns secret agent in this hilarious spy spoof! Before you read this, I want you to carefully check that no-one is reading over your shoulder - go ahead, do it now. First off, that was terrible - really obvious. If I'm going to tell you top secret government information, you're going to have to be a bit more stealthy. Try again. Was anyone looking? No? Right, then I'll begin. This year the secret service made a major mix up, they mistook a 13-year-old boy called Kevin for a secret agent (I know, so much for an 'intelligence' agency). This was the sort of kid that would try and zip wire across a building and end up falling head first into a fountain with his bum on show, so can you imagine what happened when he was allowed access to the amazing sort of spy gadgets that James Bond would use? Despite this, it was up to Kevin to save us all from an evil supervillain. It was the most dangerous, daring mission in the history of the secret service, and also its biggest blunder. This top secret book uncovers the entire story of Kevin's fateful and hilarious mission.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A decorated former Air Force pilot. A pregnant flight attendant. A dedicated TSA agent. The fates of these three, and many others, converge in Danielle Steel’s gripping new novel—a heart-stopping thriller that engages ordinary men and women in the fight of their lives during a flight from New York to San Francisco. On a beautiful May morning at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, two planes have just departed for San Francisco—one a 757, another a smaller Airbus A321. At a security checkpoint, TSA agent Bernice Adams finds a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge bearing an ambiguous—perhaps ominous—message. Her supervisor dismisses her concerns, but Bernice calls security and soon Ben Waterman arrives. A senior Homeland Security agent, still grappling with guilt after a disastrous operation in which hostages were killed, Ben too becomes suspicious. Who left the postcard behind, which flight is that person on, and what exactly does the message mean? As Ben scans the passenger manifests, his focus turns to the A321, with Helen Smith as its senior pilot. Helen’s military service and her tenure with the airline have been exemplary. But her husband’s savage death in Iraq was more than anyone should bear, leaving her widowed with three children. A major film star is on board. So is an off-duty pilot who has just lost his forty-year career. So is a distraught father, traveling with the baby son he has abducted from his estranged wife. Sifting through data and relying on instinct, Ben becomes convinced that someone on Helen’s plane is planning something terrible. And he’s right. Passengers, crew, and experts on the ground become heroes out of necessity to try to avert tragedy at the eleventh hour. In her stunning novel, Danielle Steel combines intense action with stories of emotionally rich, intertwined lives. As the jet bears down on its destination of San Francisco, strangers are united, desperate choices are made, and futures will be changed forever by a handful of accidental heroes.
