From Philip K. Dick Award-nominated author M.T. Hill and selected as The Times 'Best Book of the Month', The Breach is a unique science fiction mystery set in the dangerous underground world of the urban exploration scene. Freya Medlock, a reporter at her local paper, is down on her luck and chasing a break. When she's assigned to cover the death of a young climber named Stephen, she might just have the story she needs. Digging into Stephen's life, Freya uncovers a strange photo uploaded to an urban exploration forum not long before he died. It seems to show a weird nest, yet the caption below suggests there's more to it. Freya believes this nest - discovering what it really is and where it's hidden - could be the key to understanding the mysteries surrounding Stephen's death. Soon she meets Shep, a trainee steeplejack with his own secret life. When Shep's not working up chimneys, he's also into urban exploration - undertaking dangerous 'missions' into abandoned and restricted sites. As Shep draws Freya deeper into the urbex scene, the circumstances of Stephen's death become increasingly unsettling - and Freya finds herself risking more and more to get the answers she wants. But neither Freya nor Shep realise that some dark corners are better left unlit.
The journalist who co-wrote the original article breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal for the Washington Post reveals the complete story behind the headlines: a riveting, in-depth account of an event unique in American history -- the first impeachment of an elected president. "For all of the titillation about thongs and cigars, the story of the impeachment and trial of William Jefferson Clinton was not so much about sex as it was about power. It may have started with an unseemly rendezvous near the Oval Office, but it mushroomed into the Washington battle of a generation, ultimately dragging in all three branches of government.... "Clinton opened his second term vowing to bring the parties together, to become the 'repairer of the breach.' But the last half of the presidency demonstrated that the breach was wider than anyone had anticipated." -- from the Prologue With unprecedented access to all the players -- major and minor -- Washington Post reporter Peter Baker reconstructs the compelling drama that gripped the nation for six critical months: the impeachment and trial of William Jefferson Clinton. The Breach vividly depicts the mind-boggling political and legal events as they unfolded, a day-by-day and sometimes hour-by-hour account beginning August 17, 1998, the night of the president's grand-jury testimony and his disastrous speech to the nation, through the House impeachment hearings and the Senate trial, ending on February 12, 1999, the day of his acquittal. Using 350 original interviews, confidential investigation files, diaries, and tape recordings, Baker goes behind the scenes and packs the book with newsworthy revelations -- the infighting among the president's advisers, the pressure among Democrats to call for Clinton's resignation, the secret back-channel negotiations between the White House and Congress, a tour of the War Room set up by Tom DeLay to force Clinton out of office, the agonizing of various members of Congress, the anxiety of lawmakers who feared the exposure of their own sex lives, and Hillary Clinton's learning that her husband would admit his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The Breach is contemporary history at its best -- shocking, revealing, and consequential. It is a tale of how Washington became lost in "the breach" of its own partisan impulses. All of this, and much more, makes The Breach one of the most important and illuminating volumes of history and contemporary politics of our generation.
“Audacious and terrifying—and uncannily believable.” —Lee Child New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series, Lee Child, was blown away by The Breach—and you will be, too! A novel of unrelenting suspense and nonstop surprises, The Breach immediately rockets author Patrick Lee into the V.I.P. section of the thriller universe. A treat for Jack Bauer (“24”) fans and “X-Files” aficionados, it is a white-knuckle roller-coaster ride that combines the best of Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton with a healthy dollop of Indiana Jones thrown into the mix—the perfect secret agent/government conspiracy/supernatural adventure.
For readers of The Nightingale and Beneath a Scarlet Sky comes a gripping historical thriller set against a fully-realized WWII backdrop about the love a father has for his son and the lengths he is willing to go to find him, from a talented new voice in suspense. Rhys Gravenor, Great War veteran and Welsh sheep farmer, arrives in Paris in the midst of the city's liberation with a worn letter in his pocket that may have arrived years too late. As he follows the footsteps of his missing son across an unfamiliar, war-torn country, he struggles to come to terms with the incident that drove a wedge between the two of them. Joined by Charlotte Dubois, an American ambulance driver with secrets of her own, Rhys discovers that even as liberation sweeps across France, the war is far from over. And his personal war has only begun as he is haunted by memories of previous battles and hampered at every turn by danger and betrayal. In a race against time and the war, Rhys follows his son's trail from Paris to the perilous streets of Vichy to the starving mobs in Lyon to the treacherous Alps. But Rhys is not the only one searching for his son. In a race of his own, a relentless enemy stalks him across the country and will stop at nothing to find the young man first. The country is in tatters, no one is trustworthy, and Rhys must unravel the mystery of his son's wartime actions in the desperate hope of finding him before it's too late. Too late to mend the frayed bond between them. Too late to beg his forgiveness. Too late to bring him home alive.
The notion of battles as the irreducible building blocks of war demands a single verdict of each campaign—victory, defeat, stalemate. But this kind of accounting leaves no room to record the nuances and twists of actual conflict. In Somme: Into the Breach, the noted military historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore shows that by turning our focus to stories of the front line—to acts of heroism and moments of both terror and triumph—we can counter, and even change, familiar narratives. Planned as a decisive strike but fought as a bloody battle of attrition, the Battle of the Somme claimed over a million dead or wounded in months of fighting that have long epitomized the tragedy and folly of World War I. Yet by focusing on the first-hand experiences and personal stories of both Allied and enemy soldiers, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore defies the customary framing of incompetent generals and senseless slaughter. In its place, eyewitness accounts relive scenes of extraordinary courage and sacrifice, as soldiers ordered “over the top” ventured into No Man’s Land and enemy trenches, where they met a hail of machine-gun fire, thickets of barbed wire, and exploding shells. Rescuing from history the many forgotten heroes whose bravery has been overlooked, and giving voice to their bereaved relatives at home, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the Somme campaign in all its glory as well as its misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle when seen through the eyes of those who lived it.
Shortlisted for Neukom Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction, from Philip K. Dick Award-nominated author M.T. Hill, Zero Bomb is a startling science fiction mystery that asks: what do we do when technology replaces our need to work? The near future. Following the death of his daughter Martha, Remi flees the north of England for London. Here he tries to rebuild his life as a cycle courier, delivering subversive documents under the nose of an all-seeing state. But when a driverless car attempts to run him over, Remi soon discovers that his old life will not let him move on so easily. Someone is leaving coded messages for Remi across the city, and they seem to suggest that Martha is not dead at all. Unsure what to believe, and increasingly unable to trust his memory, Remi is slowly drawn into the web of a dangerous radical whose '70s sci-fi novel is now a manifesto for direct action against automation, technology, and England itself. The deal? Remi can see Martha again - if he joins the cause.
We all become monsters at the edge of the breach. In a post-apocalyptic world where season of birth determines power -- spring healers, summer mages, fall shapeshifters, and winter shields -- a man and a woman emerge from tragic childhoods to lead humanity on opposite sides of an interrealm war. ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ There is a hole in the sky. They call it the Rift. A portal to the gods. The scar of a suffering world. Through it, the gods rule the last scraps of civilization, harkening war. As chaos beckons, two leaders emerge from the ashes of a dying planet. Julian Kyder is the son of an abusive rape victim who compensates for his abandonment through psychopathy. Sira Rune is a cancer survivor who dedicates her life to living free and fearless while experiencing the taboo and the unorthodox. Rune is the only one unafraid of Kyder, and that terrifies him, because he only knows how to function through fear. Even though she gives him more chances than he deserves, how much violence can she forgive? When is a person beyond redemption? While he struggles to control his demons and she struggles to find purpose, the gods drag the ruined world into war. Amazon #1 Top Free Bestseller LGBT SF Top 20 New Releases LGBT SF CONTENT WARNING: The Rift Cycle is a highly graphic series intended for mature audiences. TAGS: science fiction, fantasy, grimdark, horror, LGBT, mental illness ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ READ AN EXCERPT Chapter 1: Pain Made a Man Kyder, Age 9 - July 7, 7009 Her body is stone. Her eyes glass. She doesn''t see me. Doesn''t want me. Yet her blood runs through me, a river of pain. I call her mother, but she calls me nothing. She hopes to forget me. Hopes I will disappear. Conceived in violence, I am a constant reminder of the crime that made me. "Come," she orders me. Like a dog. And I jog at her heels, obedient. She won''t use my name. It''s a reminder I exist. The meaning behind it is empty, anyway. She refused to name me, so the hospital staff did. Julian Kyder -- Julian after the doctor who delivered me and Kyder after the hospital. Forever marked by the circumstances of my birth. She tried to abort, but I survived. She put me up for adoption, but no one took me. She tried to release me into the system, but they were already at overcapacity. We''re trapped. Stuck together as two halves of misery. The doctor told me I am a miracle. She told me I am a curse. "This way." She leads me along the edge of the Shelf toward the market. With each step, my feet crunch along the parched gravel. To our left, cliffs drop hundreds of meters into the Ruined Sea, a toxic cesspool that encircles the island. In the distance, Mount Erebus puffs ash into the blanched sky, a grandfather smoking the last bit of a cigar. We mutilated our world, bombarded the planet for centuries with nuclear weapons until we ran out of missiles, until Earth flipped upside-down. The only habitable continent is Antarctica, now the North Pole, and even here, the war melted the desolate wasteland into a scorching desert. Humans near extinction, huddled near the top of the planet like exiles. But we deserve it. Sweat trickles down my back. I pull my robe tight around myself, hoping to block out the sun. It''s summer, so there''s no respite from the heat. The days are endless. They bleed into each other like ink on a page, no distinction between the lines. Night won''t come for another few months, and soon after it does, it won''t leave till winter''s done. Some call it balance. Day and night. Light and dark. Sun and stars. Birth and death. People look for meaning when it''s only chaos disguised as order... ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ WELCOME TO THE BREACH.
Their mission is called the Venus Asteroid Expedition, but it has little to do with legitimate trade. General Commander Piet Ricimer and Stephen Gregg are leading an armada of four ships from the relatively civilized clouds of Venus out beyond the orbit of Pluto, deep into the Reaches where trade and piracy are one and the same - and expedited with a gun. Their destination is the Mirror, and impenetrable membrane covering another universe - a universe where all the riches of the Federation are held in ports, ripe for plundering. There is only one place where the expedition can cross the Mirror, a weakened point known as Landolph's Breach. The last one to pass through was Landolph himself...over eighty years ago. And most of his men never returned... But the war with the Federation is raging, and the glory of Venus is at hand. Ricimer and Gregg are going forward into the hands of fate, going to claim the wealth and glory that is theirs to take...going hell-bent and full speed ahead through the Breach...
Life sucks for Vanessa. Her mother just died and her boyfriend is cheating on her (with her own sister!). To clear her mind, Vanessa is taking the California road-trip that she's been dreaming about for years. Her postcard-perfect drive through old growth forests quickly turns when THE BREACH hits. A bizarre anomaly in the sky plunges California into a nightmare-world populated with strange, extra-dimensional creatures. Now Vanessa, along with Dougie, an orphaned child, and Kai, a strange, fuzzball of a beast, must fight to survive if they ever hope to make it back home. If there's even a home to return to. Written by Ed Brisson (Uncanny X-Men, Ghost Rider, Old Man Logan) and illustrated by Damian Couceiro (Old Man Logan, Iron Fist, X-Force), BEYOND THE BREACH is a fantastical sci-fi road trip adventure about perseverance and finding family in unexpected places.
In The Breach of a Treaty: State Responses in International Law, Maria Xiouri examines the relationship between responses to the breach of a treaty, namely between the termination of the treaty or the suspension of its operation and countermeasures.
