Other books that might interest you

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  Odd People - Hunting Spies in...

  Basil Thomson

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  First World War espionage was a fascinating and dangerous affair, spawning widespread paranoia in its clandestine wake. The hysteria of the age, stoked by those within the British establishment who sought to manipulate popular panic, meant there was no shortage of suspects. Exaggerated claims were rife: some 80,000 Germans were supposedly hidden all over Britain, just waiting for an impending (and imagined) invasion. No one could be trusted... Against this backdrop, as head of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Department, it was Basil Thomson's responsibility to hunt, arrest and interrogate the potential German spies identified by the nascent British intelligence services. Thomson's story is an extraordinary compendium of sleuthing and secrets from a real-life Sherlock Holmes, following the trails of the many specimens he tracked, including the famous dancer, courtesan and spy, Mata Hari. Yet his activities gained him enemies, as did his criticism of British intelligence, his ambition to control MI5 and his efforts to root out left-wing revolutionaries - which would ultimately prove to be the undoing of his career. Odd People is the insightful and wittily observed account of Thomson's incomparably exciting job, offering us a rare glimpse into the dizzying world of spies and the mind of the detective charged with foiling their elaborate plots. The Dialogue Espionage Classics series began in 2010 with the purpose of bringing back classic out-of-print spy stories that should never be forgotten. From the Great War to the Cold War, from the French Resistance to the Cambridge Five, from Special Operations to Bletchley Park, this fascinating spy history series includes some of the best military, espionage and adventure stories ever told.

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  Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths...

  M.J. Trow

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  Discover the darker side of this scenic destination with over twenty true-crime tales, accompanied by photos and illustrations.   Its natural beauty attracts countless visitors—but notorious cases of murder, deceit, and pure malice have marked the long history of this apparently peaceful island. From crimes of passion to opportunistic killings and coldly premeditated acts of murder, the full spectrum of criminality is recounted here. For this journey into a bloody, neglected aspect of the past, Isle of Wight historian and crime writer M.J. Trow has selected over twenty notorious episodes that give a fascinating insight into criminal acts and the criminal mind.   He throws light into the shadowy world of the smugglers, pirates, and robbers who plagued the island’s early history. He recalls the escape attempts of Charles I from Carisbrooke Castle, the mysterious loss of the Mary Rose and HMS Royal George, and the scandalous conduct of Lady Worsley. In vivid, sometimes shocking detail, he reconstructs notable criminal cases, including the brutal murders that have marked the island’s more recent past. In addition, he delves into the history of the island’s three prisons—Albany, Parkhurst, and Camp Hill—which have housed many of Britain’s most violent criminals.

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  Little Crazy Children

  James Renner

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  In September of 1990, in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend, when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy's home.The murder cast a palpable gloom over the upscale community and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa's friends and peers. Together they wove a damning narrative that circled back to a likely suspect: "weird" high school outcast Kevin Young. Without a shred of evidence the teen was arrested, charged, and tried for the crime. His eventual acquittal didn't squelch the anger and outrage among those who believed that Kevin got away with murder.With a fresh perspective and painstaking research, James Renner reconstructs the events leading up to and following that heartbreaking night. What emerges is a portrait of a community seething with dark undercurrents.Who had the capacity for such unchecked violence? What monsters still lurk in the dark? After more than thirty years, questions like these continue to fester among the community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, still deeply scarred by wounds that remain hidden, unspoken, and unhealed.

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  City of Devils - The Two Men Who...

  Paul French

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  By Paul French, New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Peking—winner of both the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction—comes a rags-to-riches tale of two self-made men set against a backdrop of crime and vice in the sprawling badlands of Shanghai. City of Devils is a dynamic audiobook that will captivate listeners everywhere. 
  Shanghai, 1930s; it was a haven for outlaws from all over the world: a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, and fortunes made—and lost. 
  "Lucky" Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex-U.S. Navy boxing champion, he escaped from prison and rose to become the Slots King of Shanghai. "Dapper" Joe Farren—a Jewish boy who fled Vienna's ghetto—ruled the nightclubs. His chorus lines rivalled Ziegfeld's. 
  In 1940, Lucky Jack and Dapper Joe bestrode the Shanghai Badlands like kings, while all around the Solitary Island was poverty, starvation, and war. They thought they ruled Shanghai, but the city had other ideas. This is the story of their rise to power, their downfall, and the trail of destruction left in their wake. Shanghai was their playground for a flickering few years, a city where for a fleeting moment even the wildest dreams could come true.

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  Shadows on the Tundra

  Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

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  An extraordinary piece of international survival literature, joining the likes of Primo Levi and Anne Frank.
  In 1941, 14-year-old Dalia and her family are deported from their native Lithuania to a labour camp in Siberia. As the strongest member of her family she submits to twelve hours a day of manual labour. At the age of 21, she escapes the gulag and returns to Lithuania. She writes her memories on scraps of paper and buries them in the garden, fearing they might be discovered by the KGB. They are not found until 1991, four years after her death. This is the story Dalia buried. The immediacy of her writing bears witness not only to the suffering she endured but also the hope that sustained her. It is a Lithuanian tale that, like its author, beats the odds to survive.
  Why Peirene chose to publish this book:
  There is only one word to describe this book, extraordinary. It blew me away when I first read it in German translation. Dalia's account goes far beyond a memoir. This is an outstanding piece of literature which should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the Soviet repression.
  'A distressing historic document and a literary work of great significance.' Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  'An incredible force of language … the story of constant indignation.'JFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

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  Cult of the Great Eleven

  Samuel Fort

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  Cult of the Great Eleven is a true account of one of the twentieth century’s weirdest and most mysterious cults. Human and animal sacrifices, vanishings, the preserved corpse of a teenage cult princess, angelic encounters, a woman cooked in an oven, a mother chained to her bed for two months, resurrection experiments, refrigeration warehouses for the dead, abductions, nocturnal rituals, orgies, a breathing universe, an esoteric tome known as The Great Sixth Seal, hints of Hecate worship, and a post-apocalyptic world ruled by eleven queens from a hill in Hollywood… 
  The United States witnessed an explosion of cult activity in the 1920s that today is almost inconceivable. California, in particular, was a haven for an estimated 200,000 cultists, with over 400 active cults in southern California alone. These ranged from “love cults” that conducted ritual orgies to “devil worshipping” cults that branded their members with hot irons and beheaded their enemies.  
  Among all these, the Simi Valley's “Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven” was considered by many to be the most extraordinary. A death cult, the Great Eleven was founded by May Otis Blackburn, Portland, Oregon’s unheralded filmmaking pioneer, and Ruth Wieland, her luscious femme fatale daughter. The cult was so bizarre that accounts of its activities “elicited expressions of amazement” from justices on the California Supreme Court in 1931, who admitted, “they have never heard anything so weird.”  
  Not until the nephew of oil magnate J.B. Dabney admitted he had been a member of the cult would the world at large learn of the existence the “divine order.” Not until detectives opened a trap door in the floor of a cult couple’s Venice cottage would the world be exposed to its darkest secrets.

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