Political Crime

Many tales from the Jazz Age reek of crime and corruption. But perhaps the era’s greatest political fiasco—one that resulted in a nationwide scandal, a public reckoning at the Department of Justice, the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, and an Oscar-winning film—has long been lost to the annals of history. In Crooked, Nathan Masters restores this story of murderers, con artists, secret lovers, spies, bootleggers, and corrupt politicians to its full, page-turning glory.

"The Black Mask" is a gripping tale that follows the lives of two sisters, Fatima and Angeles, who witness the brutal assassination of their parents. Driven by the desire for justice, Fatima becomes a politician determined to eradicate corruption in the government. Meanwhile, Angeles transforms into the vigilante known as THE BLACK MASK, a formidable figure fighting against corrupt politicians from the past to the present.

Presumed dead after a staged terrorist attack, FBI Agent Odysseus Carr is running for his life with the doctor who rescued him. Meanwhile, the same power players who sent Odi to his death are now manipulating an FBI profiler into blindly tracking him down. She's not just their best - she's also his sister. As Odi unravels a devious plot of profound political manipulation and global consequence, the hunted becomes the hunter, and the real terror begins.

For hostage rescue specialist Jonathan Grave, every mission is a matter of life or death. But he faces his most personal challenge yet when two boys are abducted while being driven to Resurrection House, the school Jonathan founded as a sanctuary for children of incarcerated parents. The boys were entrusted to Jonathan's care. Now they're missing. It's time to fight fire with fire. The boys' mom, Connie Kendall, is awaiting trial on drug smuggling charges. Prosecutors want her to testify against the brutal Cortez Cartel to help bring down their ruthless operations.

Drawing on declassified documents, interviews with intelligence veterans and policymakers, and other sources, The Image of the Enemy examines how seven countries analyzed and used intelligence to understand their main adversary. The cases in the book include the Soviet Union's analysis of the United States (and vice versa), East Germany's analysis of West Germany (and vice versa), British intelligence in the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Israeli intelligence about the Palestinians, and more.

Somewhere in the once-placid streets of San Francisco, a young man is on the run, charged by the media with a crime he didn't commit, hounded by demagogues, hunted by a desperate police department. One cop knows that Kevin Shea is innocent of a brutal racial murder. An ambitious politician will use Shea for her own ends. And a down-and-out lawyer is all that stands between Kevin Shea and an even more atrocious crime. For when there's no law left, justice is the only hope.

Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Crocker of SEAL Team Six's Black Cell is in Las Vegas after conducting a training exercise in the desert with new members of the team. Lounging by the pool at Caesars Palace, he witnesses an argument between hotel security guards and three Asian men in corporate attire that quickly turns physical. Giving chase, he soon corners the businessmen, who claim to be Chinese diplomats under the protection of diplomatic immunity.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson insisted that "the policeman is the frontline soldier in our war against crime", and police forces, arms makers, policy makers, and crime experts heeded this call to arms, bringing weapons and practices from the arena of war back home. The Punitive Turn in American Life offers a political and cultural history of the ways in which punishment and surveillance have moved to the center of American life and become imbued with militarized language and policies.

Nine people arrive one night on Chelsea Bridge. They’ve never met. But at the same time, they run and leap to their deaths. Each of them received a letter in the post that morning, a pre-written suicide note, and a page containing only four words: Nothing important happened today. That is how they knew they had been chosen to become a part of the People of Choice: a mysterious suicide cult whose members have no knowledge of one another.

Anti-Terrorist Task Force agent John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, have been posted overseas to Sana'a, Yemen—one of the most dangerous places in the Middle East. While there, they will be working with a small team to track down one of the masterminds behind the USS Cole bombing: a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative known as The Panther.

After escaping the corrupt back rooms of Washington, DC, Mike Ford is again playing a dangerous game - this time the stakes are even higher. Mike's brother is in over his head in a powerful conspiracy to steal a secret worth billions of dollars from the little-known but unbelievably influential trading desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In an effort to help, Mike soon finds himself trapped by the dangerous men in charge - and forced to call on all the skills of his criminal past in order to escape.

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong?

After more than a decade of being in prison for the brutal murder of two Stirling University students, Colin Sanderson has been released after his conviction was found to be unsafe. Returning home to a small village not far from Stirling, Sanderson refuses police protection, even in the face of a death threat. But the PR firm that has scooped him up to sell his story does know of a protection expert in Stirling. They want Connor Fraser.

Red Square, 1985. The naked body of a young man is left outside the walls of the Kremlin, frozen solid - like marble to the touch - missing the little finger from his right hand. A week later, Alex Marston, the headstrong 15-year-old daughter of the British ambassador, disappears. Army Intelligence Officer Tom Fox, posted to Moscow to keep him from telling the truth to a government committee, is asked to help find her. It's a shot at redemption.

When the fingers of dead women start showing up in the Supreme Court’s mail, ex-FBI Agent Jeremy Winter is brought back to the Bureau to aid in the investigation. Agent Maggie Keeley, his girlfriend and now boss, leads the search for the serial killer. Together, Jeremy and Maggie learn the five remaining cities on the murderer’s list, but they have no idea when the killer will strike or whom he will target. When they stumble upon a clue at the scene of a young woman’s death, the case focuses on an abandoned ramshackle home in sparsely populated west Texas.

After covert investigators Ryan Decker and Harlow Mackenzie demolished APEX, a billion-dollar criminal enterprise, a tenuous truce between the two factions suggested the battle was over. But not for Decker’s director, Senator Margaret Steele. She’s uncovered an even deadlier operation - code name Skystorm. Skystorm violates every international arms-trafficking law imaginable. And for the senator, exposing the plot may be a gamble too far. APEX has caught wind of the investigation, and they’ve gone on the offensive.

Deep in the American Heartland, a team of assassins goes to work. In short order, a Chechen scientist and double agent for the US government is dead. But the team didn't exactly finish the job. The man's teenage son is still alive. In possession of crucial and potentially lethal information, he's now on the run - and off the grid.

And on its surface, the Chappaquiddick Incident (as it has infamously become known) was a simple but tragic traffic accident. However, its political fallout caused it to become the most speculated-upon car accident until Princess Diana's fatal ride, some 28 years later: Was Kennedy drunk? Was he trying to conceal an affair by deliberately killing Kopechne? Why did he wait for so long before reporting the accident? And who else was involved?

Jeff Griffin, a mechanic, and his wife, Sarah, travel from Montana to Manhattan to give their nine-year-old son, Cole, his dream vacation as they secretly face the heart-wrenching turmoil that has them teetering on divorce. In the wake of their heartbreak, a mother and son disappear. While sightseeing near Times Square, Jeff steps into a store to buy batteries for their camera - but upon returning to the street he finds that Sarah and Cole have vanished. Battling his anguish and police suspicions, Jeff fights to rescue them.

When Scott Dozier was sent to Nevada’s death row in 2007, convicted of a pair of grisly murders, he didn’t cry foul or embark upon a protracted innocence campaign. He sought instead to expedite his execution—to hasten his inevitable death. He decided he would rather face his end swiftly than die slowly in solitary confinement. In volunteering for execution, Dozier may have been unusual. But in the tortuous events that led his death date to be scheduled and rescheduled, planned and then stayed, his time on death row was anything but.