Private Politics

Martin Cruz Smith has written nine previous novels featuring Arkady Renko, one of modern detective fiction’s most popular characters. These novels, beginning with 1981’s international sensation Gorky Park, have collectively traced Russia's evolution over the last half-century. Now, with Independence Square, Smith focuses on the fraught and frenzied days leading up to Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Former NYPD detective Thomas Austin is enjoying a rare date at a monday night football game in Seattle when the evening takes a horrifying turn. A team of merciless terrorists has taken over the stadium by force, blocking cellphone signals and sealing the exits. The terrorists have a single demand: release a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative from a US supermax prison. And they have a simple threat: do so in the next 24 hours or they will blow up the stadium, killing themselves along with tens of thousands of innocent victims.

These Are the Plunderers traces the thirty-year history of corporate takeovers in America and private equity’s increasing dominance. Morgenson and Rosner investigate some of the biggest names in private equity, exposing how they buy companies, load them with debt, and then bleed them of assets and profits. All while prosecutors and regulators stand idly by.

London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend - until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris. Mlle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star, writes that her illegitimate son by an English lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.

Armored cars, burner phones, top-notch weaponry, and top-secret missions - this is the life of today's private military contractor. Like author Simon Chase, many PMCs were once the world's top military operatives, and since retiring from outfits like US Navy SEAL TEAM Six and the UK's Special Boat Service, they have devoted their lives to executing missions too sensitive for the government to acknowledge. Chase reveals here for the first time the operations too hazardous and politically volatile to be officially sanctioned by his employers.

Far beneath the sands of Alexandria, an archaeological team digs deeper than anyone has before, seeking an ancient power older than the pyramids. What they unearth is an evil that threatens the whole world. First it targets the worst of humanity: Ex-Nazis, Central American warlords, and the pushers who peddle drugs to children are found massacred, ripped limb from limb without having fired a shot in their own defense. But the next to die will be ordinary people.

Who is Nola Brown? Nola is a mystery. Nola is trouble. And Nola is supposed to be dead. Her body was found on a plane that mysteriously fell from the sky as it left a secret military base in the Alaskan wilderness. Her commanding officer verifies she's dead. The US government confirms it. But Jim "Zig" Zigarowski has just found out the truth: Nola is still alive. And on the run.

Unlock the mysteries of life after death and explore the enlightening discoveries of a private investigator's 15-year investigation. This book is a comprehensive resource answering 150 of the most crucial questions about what happens when we die. Now you can delve into the life-changing insights we learn from near-death experiences, after-death communications, spirit contact through mediums, past lives, past-life memories, past-life and between-lives regressions, out-of-body experiences, soul pre-birth planning, dream visitations, shared-death experiences, and so much more.

Private is the most elite detective agency in the world. But when kidnappers threaten to execute a royal family member in front of the queen, Jack Morgan and his team have just 24 hours to stop them. Or heads will roll, literally.

Archie Mint has a secret. He’s led a charmed life—he’s got a beautiful wife, two impressive kids, and a successful military career. But when he’s killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered—and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint’s been hiding criminal secrets none of them could have imagined.

New York Times best-selling author William Kent Krueger delivers yet another "punch-to-the-gut blend of detective story and investigative fiction" (Booklist) as Cork O'Connor and his son Stephen work together to uncover the truth behind the tragic plane crash of a senator on Desolation Mountain and the mysterious disappearances of several first responders. This is a heart-pounding and devastating mystery the scope and consequences of which go far beyond what father or son could ever have imagined....

Someone is killing off the members of a splinter group known as the Sons of Erin, normally not a cause for much concern, but the consequences are much greater than anyone realizes. For in these actions lie the seeds of disaster: the fall of two governments, the derailing of the Irish peace process. Dillon and Johnson must stop this unknown assassin, the heads of state agree, quickly, quietly, before all hell breaks loose.

There are 96 names on the list. They are those of businessmen, judges, and senators - the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful. And they are all going to die. A man named Takahashi has hired the world’s finest assassins to eliminate these men in secrecy and style, crossing names off the list without raising any suspicion. And they are killing ahead of schedule. But someone has noticed the pattern of these seemingly unrelated deaths, and she knows enough to call Blaine McCracken.

December 1889. Fresh from debunking a 'ghostly' hound in Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. A beautiful client arrives with a tale of ghosts, kidnapping and dynamite on a whisky estate in Scotland, but brother Mycroft trumps all with an urgent assignment in the South of France. On the fabled Riviera, Holmes and Watson encounter treachery, explosions, rival French detective Jean Vidocq...and a terrible discovery.

To his many thousands of fans, ex-SAS officer Ben Hope stands tall as a hero, a warrior, a protector of the innocent, a defender of those in need, relentless in his pursuit of those who exploit or do evil to others. But Ben Hope is also a man with flaws and weaknesses that we can all recognise all too well. That’s what makes Ben Hope not only one of the best-liked thriller heroes of modern fiction, but the one that readers say they feel they know as though he were a real, living person and more than a character on a page.

To his many thousands of fans, ex-SAS officer Ben Hope stands tall as a hero, a warrior, a protector of the innocent, a defender of those in need, relentless in his pursuit of those who exploit or do evil to others.

Private equity firms have long been at the center of public debates on the impact of the financial sector on Main Street companies. Are these firms financial innovators that save failing businesses or financial predators that bankrupt otherwise healthy companies and destroy jobs? The first comprehensive examination of this topic, Private Equity at Work provides a detailed yet accessible guide to this controversial business model.

When ex-SAS major Ben Hope is urgently recalled to the UK from his base in France to assist with a family crisis, little does he know that he’s about to be drawn into one of the most dangerous missions of his career: his son Jude has been accused of a brutal murder, and all the evidence points to his guilt. To prove Jude’s innocence Ben embarks on a wild chase, facing up against mysterious killers and piecing together a fragile web of clues.

Over the past two generations, U.S. leaders deregulated big business on the faith that it would yield a better economy and a freer society. But the opposite happened. Americans lost stable, well-paying jobs, Wall Street dominated industry to the detriment of the middle class and local communities, and corporations began to subject us to total surveillance, even dictating what we are, and aren’t, allowed to think. The corporate titans and mega-donors who aligned themselves with this vision knew exactly what they were getting: perfect conditions for what Sohrab Ahmari calls “private tyranny”.

Journalist Tatiana Petrovna is on the move. Arkady Renko, iconic Moscow investigator and Tatiana’s part-time lover, hasn’t seen her since she left on assignment over a month ago. When she doesn’t arrive on her scheduled train, he’s positive something is wrong. No one else thinks Renko should be worried - Tatiana is known to disappear during deep assignments - but he knows her enemies all too well and the criminal lengths to which they’ll go to keep her quiet.