Private Politics

Jack Sommers was just an ordinary accountant from Chicago - that is until his wife passed away, his young daughter was kidnapped, and he became the main suspect in an $88 million embezzlement case. Now Jack is on the run, hoping to avoid the feds long enough to rescue his daughter, Sophie, from her maternal grandfather, a suspected terrorist in Palestine.

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.

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.

Introduction to Conducting Private Investigations provides the essential tools you need to become a successful private investigator. From conducting straightforward background investigations to more complicated cases involving accidents and fraud, you will learn the critical skills needed to conduct all types of investigations and build a thriving business. Specifically tailored to meet the requirements established by the Department of Criminal Justice Services, this easy-to-use resource offers an excellent balance between theory and practice.

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.

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.

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.

In the last years of the Cold War, policy and trust for the Russians have led to disarmament treaties and hope for a new beginning. But peace is not yet within grasp. An entire American town has been wiped off the map: not by nuclear strike, but rather a space-borne particle cannon capable of reducing the entire nation to dust in hours. But who pulled the trigger? Was it the Russians, making a final bid for world domination? Or was it a third power - some aspiring conqueror hoping to pit the superpowers against each other? It’s up to Blaine McCracken to find out.

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.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist’s journey into a billon-dollar secret industry that is shaping our world - the booming business of private spying, operatives-for-hire retained by companies, political parties, and the powerful to dig up dirt on their enemies and, if need be, destroy them.

In this sharp and controversial international best seller, an award-winning economist debunks the pervasive myth that the government is sluggish and inept, and at odds with a dynamic private sector. She reveals in detailed case studies that the opposite is true: The state is, and has been, our boldest and most valuable innovator. Denying this history is leading us down the wrong path. A select few get credit for what is an intensely collective effort, and the US government has started disinvesting from innovation.

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was a German businessman, journalist philosopher, historian, political scientist, and revolutionary socialist. Engels developed Marxism together with Karl Marx. In 1848, Engels coauthored The Communist Manifesto (originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party) with Marx.

In the decade before the onset of the Civil War, groups of Americans engaged in a series of longshot - and illegal - forays into Mexico, Cuba, and other Central American countries in hopes of taking them over. These efforts became known as filibustering, and their goal was to seize territory to create new independent fiefdoms, which would ultimately be annexed by the still-growing United States. Most failed miserably. William Walker was the outlier. Soft-spoken with no military background, in 1856 he managed to install himself as president of Nicaragua.

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.

As one of the most prestigious high schools in the nation, St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, has long been the exclusive domain of America's wealthiest sons. But times have changed. Today, a new elite of boys and girls is being molded at St. Paul's, one that reflects the hope of openness but also the persistence of inequality. In Privilege, Shamus Khan returns to his alma mater to provide an inside look at an institution that has been the private realm of the elite for the past 150 years.

America's first families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and others who tend to the needs of the president and first family.

Like the Rockefellers and the Kennedys, the Kochs are one of the most influential dynasties of the modern age, but they have never been the subject of a major biography... until now. Not long after the death of his father, Charles Koch, then in his early 30s, discovered a letter the family patriarch had written to his sons. "You will receive what now seems to be a large sum of money," Fred Koch cautioned. "It may either be a blessing or a curse."

Wherever Sean Drummond goes, it seems that the JAG officer leaves a trail of political fallout in his wake. So when his superiors get an opportunity to loan him to a prestigious law firm, they jump on it, hoping he'll soak up the nuances of civilian lawyering. But almost immediately, dark clouds appear when Sean's predecessor in the loan-out program is murdered. Then Sean begins to sense something amiss with the firm's biggest client, a telecom behemoth with large defense contracts.

For the first time ever, the intimate thoughts and political decisions of Abraham Lincoln’s entire presidency - day by day. In a startlingly innovative format, journalist Stephen A. Wynalda has constructed a painstakingly detailed day-by-day breakdown of president Abraham Lincoln’s decisions in office - including his signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862; his signing of the legislation enacting the first federal income tax on August 5, 1861; and more personal incidents like the day his 11-year-old son, Willie, died.

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.