A Killmaster Spy Chiller

"Compelling, insightful and important, Beneath a Ruthless Sun exposes the corruption of racial bigotry and animus that shadows a community, a state and a nation. A fascinating examination of an injustice story all too familiar and still largely ignored, an engaging and essential read." —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just MercyFrom the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Devil in the Grove, the gripping true story of a small town with a big secret.In December 1957, the wife of a Florida citrus baron is raped in her home while her husband is away. She claims a "husky Negro" did it, and the sheriff, the infamous racist Willis McCall, does not hesitate to round up a herd of suspects. But within days, McCall turns his sights on Jesse Daniels, a gentle, mentally impaired white nineteen-year-old. Soon Jesse is railroaded up to the state hospital for the insane, and locked away without trial. But crusading...

Life is suddenly looking up for William Wooding. Thirty-five, overweight, sedately employed and unhappily married, he is given the chance to escape to a new life in South America.There he runs the English Bookshop and discovers a different kind of existence: anarchic staff, a beautiful prostitute called Theresa, intrigue at Maria's Tango Club (the local house of pleasure) and a country heading for a bloody coup. Wooding discovers that the country's young president is an old school friend and as a consequence finds himself recruited by the mysterious Mr Box of British Intelligence to investigate what is going on...Tango is a hugely enjoyable mixture of sexual escapades, revolutionary politics, and intelligence-gathering in exotic landscapes. It confirms Alan Judd as the contemporary successor to Evelyn Waugh.'Very entertaining...it makes you want to turn the pages. No mean achievement' Sunday Telegraph'Well-constructed, witty and at times moving' Independent'An...

Including his most memorable pieces – his 'Postcard from Rome', his observations on Margaret Thatcher, his insights into Heaney, Larkin and Orwell – this book also contains brilliantly funny examinations of characters like Barry Humphries, as well as showcasing James's more thoughtful, analytical side. From Germaine Greer to Marilyn Monroe, from the nature of celebrity to German culpability for the Holocaust, Reliable Essays is an unmissable collection from one of the best writers of our time. 'He has widened the "tonal range" of criticism, permitting it to be both sober and skittish, learned and lewd, rhetorically rambunctious and epigrammatically concise . . . an intellectual as well as a joker, a wise man as well as a wit' Peter Conrad, Observer 'His writing is impeccably witty, flexible and urbane . . . immensely enjoyable to read. It's a pleasure to see the metropolitan critic back in action' Christopher Taylor, Sunday Telegraph 'He can both get to the heart of...

A compelling memoir about trying to live meaningfully with illness and triumph beyond it, by breast cancer survivor Alana Somerville, a teacher and mother of two young children.I looked at all the sick people around me. Was I going to be like them? Was that already me? Did I suddenly have a time stamp on my life? Would I make it out of this alive? Alana Somerville—wife, teacher and mother of two small children—was thirty-three years old when she was diagnosed with stage-two, triple-negative breast cancer. The diagnosis changed her world and the relationships she had with everyone around her. Suddenly she was faced with endless medical appointments, multiple surgeries and procedures, the challenges of chemotherapy, and all the decisions involved in her treatment. She also had to deal with the trauma of realizing that her support network—sometimes even her closest friends—could struggle with how to help or even how to react to her...

For the bicentennial of its original publication—the first full-length book from the father of the American short storyIn 1809, New Yorkers were buzzing about a series of classified ads concerning the whereabouts of Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker. They were unaware that Washington Irving had invented the man entirely and placed the ads himself. Knickerbocker's purported manuscript, A History of New York, was Irving's own. Told from Knickerbocker's point of view, A History of New York is a chronicle of New York's fifty years under Dutch rule in the 1600s that plays fast and loose with the facts, to uproarious effect. Irving's good-humored spoofing had staying power, and his satire provided the city with its first self-portrait. A History of New York propelled Irving to the heights of literary stardom and even made a little history of its own: New Yorkers are called Knickerbockers to this day.

The meeting drew to a close, and both the Soviet chairman and the US security adviser were standing to shake hands.Then one of the men in the Soviet chairman’s own party — later I learned that he was the Russian ambassador — took a step toward the Communist chairman. He was holding a grenade that he had pulled from his pocket. The man unpinned the grenade and dropped it on the plush carpet directly at the Russian leader’s feet.In the split second of frozen horror that followed not a sound could be heard in the room. I could see the pure terror on the face of the Soviet chairman as he gazed down in helpless fascination at the lethal activated grenade lying at the tips of his shoes.At that moment, with every person in the room paralyzed, the Russian ambassador — the man who had dropped the unpinned grenade — flung himself on top of the explosive. There was a muffled blast; the grenade’s deadly power was smothered by the man’s body. He was blown apart, his head torn from his torso . . . .