The Pyramid of Lies by international financial journalist Duncan Mavin, is the true story of Lex Greensill, the Australian farmer who became a hi-flying billionaire banker before crashing back down to earth, exposing a tangled network of flawed financiers, politicians and industrialists. Lex Greensill had a simple, billion-dollar idea - democratising supply chain finance. Suppliers want to get their invoices paid as soon as possible. Companies want to hold off as long as they can. Greensill bridged the two, it's mundane, boring even, but he saw an opportunity to profit. However, margins are thin and Lex, ever the risk taker, made lucrative loans with other people's money: to a Russian cargo plane linked to Vladmir Putin, to former Special Forces who ran a private army, and crucially to companies that were fraudulent or had no revenue. When the company finally collapsed it exposed the revolving door between Westminster and big business and how David Cameron was allowed to lobby ministers for cash that would save Greensill's doomed business. Instead, Credit Suisse and Japan's SoftBank are nursing billions of dollars in losses, a German bank is under criminal investigation, and thousands of jobs are at risk. What Bad Blood did for Silicon Valley and The Smartest Guys in the Room did for Wall Street, The Pyramid of Lies will do for the world of shadow banking and supply chain finance. It is a world populated with some of the most outlandish characters in business and some of the most outrageous examples of excess. It is a story of greed and ambition that shines a light on the murky intersection between politics and business, where lavish fortunes can be made and lost.

Perhaps no other television show captures our innate fascination with crime and criminals better than the original Forensic Files. Examining true crime cases from murders to insurance fraud, hit-and-runs to kidnappings, every case featured on the show is solved in large part with the help of forensic science like DNA evidence. While the original Forensic Files stopped production in 2011 with over 400 original episodes, re-runs now air in 142 countries, not to mention on streaming services, making the show perfect for binge watchers, daunting for new-comers, and as much a mainstay as any program in the history of television. But, most of all, the cases always leave viewers wanting to know more. In Forensic Files Now, author Rebecca Reisner shares her own gripping retellings of 40 favorite cases profiled on the show along with fascinating updates adapted from her popular blog, ForensicFilesNow.com. From classic cases like the Harvard-educated architect who opted for arsenic instead of divorce, to the Texas lovebirds who robbed a grave in an insurance fraud plot that made international headlines, the Ohio doctor who attempted a fresh start by burying his wife in the basement of their house, and some cases that are so captivating that they have sparked spinoff mini-series of their own, readers will be enthralled by these vivid recaps and detailed updates. Also featuring an in-depth interview with Forensic Files creator Paul Dowling and a profile on the show's beloved narrator, Peter Thomas, Forensic Files Now is a must-read for diehard Forensic Files fans and a welcome find for true crime readers who are always looking for more riveting and well-told stories.

'Packed with insights and details that will both amaze and appal you' - Oliver Bullough, author of Butler to the World Across the world, HSBC likes to sell itself as 'the world's local bank', the friendly face of corporate and personal finance. And yet, a decade ago, the same bank was hit with a record US fine of $1.9 billion for facilitating money laundering for 'drug kingpins and rogue nations'. In pursuit of their goal of becoming the biggest bank in the world, between 2003 to 2010, HSBC allowed El Chapo and the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most notorious and murderous criminal organizations in the world, to turn its ill-gotten money into clean dollars and thereby grow one of the deadliest drugs empires the world has ever seen. How did a bank, which boasts 'we're committed to helping protect the world's financial system on which millions of people depend, by only doing business with customers who meet our high standards of transparency' come to facilitate Mexico's richest drug baron? And how did a bank that had been named 'one of the best-run organizations in the world' become so entwined with one of the most barbaric groups of gangsters on the planet? Too Big to Jail is an extraordinary story brilliantly told by writer, commentator, and former editor of The Independent, Chris Blackhurst, that starts in Hong Kong and ranges across London, Washington, the Cayman Islands and Mexico, where HSBC saw the opportunity to become the largest bank in the world, and El Chapo seized the chance to fuel his murderous empire by laundering his drug proceeds through the bank. It brings together an extraordinary cast of politicians, bankers, drug dealers, FBI officers and whistle-blowers, and asks what price does greed have? Whose job is it to police global finance? And why did not a single person go to prison for facilitating the murderous expansion of a global drug empire?

_____________ THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION _____________ 'John le Carre demystified the intelligence services; Higgins has demystified intelligence gathering itself' - Financial Times 'Uplifting . . . Riveting . . . What will fire people through these pages, gripped, is the focused, and extraordinary investigations that Bellingcat runs . . . Each runs as if the concluding chapter of a Holmesian whodunit' - Telegraph 'We Are Bellingcat is Higgins's gripping account of how he reinvented reporting for the internet age . . . A manifesto for optimism in a dark age' - Luke Harding, Observer _____________ How did a collective of self-taught internet sleuths end up solving some of the biggest crimes of our time? Bellingcat, the home-grown investigative unit, is redefining the way we think about news, politics and the digital future. Here, their founder - a high-school dropout on a kitchen laptop - tells the story of how they created a whole new category of information-gathering, galvanising citizen journalists across the globe to expose war crimes and pick apart disinformation, using just their computers. From the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 over the Ukraine to the sourcing of weapons in the Syrian Civil War and the identification of the Salisbury poisoners, We Are Bellingcat digs deep into some of Bellingcat's most successful investigations. It explores the most cutting-edge tools for analysing data, from virtual-reality software that can build photorealistic 3D models of a crime scene, to apps that can identify exactly what time of day a photograph was taken. In our age of uncertain truths, Bellingcat is what the world needs right now - an intelligence agency by the people, for the people.

The bestselling author and true crime master Ann Rule presents her fifteenth volume of the acclaimed Crime Files series focusing on disturbing stories of people in danger,. Walking home on a dark night, you hear footsteps coming up behind you. As they get closer, your heart pounds harder. Is it a dangerous stranger or someone you know and trust? The answer is as simple as turning around, but don't look behind you...run. With her signature in-depth research and compelling writing, Ann Rule chronicles fateful encounters with the secret predators hiding in plain sight. First in line is a stunning case that spanned thirty years and took one determined detective to four states-ending, finally, in Alaska-where he unraveled not one but two murders. A second case appears to begin and end with the hunt for the Green River Killer, focusing on a Washington State man who was once cleared as a suspect in that deadly chain of homicides. In another true story, a petite woman went to a tavern, looking only for conversation and fun. Instead, she met violent death in the form of a seven-foot tall man who had seemed shy and harmless. You'll feel a chill as you uncover these and numerous other cases of unfortunate victims who made one tragic mistake: trusting the wrong person-even someone they thought they knew.

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this thrilling (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a modern Gatsby swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in the heist of the century (Axios). Now a #1 international bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale is an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history. In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund--right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and in the United States, Low had become an international fugitive, even as the U.S. Department of Justice continued its investigation. Billion Dollar Whale has joined the ranks of Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood as a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world.

This is a chronology of a private investigation into the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh, the London Estate Agent. It began on the 28th July 1999 and lasted for four years. The research revealed a direct link between Suzy and John West - the younger brother of Fred West. At first the research was given to the Metropolitan Police who began a new review into the case in 2000. The investigation has opened up a whole new perspective on the Cromwell Street murders and three new victims have been named together with a possible third. After twenty-five years the mystery of Suzy Lamplugh has finally been solved.

La Bte du Gvaudan was a real wolf-like monster living in the Auvergne from 1764 to 1767. She killed about one hundred people. Prowling Catholic pre-Revolutionary France, she spread terror among the aristocrats and peasants of the beautiful Auvergne countryside. Her story beats most mystery novels in false trails, horror and atmosphere. The big difference is La Bte was real, not fiction, and leaves for ever the unanswered question, "What was she?" All efforts to stop her failed and she became infamous throughout France. The king - Louis XV - took a personal interest in her activities and how to destroy her. Many explanations - alien, prehistoric beast, mutant etc. - were put forward at the time and during the two centuries since but none have ever been widely accepted. A mass of evidence remains that La Bte did exist and was not just a legend. Compared with other monster mysteries she is unique, leaving graves, witnessed parish records, and archives of official documents, many of them included in this book, proving her real and guilty beyond doubt. Read Pourcher's book carefully and draw your own conclusions. Even if you arrive at a conventional solution to the mystery, doubts might linger as darkness falls. If twigs crack, don't whistle.

THE CHICAGO KILLER: The Hunt For Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy is the story of the capture of John Wayne Gacy, as told from the perspective of the former Chief of Detectives of the Des Plaines, Illinois Police Department, Joseph Kozenczak. The conviction of Gacy on 33 counts of murder is a record in the archives of the criminal justice system in the United States. Two additional bonus chapters give the reader a comprehensive insight into the use of psychics and the lie-detector in a serial murder investigation.

John "Red" Shea, 40, was a top lieutenant in the South Boston Irish mob run, led by James "Whitey" Bulger. An ice-cold enforcer with a red-hot temper, Shea was a legend among his peers in the 1990s South Boston, as much as John Gotti, Bugsy Siegel, and Al Capone were in their time and place. When the actor and producer Mark Wahlberg, raised in nearby Dorchester, learned of a script based on Shea's life circulating in Hollywood, he immediately committed to playing the gangster on screen. A major feature film project is now in development.

From the age of thirteen, when he started robbing delivery trucks, to the age of twenty-seven, when he began serving a twelve-year federal sentence for drug trafficking, Shea was a portrait in American crime - a bantam-weight, red-headed terror, brutal with his fists and deadly with a lead pipe, a baseball bat, or a knife. At fifteen he was selling marijuana . At seventeen he was handling Bulger's cocaine. At eighteen he was loan sharking and laundering Bulger's money. At twenty, initiated into Bulger's inner circle at the point of an Uzi, he was running a multimillion-dollar narcotics operation for his mentor.

RAT BASTARDS was the first-ever, firsthand account of mob life that wasn't told by a rat. Red Shea did his crime, then did his time--and never informed, unlike Henry Hill of Wiseguy, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano of Underboss, and so many others. Holding fast to the code of his upbringing, he remained a man of honor.

Mystery. Manipulation. Murder. Cults are associated with all of these. But what really goes on inside them? More specifically, what goes on inside the minds of cult leaders and the people who join them? Based on the hit podcast Cults, this is essential reading for any true crime fan. Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff's edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause. Perhaps it's this mindset that keeps us so utterly obsessed and desperate to learn more, or it's that the stories are so bizarre and unsettling that we are simply in awe of the mechanics that make these infamous groups tick. The premier storytelling podcast studio Parcast has been focusing on unearthing these mechanics--the cult leaders and followers, and the world and culture that gave birth to both. Parcast's work in analyzing dozens of case studies has revealed patterns: distinct ways that cult leaders from different generations resemble one another. What links the ten notorious figures profiled in Cults are as disturbing as they are stunning--from Manson to Applewhite, Koresh to Rael, the stories woven here are both spellbinding and disturbing. Cults is more than just a compilation of grisly biographies, however. In these pages, Parcast's founder Max Cutler and national bestselling author Kevin Conley look closely at the lives of some of the most disreputable cult figures and tell the stories of their rise to power and fall from grace, sanity, and decency. Beyond that, it is a study of humanity, an unflinching look at what happens when the most vulnerable recesses of the mind are manipulated and how the things we hold most sacred can be twisted into the lowest form of malevolence.

On 7 November 1938, an impoverished seventeen-year-old Polish Jew living in Paris, obsessed with Nazi persecution of his family in Germany, brooding on revenge - and his own insignificance - bought a handgun, carried it on the Metro to the German Embassy in Paris and, never before having fired a weapon, shot down the first German diplomat he saw. When the official died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels used the event as their pretext for the state-sponsored wave of anti-Semitic violence and terror known as Kristallnacht, the pogrom that was the initiating event of the Holocaust. Overnight this obscure young man, Herschel Grynszpan, found himself world-famous, his face on front pages everywhere, and a pawn in the machinations of power. Instead of being executed, he found himself a privileged prisoner of the Gestapo while Hitler and Goebbels prepared a show-trial. The trial, planned to the last detail, was intended to prove that the Jews had started the Second World War. Alone in his cell, Herschel soon grasped how the Nazis planned to use him, and set out to wage a battle of wits against Hitler and Goebbels, knowing perfectly well that if he succeeded in stopping the trial, he would certainly be murdered. Until very recently, what really happened has remained hazy. Hitler's Scapegoat, based on the most recent research - including access to a heretofore untapped archive compiled by a Nuremberg rapporteur - tells Herschel's extraordinary story in full for the first time.

'Hugely insightful and thought provoking . . . I read it from cover to cover in one go' - Emilia Fox 'With characteristic brilliance and admirable sensitivity, Wilson illuminates the complex causes of their often horrific crimes' - Professor Simon Winlow, Vice President of the British Society of Criminology Professor David Wilson has spent his professional life working with violent men - especially men who have committed murder. Aged twenty-nine he became, at that time, the UK's youngest ever prison Governor in charge of a jail and his career since then has seen him sat across a table with all sorts of killers: sometimes in a tense interview; sometimes sharing a cup of tea (or something a little stronger); sometimes looking them in the eye to tell them that they are a psychopath. Some of these men became David's friends; others would still love to kill him. My Life with Murderers tells the story of David's journey from idealistic prison governor to expert criminologist and professor. With experience unlike any other, David's story is a fascinating and compelling study of human nature.

Nineteenth-Century Female Poisoners investigates the Essex poisoning trials of 1846 to 1851 where three women were charged with using arsenic to kill children, their husbands and brothers. Using newspapers, archival sources (including petitions and witness depositions), and records from parliamentary debates, the focus is not on whether the women were guilty or innocent, but rather on what English society during this period made of their trials and what stereotypes and stock-stories were used to describe women who used arsenic to kill. All three women were initially presented as 'bad' women but as the book illustrates there was no clear consensus on what exactly constituted bad womanhood.

"The Devil Inside the Beltway." This chilling and personal story that reveals, in detail, how the Federal Trade Commission repeatedly bungled a critically important cybersecurity investigation and betrayed the American public.

Michael J. Daugherty, author and CEO of LabMD in Atlanta, uncovers and details an extraordinary government surveillance program that compromised national security and invaded the privacy of tens of millions of online users worldwide.

Background: The FTC, charged with protecting consumers from unfairness and deception, was directed by Congress to investigate software companies in an effort to stop a growing epidemic of file leaks that exposed military, financial and medical data, and the leaks didn't stop there. As a result of numerous missteps, beginning by "working directly with" malware developers, such as Limewire, instead of investigating them, the agency allowed security leaks to continue for years. When summoned before Congressional Oversight three times since 2003, the agency painted a picture of improving security when in fact leaks were worsening. Then, rather than focus on the real problem of stopping the malware, the FTC diverted Congress' attention from the FTC's failure to protect consumers by playing "get the horses back in the barn." How? By attacking small business.

"The Devil Inside the Beltway" is riveting. It begins when an aggressive cybersecurity company, with retired General Wesley Clark on its advisory board, downloads the private health information of thousands of LabMD's patients. The company, Tiversa, campaigns for LabMD to hire them. After numerous failed attempts to procure LabMD's business, Tiversa's lawyer informs LabMD that Tiversa will be handing the downloaded file to the FTC. Within this page turner, Daugherty unveils that Tiversa was already working with Dartmouth, having received a significant portion of a $24,000,000 grant from Homeland Security to monitor for files. The reason for the investigation was this: Peer to peer software companies build back doors into their technology that allows for illicit and unapproved file sharing. When individual files are accessed, as in the case of LabMD, proprietary information can be taken. Tiversa, as part of its assignment, downloaded over 13 million files, many containing financial, medical and top secret military data.

Daugherty's book exposes a systematic and alarming investigation by one of the US Government's most important agencies. The consequences of their actions will plague Americans and their businesses for years.