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Books > Fiction > True stories
Cops swear to protect. Sometimes power gets the best of them-driven
by greed, revenge, or simply insanity, the cops profiled here went
evil. Police corruption is more than just a crime; it is a betrayal
of trust. When somebody entrusted with enforcing the law and
protecting the public turns on the people he or she is supposed to
protect, society itself suffers. The real victims of police
corruption are law-abiding citizens that learn to distrust or fear
the police. Find out more in this book
Few women seek the profession of law enforcement and even less stay
until retirement. In Crossing the Line, the eighth woman ever to
retire from the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia offers
an in-depth glimpse into her life as a female police officer. When
Connie Novak was hired by the Fairfax County Police in 1979, there
were 700 sworn officers, of which just thirty were women. As Novak
chronicles the good and the evil, the lighthearted and the insane,
the humorous and the sad, she allows others to see what really goes
on behind the yellow police tape. From boot camp where she was
clobbered with a right hook and learned how to shoot a handgun and
shotgun, to the bulletproof vest that made her look like Dolly
Parton, to the gun belt that bruised her hips on a regular basis,
Novak tells a fascinating story of how she balanced a shift-based
career where personal sacrifice is expected with the demands of
motherhood where little people depended on her for everything.
Crossing the Line offers a compelling look into an honorable
profession where officers must be lifesavers, marriage counselors,
judges, and parents-all while keeping their emotions in check. This
is real life.
Danvers State gives an insider's view of what really went on at the
state run insane asylum. The book provides details about the
facility's dark past and the melancholy lives of her inhabitants.
It brings to light the harsh treatment of mental illness in decades
past.
**As seen on BBC news** **As featured on BBC Radio 4: Today with
Frank Gardner** 'In order to defeat your enemy, you must first
understand them.' - Tamer Elnoury Tamer Elnoury, a long-time
undercover agent, joined an elite counterterrorism unit after
September 11. Its express purpose is to gain the trust of
terrorists whose goals are to take out as many people in as public
and devastating a way as possible. It's a furious race against the
clock for Tamer and his unit to stop them before they can implement
their plans. Yet as new as this war still is, the techniques are as
old as time. Listen, record and prove terrorist intent. Due to his
ongoing work for the FBI, Elnoury writes under a pseudonym. An
Arabic-speaking Muslim American, a patriot, a hero. To many people,
it will be a revelation that he and his team even exist, let alone
the vital and dangerous work they do keeping all of us safe. It's
no secret that federal agencies are waging a broad, global war
against terror. Now, for the first time, an active, Muslim American
federal agent reveals his experience infiltrating and bringing down
a terror cell in North America.
With first-hand research among gang members, 'Young Guns'
chronicles the new generation of violent gangstas in towns and
cities around the UK. Steve Hackman is a reformed drug dealer who
met many gang members in jail. He has since exchanged a pair of
scales and a sealer bag for a pad and a pen and he is currently
working on a number of true crime titles. Young Guns is his first
book.
The Landscape of Murder documents all the sites where murders
occurred in London between January 1st, 2011 and December 31st,
2012. In total 209 murders were committed over this two year
period. Most murders make the news for only a fleeting moment and
the landscape in which they occur reverts back to normality very
quickly after the forensic teams leave. Yet the scars remain,
sometimes subtle, sometimes very open, whether a single solitary
flower or the gathering of grieving family and friends. Sometimes
nothing remains to show that a life has ended violently in a
particular location. Antonio Zazueta Olmos seeks to give memory to
what are mostly forgotten events, in unseen places where great
violence has occurred. A violence that is mostly silent, private
and unseen by the wider public. The project has taken him to parts
of London he knew little or nothing about and in the process he has
created an alternative portrait of London, one shaped by violence
and inequality.
When you think of serial killers throughout history, the names that
come to mind are ones like Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy. But what
about Tillie Klimek, Moulay Hassan, Kate Bender? The narrative
we're comfortable with is the one where women are the victims of
violent crime, not the perpetrators. In fact, serial killers are
thought to be so universally, overwhelmingly male that in 1998, FBI
profiler Roy Hazelwood infamously declared in a homicide
conference, 'There are no female serial killers'. Lady Killers,
based on the popular online series that appeared on Jezebel and The
Hairpin, disputes that claim and offers fourteen gruesome examples
as evidence. Though largely forgotten by history, female serial
killers such as Erzsebet Bathory, Nannie Doss, Mary Ann Cotton, and
Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova rival their male counterparts in
cunning, cruelty, and appetite for destruction. Each chapter
explores the crimes and history of a different subject, and then
proceeds to unpack her legacy and her portrayal in the media, as
well as the stereotypes and sexist cliches that inevitably surround
her. The first book to examine female serial killers through a
feminist lens with a witty and dryly humorous tone, Lady Killers
dismisses easy explanations (she was hormonal, she did it for love,
a man made her do it) and tired tropes (she was a femme fatale, a
black widow, a witch), delving into the complex reality of female
aggression and predation. Featuring 14 illustrations from Dame
Darcy, Lady Killers is a bloodcurdling, insightful, and
irresistible journey into the heart of darkness.
In the fourth Quarterly Essay of 2005, John Birmingham ponders the
Aust ralian way of war. After East Timor and Bali, a combination of
primal fear and primal ambition has transformed attitudes to our
region, to security and to war as an instrument of politics.
Australian defence policy has become more assertive and our armed
forces are being radically restructured and hardened. Australia now
has the capacity, and even the will, to act as a military power in
its region. A Time for War begins with a gripping account of
Operation Anaconda, the 2002 battle in Afghanistan to which
Australian special forces made a crucial contribution. Birmingham
also looks at our war dreaming- the sanctification of Anzac Day and
the eclipse of the Vietnam Syndrome. Ranging from Sir John Monash
to Peter Cosgrove, from Rudyard Kipling to The One Day of the Year,
he finds that our armed forces can now do no wrong, and that
politicians have taken note. The new militarism is not simply a
response to September 11, he argues - it marks a deeper shift in
the culture. 'It being an RSL, we would stand each night at six
o'clock for the prayer of remembrance. It was always a moving
occasion, a strange suspended moment when the pokies and racing
channel, the piped music and the drunken bullshitting all fell away
...Friends from overseas who witnessed the quiet ceremony never
failed to be impressed. One, a poet from Czechoslovakia, had always
thought Australians to be a shallow, soulless, materialistic
people, but she changed her mind after her first experience of the
ode to the fallen among the half-empty schooners and chip packets.'
- John Birmingham, A Time For War
Beginning on Valentine's Day, 1981, when twelve-year-old Todd
Domboski plunged through the earth in his grandmother's backyard in
Centralia, Pennsylvania, The Day the Earth Caved In is an
unprecedented and riveting account of the nation's worst mine fire.
In astonishing detail, award-winning journalist Joan Quigley, the
granddaughter of Centralia miners, ushers readers into the dramatic
world of the underground blaze. Drawing on interviews with key
participants and exclusive new research, Quigley paints
unforgettable portraits of Centralia and its residents, from Tom
Larkin, the short-order cook and ex-hippie who rallied the
activists, to Helen Womer, the bank teller who galvanized the
opposition, denying the fire's existence even as toxic fumes
invaded her home. Like Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action, The Day the
Earth Caved In is a seminal investigation" "of individual rights,
corporate privilege, and governmental indifference to the
powerless.
A vivid recount of the little known exploits of 17 courageous
Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers in Italy during World
War II In this inspiring new study of the SOE and Italian
Resistance, 17 extraordinary stories of individual SOE officers
illustrate the many and varied tasks of SOE missions throughout the
different regions of Italy from 1943-1945. Through their gallantry,
ingenuity, and determination, a small handful of SOE missions were
able to arm and inspire thousands of Italians to fight the
occupying German army after 1943 and in the process give invaluable
support to the advancing Allied armies as they pushed north towards
Austria.
A definitive history of the Loomis Gang who terrorized central New
York in the 1800's. Well-educated and from aristocratic New England
families, George and Rhoda Loomis raised their children to be
outlaws. Robbery, horse thieving, bribery, arson, counterfeiting,
kidnapping, rape and murder-the Loomis Gang did it all until they
were brought down by Constable Jim Filkins and United States
Senator Roscoe Conkling.
DESCRIPTION: Elmore Leonard meets Franz Kafka in the wild,
improbably true story of the legendary outlaw of Budapest. Attila
Ambrus was a gentleman thief, a sort of Cary Grant--if only Grant
came from Transylvania, was a terrible professional hockey
goalkeeper, and preferred women in leopard-skin hot pants. During
the 1990s, while playing for the biggest hockey team in Budapest,
Ambrus took up bank robbery to make ends meet. Arrayed against him
was perhaps the most incompetent team of crime investigators the
Eastern Bloc had ever seen: a robbery chief who had learned how to
be a detective by watching dubbed Columbo episodes; a forensics man
who wore top hat and tails on the job; and a driver so inept he was
known only by a Hungarian word that translates to Mound of
Ass-Head. BALLAD OF THE WHISKEY ROBBER is the completely bizarre
and hysterical story of the crime spree that made a nobody into a
somebody, and told a forlorn nation that sometimes the brightest
stars come from the blackest holes. Like The Professor and the
Madman and The Orchid Thief, Julian Rubinsteins bizarre crime story
is so odd and so wicked that it is completely irresistible.
As World War II ended, dancing broke out in the streets of
victorious capitals. But in Washington and Moscow, menacing
ultimatums soon replaced declarations of common purpose. The music
stopped, the Grand Alliance crumbled, and the Soviet Union and the
United States squared off against one another. The victor in this
war would be determined by the outcome of a series of geo-strategic
battles. Which side would capture the Persian Gulfs oilfield's, and
who would seize the Congolese uranium essential for the manufacture
of atomic bombs? And whose air and naval bases would dominate the
globe's vital traffic lanes from the Black Sea Straits to the
Pacific Islands? Three British diplomats, Donald Maclean, Kim
Philby, and Guy Burgess, did everything in their power to see to it
that the Soviet Union prevailed in these clashes. The Cambridge
Spies is the first book to detail their behind-the-scenes effort to
sabotage America's national security apparatus during the crucial
period between 1945 and 1951 when each, at various times, served at
the British embassy in Washington. The book is the result of many
years of digging through the State Department and Foreign Office
records overlooked by previous scholars and undiscovered by
government officials responsible for "purging" such files. For the
first time in history the reader can follow the Soviet spies as
they work behind enemy lines to sabotage the machinery of Western
foreign policy. It is also the first book written by an American on
these fabled British spies, and the first to chronicle their most
effective period as allied diplomats and enemy agents. The
Cambridge Spies reveals the story Washington managed to cover up
for forty years. Telling it at a time the work is beginning to
relive the fiftieth anniversary of many of the events described in
these pages will only add to its explosive impact, and spark new
historical debates on issues of abiding interest and contemporary
concern.
The New York Times bestselling True Crime Files series continues
with this haunting collection of the dangers lurking among those we
trust the most-from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The
Stranger Beside Me. Doomed relationships and deadly betrayals are
at the heart of this unputdownable collection of true cases from
the personal files of Ann Rule, "America's best true-crime writer"
(Kirkus Reviews). First is one of the most tragic unsolved crimes
of the last twenty years: the disappearance of Susan Powell and the
murder of her two young sons. With in-depth research and clear-eyed
compassion, Rule leaves no stone unturned as she searches for the
truth in this shocking story. Rule also chronicles the strange tale
of a Coronado, California mansion that was the site of two
horrifying deaths only days apart: a billionaire's son's plunge
from a balcony and his girlfriend's hanging. Although the cases are
quickly closed, baffling questions remain. In these and seven other
riveting cases, Ann Rule exposes the twisted truth behind the
facades of Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors.
'I knew dogs could make a difference to the children's lives. I
knew it the moment I watched a little boy, exhausted by pain and
sickness, stretch out his hand to touch my dog's paw, and then...he
smiled.' Lyndsey Uglow has endured and overcome mental health
challenges and much personal pain, including her young son's battle
with Leukaemia. Lyndsey knows only too well the emotional
rollercoaster experienced by parents supporting their children
through critical illness, but she also knows just how much the
company of dogs can alleviate just some of their worry and pain.
The healing bond with dogs that helped her, she now shares with
others - in the shape of a dynasty of exceptional Golden
Retrievers, including the incredible Leo. Since 2012, Lyndsey has
made it possible for therapy dogs to visit more than 10,000
children, many critically ill, bringing smiles of simple joy and a
sense of normality to lives ruled by pain, sadness and uncertainty
in paediatric intensive care, cancer wards and palliative care. Leo
has also faced his own battles. After suffering a serious injury on
a beach run, he was saved by a pioneering technique which restored
him to full health for the sake of the children who were missing
him so much. This is Lyndsey and Leo's story and how they have
brought the extraordinary healing powers of dogs to others; while
sharing the stories of just some of the thousands of children for
whom a soft paw or wet nose has brought comfort, care, laughter and
joy at the darkest of times.
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