|
Books > Fiction > True stories
The first story in this book is Jackie Waldman's own - the
self-described charmed life - until July 1991, when she was
diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It took years, but eventually
she came to understand that a person with MS is only part of who
she is. In this book, Waldman has collected stories of 24 men and
women living with MS, who have extraordinary lives, and who have
found the courage to do new things or old things in new ways.
An unputdownable tale of one man's quest to recover his family's
property, plundered by the Nazis. Menachem Kaiser's brilliantly
told story is set in motion when the author takes up his
Holocaust-survivor grandfather's former battle to reclaim the
family's property in Sosnowiec, Poland. Here, he meets a Polish
lawyer known as 'The Killer' who agrees to take his case and
becomes involved with a band of Silesian treasure-seekers, all the
while piecing together his family's complex history. Propelled by
rich, original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound
questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it
mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts
among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure
story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance -
material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
|
Chopper
(Paperback)
Mark Brandon Read
|
R267
R217
Discovery Miles 2 170
Save R50 (19%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
|
Bullied at school, and growing up dreaming of revenge, Mark
'Chopper' Read determined to be the toughest in any company. He
became a crime commando who terrorised drug dealers, pimps, thieves
and armed robbers on the streets and in jail - but boasts never to
have hurt an innocent member of the public. Streetfighter, gunman
and underworld executioner, he has been earmarked for death a dozen
times, but has lived to tell the tale. This is his story.
|
Murder Thy Neighbor
(Hardcover)
James Patterson; Contributions by Max DiLallo; Read by Chloe Cannon
|
R885
R767
Discovery Miles 7 670
Save R118 (13%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
The name "Hollywood" conjures up fantastical images of bright
lights, glamorous dreams, and impossible riches. From its humble
beginnings as a ranch sprawling northwest of Los Angeles in the
late 1800s, Hollywood has spanned lifetimes as a factory of dreams,
a dazzling place where all things are possible. This collection of
stories takes you on a journey into the golden age, illuminating
the space between the airy fantasy and the gritty reality of life
in Hollywood. In a transient city where nothing lasts, thousands of
stories have taken place in their time here. From the offscreen
debauchery of the silent era, to countless dramatic and mysterious
deaths, to the sinister past lives of world-famous LA landmarks,
vestiges of Hollywood's checkered past can still be found all over
the city. With generations of Tinseltown's luminaries living and
working under the sunny guise of paradisal prosperity, their real
stories reveal the sordid underbelly lurking directly beneath the
surface. A dangerous collusion between the studios, the press, the
mob, and the LAPD forms an impenetrable behind-the-scenes network
of corruption, power and control, where the truth is always up for
sale. A network in which the most glamorous and well-known figures
are merely players in this elaborate charade. It's magical and
gritty, it's ugly and dirty, it's the land of dreams...it's
Hollywood.
|
Beating The System
(Hardcover)
Jerry Bader; Illustrated by Paola Ceccantoni
|
R759
R642
Discovery Miles 6 420
Save R117 (15%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
The Hess affair requires an understanding of a variety of
disciplines and practices: Wartime aviation, political history and
human psychology to name but three. Harris and Wilbourn have over
an extended period tried to learn as much as possible about all
relevant aspects of what is in concert a complicated subject, one
that has not yet been satisfactorily explained even after more than
80 years. In the past there have been works that have concentrated
on single aspects of the affair; usually in great detail, but in
Conspiracy, Calamity and Cover-up the authors' work on the
individual components provides the best ever yet plausible
explanation of the affair as a whole. Official secrecy on the
grounds of 'National Security', obfuscation and downright lying
have all played a part in preserving the truth behind the flight.
Through dogged perseverance and endeavour Harris and Wilbourn now
present what they believe is the ultimate truth behind the affair.
Guilty as charged. If reading true crime is a guilty pleasure, this
collection of stunning heists and unspeakable murders from the
front pages of history will leave no doubt about the verdict. Three
unsuspecting men's lives cut short at the hands of their lovers in
Gangland Chicago, a mysterious and murderous trapper chased across
unforgiving Arctic mountains in sub-zero temperatures, a notorious
band of outlaws' ill-fated bank robbery, a little-known but starkly
detailed look at Lizzie Borden's handiwork with her famous ax, a
body in a trunk and a suspect halfway across the world thinking
he's pulled it off are among the enticing and unsettling tales in
this arresting collection. Here are stories sure to intrigue and
shock readers and put them on the edges of their seats. That's the
point after all, and The Greatest Crime Stories Ever Told will not
disappoint. From a first-person account of the infamous Lufthansa
robbery that netted millions, to the beguiling society bank robber
so confident he broke into the same New York City bank twice to
pull off the biggest haul in history, to the mysterious and brutal
murders of a quiet farm family in a close-knit but suspicious
community that offered an unusual number of suspects, The Greatest
Crime Stories Ever Told is a fascinating and darkly enticing
contribution to the wildly popular true crime genre. Here are not
only the suspects, obvious or not, but the detectives who wanted
them in prison and were willing to put their own lives at risk to
do so. Did the perpetrators get away with their perfidies? Did the
rule of law prevail in the end? Were the right people caught and
prosecuted? Readers will have to decide for themselves.
A riveting collection of thirty-eight narratives by American
soldiers serving in Afghanistan, "Outside the Wire" offers a
powerful evocation of everyday life in a war zone. Christine
Dumaine Leche--a writing instructor who left her home and family to
teach at Bagram Air Base and a forward operating base near the
volatile Afghan-Pakistani border--encouraged these deeply personal
reflections, which demonstrate the power of writing to battle the
most traumatic of experiences.
The soldiers whose words fill this book often met for class with
Leche under extreme circumstances and in challenging conditions,
some having just returned from dangerous combat missions, others
having spent the day in firefights, endured hours in the bitter
cold of an open guard tower, or suffered a difficult phone
conversation with a spouse back home. Some choose to record
momentous events from childhood or civilian life--events that
motivated them to join the military or that haunt them as adults.
Others capture the immediacy of the battlefield and the emotional
and psychological explosions that followed. These soldiers write
through the senses and from the soul, grappling with the impact of
moral complexity, fear, homesickness, boredom, and despair.
We each, writes Leche, require witnesses to the narratives of
our lives. "Outside the Wire" creates that opportunity for us as
readers to bear witness to the men and women who carry the weight
of war for us all.
What really happened before, during and just after the sensational,
Prohibition era murder of the police chief by the town's most
admired physician has been saved from oblivion by this book by
retired newspaper editor Wint Capel, "The Good Doctor's Downfall."
The author dug up the facts and has arranged them to show in great
detail how brilliant Dr. J. W. Peacock ambushed the young, arrogant
police chief, John Taylor, on a busy downtown street in
Thomasville, a small North Carolina factory town. The doctor
finished him off with a World War I souvenir, a German Luger. The
doctor, also a city councilman, and the chief began feuding after
the chief decided to crackdown on those, like the doctor, who
ignored the laws against gambling and drinking. The feud became
unbelievably bitter and explosive. By the time of the attack
downtown, the doctor had been convinced, "It's either him or me."
In a trial that featured the best legal minds in North Carolina,
the doctor barely escaped the electric chair. Then, a year later,
he escaped a prison for the criminally insane. He managed to outrun
them all. Only a horrible accident in California could rob him of
his freedom.
'I went for a walk around the garden. A great tit warbled above a
patch of coltsfoot. I felt a thousand discoveries awaited...' Notes
from a Summer Cottage by Nina Burton is a beautifully written
nature memoir about the time spent renovating a cottage in the
Swedish countryside, and all the species that she encountered her
during her stay. Did you know that there are more ants altogether
than the number of seconds that have passed since the Big Bang? And
that in relation to their size, their anthill cities can be larger
than London and New York? Or, that a bird's migratory instinct is
so strong that an injured stork once escaped captivity and was
found six weeks later having walked 150 kilometres, following the
migratory path of his flock on foot? What begins with a renovation
of a an old summer cottage swiftly turns into an exploration of
nature, life and philosophy, in which Nina Burton reveals the inner
lives and hitherto unknown habits of the animals with which she
shares. Within the walls, the ceiling and the floor of the cottage
and its surrounding garden, she encounters a host of animals-ants,
honey bees, foxes, squirrels, blackbirds, badgers, pigeons, deer
and many more-all of whom have made her house and garden their
home, and all of whom cause Nina to reflect on their role within
our world.
For three decades after the Second World War, the 'Butcher of the
Balkans' lived an idyllic life with his family in a Los Angeles
suburb. Andrija Artukovic was a senior member of the Ustasha, a
Croatian fascist and nationalist movement, and was responsible for
the brutal murders of hundreds of thousands of men, women and
children. Wanted in Yugoslavia to stand trial for war crimes, he
had illegally entered and claimed political asylum in the United
States - and his powerful supporters sought to keep him there.
Meanwhile, just 10 miles away, David Whitelaw lived with his
mother, Judith, who fled Germany in 1938. Seventy-six of her
relatives were killed in the Holocaust. When David learned
Artukovic was living comfortably nearby, he vowed to ensure his
deportation to stand trial as a war criminal. But when a firebomb,
thrown with the sole intention of causing fear, saw the young man
sent to jail, a battle began for his own freedom, while the war
criminal remained at large. A true David versus Goliath battle, The
Fierce is the story of the teenager who helped take down the worst
mass murderer and war criminal in America.
In the tradition of 'Agent Zigzag' comes a breathtaking biography
of WWII's 'Scarlet Pimpernel' as fast-paced and emotionally
intuitive as the best spy thrillers. This celebrates unsung hero
Robert de La Rochefoucauld, an aristocrat turned anti-Nazi
saboteur, and his exploits as a British Special Operations
Executive-trained resistant When the Nazis invaded France during
the Second World War and imprisoned his father, Robert de La
Rochefoucauld - a scion of one of the oldest aristocratic families
in France - escaped to England and trained in the dark arts of
anarchy and combat. Under the guidance of SOE spies, he learned to
crack safes, plant bombs and kill enemies with his bare hands.
Then, back in France, he organised Resistance cells, killed Nazi
officers and interfered with German missions. He survived
unbearable torture and escaped Nazi confinement on not one but two
occasions, to live well into his eighties. The adventures of de La
Rochefoucauld offer rare insight into a unique moment in history,
revealing brand new information about a network of commandos who
battled evil and bravely worked together to change the course of
history.
In 2018 Captain Louis Rudd MBE walked into the history books when he
finished a solo, unsupported crossing of Antarctica, pulling a 130 kg
sledge laden with his supplies for more than 900 miles. Louis’ skills
had been honed in the SAS, on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but
now – in the most hostile environment on earth – they would be tested
like never before. Alone on the ice, Louis battled through whiteouts,
50 mph gales and temperatures of -30 degrees Celsius. It would take all
his mental strength to survive.
In this gripping book Louis reveals how a thirst for adventure saw him
join the Royal Marines at sixteen and then pass the SAS selection
course at only twenty-two. He describes his first gruelling polar
expedition with legendary explorer Lieutenant Colonel Henry Worsley in
2011 and the leadership challenges he faced a few years later when he
led a team of Army Reservists across Antarctica. And he takes us with
him step by painful step as he pushes himself to the limit, travelling
alone on his epic and lonely trek across the continent’s treacherous
ice fields and mountains.
With edge-of-the-seat storytelling, Endurance is an awe-inspiring
account of courage and resilience by a remarkable man.
When an eleven year old James Renner fell in love with Amy
Mihaljevic, the missing girl seen on posters all over his
neighbourhood, it was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with
true crime. That obsession leads James to a successful career as an
investigative journalist. It also gave him PTSD. In 2011, James
began researching the strange disappearance of Maura Murray, a
UMass student who went missing after wrecking her car in rural New
Hampshire in 2004. Over the course of his investigation, he
uncovers numerous important and shocking new clues about what may
have happened to Maura, but also finds himself in increasingly
dangerous situations with little regard for his own wellbeing. As
his quest to find Maura deepens, the case starts taking a toll on
his personal life, which begins to spiral out of control. The
result is an absorbing dual investigation of the complicated story
of the All- American girl who went missing and James' own equally
complicated true crime addiction. James Renner's True Crime Addict
is the story of his spellbinding investigation of the missing
person's case of Maura Murray, which has taken on a life of its own
for armchair sleuths across the web. In the spirit of David
Fincher's Zodiac, it is a fascinating look at a case that has
eluded authorities and one man's obsessive quest for the answers.
|
You may like...
The Camp Whore
Francois Smith
Paperback
(2)
R350
R301
Discovery Miles 3 010
|