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Books > Fiction > True stories
Run for the Love of Life is a must-read for anyone who desires to escape the day-to-day sameness of our new pandemic-informed lives, or who seeks to feel alive, inspired, and filled with a renewed enthusiasm for the year ahead. It recounts the extraordinary journey of South African Erica Terblanche, an ordinary woman who manages to not only achieve – but excel – on the world stage of extreme distance-running in some of the most inhospitable and majestic landscapes across the planet. Raw, honest and infinitely human, this part-memoir, part-travel novel thunders through one exotic race location after the other, as the runners battle the elements and each other across the vastness of the Sahara, Atacama and Namib Deserts, the great Grand Canyon, Turkish Cappadocia and the Kalahari Desert, to name only a few. But more than just a book on racing, what makes this novel infinitely compelling and rewarding is that in the echoes of Erica’s story, one begins to sense the pulse of one’s own potential and long-forgotten dreams. While you may laugh, cry, and forget to take a breath at times, it is inevitable that Run will spur you on to find your own bliss, that which is buried deep within your soul and body. At its heart, Run for the love of life is a story about love, forgiveness, perseverance and growth, and about the important things in life that ultimately makes us happy. Told with wit, humour and vulnerability, it is a book that will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.
German South West Africa 1906, Australian horse trader Cyril Blake is executed in cold blood by the Kaiser’s soldiers. Sydney, the present day. Blake’s great-great nephew, recently widowed Nick Eatwell, is approached by South African journalist Susan Vidler who is investigating his ancestor’s mysterious demise. Intrigued and looking for distraction, Nick discovers a long-lost manuscript which tells how Blake stayed in South Africa after serving in the Anglo Boer War and joined the Nama people in their rebellion against the Germans in South West Africa, modern-day Namibia. In Munich, historian Anja Berghoff, researching the origin of the wild ‘ghost’ horses of Namibia, stumbles across intriguing letters from Irish-German spy Claire Martin, with whom Blake had an affair. As Nick and Anja’s paths cross, they find themselves racing through southern Africa and time on the trail of a legend. But they’re not alone. Someone else is chasing these ghosts of the past, looking for clues to a hidden treasure worth killing for. Ghosts of the Past is based on a true story.
Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku made a vow to smile every day and now believes he is the ‘happiest man on earth’. In his inspirational memoir, he pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story and sharing his wisdom. Life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful. It is up to you. Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed in November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on a Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country. The Happiest Man on Earth is a powerful, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful memoir of how happiness can be found even in the darkest of times.
From Deadwood to Aberdeen, Vermillion to Belle Fourche, the frontier towns of South Dakota were populated by some of the toughest and most dangerous characters in the West. Chief Two Sticks led a starving band of rebels on a desperate path of destruction. Bud Stevens's murder of a cattle king's son rang a death knell for an entire town. And bank robbers Stelle and Bennie Dickinson did their best to become South Dakota's very own Bonnie and Clyde. All these stories and more come to life in Outlaw Tales of South Dakota.
No murderer should ever be the keeper of their victim's story …
THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
As a follow up to the bestselling Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed (2010), Ministry of Crime: An Underworld Explored examines how organised crime, gangsters and powerful political figures have been able to capture the law enforcement authorities and agencies. These various organisations have been eviscerated, hollowed out and left ineffective. They have been infiltrated and compromised and, as a result, prominent underworld figures have been able to flourish in South Africa, setting up elaborate networks of crime with the assistance of many cops. The criminal justice system has been left exposed and it is crucial that the South African public knows about the capture that has occurred on different levels.
Hugh Hunter thought he'd landed his dream job in Orlando - he was wrong From day one, his working week was an endless round of prison visits to meet British murderers, drug dealers and conmen - desperate people with terrifying tales to tell. Many of these stories never made it back home - until now.
For almost forty years, Paul Williams has chronicled the life and crimes of some of Ireland's most notorious godfathers, killers and thieves. In Crooks he brings his readers for a ride-along, taking us behind the scenes of his most notorious scoops, describing the run-ins he's had with unsavoury, dangerous criminals and the high price of his line of work. From pursuing the General to death threats from PJ 'The Psycho' Judge, exposing the Westies and tracking the Kinahan cartel, Paul's extraordinary career doubles as an eyewitness account of the evolution of organized crime in Ireland.
Four lives... Two people... One question... What do you really know about the people around you? To the residents of leafy Acacia Avenue, Mr and Mrs Smith were like any other couple. Living a very ordinary life, in a very ordinary suburb, on the outskirts of a very ordinary city. But behind closed doors, Mr and Mrs Smith were at the heart of a world filled with deception and organised crime - and they were the good guys. Inspired by true events and detailing Mr and Mrs Smith's covert deployments, this is first in a series of gripping tales. 'Undercover Legends' is a fascinating insight into the double lives of two undercover officers. First as individuals and then as a couple, they had to balance the stresses and strains of their real lives, families and relationships, with the murky underworld they found themselves enmeshed in. In many ways, their legends, those false identities and lives that inhabited the criminal world, were no less real than the lives they were born into. That was a must as their lives may have depended on the robustness of their cover. Four lives... two people. One question... will you join them on their extraordinary story?
For nearly 30 years, Mo trafficked cannabis from north Africa to the cities of the UK and Ireland. Buying from the growers and selling to the dealers from his base on the Costa del Sol, he became the middleman for anyone seeking a consignment. In this memoir, he tells the story of the puff game and its triumphs and disasters.
Based on a series of fascinating interviews, this extraordinary book relates real stories of conflict from the people who lived through it. In vivid detail, and genuinely moving accounts, this unique publication draws the reader into a hugely significant period of history; capturing surprising and emotional stories first hand, before they disappear forever. These are more than just memories, they are the events that marked the world and an entire generation.
Local prosecution associations were a method of controlling crime which was devised in the second half of the eighteenth century, fifty years before the introduction of police forces. They were a national phenomenon, and it is estimated that by the end of the 1700s around 4000 of them existed in England, but this book tells the story of one particular society: the Hathersage Association for the Prosecution of Felons and Other Offenders. Hathersage is a Peak District village which recently came top in a Country Living poll to determine the '20 best hidden gems in the UK'. The tourists who now visit the village in their thousands each year come as walkers, climbers, and cyclists. Its grimy history of wire and needle manufacturing is almost forgotten. In addition to telling the story of its ancient prosecution organisation, this book seeks to illuminate some of the less conspicuous aspects of Hathersage's social history by shining a light from the unusual direction of minor crime and antisocial behaviour. It also describes the lives of some of the residents of the village: minor gentry; industrialists; clergy; and farmers, in addition to the mill workers and labourers. With access to hand-written records going back to 1784 which had never been studied before, the author has drawn on contemporary newspaper articles and census returns to assemble a montage which depicts the life of the village, particularly during the 19th century. Many of these original records have been reproduced in order to offer reader an opportunity to interpret the old documents themselves. While striving for historical accuracy throughout, the author has produced a book which is both entertaining and informative. Any profits from the sale of this book will go to the Hathersage Association and will, in turn, be donated to the local charities which the Association supports. Those charities include Edale Mountain Rescue, the Air Ambulance, Helen's Trust, Bakewell & Eyam Community Transport, and Cardiac Risk in the Young.
The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War - organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place - 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces. How these three men came together - along with the partisans - to plan and execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest Escape, written by Ralph Churches' son Neil, takes us from Ralph and Les's capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the escapees on a nail-biting 160-mile journey across the Alps, pursued by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.
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. Just how did 'the world's local bank' find itself enabling Mexico's leading drugs cartel, and the biggest drugs trafficking organization in the world, to launder cash through the bank's branch network and systems? 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 as recently as 2002 had been named 'one of the best-run organizations in the world' become so entwined with such a criminal, 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? Are some corporations now so big as to be above the law? |
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