Budapest's dark history finally catches up with Detective Balthazar Kovacs in the final instalment in Adam LeBor's Danube Blues Hungarian crime trilogy. Budapest, January 2016. The Danube is grey and half-frozen, and the city seems to have gone into hibernation. But not Detective Balthazar Kovacs. Elad Harrari, a young Israeli historian, has disappeared. There's no sign of violence but something feels very wrong. Harrari was working in the city's Jewish Museum, investigating the fate of the assets of the Hungarian Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It's clear his research set off alarm bells at one of the country's most powerful companies. The more Balthazar digs into the case, the more he is certain that shadowy forces are in play. And the pressure is building: Budapest is preparing for a major diplomatic visit - if Harrari is not found it will be cancelled. The threats against Balthazar soon turn to violence. It's clear that if he is to find the historian he will have to go face-to-face with some very dangerous people - and confront the darkest era in Hungary's past. Reviews for Dohany Street: 'Budapest is a versatile and exciting setting for Adam LeBor's superb thriller' The Times 'All the twists and turns of a high-concept Hollywood thriller' Financial Times

Budapest's dark history finally catches up with Detective Balthazar Kovacs in the final instalment in Adam LeBor's Danube Blues Hungarian crime trilogy. Budapest, January 2016. The Danube is grey and half-frozen, and the city seems to have gone into hibernation. But not Detective Balthazar Kovacs. Elad Harrari, a young Israeli historian, has disappeared. There's no sign of violence but something feels very wrong. Harrari was working in the city's Jewish Museum, investigating the fate of the assets of the Hungarian Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It's clear his research set off alarm bells at one of the country's most powerful companies. The more Balthazar digs into the case, the more he is certain that shadowy forces are in play. And the pressure is building: Budapest is preparing for a major diplomatic visit - if Harrari is not found it will be cancelled. The threats against Balthazar soon turn to violence. It's clear that if he is to find the historian he will have to go face-to-face with some very dangerous people - and confront the darkest era in Hungary's past. Reviews for Dohany Street: 'Budapest is a versatile and exciting setting for Adam LeBor's superb thriller' The Times 'All the twists and turns of a high-concept Hollywood thriller' Financial Times

"Tower of Basel" is the first investigative history of the world's most secretive global financial institution. Based on extensive archival research in Switzerland, Britain, and the United States, and in-depth interviews with key decision-makers--including Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve; Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England; and former senior Bank for International Settlements managers and officials--Tower of Basel tells the inside story of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS): the central bankers' own bank.
Created by the governors of the Bank of England and the Reichsbank in 1930, and protected by an international treaty, the BIS and its assets are legally beyond the reach of any government or jurisdiction. The bank is untouchable. Swiss authorities have no jurisdiction over the bank or its premises. The BIS has just 140 customers but made tax-free profits of $1.17 billion in 2011-2012.
Since its creation, the bank has been at the heart of global events but has often gone unnoticed. Under Thomas McKittrick, the bank's American president from 1940-1946, the BIS was open for business throughout the Second World War. The BIS accepted looted Nazi gold, conducted foreign exchange deals for the Reichsbank, and was used by both the Allies and the Axis powers as a secret contact point to keep the channels of international finance open.
After 1945 the BIS--still behind the scenes--for decades provided the necessary technical and administrative support for the trans-European currency project, from the first attempts to harmonize exchange rates in the late 1940s to the launch of the Euro in 2002. It now stands at the center of efforts to build a new global financial and regulatory architecture, once again proving that it has the power to shape the financial rules of our world. Yet despite its pivotal role in the financial and political history of the last century and during the economic current crisis, the BIS has remained largely unknown--until now.

UN covert negotiator, Yael Azoulay, has been sent to Reykjavik to broker a secret meeting between the US President and her Iranian counterpart. Both parties want to reach agreement, but Yael soon realises that powerful enemies are preparing to sabotage the talks. Enemies for whom peace means an end to their lucrative profit streams. In this gripping, intelligent thriller, Adam LeBor draws on twenty-five years of frontline reporting to show us who calls the shots in the corridors of power.

'A first-class crime thriller' CHARLES CUMMINGS. THE TIMES BEST 100 BOOKS OF THE SUMMER. When Detective Balthazar Kovacs is called out before dawn to a brothel owned by his brother, he knows it can only be bad news. A customer has died in the brothel's VIP room. Worse still, he's an Arab financier, a guest of government, connected to a massive investment programme that could transform Hungary. It looks like a heart attack - but why has the brothel's CCTV footage been erased? Kovacs knows only too well the treacherous undercurrents that permeate life in Hungary's capital - the deadly intersection between the criminal underworld, the corridors of power and the ghosts of history. He knows that his investigation is more than likely to lead back to the seat of power, the Orszaghaz, in Kossuth Square... but he does not expect to be swept into his own family's dark past too.

Yael Azoulay does the United Nations' dirty work. From the caves of Afghanistan and the slums of Baghdad to the world's corporate boardrooms, Yael's job is to broker the secret deals that grease the wheels of superpower diplomacy and big business. When a suspicious death at the UN headquarters in Manhattan is covered up, Yael decides that the ends no longer justify the means and she goes rogue. Events quickly spiral out of control as Yael is forced on the run in the streets of New York and Geneva. Hunted by the world's intelligence and law enforcement agencies, Yael must ultimately learn that salvation means not just saving other's lives but slaying her own inner demons. A gripping journey through the secret corridors of power.

How America fell for financier Bernie Madoff's $65 billion investment scam. It was luxurious Palm Beach, by the manicured lawns and Olympic-sized swimming pool, that financier Bernard Madoff ravaged the world of philanthropy and high society he had strived so hard to join, vaporising the assets of charities, foundations and individuals that had trusted him with their funds. It seems nothing was sacrosanct to Madoff, possibly the greatest con-man in history. Even Elie Wiesel's foundation has lost tens of millions. How could Madoff, a pillar of the Jewish community, do this to a Nobel Laureate and Auschwitz survivor? But Wiesel was hardly alone in trusting the rogue financier. How could some of the most sophisticated and worldly people in America fall victim to a collective delusion for year after year? THE BELIEVERS answers these unsettling questions. It opens up the clubbish world where Madoff operated, tracing the links from Palm Beach and The Hamptons to the salons and clubs of Manhattan society. It details the network of relationships across which flows hundreds of millions of dollars. 'The Believers' shows how despite material success and acclaim, some human impulses remain eternal. It reveals how an underlying sense of insecurity still shapes some of the richest and most successful individuals in America, making them crave ever more status and peer acclaim. By focusing on Madoff's connection to, and catastrophic impact on, the American Jewish community, THE BELIEVERS dramatically humanises a story that is part financial scandal and part Greek tragedy.

The ancient port of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, was once known as the 'Bride of Palestine'. It was one of the great cosmopolitan cities of the Mediterranean. Once the centre of Palestinian modernity, Jaffa was the country's cultural and political capital. There Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived, worked, and celebrated together. It was commonplace for the Arabs of Jaffa to attend a wedding at the house of the Jewish Chelouche family and even after 1948 Jews and Arabs gathered at the Jewish-owned spice shop Tiv and the Arab Abulafia family's twenty-four-hour bakery. Through intimate personal interviews and memoirs, letters, and diaries, Adam LeBor gives us a crucial insight into the human lives behind the apparently intractable story of national conflict and a vivid narrative of cataclysmic change. LeBor deftly weaves the personal story of six families, three Jewish and three Arab, into a rich and complex history of Israel and Palestine in the twentieth century. In a special updated afterword, LeBor returns to Jaffa after ten years to find a city greatly changed by gentrification, demolition and waves of new incomers. Rising prices have scattered communities. The exodus of Jaffa's Arabs continues. But with all the changes, the desire for integration endures. LeBor's magnificent history is a story of hope found in the memories of the Levant's once dazzling mosaic of cultures and communities.

A LONE AGENT. AN UNIMAGINABLE CONSPIRACY. UN covert negotiator Yael Azoulay went rogue in Geneva and nearly lost her life. Her physical wounds are healed, but she will never be able to forget what happened. Now back in New York, Yael uncovers a chilling conspiracy whose end game is a devastating new war in the Middle East. But as Yael draws closer to the truth, she is forced to confront the ghosts of her past. As the few certainties of her life begin to crumble around her, a terrifying truth is laid bare: Yael has enormously powerful enemies who neither forgive, nor forget.

Yael Azoulay does the United Nations' dirty work by cutting deals that most of us never hear about. Equally at home in the caves of Afghanistan, the slums of Gaza, or corporate boardrooms all across the world, Yael believes the ends justify the means...until she's pushed way beyond her breaking point.

When Yael is assigned to eastern Congo to negotiate with Jean-Pierre Hakizimani, a Hutu warlord wanted for genocide, she offers him a generous plea bargain. Thanks to Congo's abundance of a valuable mineral used in computer and cell phone production, her number one priority is maintaining regional stability. But when she discovers that Hakizimani is linked to the death of the person she loved the most--and that the UN is prepared to sanction mass murder--Yael soon realizes that salvation means not just saving others' lives but confronting her own inner demons.

Spanning New York City, Africa, and Switzerland, The Geneva Option is the first in a series of gripping conspiracy thrillers, a tour de force of international espionage and intrigue.

Before his death in March 2006, Slobodan Milosevic was on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague for crimes against humanity. This engrossing biography documents the life of the former Serbian leader, whose policies instigated wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo as well as the bloody campaigns of ethnic cleansing that destroyed a once sophisticated multi-national country. Drawing on his unrivalled access to many of those closest to Milosevic, author and journalist Adam LeBor describes his subject's unhappy childhood, his marriage, and his important friendships. He offers details about the ascendancy of crime over politics in the new republic and the secret channels used by Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman as they conspired to carve up Bosnia. LeBor recounts the history of the negotiations between Milosevic and the Western diplomats, politicians, and businessmen with whom he dealt, and tells the tragic story of the wars. Finally he portrays the unprecedented international operation that brought down the Milosevic regime in 2001 and led to his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. A gripping account of Europe's first rogue leader in the post-cold war period, this book is also a revelatory look at the tragic story of the collapse of a country and the role played by the West.

The millennia-old port of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, was once known as the Bride of Palestine, one of the truly cosmopolitan cities of the Mediterranean. There Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived, worked, and celebrated together--and it was commonplace for the Arabs of Jaffa to attend a wedding at the house of the Jewish Chelouche family or for Jews and Arabs to both gather at the Jewish spice shop Tiv and the Arab Khamis Abulafia's twenty-four-hour bakery. Through intimate personal interviews and generations-old memoirs, letters, and diaries, Adam LeBor gives us a crucial look at the human lives behind the headlines--and a vivid narrative of cataclysmic change.

A seasoned foreign correspondent shows how the UN privileges its own neutrality and interests above its founding mission of protecting humanity, with predictably tragic consequences From the killing fields of Rwanda and Srebrenica a decade ago to those of Darfur today, the United Nations has repeatedly failed to confront genocide. This is evinced, author and journalist Adam LeBor maintains, in a May 1995 document from Yasushi Akashi, the most senior UN official in the field during the Yugoslav wars, in which he refused to authorize air strikes against the Serbs for fear they would "weaken" Milosevic. More recently, in 2003, urgent reports from UN officials in the Sudan detailing atrocities from Darfur were ignored for a year because they were politically inconvenient. This book is the first to examine in detail the crucial role of the Secretariat, its relationship with the Security Council, and the failure of UN officials themselves to confront genocide. LeBor argues the UN must return to its founding principles, take a moral stand and set the agenda of the Security Council instead of merely following the lead of the great powers. LeBor draws on dozens of firsthand interviews with UN officials, current and former, and such international diplomats as Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Douglas Hurd, and David Owen. This book will set the terms for discussion when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan steps down to make room for a new head of the world body, and political observers assess Annan's legacy and look to the future of the world organization.