How does one turn unassuming words into phrases that are beautiful, effective, and memorable? Using examples from Churchill, Lincoln, Dickens, Melville, and many others, this book examines the most valuable rhetorical devices with amazing clarity.

A modern Indiana Jones steals a relic of Alexander the Great in this thrilling debut novel.

Jonathan Blake makes a living stealing antiquities stealing them back, that is. A field agent for the Argo Foundation, a company that makes it their business to preserve humanity s history by liberating stolen artifacts from thieves and looters, Blake is used to dangerous assignments. But when he is forced by the US government into a deadly mission involving a missing Napoleonic standard, he finds himself in over his head.

Blake is pitted against Vanya, the head of a fanatical cult, who seeks a gilded bronze eagle that holds a vital clue to the lost tomb of Alexander the Great.

From ancient ruins in Afghanistan to the catacombs of Paris to a chateau high in the French Alps, Blake must unravel the secret truth of the final fate of Napoleon Bonaparte, the murder of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the hidden remains of Alexander. And he must do it before Vanya s apocalyptic plans for humanity come to their deadly fruition.

Inspired by real CIA operations, this is the riveting novel of a fraying CIA analyst who conducts secret mind-control experiments and the young agent who, years later, uncovers the appalling legacy of the program and the people destroyed by it.

From its official sanction in 1953 to its shutdown in 1973, the CIA clandestinely conducted methods of mind control on unwitting American and Canadian citizens. This covert and illegal operation, Project MK Ultra, eventually made national headlines upon the declassification of thousands of documents in 2001.

Intrigued by the people empowered to enact such abuses and the legacy of such an operation, Scott O Connor weaves the nuanced and compelling story of Henry March, a CIA agent forced to spearhead a series of insidious mind-control experiments in San Francisco. With each passing day, Henry s existence becomes a nightmare, his identity withering as he works over the hapless men lured into his facility. Struggling between his duty to his country and his responsibility to his wife and children, Henry finally reaches a breaking point, leaving both his project and mind fractured. Amid the wreckage, he disappears, becoming the deepest Ultra mystery.

Two decades later, Dickie Ashby, a young CIA agent, is sent to Los Angeles to infiltrate a group of bank-robbing radicals who claim to have been abused in a government brainwashing operation years earlier. The members of the group know they need to find Henry March and that the only bridge to Henry is his daughter, Hannah, who lives in the city. Dickie suddenly finds himself dragged into the stunning legacy of the experiments, torn between doing his job, helping the victims of Henry s program, and protecting Hannah.

Called one to watch ("Los Angeles Times") and hailed for his ability to make something beautiful of unspeakable matters ("New York Times"), O Connor will stir your emotions with "Half World," a mesmerizing novel about reality and the basic incorruptible value of human relationships.