Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios for Bloomsbury" in True Crime

In a ranch south of Texas, the man known as The Executioner dumps 500 body parts in metal barrels. In Brazil's biggest city, a mysterious prisoner orders hit men to gun down 41 police officers and prison guards in two days. In Southern Mexico a meth maker is venerated as a saint while enforcing Old Testament justice on his enemies. A new kind of criminal kingpin has arisen: part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star, unleashing guerrilla attacks, strong-arming governments, and taking over much of the world's trade in narcotics, guns, and humans.

This riveting account reveals the secret corners of our supposedly flat world: black markets where governments are never seen but still spend outrageous amounts of money. Journalist Matt Potter tells the story of Yuri and his crew, a gang of Russian military men who, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, found themselves without work or prospects. So they bought a decommissioned Soviet plane - at liquidation prices, straight from the Russian government - and started a shipping business.

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.

This audiobook explains the scientific tools and techniques that revealed the century's biggest food fraud scams. It looks in detail at the biggest scams in recent times; drawing on the lead author's extensive experience at the forefront of the fight against these fraudsters, it goes on to explore the arms race between scientists and adulterers as better techniques for detection spur more creative and sophisticated means of adulteration.

From the capture of Sidney Reilly, the "Ace of Spies", by Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1925, to the deportation from the USA of Anna Chapman, the "Redhead under the Bed", in 2010, Kremlin and Western spymasters have battled for supremacy for nearly a century. In Deception Edward Lucas uncovers the real story of Chapman and her colleagues in Britain and America, unveiling their clandestine missions and the spy-hunt that led to their downfall. It reveals unknown triumphs and disasters of Western intelligence in the Cold War,

On December 11, 2008, in the middle of a busy baseball offseason, Bernard Madoff was arrested for orchestrating a massive financial fraud. Among his chief investors was Mets owner Fred Wilpon, who not only lost a major revenue stream as a result, but is now being sued for "fictitious profits" that he now owes to other Madoff victims. To the tune of almost a billion dollars. How did this happen? Where did Wilpon go wrong, and why does a fraud victim suddenly owe money?

Shirley Pitts, the eldest of six children, was born upside down on November 24, 1934. Her "career" began by thieving bread off doorsteps and coal from coal carts. Her father's bungled attempts at black marketeering and her dipsomaniac mother's inadequacies made Shirley resolve to be not only a first-class thief but also the best mother her six children could wish for.

Early in the morning of Monday, 8 July 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes and his 12-year-old brother, Nattie, set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbours, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next 10 days, Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside.

For the first time in history, the navies of the world have united against a common enemy - a couple of thousand rag-tag, underfed men and boys in the western Indian Ocean. Crammed into open boats and armed with ancient AK-47s, they range up to a thousand miles from home shores in Somalia. No one knows how many die at sea. But occasionally they hit the jackpot, seizing vessels and crews to be ransomed for millions of dollars.