Private Politics

Former NYPD detective Thomas Austin is enjoying a rare date at a monday night football game in Seattle when the evening takes a horrifying turn. A team of merciless terrorists has taken over the stadium by force, blocking cellphone signals and sealing the exits. The terrorists have a single demand: release a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative from a US supermax prison. And they have a simple threat: do so in the next 24 hours or they will blow up the stadium, killing themselves along with tens of thousands of innocent victims.

A space shuttle is destroyed during flight, and the CIA recalls disgraced agent Blaine McCracken to uncover the people responsible. A space shuttle disappears during a routine repair mission, 180 miles above Earth’s surface. An intelligence operative with a dark secret is murdered, his car set ablaze, while he is in the middle of fulfilling a depraved fantasy. And a reporter receives a message from a dying man that suggests the organization responsible may be one of the world’s most prestigious corporations. The government knows just one man who can untangle this mystery: a throwaway on the deactivated list. Exiled to a desk job in Paris for stepping on the wrong toes, Blaine McCracken is a killer—a ruthless pursuer of truth who will let no one, friend or enemy, stand in his way when civilian lives are in danger. McCracken gets results, and his country needs him now more than ever.

Since he first went behind enemy lines in Vietnam, Blaine McCracken has faced death on every continent. In the line of fire he is an iron man, but now he faces a different challenge: fatherhood. His son, Matt, is 13 - the unknown product of a long ago tryst. When the boy’s mother dies, McCracken goes to England to meet him. He finds a son cut in his father’s mold: a young athlete determined to put his body at risk to serve his country.

Introduction to Conducting Private Investigations provides the essential tools you need to become a successful private investigator. From conducting straightforward background investigations to more complicated cases involving accidents and fraud, you will learn the critical skills needed to conduct all types of investigations and build a thriving business. Specifically tailored to meet the requirements established by the Department of Criminal Justice Services, this easy-to-use resource offers an excellent balance between theory and practice.

This is the memoir of James C. Hormel - a man who grew up feeling different not only because his family owned the Hormel “empire” and lived in a 26 bedroom house in a small Midwest town, but because he was gay at a time when homosexuality was not discussed or accepted. Outwardly he tried to live up to the life his father wanted for him - he was a successful professional, had married a lovely woman, and had children - but as volatile changes in the late 1960s impeded on the American psyche, Hormel realized that he could not hide his true self forever.

England's Tudor monarchs - Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I - are perhaps the most celebrated and fascinating of all royal families in history. Their love affairs, their political triumphs, and their overturning of the religious order are the subject of countless works of popular scholarship. But for all we know about Henry's quest for male heirs or Elizabeth's purported virginity, the lives of the Tudor monarchs away from the public eye remain largely beyond our grasp, mostly not chronicled by previous historians.

In the last years of the Cold War, policy and trust for the Russians have led to disarmament treaties and hope for a new beginning. But peace is not yet within grasp. An entire American town has been wiped off the map: not by nuclear strike, but rather a space-borne particle cannon capable of reducing the entire nation to dust in hours. But who pulled the trigger? Was it the Russians, making a final bid for world domination? Or was it a third power - some aspiring conqueror hoping to pit the superpowers against each other? It’s up to Blaine McCracken to find out.

*VANITY FAIR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025*ONE OF NEW REPUBLIC'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR*KIRKUS' BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2025*ONE OF AV CLUB'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025* "[An] indictment of an industry that has cannily tilted the playing field in its favor. Bad Company details how clichéd abstractions like...

Bloomsbury presents Death Is Our Business by John Lechner, read by Christopher Ragland. "Extraordinary. . . Essential reading for understanding Russia and modern warfare."—CHRIS MILLER, New York Times bestselling author of Chip War and Putinomics “John Lechner is an amazingly bold reporter...

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

For the first time ever, the intimate thoughts and political decisions of Abraham Lincoln’s entire presidency - day by day. In a startlingly innovative format, journalist Stephen A. Wynalda has constructed a painstakingly detailed day-by-day breakdown of president Abraham Lincoln’s decisions in office - including his signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862; his signing of the legislation enacting the first federal income tax on August 5, 1861; and more personal incidents like the day his 11-year-old son, Willie, died.

Far beneath the sands of Alexandria, an archaeological team digs deeper than anyone has before, seeking an ancient power older than the pyramids. What they unearth is an evil that threatens the whole world. First it targets the worst of humanity: Ex-Nazis, Central American warlords, and the pushers who peddle drugs to children are found massacred, ripped limb from limb without having fired a shot in their own defense. But the next to die will be ordinary people.

Deep inside Wyoming, in the dead of winter, CIA Agent Alex Shepard is desperate. A few days ago, he sent an undercover agent to the Red Rain Indian Reservation to investigate an unthinkable terrorist plot. However, when his man skipped his daily check-in, Shepard feared the worst.

Private equity firms have long been at the center of public debates on the impact of the financial sector on Main Street companies. Are these firms financial innovators that save failing businesses or financial predators that bankrupt otherwise healthy companies and destroy jobs? The first comprehensive examination of this topic, Private Equity at Work provides a detailed yet accessible guide to this controversial business model.

There are 96 names on the list. They are those of businessmen, judges, and senators - the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful. And they are all going to die. A man named Takahashi has hired the world’s finest assassins to eliminate these men in secrecy and style, crossing names off the list without raising any suspicion. And they are killing ahead of schedule. But someone has noticed the pattern of these seemingly unrelated deaths, and she knows enough to call Blaine McCracken.

What if law and order didn't require government at all? Private Law, Private Order: Justice and Security Without Government Interference challenges one of society's most deeply held assumptions: that only the state can provide justice, security, and social stability. This concise yet rigorous book shows how private institutions—built on property rights, voluntary exchange, and competition—can not only replace government systems, but often outperform them.

From the number-one New York Times bestselling author and FOX News host Trey Gowdy comes a dark mystery debut about a murder in a small South Carolina town. Assistant DA Colm Truesdale must pick up the pieces of his own life in order to solve the case. Following the death of his wife and...

Featured on BBC Radio 4's Take Four Books Six friends. One city. The time of their lives. It’s 1988, and on the verge of a reunion with friends she hasn’t seen since graduation, Julie recalls her halcyon student days of 1984 and the strange tumultuous time they lived through. The...

Bloomsbury presents The Ruling Class by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, read by Ina-Marie Smith. This mystery thriller by the bestselling author of The Inheritance Games is a gripping story of high stakes, betrayal, and unpredictable twists. Any problem can be fixed for a price . . . When Tess Kendrick is...

One shot. One kill. A deadly sniper targets the only man to escape him—Jack Widow. A sniper is out there, murdering the best shooters in the world until he’s all that’s left. Widow is the only man to survive an encounter with the suspect. This sniper is a whisper, a phantom, a ghost, known as the Rainmaker. His shooting falls somewhere between the best there ever was and godlike. As the Rainmaker murders the world’s top shooters in cold blood, one by one, only Widow can track and stop him.