7 results for "World History"

The Order

Daniel Silva
#1 New York Times Bestseller * #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller From Daniel Silva, the internationally acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author, comes a riveting new thriller featuring art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon. It was nearly one a.m. by the time he crawled into bed. Chiara was reading a novel, oblivious to the television, which was muted. On the screen was a live shot of St. Peter's Basilica. Gabriel raised the volume and learned that an old friend had died ... Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into Venice for a much-needed holiday with his wife and two young children. But when Pope Paul VII dies suddenly, Gabriel is summoned to Rome by the Holy Father's loyal private secretary, Archbishop Luigi Donati. A billion Catholic faithful have been told that the pope died of a heart attack. Donati, however, has two good reasons to suspect his master was murdered. The Swiss Guard who was standing watch outside the papal apartments the night of the pope's death is missing. So, too, is the letter the Holy Father was writing during the final hours of his life. A letter that was addressed to Gabriel. While researching in the Vatican Secret Archives, I came upon a most remarkable book ... The book is a long-suppressed gospel that calls into question the accuracy of the New Testament's depiction of one of the most portentous events in human history. For that reason alone, the Order of St. Helena will stop at nothing to keep it out of Gabriel's hands. A shadowy Catholic society with ties to the European far right, the Order is plotting to seize control of the papacy. And it is only the beginning. As the cardinals gather in Rome for the start of the conclave, Gabriel sets out on a desperate search for proof of the Order's conspiracy, and for a long-lost gospel with the power to put an end to two thousand years of murderous hatred. His quest will take him from the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, to a monastery in Assisi, to the hidden depths of the Secret Archives, and finally to the Sistine Chapel, where he will witness an event no outsider has ever before seen--the sacred passing of the Keys of St. Peter to a newly elected pope. Swiftly paced and elegantly rendered, The Order will hold readers spellbound, from its opening passages to its breathtaking final twist of plot. It is a novel of friendship and faith in a perilous and uncertain world. And it is still more proof that Daniel Silva is his generation's finest writer of suspense and international intrigue.
HarperCollins Publishers 2021-02-16 432 pages

Think Twice

Harlan Coben
A man presumed dead is suddenly wanted for murder in this thriller of secrets, lies, and dangerous conspiracies that threaten to cover up the truth. Three years ago, sports agent Myron Bolitar gave a eulogy at the funeral of his client, renowned basketball coach Greg Downing. Myron and Greg had history: initially as deeply personal rivals, and later as unexpected business associates. Myron made peace and moved on - until now, when two federal agents walked into his office, demanding to know where Greg Downing is. According to the agents, Greg is still alive--and has been placed at the scene of a double homicide, making him their main suspect. Shocked, Myron needs answers. Myron and Win, longtime friends and colleagues, set out to find the truth, but the more they discover about Greg, the more dangerous their world becomes. Secrets, lies, and a murderous conspiracy that stretches back into the past churn at the heart of Harlan Coben's blistering new novel.
Grand Central Publishing 2024-12-03 400 pages

Brooklyn Crime Novel

Jonathan Lethem
Named a Best Book of the Year by: Boston Globe * New Yorker * NPR * PopMatters From the bestselling and award-winning author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn comes a sweeping story of community, crime, and gentrification, tracing more than fifty years of life in one Brooklyn neighborhood. "A blistering book. A love story. Social commentary. History. Protest novel. And mystery joins the whole together: is the crime 'time'? Or the almighty dollar? I got a great laugh from it too. Every city deserves a book like this." -- Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin On the streets of 1970s Brooklyn, a daily ritual goes down: the dance. Money is exchanged, belongings surrendered, power asserted. The promise of violence lies everywhere, a currency itself. For these children, Black, brown, and white, the street is a stage in shadow. And in the wings hide the other players: parents; cops; renovators; landlords; those who write the headlines, the histories, and the laws; those who award this neighborhood its name. The rules appear obvious at first. But in memory's prism, criminals and victims may seem to trade places. The voices of the past may seem to rise and gather as if in harmony, then make war with one another. A street may seem to crack open and reveal what lies behind its glimmering facade. None who lived through it are ever permitted to forget. Written with kaleidoscopic verve and delirious wit, Brooklyn Crime Novel is a breathtaking tour de force by a writer at the top of his powers. Jonathan Lethem, "one of America's greatest storytellers" (Washington Post), has crafted an epic interrogation of how we fashion stories to contain the uncontainable: our remorse at the world we've made.
HarperCollins Publishers 2024-09-24 384 pages

When brute force fails: how to have less crime and less punishment

Kleiman, Mark
Since the crime explosion of the 1960s, the prison population in the United States has multiplied fivefold, to one prisoner for every hundred adults--a rate unprecedented in American history and unmatched anywhere in the world. Even as the prisoner head count continues to rise, crime has stopped falling, and poor people and minorities still bear the brunt of both crime and punishment. When Brute Force Fails explains how we got into the current trap and how we can get out of it: to cut both crime and the prison population in half within a decade. Mark Kleiman demonstrates that simply locking up more people for lengthier terms is no longer a workable crime-control strategy. But, says Kleiman, there has been a revolution--largely unnoticed by the press--in controlling crime by means other than brute-force incarceration: substituting swiftness and certainty of punishment for randomized severity, concentrating enforcement resources rather than dispersing them, communicating specific threats of punishment to specific offenders, and enforcing probation and parole conditions to make community corrections a genuine alternative to incarceration. As Kleiman shows, "zero tolerance" is nonsense: there are always more offenses than there is punishment capacity. But, it is possible--and essential--to create focused zero tolerance, by clearly specifying the rules and then delivering the promised sanctions every time the rules are broken. Brute-force crime control has been a costly mistake, both socially and financially. Now that we know how to do better, it would be immoral not to put that knowledge to work.
Princeton University Press 2010-08-01 231 pages

Silent Mercy

Linda A. Fairstein
New York Times bestselling author Linda Fairstein is at her explosive best as she plunges into the byzantine world of New York City's most powerful and sacred institutions--and unearths the most sinister of secrets... Prosecutor Alexandra Cooper has been called to a Harlem Baptist Church, where a woman has been decapitated and set on fire on the church steps--with the imprint of a Star of David necklace seared into her flesh. Then a second body is found at a cathedral in Little Italy. Alex is blind to the sick and inconceivable motives feeding a particularly vicious serial killer--until she mines the depths of the city's vast and serpentine religious history. What Alex follows is a dangerous path that takes her far beyond the scope of her investigation, and directly into the path of a frightening and inescapable truth.
Signet Select 2012 466 pages

The Book of Lost Fragrances

M. J. Rose
Jac L'Etoile has always been haunted by the past -- her memories infused with the exotic scents that she grew up with as the heir to a storied French perfume company. In order to flee the pain of those remembrances -- and of her mother's suicide -- she moved to America. Now, fourteen years later she and her brother have inherited the company as well as its financial problems. But when Robbie hints at an earth-shattering discovery in the family archives and then suddenly goes missing, leaving a dead body in his wake, Jac is plunged into a world she thought she'd left behind. In Paris to investigate her brother's disappearance, Jac becomes haunted by the legend that the House of L'Etoile has been espousing since 1799. Could there really be a scent that unlocks the mystery of reincarnation? In The Book of Lost Fragrances, M. J. Rose fuses history, passion, and suspense, moving from Cleopatra's Egypt and the terrors of revolutionary France to Tibet's battle with China and the glamour of modern-day Paris. Jac's quest for the ancient perfume someone is willing to kill for becomes the key to understanding her own troubled past.
Center Point Large Print 2012 556 pages

Stateless

Alan Gold,Mike Jones
In this next thrilling story from Alan Gold and Mike Jones, we meet Shalman, a freedom-fighter turned peacenik and archaeologist, and his young beautiful wife, Judit, a refugee from the horrors of Stalin's USSR. As the Second World War draws to a close, and the world begins to learn the truth about Hitler's genocide, the foundation of the State of Israel as a permanent home for what's left of the Jewish people becomes increasingly urgent. In Palestine, Arab and Jewish forces fight each other and the British for supremacy and the right to own the land, causing a nightmare environment of hatred and suspicion. But a deeply buried global conspiracy, which has its origin in Stalin's Russia, seeks to undermine Israel's future as an independent nation. A plot to fashion the fledgling nation as a puppet of the Soviet Union rests upon a handful of committed Jewish Communists, led secretly by Judit. But is she a heartless assassin, a disciple of the evils of Beria and the Kremlin, or a committed fusion of Zionist and Communist? And in the darkest recesses of ancient history, we meet Shalman's ancestors, themselves descendants of the builders of Solomon's Temple. As the family escapes the nightmare of the Roman occupation of Jerusalem, it witnesses the glories of the Islamic renaissance in Baghdad and the rampages of the Crusaders through the region. Another exciting instalment in this story of the births of nations and of the strength of their people.
Simon & Schuster 2014 480 pages