Monoray

In 1960s Paris, the high-life and the low-life go hand in hand. It is a time of glamour, sports cars, casinos and night clubs with a cast of actresses, petty criminals, high-level gangsters and compromised politicians. And with French cinema taking the world by storm, the man at the dark heart of it all is an enigmatic film star dubbed 'the most beautiful man in the world'. With a shady past and a taste for bad company, Alain Delon lives on the edge. But when a dead body turns up in the outskirts of Paris that turns out to be his associate, Stevan, questions begin to be asked. That Delon shot to stardom playing the stylish and murderous Tom Ripley does not go unnoticed. Is art imitating life or is life imitating art? And who killed Stevan Markovic? Edward Chisholm, author of the acclaimed A Waiter In Paris submerses the reader into the city's demimonde and draws us intimately into events as they unfold. And as we inhabit the lives of the players in this extraordinary true-life drama, we witness what became to be known as The Markovic Affair from the inside, as it spirals out of control and not only pulls down Alain Delon but everyone in his orbit.

Dirty cops, trafficking rings, globe-spanning, nail-biting undercover detective work and the biggest takedown of the online narcotics market in the history of the internet. This is the story of how a single innovation has fuelled the world's criminal financial markets, and unleashed a cat-and mouse game like no other. Over the last decade, crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely - whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking - than their old school counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government and beholden no bankers, they have robbed law enforcement of the primary method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money. But what if this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn't so cryptic after all? Could an investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence uncover an entire criminal underworld? Lords of Crypto Crime is the gripping, insider story of how a brilliant group of investigators took down the biggest kingpins of the dark web. Published in the US as Tracers in the Dark.

The definitive book in English about the 'Ndrangheta - the most powerful Mafia in the world. The 'Ndrangheta is the world's most powerful Mafia and it's behind a litany of violence, organised crime and corruption around the world. Bound together by blood ties, silent but deadly, and steeped in religious ritual, they are a Mafia unlike any other, and vastly more dangerous. In Mafiopoli, the first comprehensive book to be published in English about the 'Ndrangheta, Sanne De Boer takes us deep inside this extraordinary criminal organisation. In 2006, Sanne, a journalist, moved from Amsterdam to a quiet coastal town in Calabria. She has only intended to live there for a few months but was won over by the beautiful surroundings and warm community and decided to stay. And then, one night, a car was set alight on her street in the dead of the night and soon after, two men were shot dead. Slowly, she begins to see glimpses of darker forces that control the small, idyllic Italian town. MAFIOPOLI is an engrossing and dramatic insight into an incredibly destructive and ascendant criminal organisation. As Sanne starts to piece together the mysterious events and violence marring her new home, she dives deep into the story of the 'Ndrangheta: how they got power, how they're expanding it around the world and how all our lives are, in frightening and shocking ways, affected by their reign. This is a powerful new book on a deliberately opaque but deadly Mafia.

So, you fell into football by accident. You've played for Chelsea, Everton and your country at an international level. But what happens when you discover you're in so deep that football has taken over your whole life? In his brilliant new memoir, Pat Nevin takes us on a journey to the less glamorous side of football. From Tranmere to Kilmarnock, he plays some of the best football he's ever played. Then, in an unprecedented twist of fate, finds himself both player and Chief Executive of Scottish First Division club Motherwell. What follows is an entertaining and revealing tale of the side of football that you rarely see as Pat tries to keep the lid on simmering tensions between owner and the manager; travels in Lear jets one moment, but has to sell off half the team, the next. So much is madness, like being the manager's boss, and his player at the same time; or discovering that the ground's goalposts are higher on one side than on the other! And with impossible challenges at every corner, such as learning that their son is autistic, and the club hurtling towards administration, Pat strives to walk the impossible line between player, parent and boss. FOOTBALL AND HOW TO SURVIVE IT is a real one-off, uncovering the sport in all its complex, confusing and calamitous glory. Once you've read it, you may never look at the game in the same way again.

Eighty years on, D-Day The Oral History is a fresh and significant new history of arguably the most important day of the 20th Century. On 6th June 1944, the Allied invasion began. For hours, wave after wave of soldiers, sailors, and airmen crossed the channel and stormed the Normandy coast, fighting to gain a foothold in Nazi-occupied Northwest Europe. It was the largest combined air and seaborne invasion ever, involving over 150,000 Allied troops on the ground, and its eventual success became a critical turning point in the war, spelling the beginning of the end for the Third Reich. As the events of that day fade from living memory, it's more important than ever to understand what it felt like to be there and to live through it, on both sides. In this definitive work, Garrett M. Graff, the bestselling author of The Only Plane in the Sky: The Oral History of 9/11, compiles hundreds of US, Canadian, UK, French and German voices to tell the full story of exactly how that historic day unfolded, in visceral detail. From paratroopers to fighter pilots to nurses, generals, French villagers, German Defenders to Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, this is the most intimate re-telling of D-Day published to date.

WITH A FOREWORD BY PAUL WELLER This is the memoir of a teenage mod from the East End of London. A journey of discovery for a schoolboy dabbling with punk, funk, record shops, discos and clothes, and then... WHAAAM! An unstoppable wave of like-minded kids fall headlong in love with 60s mod culture, revived and reformatted for the 70s and 80s generation. Eddie Piller was one such kid. His life was changed forever. Written with humour, passion and attention to detail, CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES is perhaps the ultimate mod memoir, taking us from meeting the Small Faces as a toddler, to the 1979 Mod revival, through the more purist 1980s mod scene and eventually to Acid Jazz. A born storyteller, Eddie takes us evocatively into a world of scooters, clothes, and music. We run with the crowd to decaying seaside towns, East End backstreet boozers and sweaty teenage gigs, all fizzing with an uncontainable excitement and often exploding into violence. Once mod touched your soul it changed the way you looked at life, unexpectedly broadening your horizons. In Eddie it awakens a can-do attitude that sees him setting up a fanzine, putting on club nights, hustling jobs in the music industry, and eventually setting up a record label. It even takes him to Ireland at the height of the troubles and to Australia where the local mods take him on a military exercise... Visceral and always entertaining, CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES is a stand-out memoir that relives the thrill of the 70s and 80s, and the movement that helped make mod the most enduring and successful British youth culture of all time.

This is the memoir music fans have been waiting for. Half of one of the greatest creative partnerships in popular music, Bernie Taupin is the man who wrote the lyrics for Elton John, who conceived the ideas that spawned countless hits, and sold millions and millions of records. Together, they were a duo, a unit, an immovable object. Their extraordinary, half-century-and-counting creative relationship has been chronicled in biopics (like 2019's Rocketman) and even Elton John's own autobiography, Me. But Bernie, a famously private person, has kept his own account of their adventures close to his chest, until now. In this exciting, multi-decade whirlwind, we ride shotgun with Bernie on his extraordinary life. We discover early '70s New York with Elton on the cusp of global fame. We spend late night hours with John Lennon, with Bob Marley, and hanging with Frank Sinatra in LA. We witness memorable encounters with Graham Greene, Salvador Dali , Andy Warhol and scores of notable misfits, miscreants, eccentrics, and geniuses, some of whom inspire the indelible lyrics to songs such as Tiny Dancer, Candle in the Wind, Bennie and The Jets, and so many more. Written with honesty and candour, Scattershot bears witness to events unfolding from Taupin's singular perspective, always with an infectious energy that only a songwriter's vivid prose could offer - his imagination sparked by country music and cowboy culture. From his East Midlands childhood and early London days with Elton to the star-studded fishbowl of '70s and '80s Beverly Hills, it is an epic, picaresque journey across a landscape of unforgettable characters and locations, as well as a striking, first-hand account of a creative era like no other.

How many steps have you done today? How many emails answered? How much money have you spent this week And how many hours have you slept? Welcome to the numberdemic, where a deluge of figures, stats and data manipulate your every move. From the way you work, date and exercise to the products you buy and the news you read, numbers have worked their way into every part of our lives. But is life better this way? How are all of those numbers affecting us? With fascinating, sometimes frightening and sometimes shrewdly funny research, behavioural economists Micael Dahlen and Helge Thorbjornsen explain why we're so attached to numbers and how we can free ourselves from their tyranny. Along the way, you'll learn why viral videos, however inaccurate, become more convincing with every view; how numbers can affect the way we physically age, if we let them; why the more films you rate the less impressive you'll find them and how numbers that 'anchor' themselves in your brain can affect the size of your mortgage - plus much more. Sharp, insightful and totally engaging, NUMBERMANIA is your vaccination against a world obsessed with numbers.

In TAXTOPIA a rogue accountant breaks ranks to share his journey from clueless naif to skilled tax consultant -and in doing so blows the lid on the murky world of making the tax burdens of the ultra-wealthy disappear. In the topsy-turvy world of tax avoidance, you can get richer by buying a yacht, the world's biggest exporter of coffee is Switzerland, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump and the Duke of Westminster often pay less tax than you do. Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous author shows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind. If you suspect that tax is a rigged game, a con, designed to fleece the little guy, you are about to find out just how shockingly true that really is. Welcome to TAXTOPIA.

With what this poor woman had been through the sight of her crying tore at my heartstrings. What if something should happen to her; who would care for her little baby? To conceal the fear and terror in my heart I left her, trying to put up a cheerful front. But no one could conceal from her the ominous import of the dark spots that had appeared on her chest. The Doctor of Hiroshimais the extraordinary true story of Dr Michihiko Hachiya, whose hospital was less than a mile from the centre of the atomic bomb that hit on that warm August day. In immense shock and pain, he and his wife Yaeko dragged themselves to the devastated hospital building and what colleagues they could find. In time, they begin to heal, and start to treat the impossible numbers of patients - a small girl covered in burns, an elderly man with pneumonia, a young boy and his little sister looking for their parents. They also began to investigate the strange unexplainable symptoms afflicting his patients - things he never dreamed he would see... Told simply and poignantly in Dr Hachiya's own words, The Doctor of Hiroshima is a unique and deeply moving human story of survival about a small, committed band of hospital staff in the face of unthinkable destruction and loss.

A powerful personal manifesto against shame that empowers us and calls us to action - from the author of Unmasking Autism How many times a day do you feel shame? Struggling to pay the bills; buying a top made in a sweatshop; reading the news and feeling - yet again - a powerlessness to the point of apathy? In today's self-blame culture, it often feels impossible not to carry shame about the choices we make and the values by which we live. When the political is so personal, and the personal is so political, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the sense that we're not doing enough - maybe, even, that we're not enough. In this bold and transformative manifesto, social psychologist and author of Unmasking Autism Dr Devon Price takes an in-depth look at shame and the role it plays in our lives. Systemic Shame traps us into fighting unwinnable battles and judging others for their failures. But it especially affects those who are already vulnerable because they're carrying shame from a difficult past or a complicated sense of self-esteem. This new, radically positive book shows us that there is no such thing as becoming "good enough" to be deserving of love; that we must claim acceptance for ourselves. Blending the latest social psychology, personal insights and empowering practical exercises, Unlearning Shame is a radical guide to overcoming self-blame and embracing a new culture - one where we take control of the choices we make and the future we create.

The Nazis spared their lives because they were twins. In the summer of 1944, Eva Mozes Kor and her family arrived at Auschwitz. Within thirty minutes, they were separated. Her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, while Eva and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man who became known as the Angel of Death: Dr. Josef Mengele. They were 10 years old. While twins at Auschwitz were granted the 'privileges' of keeping their own clothes and hair, they were also subjected to Mengele's sadistic medical experiments. They were forced to fight daily for their own survival and many died as a result of the experiments, or from the disease and hunger rife in the concentration camp. In a narrative told simply, with emotion and astonishing restraint, The Twins of Auschwitz shares the inspirational story of a child's endurance and survival in the face of truly extraordinary evil. Also included is an epilogue on Eva's incredible recovery and her remarkable decision to publicly forgive the Nazis. Through her museum and her lectures, she dedicated her life to giving testimony on the Holocaust, providing a message of hope for people who have suffered, and worked toward goals of forgiveness, peace, and the elimination of hatred and prejudice in the world.

YOU HAVE MORE POWER THAN YOU THINK. At a time when many of us feel the world isn't listening, Jess Phillips offers inspiration to those of us who want to speak out and make a difference. No stranger to speaking truth to power herself, she will help you dig deep and get organised, finding the courage and the tools you need to take action. As well as bringing us hope through her own experiences Jess talks to the accidental heroes who have been brave enough to risk everything, become whistle-blowers and successfully fight back. Zelda Perkins, the personal assistant who first called-out Harvey Weinstein; Paul Caruana Galizia, son of murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia; Tom Watson the British MP who successfully took on the Murdoch press empire and won; Sara Rowbotham, the sexual-health worker who uncovered the abuse of young girls by gangs of Asian men in Rochdale - and the subsequent cover-up by the authorities; Natasha Elcock, resident of Grenfell Tower and chair of Grenfell United, the pressure group set up by families after the disaster; Cara Sanquest from the campaign to legalise women's right to choose abortion in Ireland. Entertaining, empowering and uncompromising, TRUTH TO POWER is the book we all need to help us call time on the seemingly unstoppable tide of bullshit in our lives.