The book centres on Ian Fleming the man, his contradictions and his public and private personality. It examines the man behind the myth and how in particular he managed (unsuccessfully at first) to create a film franchise that has lasted over fifty years. It considers Fleming's reputation as a writer, the 'formula method' he perfected and the formula's reliance on the recycling of real individuals and events as well as the occasional reliance on plagiarism. It uniquely accesses a number of closed and recently opened government files that shed light on previously unknown wartime operations such as the Air Ministry's top secret 'Operation Grand Slam', which was used in Goldfinger.

Epic in scope, precise in detail, and heart-breaking in its human drama, Former People is the first book to recount the history of the aristocracy caught up in the maelstrom of the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of Stalin’s Russia. Filled with chilling tales of looted palaces and burning estates, of desperate flights in the night from marauding peasants and Red Army soldiers, of imprisonment, exile, and execution, it is the story of how a centuries’-old elite, famous for its glittering wealth, its service to the Tsar and Empire, and its promotion of the arts and culture, was dispossessed and destroyed along with the rest of old Russia.Yet Former People is also a story of survival and accommodation, of how many of the tsarist ruling class—so-called “former people” and “class enemies”—overcame the psychological wounds inflicted by the loss of their world and decades of repression as they struggled to find a place for themselves and their families in the new, hostile order of the Soviet Union. Chronicling the fate of two great aristocratic families—the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns—it reveals how even in the darkest depths of the terror, daily life went on. Told with sensitivity and nuance by acclaimed historian Douglas Smith, Former People is the dramatic portrait of two of Russia’s most powerful aristocratic families, and a sweeping account of their homeland in violent transition.

On November 2nd armed with a sheaf of visas...one suitcase...and my typewriter, I left humdrum London for the thrilling cities of the world...In 1959, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was commissioned by the Sunday Times to explore fourteen of the world's most exotic cities. Fleming saw it all with a thriller writer's eye. From Hong Kong to Honolulu, New York to Naples, he left the bright main streets for the back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favour of underground haunts, and mingling with celebrities, gangsters and geishas. The result is a series of vivid snapshots of a mysterious, vanished world.Review"An accomplished travel writer" Scotsman "He gathered material for his novels like a voracious travelling magpie: the people and places Fleming experienced on his Thrilling Cities tour in 1959 would [furnish] much of the backdrop and research for the five Bond novels and seven short stories that would follow" The Times "Fleming was a fine travel writer, too (check out Thrilling Cities), and we quickly come to know and appreciate the locales in the book as we do the characters" Daily Telegraph "Fleming describes food precisely and enticingly" Independent "[Fleming's] penchant for fast cars, stylish hotels, expensive alcohol and bizarre encounters brings a whiff of excitement to the narrative, which is vivid, shocking and exuberant by turns" Good Book Guide About the AuthorIan Fleming was born in London on May 28, 1908. He was educated at Eton College and later spent a formative period studying languages in Europe. His first job was with Reuters News Agency where a Moscow posting gave him firsthand experience with what would become his literary bête noire—the Soviet Union. During World War II he served as Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence and played a key role in Allied espionage operations.After the war, he worked as foreign manager of the Sunday Times, a job that allowed him to spend two months each year in Jamaica. Here, in 1952, at his home “Goldeneye,” he wrote a book called Casino Royale—and James Bond was born. The first print run sold out within a month. For the next twelve years Fleming produced a novel a year featuring Special Agent 007, the most famous spy of the century. The Bond novels have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide, boosted by the hugely suc­cessful film franchise that began in 1962 with the release of Dr. No. His travels, interests, and wartime experience lent authority to everything he wrote. Based on those experiences, he wrote two pieces of nonfiction—Thrilling Cities and The Diamond Smugglers.He married Anne Rothermere in 1952. His story about a magical car, written in 1961 for their only son, Caspar, went on to become the well-loved novel and film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Fleming died of heart failure on August 12, 1964, at the age of fifty-six. www.ianfleming.com

As the super patriot and war veteran who’s bankrolling Britain’s top-secret Moonraker rocket program, Sir Hugo Drax should be above reproach. But there’s more to this enigmatic millionaire than he lets on. When M suspects Drax of cheating at cards in an exclusive gentleman’s club, he sends Bond in to investigate. But exposing the deception only enrages Drax—and now 007 must outwit an angry man with the power to loose a nuclear warhead on London. The mysterious death of the head of security at Drax’s missile base gives Bond the perfect opportunity to go undercover to find out the secret agenda of the supposed British war hero. With the help of another agent, the lustrous Gala Brand, 007 learns the truth about Drax’s battle scars, his wartime allegiances—and his murderous plans for the deployment of Moonraker.ReviewIrresistibly readable Observer About the AuthorIan Fleming was born in London on May 28, 1908. He was educated at Eton College and later spent a formative period studying languages in Europe. His first job was with Reuters News Agency where a Moscow posting gave him firsthand experience with what would become his literary bete noire—the Soviet Union. During World War II he served as Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence and played a key role in Allied espionage operations. After the war he worked as foreign manager of the Sunday Times, a job that allowed him to spend two months each year in Jamaica. Here, in 1952, at his home “Goldeneye,” he wrote a book called Casino Royale—and James Bond was born. The first print run sold out within a month. For the next twelve years Fleming produced a novel a year featuring Special Agent 007, the most famous spy of the century. His travels, interests, and wartime experience lent authority to everything he wrote. Raymond Chandler described him as “the most forceful and driving writer of thrillers in England.” Sales soared when President Kennedy named the fifth title, From Russia With Love, one of his favorite books. The Bond novels have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide, boosted by the hugely successful film franchise that began in 1962 with the release of Dr. No. He married Anne Rothermere in 1952. His story about a magical car, written in 1961 for their only son Caspar, went on to become the well- loved novel and film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Fleming died of heart failure on August 12, 1964, at the age of fifty-six.

Alpha Force are in the Caribbean, diving, when a sudden oil spill draws them into a new mission. All their skills — powerboating, scuba-diving and jetskiing — are needed when an underwater bomb explodes. And then an assassin strikes . . .

Joe Shelby — a brilliant and daring combat reporter for a big magazine he refers to as "the comic" — is an Englishman who is at home only in the world's trouble spots — Chechnya, Rwanda, Gaza — where he is face-to-face with murder, starvation, war crimes and the sound of bullets whistling past his ears. Now, after a life of triumphs, he must confront challenges he never imagined: lost love, incurable illness and failure both in his work and on his beloved high mountains.His partner is glamorous French photographer and former fashion model Faria Duclos: beautiful, cool, sexy and wildly intoxicated by taking incredible risks as she puts her life in jeopardy to capture with her battered Leica camera both war's killers and their victims — a woman high on danger who, in her own way, loves Joe.Eva Kimberly is a privileged white Kenyan about to marry her childhood sweetheart, Jeremy Davenport, when Joe and Faria explode into her life at a fancy lawn party given by her wealthy...

When hordes of people descend on the picturesque village of Nasely for the annual celebration of its most famous resident, murder mystery writer Agnes Crabbe, events take a dark turn as the festival opens with a shocking death.Each year the residents are outnumbered by crowds dressed as Crabbe's best-known character, the lady detective Millicent Cutter. The weekend is never a mild-mannered affair as fan club rivalries bubble below the surface, but tensions reach new heights when a second Crabbe devotee is found murdered. Though the police are quick to arrive on the scene, the facts are tricky to ascertain as the witnesses, suspects and victim are all dressed as Miss Cutter. And they all want to solve that crime too . . .

Mathias, a timorous, ineffectual traveling salesman, returns to the island of his birth after a long absence. Two days later, a thirteen-year-old girl is found drowned and mutilated. With eerie precision, Robbe-Grillet puts us at the scene of the crime and takes us inside Mathias's mind, artfully enlisting us as detective hot on the trail of a homocidal maniac. A triumphant display of the techniques of the “new novel," The Voyeur achieves the impossible feat of keeping us utterly engrossed in the mystery of the child's murder while systematically raising doubts about whether it really occurred.

"When I have a little money, I buy books. And if any is left, I buy food and clothing."--Desiderius ErasmusThose who share Erasmus's love of those curious bundles of paper bound together between hard or soft covers know exactly how he felt. These are the people who can spend hours browsing through a bookstore, completely oblivious not only to the passage of time but to everything else around them, the people for whom buying books is a necessity, not a luxury. A Passion for Books is a celebration of that love, a collection of sixty classic and contemporary essays, stories, lists, poems, quotations, and cartoons on the joys of reading, appreciating, and collecting books.This enriching collection leads off with science-fiction great Ray Bradbury's Foreword, in which he remembers his penniless days pecking out Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter, conjuring up a society so frightened of art that it burns its books. This struggle--financial and...

Open Season is a thrilling, eye-opening insider's view of a little-known facet of the political campaign process: the multi-million dollar opposition research industry, or “oppo” as it's called. For sixteen years authors Alan Huffman and Michael Rejebian have been digging up dirt on political candidates across the country, from presidential appointees to local school board hopefuls. Open Season is a fascinating, riveting, sometimes funny, sometimes shocking look at the unseen side of political campaigning—a remarkable chronicle of a year in the life of two guys on a dedicated hunt to uncover the buried truths that every American voter has a right to know.