Disclaimer

When a double agent in Cuba suddenly disappears, there is concern that he might have gone rogue, working against ROOM 59 and the world at large. But one of the agency's top spymasters has a blood tie to the operative in question, which leaves him with an agonizing choice: allow the mission to be scrubbed, and leave thousands to die in the resulting bloodbath―or risk everything he knows, including his career, to keep his secret deeply buried.

Their name is a byword for immense wealth and power, but before their renown as art patrons and noblemen the Medicis built their fortune on banking—specifically, on lending money at interest. Banking in the fifteenth century, even at the height of the Renaissance, meant running afoul of the Catholic Church's prohibition against usury. It required more than merely financial skills to make a profit, and the legendary Medicis—most famously Cosimo and Lorenzo ("the Magnificent")—were masterly in wielding the political, diplomatic, military, and even metaphysical tools that were needed to maintain their family's position.

In this brisk and witty narrative, Tim Parks uncovers the intrigues, dodges, and moral qualities that gave the Medicis their edge. Vividly evoking the richness of the Florentine Renaissance and the Medicis' glittering circle, replete with artists, popes, and kings, Medici Money is a brilliant look into the origins of modern banking and its troubled relationship with art and religion. 14 illustrations.

A riveting white-water ride down a raging river in the Italian Alps, pitting people against Nature, in the novel Tim Parks was born to write.<

One last mission

When crisis looms and politics and red tape conspire against effective measures, the International Intelligence Agency plays its hidden hand. Now the spymasters of Room 59—dedicated, dangerous and willing to push the limit—get the green light to eradicate the threat.

One last chance

Room 59 agent Alex Tempest has a secret: a degenerative illness that may end his career as a field operative. But first he accepts one final mission. And…it's personal. A research facility in China has built the ultimate biological weapon. Alex's job: infi ltrate and destroy. His wife works at the biotech company's stateside lab, and Alex fears danger is poised to hit home. But when Alex is captured, his personal and professional worlds collide in a last, desperate gamble to stop ruthless masterminds from unleashing virulent, unstoppable death.

How does an Italian become Italian? Or an Englishman English, for that matter? Are foreigners born, or made? In Tim Parks focuses on his own young children in the small village near Verona where he lives, building a fascinating picture of the contemporary Italian family at school, at home, at work and at play. The result is a delight: at once a family book and a travel book, not quite enamoured with either children or Italy, but always affectionate, always amused and always amusing.<

ON ALERT.

A nuclear bomb has gone missing. At the same time Room 59, a covert unit of the International Intelligence Agency created to fi ght terrorist cells, intercepts a communiqué from U.S. Border Patrol agent Nathaniel Spencer. A known terrorist, thought to be dead, is back in business.

.AND UNDERCOVER

Tracy Wentworth is working for the Department of Homeland Security when she's contacted by Room 59 for an inside job. Aligned with Agent Spencer and backed up by Room 59's considerable resources, they are to assess and eliminate the threat, using any means necessary. But as they delve deeper into Mexico's criminal underworld, it soon becomes clear that someone is planning a massive attack against America.one that would render the entire nation completely defenseless!

Officially, it doesn't exist. Off the books, Room 59 is mandated to disrupt and terminate threats that bury official channels in red tape. Driven, dedicated and extremely efficient, the elite agents recruited for the ultimate spy game ply their trade below the radar and on the razor's edge of action.and sudden death.

New recruit Jason Siku is ex-CIA, a cold, calculating agent with black ops skills and a brilliant mind - a loner perfect for deep espionage work. Using his Inuit heritage and a search for his lost family as covers, he tracks intelligence reports of a new Russian Oscar-class submarine capable of reigniting the Cold War. But when Jason discovers weapons smugglers and an idealistic yet dangerous brother he never knew existed, the line between his mission and a secret hope collide with deadly consequences.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Garrett Dylan for his contribution to this work.

In the bestselling Italian Neighbours, Tim Parks explores the idiosyncrasies and nuances of Italian culture. When Parks moved to Italy he found it irresistible; this book is a testament to his love of Italy and his attention to the details of everyday Italian life.<

Sex is forbidden at the Dasgupta Institute. So what is the sparkling, magnetically attractive Beth Marriot doing here? Why is a young woman whose irrepressible vitality and confident ego were once set on conquest and stardom, now spending month after month serving in the vegetarian kitchen of a bizarrely severe Buddhist retreat?

Beth is fighting demons: a catastrophic series of events has undermined all prospect of happiness. Trauma leaves her no alternative but to bury herself in the austere asceticism of a community that wakes at 4am, doesn't permit eye contact, let alone speech, and keeps men and women strictly segregated. But the curious self dies hard. Conflicted and wayward, Beth stumbles on a diary and cannot keep away from it, or the man who wrote it. And the more she yearns for the purity of the retreat's silent priestess, the more she desires the priestess herself.

The espionage game has a brand-new rule book. Agents joining the international clandestine group known as Room 59 are the new spymasters. Working beyond the reach of government bureaucracy, Room 59 recruits only the best of the best. The risks, the rewards―and the rush―are worth everything, including the ultimate sacrifice.

After a routine surveillance mission on a quiet London street goes awry, operative David Southerland-s reaction leaves him branded a cowboy. While his quick thinking gained valuable intelligence, breaching procedure is a violation that can end a career―or a life. His future in question, Southerland embarks on a desperate pursuit through the capitals of Europe. His mission is to hunt down the beautiful thief in possession of highly classifi ed security information. But the Room 59 agent is not the only hunter. Other very dangerous players are also seeking the prize, and he could become the prey….

Espionage takes to the twenty-first century playing fields, where rules are broken and remade outside the reach of governments and the law. Agents recruited for the clandestine organization known as Room 59 play hard, play for keeps…or die trying. But now new Room 59 agent Ajza Manaev, a top MI6 operative, discovers just how high the stakes really are when she goes undercover inside Chechnya's terrorist training camps, where bitter young widows harness their hate as suicide bombers. Ajza doesn't know she's being manipulated by many sides of a deadly game. Her mysterious Room 59 handler has his own agenda, while the secret, silent mastermind behind a global destabilization plot hopes to push Ajza's loyalties to the breaking point. And in a game where the ground is always shifting, Ajza is inducted by hellfire into Room 59's harsh reality: she's on her own.

In the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, thousands of desperate refugees fled the killing fields for new lives in Southern California. But for those who settled in “Little Saigon,” the war never really ended. The latest victim of the continuing struggle is Li Frye, a popular singer whose songs of hope and home have made her a heroine to her people. Ripped from the stage by masked gunmen, she has vanished into the dark alleys of Little Saigon, where outsiders are met with suspicion and a stony silence as impenetrable as the steaming jungles of Vietnam.

Local surfing legend turned reporter Chuck Frye knows what it means to be an outsider. The black sheep of his wealthy family, Chuck is more at home on a longboard than in a boardroom. But Li is his sister-in-law, and he cannot sit back and let his family or the clueless police investigate the case alone. What Chuck cannot know is that he stands upon the crest of a deadly wave, a swirling vortex of corruption and violence that reaches to the highest levels of the United States intelligence community. And even as he comes closer to the truth, he draws nearer to a terrible secret that many would kill to keep.

Enigmatic and sexy, Professor Gabriel Emerson is a well respected Dante specialist by day, but by night he devotes himself to an uninhibited life of pleasure. He uses his notorious good looks and sophisticated charm to gratify his every whim, but is secretly tortured by his dark past and consumed by the profound belief that he is beyond all hope of redemption. When the sweet and innocent Julia Mitchell enrolls as his graduate student, his attraction and mysterious connection to her not only jeopardizes his career, but sends him on a journey in which his past and his present collide. An intriguing and sinful exploration of seduction, forbidden love and redemption, "Gabriel's Inferno" is a captivating and wildly passionate tale of one man's escape from his own personal hell as he tries to earn the impossible…forgiveness and love.<

George Crawley has finally got his life running along satisfyingly straight lines. Having made a success of his career and saved his faltering marriage, he is secure in the belief that he is master of his own destiny. Then comes the tragic blow — fate presents him with an apparently insoluble problem. Except that the word 'insoluble' just isn't part of the man's vocabulary. George will stop at nothing, , to get his life back on the rails again.<

A book of stories, or "narrations," by the finest Catalan writer of his generation. In this beautiful work, translated into English for the first time, Pla transcribes his witnessings of basic truths: the waves of the sea, the hardness of rolled tobacco. The reader feels tangibly the pleasure with which Pla puts the sensual and real on paper.<

Detective Sgt. Frederick Hume is called Round Freddy by friend and foe alike because of his girth and easy way of dealing with unusual situations, but he's puzzled by the abduction of a young woman from the Bootham Park Insane Asylum in the middle of a quiet Spring night in 1910. Investigating the kidnapping, with a fire-breathing chief constable continually at his back to deliver results quickly, Round Freddy uncovers a web of lies, deceit, embezzlement and murder. Round Freddy finds he has a roomful of suspects, including an unscrupulous banker, two shadowy financial fixers, a pair of lowlife ruffians, and even her uncle, a church vicar. Round Freddy scours York, England, for the woman until he's able to put together the puzzle pieces that allow him to make a final effort to get her back and clap the irons on those responsible.<

Alan Pauls, one of Latin American literature’s rising stars, combines the intimate and the political in a novel that, although it is set in Argentina in the 1970s and ’80s, will bring to mind books like Choire Sicha’s and Sam Lipsyte’s in its subtle, brilliant depiction of the place of money in its protagonists’ lives.

It begins with a body: a top executive of an iron and steel company dies after his helicopter, traveling toward the factory where he is due to meet with striking workers, plummets into the river. The briefcase full of money which he was carrying disappears without a trace. Accident, or assassination? And where is the money?

And his individual story is echoed in the larger story of Argentina in the 1970s and ’80s, where money is everything: promise and punishment, dream and disaster. An intensely evocative novel from one of the world’s most exciting new writers.