{"title":"Mortalis","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"accidental-american-book-alex-carr-9780812977080","title":"An Accidental American","description":"Forced out of a self-imposed exile, one woman faces a lifetime's worth of secrets and betrayal-all in the name of staying alive. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNicole Blake had planned to leave her criminal life in the past. She had done her time in a dank prison in Marseille and relinquished the world of forgery and counterfeiting for an unassuming career as a freelance consultant. Now her world is a small farm in the French Pyrenees, with daily fresh eggs and the companionship of her devoted dog. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBut when U.S. intelligence operative John Valsamis shows up at her door, Nicole is reminded that she'll always be an ex-con. Valsamis is after Nicole's former lover, Rahim Ali, and soon Nicole finds herself back in Lisbon, tracking down Rahim in all their old haunts. Except now Rahim isn't just a document forger-he's a suspected terrorist. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eUnwittingly drawn into an international web of fundamentalism, crime, and corruption, Nicole discovers that its threads stretch from the cobbled streets of Lisbon to the once-beautiful city of her birth, Beirut, and to the top levels of the government that sent Valsamis to find her. And as with any good web, the harder Nicole fights to free herself, the tighter it closes around her. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Thought-provoking . . . The gritty atmosphere is perfectly drawn, and complex layers of lies and betrayal keep the reader happily guessing up to the end.\u003cbr\u003e-\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eChilling and utterly believable, \u003ci\u003eAn Accidental American\u003c\/i\u003e hurls the reader into the dark and forbidding world of espionage. Not to be missed.\u003cbr\u003e-Gayle Lynds, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Last Spymaster\u003cbr\u003e______________________________________________________________ \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eTHE MORTALIS DOSSIER- ALEX CARR'S NOTE ON THE BOMBING OF THE AMERICAN EMBASSY IN BEIRUT\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn April 18, 1983, at one o'clock in the afternoon, a van carrying two\u003cbr\u003ethousand pounds of explosives blew up outside the American embassy\u003cbr\u003ein Beirut, killing sixty-three people. Among the victims were\u003cbr\u003eseventeen Americans, eight of whom represented the Central Intelligence\u003cbr\u003eAgency's entire Middle East contingent. In the years preceding\u003cbr\u003ethe bombing, an increasing number of attacks on Western and\u003cbr\u003eIsraeli interests had been carried out by Palestinian and Muslim extremists, \u003cbr\u003ebut the Beirut bombing was widely seen as a watershed\u003cbr\u003eevent for American policies in the region. With the exception of the\u003cbr\u003eseizure of the American embassy in Tehran four years earlier, an act\u003cbr\u003ethat was carried out within the framework of Iran's Islamic revolution, \u003cbr\u003ethe embassy bombing represented the first time America had\u003cbr\u003ebeen so directly and bloodily targeted by Islamic terrorists for its military\u003cbr\u003einvolvement in the Middle East.\u003cbr\u003eIt's impossible to see why the United States was such an unwelcome\u003cbr\u003eforce without an understanding of the history of Lebanon and\u003cbr\u003ethe surrounding region, and of American and Western involvement\u003cbr\u003ein the politics of the Middle East in general. Though Lebanon has\u003cbr\u003eexisted in one form or another since the ninth century b.c., the modern\u003cbr\u003ecountry of Lebanon was not established until 1920, when it was\u003cbr\u003egranted to the French as part of a system of mandates established for\u003cbr\u003ethe administration of former Turkish and German territories following\u003cbr\u003eWorld War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, almost\u003cbr\u003eall of what we think of as the modern Middle East was shaped\u003cbr\u003eby these mandates.\u003cbr\u003eAmerica's first direct intervention in Lebanese politics came in\u003cbr\u003e1946. During World War II, Lebanon had been declared a free state\u003cbr\u003ein order to liberate it from Vichy control. But when, after the war, \u003cbr\u003eLebanon eventually moved toward full independence, the French\u003cbr\u003ebalked, and the United States, Britain, and several Arab governments\u003cbr\u003estepped in to support Lebanese independence. It was at this time\u003cbr\u003ethat Lebanon's system of political power sharing was devised. Well\u003cbr\u003eaware of the country's shaky precolonial past and determined to keep\u003cbr\u003eLebanon intact, the fledgling nationalist government agreed to split\u003cbr\u003epower along sectarian lines, based on the numbers of the 1932 census.\u003cbr\u003eIt was a well-intentioned plan, but one that inadvertently set the\u003cbr\u003estage for decades of strife and civil war.\u003cbr\u003eThe power-sharing government's first major stumbling block came\u003cbr\u003ewith the partitioning of the British Mandate of Palestine in the wake\u003cbr\u003eof World War II, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed. The\u003cbr\u003eensuing influx of some 100,000 Palestinian refugees into Lebanon\u003cbr\u003eproved a strain on the carefully crafted power-sharing system. Tensions\u003cbr\u003ewere further exacerbated in 1956, when Egyptian president\u003cbr\u003eGamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, provoking the\u003cbr\u003eUnited States, along with Britain, France, and Israel, to respond with\u003cbr\u003emilitary force. While Lebanese Muslims wanted the government to\u003cbr\u003eback the newly created United Arab Republic, Christians fought to\u003cbr\u003ekeep the nation allied with the West. In 1958, with the country teetering\u003cbr\u003eon the brink of civil war, the United States sent marines into\u003cbr\u003eLebanon to support the government of President Camille Chamoun, \u003cbr\u003ethus inextricably linking itself with Christian forces.\u003cbr\u003eIt was an alliance that would be tested when, nearly two decades\u003cbr\u003elater, sectarian rivalries finally erupted into full-scale civil war. While\u003cbr\u003eLebanon had enjoyed a period of relative peace and prosperity, tensions\u003cbr\u003ebetween the United States and the Soviet Union, and between\u003cbr\u003ethe United States and Iran, had escalated significantly, as had tensions\u003cbr\u003ebetween the Israelis and the Palestinians. By the spring of\u003cbr\u003e1975-when gunmen from the Christian Phalange militia attacked a\u003cbr\u003ebus in the suburbs of Beirut and massacred twenty-seven Palestinians\u003cbr\u003eon board in what is widely agreed to have been the first act of the\u003cbr\u003ecivil war-the forces at work in Lebanon were not merely internal\u003cbr\u003eones. The Cold War, as well as the larger Arab-Israeli conflict, were\u003cbr\u003eboth","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49995712364817,"sku":"CIN0812977084G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812977084.jpg?v=1751233319"},{"product_id":"blood-of-paradise-book-david-corbett-9780812977332","title":"Blood of Paradise","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50294092333329,"sku":"CIN0812977335G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50307033661713,"sku":"CIN0812977335VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812977335.jpg?v=1750946866"},{"product_id":"hidden-man-book-anthony-flacco-9780812977585","title":"The Hidden Man","description":"1915. 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Homicide detective Randall Blackburn and his adopted son, Shane Nightingale, must combine their intuitive profiling skills deductive techniques to solve a murder that hasn't happened yet . . . one that only its terrified intended victim can see coming. \u003cbr\u003ePraise for Anthony Flacco's The Last Nightingale \u003cbr\u003eFlacco imagines the chaos  of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake] in precise and vivid detail while contributing his own distinctive narrative touch.\u003cbr\u003e-The New York Times \u003cbr\u003eGripping . . .  Flacco's] screenwriting talent shines in this story of the earth's destructive power and humanity's moral depravity. . . . Dickens meets Hannibal Lecter. 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Dubbed the Bobbed Haired Bandit by the press, the petite thief continued her escapades in the months that followed, pulling off increasingly spectacular robberies, writing taunting notes to police officials, and eluding the biggest manhunt in New York City history. When laundress Celia Cooney was finally caught in Florida and brought back to New York, media attention grew to a fever pitch. Crowds gathered at the courts and jails where she appeared, the public clamored to know her story, and newspapers and magazines nationwide obliged by publishing sensational front-page articles. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eCelia Cooney was a celebrity, a symbol of the lawlessness of Prohibition-era New York City, a cultural icon of the Jazz Age. \u003ci\u003eThe Bobbed Haired Bandit \u003c\/i\u003ecaptures what William Randolph Hearst's newspaper called the strangest, weirdest, most dramatic, most tragic human interest story ever told. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA wild ride . . . a thumping good read . . . It's true crime, it's top-notch American history, it's flat-out fun-grab it.\u003cbr\u003e-Caleb Carr, author of\u003ci\u003e The Alienist\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRiveting . . . an absolute winner.\u003cbr\u003e-\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith crisp prose and a lively selection of newspaper photographs, headlines, cartoons, and excerpts, authors Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson tell a story of an outlaw couple and, through them, the story of an era. \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e-The Boston Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA phenomenally complete work of historical literature: gripping, suspenseful, fast-moving, kaleidoscopic, gimlet-eyed, analytic, penetrating, sympathetic, and oddly tender.\u003cbr\u003e-Luc Sante, author of \u003ci\u003eLow Life\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFascinating . . .  a] historical account that reads like Doctorow.\u003cbr\u003e-\u003ci\u003eCrimespree Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBrings alive the darker side of flapper-era Manhattan.\u003cbr\u003e-\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50484636844305,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50484637466897,"sku":"CIN0812977351G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53392867524881,"sku":"CIN0812977351VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812977351.jpg?v=1751330181"},{"product_id":"do-they-know-i-m-running-book-david-corbett-9780812977554","title":"Do They Know I'm Running?","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51322899005713,"sku":"CIN0812977556VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51413911699729,"sku":"CIN0812977556G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52948551532817,"sku":"CIN0812977556A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812977556.jpg?v=1751201282"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-mortalis.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}