The stories of five men unfairly condemned to death

Written by an investigative journalist, this book looks at professional killers, the people who hire them, and those who die at their hands. Among the true stories described are the story of the ultimate hitman, Carlos the Jackal, and how he was eventually brought to justice; the mother who hired a hitman to murder the wife of the son she could not bear to lose; and the story of Northern Ireland terrorist turned hitman Michael Boyle, whose hit on Jimmy Brindle, the infamous South London criminal, was captured on camera by police as he tried to execute his plan.

In 1952 a shopkeeper named Lily Volpert was murdered in the docks district of Cardiff, known as Tiger Bay. A Somali former merchant seaman, Mahmood Hussein Mattan, was charged with the murder, convicted and hanged. But 46 years later he became the first person in British history to have a murder conviction overturned after being executed. "Hanged for the Word If" is the first book in English about this historic case. Drawing on all the available documentary evidence, including the surviving records held by the police, it tells the story of the crime, the investigation, the trial and the execution. It traces the later history of some of the people involved, and relates how another murder and an attempted murder raised doubts about Mattan's guilt. It describes the campaign to reopen the case in the 1990s and the appeal that overturned his conviction. And finally it tries to answer the question of who really killed Lily Volpert in 1952.

When a Russian hit team catches up with Roman Tobinskiy, political opponent of Moscow and former FSB colleague of Alexander Litvinenko (murdered by polonium poisoning in 2006), it's an easy kill; he's lying helpless in a hospital bed. They realise too late that in an adjacent room is Clare Jardine, ex-MI6 officer, recovering from wounds while saving Harry Tate's life. When Clare goes on the run, Harry is ordered to track her down before the Russians reach her. It's one of his toughest challenges yet. For not only is Clare as adept at covering her tracks as Harry is himself, but the Russians are not the only ones chasing her. Harry is about to come up against an old enemy from his past. And if he is to save Clare’s life – as she saved his – he must seek help from a most unlikely source.

"The most balanced and comprehensive account of the Korean War." —The Economist Sixty years after North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea, the Korean War has not yet ended. Sheila Miyoshi Jager presents the first comprehensive history of this misunderstood war, one that risks involving the world’s superpowers—again. Her sweeping narrative ranges from the middle of the Second World War—when Korean independence was fiercely debated between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill—to the present day, as North Korea, with China’s aid, stockpiles nuclear weapons while starving its people. At the center of this conflict is an ongoing struggle between North and South Korea for the mantle of Korean legitimacy, a "brother’s war," which continues to fuel tensions on the Korean peninsula and the region. Drawing from newly available diplomatic archives in China, South Korea, and the former Soviet Union, Jager analyzes top-level military strategy. She brings to life the bitter struggles of the postwar period and shows how the conflict between the two Koreas has continued to evolve to the present, with important and tragic consequences for the region and the world. Her portraits of the many fascinating characters that populate this history—Truman, MacArthur, Kim Il Sung, Mao, Stalin, and Park Chung Hee—reveal the complexities of the Korean War and the repercussions this conflict has had on lives of many individuals, statesmen, soldiers, and ordinary people, including the millions of hungry North Koreans for whom daily existence continues to be a nightmarish struggle. The most accessible, up-to date, and balanced account yet written, illustrated with dozens of astonishing photographs and maps, Brothers at War will become the definitive chronicle of the struggle’s origins and aftermath and its global impact for years to come.

The death penalty has inspired controversy for centuries. Raising questions regarding capital punishment rather than answering them, Questioning Capital Punishment offers the footing needed to allow for more informed consideration and analysis of these controversies. Acker edits judicial decisions that have addressed constitutional challenges to capital punishment and its administration in the United States and uses complementary materials to offer historical, empirical, and normative perspectives about death penalty policies and practices. This book is ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes in criminal justice.

Reported from inside Cuba by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Andres Oppenheimer, Castro's Final Hour chronicles the dramatic events that have crippled the more-than-three-decades-old Marxist regime of Fidel Castro. From the execution of the country's most celebrated Army general in 1989 to the devastating effects of the loss of all Soviet aid, the picture Oppenheimer paints is extraordinarily detailed and engrossing, revealing a country on the brink of disaster. He uncovers Castro's never-before reported efforts to radicalize Noriega's regime in Panama, the failure of his "Zero Option" plan to restore economic stability without outside aid, and tells how, in a last ditch attempt to save the country from its dire slide, Castro's top aides pushed a plan to strip him of some of his powers. Including exclusive interviews with Soviet officials, Latin American leaders - including Daniel Ortega and Manuel Noriega - as well as the top echelon of current Cuban leadership and Fidel's dissident daughter, Alina, Castro's Final Hour is a compelling and intimate portrait of the Cuban leader, and an authoritative evaluation of what the future may hold for his country.