Written by Chris Booker, Darren Grey, Tim Gayda, Allen Farr, Lisa Wolf, Ulla Susimetsä, Marko Susimetsä, Rose Thurlbeck, Alexander Saunders, Gareth Bailey, Nicholas Hansen, Ramon Marett, Frederick Burbidge, Matthew Benson and Christopher Jarvis under official license from the creators of, and based in the vast universe of, the seminal space trading computer game Elite: Dangerous. Cover design by Heather Murphy. Orbital scrap yard worker Oliver dreams of exploring the galaxy, but when the return of a long lost friend sparks a terrible disaster, can Oliver deal with some uncomfortable truths about his own life? - A Game of Death Chenoa O'Laundy is on a mission to find her missing father and bring him home safely, but can either of them escape the Calite Corporation, determined to reclaim their property at any cost? - A Question of Intelligence Myles Jarek is a company man on a far flung exploratory mission with a hired crew. Will he be able to return to his previous life or will the Children of Zeus stay with him forever? - Children of Zeus These are three of 15 scintillating tales in this eclectic collection where characters from the Elite universe seek honour, truth, retribution and in one case a place to sell 300 year old Lavian brandy. The Stories Crossing The Line by Chris Booker The Comet's Trail by Darren Grey A Question of Intelligence by Lisa Wolf The Easy Way Out by Ramon Marett The Maledict by Tim Gayda Children of Zeus by Christopher Jarvis Pinacotheca by Alexander G Saunders Blood is Thicker by Ulla Susimetsä Beyond Civilisation by Marko Susimetsä Cat's Cradle by Rose Thurlbeck Nature's Way by Gaz Bailey A Game of Death by Allen L Farr Mission (almost) Completed by Matthew Benson Research Purposes by Fred Burbidge Ode to Betty Cole by Nicholas Hansen and Darren Grey 10% of the proceeds of this book will be donated to Plan who do wonderful work promoting child rights to end child poverty, worldwide.

After 23 years of working with award-winning coaches and record-breaking athletesÊwho span multiple sports (NFL, MLB, NHL, Pro Rodeo, NBA, etc.), Dr. Spencer Baron has identified what works "consistently for the amazing."Ê When implementing these "secrets," tremendous results occur for average people like you andÊme. Spencer will transform your body and mind to generate top performance by getting better, faster, and with greater energy. Your employees and executives will experience the same things! áÊCreate greater clarity and focus; áÊImprove efficiency by increasing energy for optimal performance; á Help strengthen the strong. With the economy spiraling out of control -Ê the increases in stress, pressure, and tensionÊare cause for greater disease and injury.Ê People are desperate to take matters into their own hands just to survive.There is only one area you can gain power overÉ by making the right choices to fuel the most critical commodity of life - our ENERGY! Learn the performance secrets of professional athletes so you, too, can impact your daily behavior.Ê "Secrets of the Game" will provide you the physical and emotional heath that is the foundation to any achievement.

Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy ... weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories." In 1943 it became known under the cover name Special Reconnaissance Department (SRD) and included some British officers who had escaped from Singapore. After arriving in Australia, they assembled in Melbourne, forming the nucleus of ISD and together with some Australians established what became the Z Special Unit. Training began in a number of locations around Australia including on Fraser Island off the Queensland coast, In Broken Bay near Sydney, at Careening Bay in Western Australia, at the “House on the Hill” in Cairns and at East Arm near Darwin. From these training areas and bases, Z Special undertook intelligence gathering and raiding missions throughout Southeast Asia including New Guinea, Singapore, Timor, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam and the Dutch East Indies. The first operation was Jaywick in September 1943. Led by a 28 year old officer from the Gordon Highlanders, Captain Ivan Lyon. Using an old Japanese fishing boat renamed Krait this captured vessel was re-fitted and provisioned for a voyage from Australia to just south of Singapore where it released six commandos in three folding kayaks to attack Japanese shipping in the harbour. They placed limpet mines on several Japanese ships sinking 40,000 tons of shipping. After the successful attack, they paddled south, were picked up by the Krait and successfully returned to Australia. This was followed by Operation Rimau again led by Lyon but this time things went very wrong very early. Identified, they made a fighting withdrawal but all of the raiding party were shot or captured, with the last ten being executed just before the end of the war. Important in Z Special operations were a number of vessels designated “snake boats”. Four 66’ modified trawlers were constructed as well as a range of Asian vessels that allowed their operation in South East Asian areas of operation. One Z Special, the last in PNG, set out on the night of the 11 April 1945. Eight operatives were landed on the Japanese held island of Muschu about five kilometres off the coast near Wewak to determine the status of two 140mm Japanese naval guns that had been placed there. These guns would prove dangerous to planned naval landings at Wewak, and allied command needed to know if these were operational. The operatives were launched in four double folding kayaks from a HTML fast crash boat but the current carried them away from their landing position and the surf capsized their boats. The men swam ashore but both their radio and their signal torches had been destroyed and the men had no way of connecting with the return crash boat. Soon their lost equipment was found by the Japanese and a massive search with 1,000 troops scoured the island. Quite soon seven of the eight men had been captured, killed or died trying to swim to the mainland and only one man, Sergeant ‘Mick’ Dennis remained. Over the next three days he continued a one man war, fighting off Japanese patrols and living off the land. Unable to do this for long, he took to the dangerous shark and crocodile infested waters and with the aid of a log, paddled to the mainland. Landing on a Japanese controlled beach, he snuck ashore and after further firefights and a difficult journey travelling west, he finally was found by an Australian patrol. Mick Dennis was able to provide valuable information and for his service and bravery, was awarded a Military Medal. During the course of the war, Z Special Unit carried out 81 covert operations in the Southwest Pacific theatre. While the unit was disbanded after the end of the war, many of its techniques would be modified and used by Australian Special Forces to this day.

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year The untold story of how Russian espionage in imperial China shaped the emergence of the Russian Empire as a global power. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire made concerted efforts to collect information about China. It bribed Chinese porcelain-makers to give up trade secrets, sent Buddhist monks to Mongolia on intelligence-gathering missions, and trained students at its Orthodox mission in Beijing to spy on their hosts. From diplomatic offices to guard posts on the Chinese frontier, Russians were producing knowledge everywhere, not only at elite institutions like the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. But that information was secret, not destined for wide circulation. Gregory Afinogenov distinguishes between the kinds of knowledge Russia sought over the years and argues that they changed with the shifting aims of the state and its perceived place in the world. In the seventeenth century, Russian bureaucrats were focused on China and the forbidding Siberian frontier. They relied more on spies, including Jesuit scholars stationed in China. In the early nineteenth century, the geopolitical challenge shifted to Europe: rivalry with Britain drove the Russians to stake their prestige on public-facing intellectual work, and knowledge of the East was embedded in the academy. None of these institutional configurations was especially effective in delivering strategic or commercial advantages. But various knowledge regimes did have their consequences. Knowledge filtered through Russian espionage and publication found its way to Europe, informing the encounter between China and Western empires. Based on extensive archival research in Russia and beyond, Spies and Scholars breaks down long-accepted assumptions about the connection between knowledge regimes and imperial power and excavates an intellectual legacy largely neglected by historians.

Dubbed an "agent of British imperialism" by Joseph Stalin, Reginald Teague-Jones (1889- 1988) was the quintessential English spy whose exceptional story is recounted in this new biography. He studied in St Petersburg, participated in the 1905 Revolution and spent the rest of his life working for various branches of British secret intelligence. Plunging into the Great Game, he participated in daring operations against the Bolsheviks and tracked down a turbulent German agent, Wilhelm Wassmuss, who was spreading anti-British propaganda in Persia. Teague-Jones was also held responsible for the execution of 'the 26 Commissars' after the fall of the Baku Commune in 1918. This became one of the Soviet Union's most powerful cults of martyrology, inspiring a poem by Yesenin, a Brodsky painting, a 1933 feature film and an immense monument. Shortly after, Teague-Jones changed his name to Ronald Sinclair and adopted a secret persona for the next five decades, for part of which he worked undercover in the United States as an expert on Indian, Soviet and Middle-Eastern affairs, possibly in collaboration with the OSS, the new American secret service. In his swan song in espionage he kept a gimlet eye on the Soviet delegation to the UN in New York. For these reasons, and many others besides, Reginald Teague-Jones is the most important British spy you have never heard of.