Dongzhou City needs a new Mayor. Government corridors are awash with rumor and subterfuge as the local Communist Party mandarins go through the motions of selecting a candidate. Dangerous factions begin to form around the two contenders, Liu Yihe and Peng Guoliang. Devious plots, seduction, blackmail and bribery are all on the table in a no-holds-barred scramble for political prestige and personal gain. At the center of it all is a notebook whose pages contain information they shouldn't. Penned by a former insider, this book offers a glimpse into the distorted psyches of those who roam the guarded halls of Chinese political power. "Serve the people" is just about the last thing on their minds.

Although it is seldom recognised as such by the public, the civil service is a profession like any other. The UK civil service employs 400,000 people across the country, with over 20,000 students and graduates applying to enter every year through its fast-stream competition alone. Martin Stanley's seminal How to Be a Civil Servant was the first guidebook to the British civil service ever published. It remains the only comprehensive guide on how civil servants should effectively carry out their duties, hone their communication skills and respond to professional, ethical and technical issues relevant to the job. It addresses such questions as: How do you establish yourself with your minister as a trusted adviser? How should you feed the media so they don’t feed on you? What’s the best way to deal with potential conflicts of interest? This fully updated new edition provides the latest advice, and is a must-read for newly appointed civil servants and for those looking to enter the profession – not to mention students, academics, journalists, politicians and anyone with an interest in the inner workings of the British government.

From “America’s preeminent spy novelist” (The New York Times) comes a fast-paced, mesmerizing thriller of the French resistance fighters working secretly and bravely to defeat Hitler. Occupied Paris, 1942. Just before he dies, a man being chased by the Gestapo hands off a strange-looking document to the unsuspecting novelist Paul Ricard. It looks like a blueprint of a part for a military weapon, one that might have important information for the Allied forces. Ricard realizes he must try to get the diagram into the hands of members of the resistance network. As Ricard finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into anti-Nazi efforts and increasingly dangerous espionage assignments, he travels to Germany and along the escape routes of underground resistance safe houses to spy on Nazi maneuvers. When he meets the mysterious and beautiful Leila, a professional spy, they begin to work together to get crucial information out of France and into the hands of the Allied forces in London.

Susan Orlean’s bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is “a sheer delight…as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library” (USA TODAY)—a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries. “Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book” (The Washington Post). On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a “delightful…reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in America” (New York magazine) that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In the “exquisitely written, consistently entertaining” (The New York Times) The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries; brings each department of the library to vivid life; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. “A book lover’s dream…an ambitiously researched, elegantly written book that serves as a portal into a place of history, drama, culture, and stories” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country.

Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World explores the inescapable tensions and ambiguities in the relationship between art and the state, revealing the ethical complexities that lurk behind what might seem mere goodwill diplomatic tours. Author Mark Katz makes the case that hip hop can be a valuable, positive, and effective means to promote meaningful and productive international relations between people and nations.

If you've ever heard a Jewish, Italian, Irish, Libyan, Catholic, Mexican, Polish, Norwegian, or an Essex Girl, Newfie, Mother-in-Law, or joke aimed at a minority, this book of Civil servant jokes is for you. In this not-so-original book, The Best Ever Book of Civil servant Jokes; Lots and Lots of Jokes Specially Repurposed for You-Know-Who, Mark Young takes a whole lot of tired, worn out jokes and makes them funny again. The Best Ever Book of Civil servant Jokes is so unoriginal, it's original. And, if you don't burst out laughing from at least one Civil servant joke in this book, there's something wrong with you. This book has so many Civil servant jokes, you won't know where to start. For example: Why do Civil servants wear slip-on shoes? You need an IQ of at least 4 to tie a shoelace. *** An evil genie captured a Civil servant and her two friends and banished them to the desert for a week. The genie allowed each person to bring one thing. The first friend brought a canteen so he wouldn't die of thirst. The second friend brought an umbrella to keep the sun off. The Civil servant brought a car door, because if it got too hot she could just roll down the window! *** Did you hear about the Civil servant who wore two jackets when she painted the house? The instructions on the can said: "Put on two coats." *** Why do Civil servants laugh three times when they hear a joke? Once when it is told, once when it is explained to them, and once when they understand it.