Hijack, Betrayal, Murder -- The Ultimate Suspense In this classic Cold War novel, Payne Harrison straps you in for a techno-thriller ride as the superpowers square off to control the strategic high ground of space. Crippled and silent, the Intrepid orbits the earth. On board is a military payload so secret that only the most senior defense and intelligence officials know of its existence. But as Space Command mounts a mission to rescue a crew they fear is dead, a spy satellite eavesdrops on an astounding transmission between the shuttle and a ground station deep in the heart of the Soviet Union. An SR-71 Blackbird spyplane is scrambled to brave the full fury of the Soviet air defense forces, and confirms a horrific suspicion. The shuttle and its irreplaceable payload are under Russian control!

Black Cipher signals the dawn of the cryptothriller. Payne Harrison, the author of the best-selling Storming Intrepid and Thunder of Erebus, spins his narrative magic vet again -- this time exploring the fascinating but clandestine world of codebreaking and signals intelligence. Secluded in the quiet Gloucestershire township of Cheltenham is the hypersecret codebreaking and signals intelligence enclave of the British spy machine. Known as Government Communications Headquarters, it is home to a small army of eavesdroppers, linguists, and codebreakers who secretly probe the airwaves for the defense of the realm. Within this high-tech fortress is a man of great mystery, urbanity, and elan, whose powers in the field of cryptanalysis are nothing short of legendary. His name is Faisal Shaikh, and when an unusual encrypted message crosses his desk, it is like a siren's song to his codebreaking skills. Calling upon all of his knowledge and intuition, Faisal finally unlocks its secrets, and thereby casts himself as a man who knows too much in the eyes of a powerful, mysterious clique at the highest levels of the British government. To find the key to the possibly unbreakable Black Cipher messages, Faisal Shaikh embarks upon a global quest -- from Japan to Australia, from Fort Meade to Belfast. His only hope is to tear away the veil that conceals a menacing, invisible government lurking within the halls of Westminster before his time -- and his luck -- run out.

Cheyenne Mountain is the nerve center of America's early warning system. Four unidentified aircraft are sited and tracked on a controlled descent over North America. Intelligence officer Frank Hannon is puzzled by the official response--or lack of it. So begins his personal investigation into the ultimate government cover-up. A journey that ends on a lonely desert mesa--where the truth is waiting.

James Fitzjames was a hero of the early nineteenth-century Royal Navy. A charismatic man with a wicked sense of humour, he pursued his naval career with wily determination. When he joined the Franklin Expedition at the age of 32 he thought he would make his name. But instead the expedition completely disappeared and he never returned. Its fate is one of history's last great unsolved mysteries, as were the origins and background of James Fitzjames – until now. Fitzjames packed a great deal into his thirty-two years. He had sailed an iron paddle steamer down the River Euphrates and fought with spectacular bravery in wars in Syria and China. But Fitzjames was not what he seemed. He concealed several secrets, including the scandal of his birth, the source of his influence and his plans for after the Franklin Expedition. In this first complete biography of the captain of the HMS Erebus, William Battersby draws extensively on Fitzjames' personal letters and journals – most never published before – as well as official naval records, to strip away 200 years of misinformation and half-truths and enables us to understand for the first time this intriguing man and his significance for the Franklin Expedition.

An "excellent," darkly-told crime novel in the tradition of Tana French and Ian Rankin (Wall Street Journal). Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi is a recent transfer from the London metro police to the rugged Kentish countryside. She's done little to ingratiate herself with her new colleagues, who find her too brash, urban, and -- to make matters worse -- she investigated her first partner, a veteran detective, and had him arrested on murder charges. Now assigned the brash young Constable Jill Ferriter to look after, she's facing another bizarre case: a woman found floating in local marsh land, dead of no apparent cause. The case gets even stranger when the detectives contact the victim's next of kin, her son, a high-powered graphic designer living in London. Adopted at the age of two, he'd never known his mother, he tells the detectives, until a homeless womanknocked on his door, claiming to be his mother, just the night before: at the same time her body was being dredged from the water. Juggling the case, her aging mother, her teenage daughter, and the loneliness of country life, Detective Cupidi must discover who the woman really was, who killed her, and how she managed to reconnect with her long lost son, apparently from beyond the grave.

What does it take for a volcanic eruption to really shake the world? Did volcanic eruptions extinguish the dinosaurs, or help humans to evolve, only to decimate their populations with a super-eruption 73,000 years ago? Did they contribute to the ebb and flow of ancient empires, the French Revolution and the rise of fascism in Europe in the 19th century? These are some of the claims made for volcanic cataclysm. Volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer explores rich geological, historical, archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records (such as ice cores and tree rings) to tell the stories behind some of the greatest volcanic events of the past quarter of a billion years. He shows how a forensic approach to volcanology reveals the richness and complexity behind cause and effect, and argues that important lessons for future catastrophe risk management can be drawn from understanding events that took place even at the dawn of human origins.