In The Lions Mouth And Other Stories

International bestseller! James Bond has nothing on Dusko Popov. a double agent for the Abwehr, MI5 and MI6, and the FBI during World War II, Popov seduced numerous women, spoke five languages, and was a crack shot, all while maintaining his cover as a Yugoslavian diplomat… On a cool August evening in 1941, a Serbian playboy created a stir at Casino Estoril in Portugal by throwing down an outrageously large baccarat bet to humiliate his opponent. The Serbian was a British double agent, and the money―which he had just stolen from the Germans―belonged to the British. From the sideline, watching with intent interest was none other than Ian Fleming… The Serbian was Dusko Popov. As a youngster, he was expelled from his London prep school. Years later he would be arrested and banished from Germany for making derogatory statements about the Third Reich. When World War II ensued, the playboy became a spy, eventually serving three dangerous masters: the Abwehr, MI5 and MI6, and the FBI. On August 10, 1941, the Germans sent Popov to the United States to construct a spy network and gather information on Pearl Harbor. The FBI ignored his German questionnaire, but J. Edgar Hoover succeeded in blowing his cover. While MI5 desperately needed Popov to deceive the Abwehr about the D-Day invasion, they assured him that a return to the German Secret Service Headquarters in Lisbon would result in torture and execution. He went anyway... Into the Lion’s Mouth is a globe-trotting account of a man’s entanglement with espionage, murder, assassins, and lovers―including enemy spies and a Hollywood starlet. It is a story of subterfuge and seduction, patriotism, and cold-blooded courage. It is the story of Dusko Popov―the inspiration for James Bond. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

B>In this book of short stories I have compiled some of my writing and ideas on a life past and present. Ever wonder what would happen if it started snowing and never stopped...never ever stopped? How would we exist? Where would we live? Or what about the young soldiers in the Great War who were shot at dawn after a court martial. Have you ever considered the feelings of those who pulled the trigger? Perhaps you are in a sailing boat wondering how a Vikinglong ship has come to be just off the starboard bow. Is it daydream? Well, is it? Or have you noticed police officers on duty, perhaps on television? Ever wondered what they fear? What they carry forever locked inside? Their ghosts? In life there is presumption that we know and understand how others think, feel and fear. Always trying to make the best of circumstances we find ourselves in. I call this the human condition. No matter what that condition, I have found the human spirit always shines through. You just need to know where to look .Life is for living. Stories are for reading. Enjoy.

Less than six months after taking office, the Norwegian Prime Minister is found dead. She has been shot in the head. But was it a politically motivated assassination or personal revenge? The death shakes the country to its core. The hunt for her killer is complicated, intense and gruelling. Hanne Wilhelmsen must contain the scandal before a private tragedy becomes a public outrage, in what will become the most sensitive case of her career... This is a story of lies, intrigue and politics. The Lion's Mouth questions who holds the power in Norway, and how far they will go to use it.

The newly awakened interest in the lives of craftspeople in Turkey is highlighted in this collection, which uses archival documents to follow Ottoman artisans from the late 15th century to the beginning of the 20th. The authors examine historical changes in the lives of artisans, focusing on the craft organizations (or guilds) that underwent substantial changes over the centuries. The guilds transformed and eventually dissolved as they were increasingly co-opted by modernization and state-building projects, and by the movement of manufacturing to the countryside. In consequence by the 20th century, many artisans had to confront the forces of capitalism and world trade without significant protection, just as the Ottoman Empire was itself in the process of dissolution.

Iain Campbell has been fascinated by mountains for as long as he can remember. In his new book, he tells the story of a journey following the course of the Indus River from its mouth in the mudflats of Karachi through the Karakorum, Kashmir and the Himalayas to its source in Ladakh on the Indian side of the Tibetan plateau, where it springs from the 'Lion's Mouth' on Mount Kailash. His narrative paints an insightful, honest and heartfelt portrait of Pakistan, a country that through all his wanderings of the deserts and mountains of Asia kept drawing him back, and a place which combines a rich religious heritage with some of the most spectacular mountains in the world. Engrossing and eye-opening, Iain Campbell's account of his travels through this mesmerising land will appeal to travellers, mountaineers, trekkers, wilderness enthusiasts, anyone interested in the culture and history of the subcontinent, and fans of quality travel writing.

In 1498, an orphan can't expect much out of life. But the Renaissance is burgeoning, and Venice ripe with infinite possibilities. Nico is a child of the city, and his veins run with canal water. Rising above his lowly status, apprentice to a painter, just might be possible in the city of bridges. He's determined to use his wit and wile to become something more than another errand boy. But his hopes come crashing to the ground when he witnesses deception in Venice's inner circle. To escape the vengeance of the corrupt Lord Foscari, Nico travels half a world away to safety. But danger follows him to the streets of Constantinople where he discovers a peril looms over Venice that threatens to destroy it. Now he's forced to make a choice: stay safe in a foreign land and let Venice fall or risk his life to save everything he loves. Can he save his city, or will he lose his life trying?

June, 1942: As Germany's blitzkrieg stalls in Russia, Hitler becomes so erratic that the Wehrmacht asks Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung to assess Hitler's sanity. He refuses. Unknown to the Germans and Jung, his friend, Mary Bancroft, is an OSS analyst. She and her boss, spy master Allen Dulles, convince Jung to go to Germany and attempt to steal Hitler's darkest secrets.

MOON-FACE (Excerpt) John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind, cheek-bones wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the circumference, flattened against the very centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly he had become an offense to my eyes, and I believed the earth to be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps my mother may have been superstitious of the moon and looked upon it over the wrong shoulder at the wrong time. Be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such things at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain individual, one who the very instant before we did not dream existed; and yet...