The Chain

THE ONLY WAY TO GET YOUR CHILD BACK IS TO KIDNAP ANOTHER CHILD 'A blazing, full-tilt thriller that entirely justifies the hype' GUARDIAN 'A heart-stopping roller coaster' DAILY MAIL * * * * * YOUR PHONE RINGS. A STRANGER HAS KIDNAPPED YOUR CHILD. TO FREE THEM YOU MUST ABDUCT SOMEONE ELSE'S CHILD. YOUR CHILD WILL BE RELEASED WHEN YOUR VICTIM'S PARENTS KIDNAP ANOTHER CHILD. IF ANY OF THESE THINGS DON'T HAPPEN: YOUR CHILD WILL BE KILLED. VICTIM. SURVIVOR. ABDUCTOR. CRIMINAL. YOU WILL BECOME EACH ONE. YOU ARE NOW PART OF THE CHAIN * * * * * DON'T MISS THE LATEST NAIL-BITING THRILLER FROM ADRIAN MCKINTY: THE ISLAND IS AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW. * * * * * THE MULTI-AWARD-WINNING THRILLER Winner: Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Winner: Ned Kelly Award for Best International Crime Fiction Winner: International Thriller Writers Awards - Best Hardcover Winner: Macavity Awards - Best International Crime Fiction Winner: Barry Award - Thriller of the Year ***** 'A heart-stopping roller coaster' DAILY MAIL 'The book everyone is talking about' MIRROR 'Scary, plausible, gripping.' IAN RANKIN 'You'll miss meals, sleep, and your stop on the bus - guaranteed.' VAL McDERMID 'I writhed with the pain of withdrawal when I finished it. Deserves to be the popular hit of the year.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Incredibly propulsive and original. You won't shake it for a long time.' STEPHEN KING 'A masterpiece. You will never be able to forget it.' DON WINSLOW 'A unique and unforgettable thriller. Breath-taking, breakneck, brilliant.' MARK BILLINGHAM 'Striking, memorable, should be savoured.' TANA FRENCH 'Explosively brilliant. Genuinely unputdownable. Terribly plausible' OBSERVER 'I may not read a better thriller in my lifetime.' STEVE CAVANAGH 'An electrifying thriller - one of the very best of its kind' FIONA CUMMINS 'What a fantastic idea and perfectly written. I'm quite jealous.' ANTHONY HOROWITZ 'Terrifying. Terrific.' MICK HERRON 'THE CHAIN does for parenting what Gone Girl did for marriage. A must-read thriller.' JAMES SWALLOW 'Diabolical, unnerving, relentless.' DENNIS LEHANE 'Utterly brilliant' ELLY GRIFFITHS A 'THRILLER OF THE YEAR' SELECTION FOR: GUARDIAN DAILY TELEGRAPH AMAZON EXPRESS OBSERVER TIME MAGAZINE

Set among the Malibu mansions and Hollywood rock clubs of California's southland, Never Break the Chain finds Tim Green's grief over the loss of his father spinning into an obsessive quest to track down the wayward mother who deserted him almost three decades before. It's a journey that, like Believe in Me before it, sends Green venturing deep into the heart of the rock and roll jungle. Opening a few months after the end of Believe in Me, Never Break the Chain lands Green in the oceanfront Malibu compound of British guitarist Blake Saunders, who's just hired him to pen an authorized biography of his floundering, formerly-huge arena rock band. Even as the highly combustible Saunders' son Mal-recently installed as the band's new lead singer-and daughter Jane offer him distorted reflections of himself, Green's efforts to retrace his mother's steps through LA's rock and roll underworld propel him toward a cathartic confrontation. The revelations to come challenge every answer he once thought he possessed to the most fundamental question of all: who is Tim Green? Equal parts family drama, literate thriller, and peek behind the curtain of an aging rock band, Never Break the Chain is ultimately a story about families-the ones we're born into, and the ones we create. Praise for Never Break the Chain: "Rock writer Jason Warburg ties up some loose ends with his latest Tim Green novel, Never Break the Chain. His charming protagonist is still threading the road to self-knowledge by poetically and amusingly examining the lives of others in this tale of excess and success. Best of all, a turn in the story resolves the mystery of who Tim Green really is. It's the magic of music that takes us there, along with Warburg's very entertaining style." -- Viola Weinberg, Poet Laureate emerita of Sacramento & former KZAP FM News Director "A beautiful book... Never Break the Chain is a novel about family life and the ties that bind people together. It is not easy to write about music and the life of musicians in a convincing way, but Jason Warburg never misses a beat. Warburg understands how music can play a major part in the staging posts of people's lives." -- Greg Spawton, co-founder & songwriter, Big Big Train

Lavishly illustrated story of 50 years of Fleetwood Mac by respected music journalist.

A powerful and important work of investigative journalism that explores the runaway growth of the American meatpacking industry and its dangerous consequences “A worthy update to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and a chilling indicator of how little has changed since that 1906 muckraking classic.” — Mother Jones “I tore through this book. . . . Books like these are important: They track the journey of our thinking about food, adding evidence and offering guidance along the way.” —Wall Street Journal On the production line in American packing-houses, there is one cardinal rule: the chain never slows. Under pressure to increase supply, the supervisors of meat-processing plants have routinely accelerated the pace of conveyors, leading to inhumane conditions, increased accidents, and food of questionable, often dangerous quality. In The Chain, acclaimed journalist Ted Genoways uses the story of Hormel Foods and its most famous product, Spam—a recession-era staple—to probe the state of the meatpacking industry, from Minnesota to Iowa to Nebraska. Interviewing scores of line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, and local politicians and activists, Genoways reveals an industry pushed to its breaking point—while exposing alarming new trends, from sick or permanently disabled workers to conflict between small towns and immigrant labor. A searching exposé in the tradition of Upton Sinclair, Rachel Carson, and Eric Schlosser, The Chain is a mesmerizing story and an urgent warning about the hidden costs of the food we eat.

The conflict of a minister with his "country club" congregation.

From a former senior advisor to Senator John McCain comes an urgent wake-up call about how new technologies are threatening America's military might. For generations of Americans, our country has been the world's dominant military power. How the US military fights, and the systems and weapons that it fights with, have been uncontested. That old reality, however, is rapidly deteriorating. America's traditional sources of power are eroding amid the emergence of new technologies and the growing military threat posed by rivals such as China. America is at grave risk of losing a future war. As Christian Brose reveals in this urgent wake-up call, the future will be defined by artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and other emerging technologies that are revolutionizing global industries and are now poised to overturn the model of American defense. This fascinating, if disturbing, book confronts the existential risks on the horizon, charting a way for America's military to adapt and succeed with new thinking as well as new technology. America must build a battle network of systems that enables people to rapidly understand threats, make decisions, and take military actions, the process known as "the kill chain." Examining threats from China, Russia, and elsewhere, The Kill Chain offers hope and, ultimately, insights on how America can apply advanced technologies to prevent war, deter aggression, and maintain peace.

An award-winning historian reveals the harrowing forgotten story of America's internal slave trade—and its role in the making of America. Slave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men—who trafficked and sold over half a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South—were essential to slavery's expansion and fueled the growth and prosperity of the United States. In The Ledger and the Chain, acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history. Far from social outcasts, they were rich and widely respected businessmen, and their company sat at the center of capital flows connecting southern fields to northeastern banks. Bringing together entrepreneurial ambition and remorseless violence toward enslaved people, domestic slave traders produced an atrocity that forever transformed the nation.

Livvie isn’t superstitious like her best friend, Joyce, who thinks everything is bad luck. So Livvie isn’t worried about tearing up the chain letter and throwing it away–until she’s humiliated in gym class, falls down her back stairs, and gets invited to Thanksgiving dinner at Peter Finch’s house. Peter’s dad has crooked teeth, a plastic wonderland in his front yard, and some kind of secret up in his study. There is no way Livvie wants Phil Finch to date her mom. But it’s hard work keeping their families apart–especially when Livvie is assigned to work on the sixth-grade snow maze project with Peter. Clearly, Joyce was right: breaking the chain was a huge mistake. And the only way to set things straight is to find out who sent the letter in the first place. . . . Rich in humor and suspense, Julie Schumacher’s absorbing novel is about friendship, choices, and the kind of luck that really matters.