The Virgin S Spy

Perfect for fans of Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir, The Virgin’s Spy is award-winning author Laura Andersen’s second novel about the next generation of Tudor royals—a mesmerizing historical novel filled with rich period detail, vividly drawn characters, and all the glamour and seduction of the fabled Tudor court. Queen Elizabeth I remains sovereign of England and Ireland. For the moment, at least. An Irish rebellion is growing and Catholic Spain, led by the Queen’s former husband, King Philip, plans to seize advantage of the turmoil. Stephen Courtenay, eldest son of Dominic and Minuette, Elizabeth’s most trusted confidantes, has accepted a command in Ireland to quell the unrest. But the task will prove dangerous in more ways than one. The Princess of Wales, Elizabeth’s daughter, Anabel, looks to play a greater role in her nation, ever mindful that there is only one Queen of England. But how is Anabel to one day rule a country when she cannot even govern her own heart? Praise for The Virgin’s Spy “Andersen delivers another dramatic thriller complete with spies, battles, ruthless villains and twists on historical events that draw the reader deeply into the lives of her characters. There is magic here, and Andersen’s fantastic storytelling will keep readers coming back for more.”—RT Book Reviews (4 1/2 stars, Top Pick!) Find your next book club pick, read special features, and more. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle.

Young college grad Trent Wilson has passed his vetting into the CIA and gone into basic training in the belief that his deep-seated desire for other men and his brief and tentative experimentation have not been uncovered. What he doesn't know is that the Agency has a use for men who can suborn other men with their physical attributes and perpetual aspect of innocence that the spy agency recruiters have seen in Trent. Blackmailing Trent into working with a unit of spies using man sex to trap and compromise foreign targets into providing information and actions the Agency seeks, his Agency handler, Maurice, covers and masters Trent and then pulls him into the role of convincing targets across the world who seek to deflower virgins-in Bermuda, England, Austria, Turkey, Greek, and, ultimately, Macao-that Trent is what they want and is the virgin they will give up all to initiate. But as Trent becomes very good at this and even to enjoy it and seek it out, Maurice sees that he increasingly is losing control over his protege and makes plans of his own to put an end to Trent's use in these operations."

Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans looks at the early modern theater through the lens of obscure and obscene puns--especially "queer" puns, those that carry homoerotic resonances and speak to homoerotic desires. In particular, it resurrects the operations of a small boys' company known as the first Whitefriars, which performed for about nine months in 1607-8. As a group, the plays performed by this company exhibit an unusually dense array of bawdy puns, whose eroticism is extremely interesting, given that the focus of eros is the male body. The laughter recoverable from Whitefriars plays harnesses the pun's inherent doubleness to homoerotic pleasure; in these plays, 'the bawdy hand of the dial' is always 'on the pricke of noone'. Mary Bly's analysis depends on the nature of punning itself, and the inflections of language and the creativity that marked Whitefriars punsters, with special emphasis on the effect of puns on an audience. What happens to audience members who sit shoulder to shoulder and laugh at homoerotic quibbles? What is the effect of catching a queer pun's double meaning in a group rather than while alone? How can we characterize those auditors, within the convoluted, if fascinating, theories of erotic identity offered by queer theorists?

Though devastating charm lay in his wicked dark eyes, Miranda knew how fleeting Lord Rotham's romances were, and how long and painful the cure. Scandal was a way of life for this rake who had no regrets about his crimson past, and no desire for a tamer future. But his latest intrepid undertaking was too delicious for Miranda to resist. For he had stolen France's national symbol from right under Napoleon's nose. Yet what had begun as an exciting spy game turned painfully serious when murder was attempted. In the heat of it all, Lord Rotham was surprised to discover himself reformed by a clever miss. Miranda had been daring enough to steal his heart

This book proposes the idea of fictional International Relations (IR) and engages with feminist IR by contextualising the case of a woman spy in Korea in the Cold War. Fictional imagination and feminist IR encourage one to go beyond conventional or standard ways of thinking; it reshapes taken-for-granted interpretations and assumptions. This takes the view that a dominant narrative of events might be reconstructed as a different kind of story, once events are placed within a wider temporal approach. The case of the woman Korean secret agent- who reportedly bombed a South Korean plane (Korean Airlines (KAL) Flight 858) under the instruction from the North Korean leadership to disrupt the Seoul Olympic Games- is chosen to serve as an effective example of fictional IR and feminist IR scholarship, which can be investigated through the research puzzles concerning gender, pain and truth. Fictional International Relations has three main objectives. First, it investigates the way in which fiction-writing can become a method for dealing with data problems and contingency in IR. Second, the book examines how gender, pain and truth operate or interact in the case of the Korean spy and how this observation can strengthen feminist IR in terms of intersectionality. Finally, the author goes on to explore why this case has been so difficult to study openly and thoroughly. The aim of the book is not to refute the official findings; the point is to unpack complex dynamics surrounding truth—more specifically how the official account has been executed as ‘the’ truth—based on a feminist-informed investigation. This book will be of interest to students of IR theory, critical security studies, Cold War studies, gender studies and Asian studies.

This book is the first attempt to establish 'economic crime' as a new sub-discipline within criminology. Fraud, corruption, bribery, money laundering, price-fixing cartels and intellectual property crimes pursued typically for financial and professional gain, have devastating consequences for the prosperity of economic life. While most police forces in the UK and the USA have an ‘economic crime’ department, and many European bodies such as Europol use the term and develop strategies and structures to deal with it, it is yet to grain traction as a widely used term in the academic community. Economic Crime: From Conception to Response aims to change that and covers: definitions of the key premises of economic crime as the academic sub-discipline within criminology; an overview of the key research on each of the crimes associated with economic crime; public, private and global responses to economic crime across its different forms and sectors of the economy, both within the UK and globally. This book is an essential resource for students, academics and practitioners engaged with aspects of economic crime, as well as the related areas of financial crime, white-collar crime and crimes of the powerful.