Downfall


Book Description

'One of the best thriller writers of our time' HARLAN COBEN 'Jeff Abbott has put together a hell of a page turner' MICHAEL CONNELLY 'Help me.' When a young woman rushes into Sam Capra's San Francisco bar and whispers these desperate words, Sam feels compelled to help. A moment later she is attacked by two killers. With Sam's aid, she manages to overpower the men, saving his life in the process before vanishing into the night. On discovering that one of the attackers is no mere thug, but, shockingly, one of the most powerful investors in America, Sam searches for the beguiling young woman who asked for help and unearths a deadly network run by some of the most powerful and influential people in the world... What readers say about the Sam Capra series 'You can't put this book down, it pulls you in and you're willing Sam to find out the truth. Edge-of-seat reading. Pure brilliance' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'Brilliant twists and turns and the ending makes you want more' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'The plot is action-packed, brutal and thoroughly entertaining' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'More than just a great thriller, it's a well-written spy novel. It's fast-paced, funny, intelligent and even quite moving' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐




Downfall


Book Description

Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady returns in this outstanding new mystery set in the beautiful desert country of the Southwest. With a baby on the way, sudden deaths in the family from which to recover, a re-election campaign looming, and a daughter heading off for college, Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady has her hands full when a puzzling new case hits her department, demanding every resource she has at her disposal. Two women have fallen to their deaths from a small nearby peak, referred to by Bisbee locals as Geronimo. What’s the connection between these two women? Is this a case of murder/suicide or is it a double homicide? And if someone else is responsible, is it possible that the perpetrator may, even now, be on the hunt for another victim?




Downfall


Book Description

*INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER Detectives dig into the dark side of Toronto when a serial killer targets homeless people camped out near one of the city’s most exclusive enclaves in this latest crime thriller from bestselling author Robert Rotenberg. Exactly what is one person’s death worth? For decades, the Humber River Golf Course has been one of the city’s most elite clubs. All is perfect in this playground for the rich, until homeless people move into the pristine ravine nearby, and tensions mount between rich and poor and reach a head when two of the squatters are brutally murdered. The killings send shockwaves through the city, and suspicion immediately falls upon the members of the club. Protests by homeless groups and their supporters erupt. Suddenly the homelessness problem has caught the attention of the press, politicians, and the public. Ari Greene, now the head of the homicide squad, leaves behind his plush new office and, with his former protégé Daniel Kennicott in tow, returns to the streets to investigate. Meanwhile, Greene’s daughter, Alison, a dynamic young TV journalist, reports on the untold story of extreme poverty in Toronto. With all the attention focused on the murders, pressure is on Greene to find the killer—now. He calls on his old contacts and his well-honed instincts to pursue the killer and save the city and the people he loves. But then a third body is found. A riveting page-turner ringing with authenticity, Downfall is a scathing look at the growing disparity between rich and poor in Canada’s wealthiest city.




Hell to Pay


Book Description

Two years before the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped bring a quick end to hostilities in the summer of 1945, U.S. planners began work on Operation Downfall, codename for the Allied invasions of Kyushu and Honshu, in the Japanese home islands. While other books have examined Operation Downfall, D. M. Giangreco offers the most complete and exhaustively researched consideration of the plans and their implications. He explores related issues of the first operational use of the atomic bomb and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war, including the controversy surrounding estimates of potential U.S. casualties. Following years of intense research at numerous archives, Giangreco now paints a convincing and horrific picture of the veritable hell that awaited invader and defender. In the process, he demolishes the myths that Japan was trying to surrender during the summer of 1945 and that U.S. officials later wildly exaggerated casualty figures to justify using the atomic bombs to influence the Soviet Union. As Giangreco writes, “Both sides were rushing headlong toward a disastrous confrontation in the Home Islands in which poison gas and atomic weapons were to be employed as MacArthur’s intelligence chief, Charles Willoughby, succinctly put it, ‘a hard and bitter struggle with no quarter asked or given.’ Hell to Pay examines the invasion of Japan in light of the large body of Japanese and American operational and tactical planning documents the author unearthed in familiar and obscure archives. It includes postwar interrogations and reports that senior Japanese commanders and their staffs were ordered to produce for General MacArthur’s headquarters. This groundbreaking history counters the revisionist interpretations questioning the rationale for the use of the atomic bomb and shows that President Truman’s decision was based on real estimates of the enormous human cost of a conventional invasion. This revised edition of Hell to Pay expands on several areas covered in the previous book and deals with three new topics: U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the war against Imperial Japan; U.S., Soviet, and Japanese plans for the invasion and defense of the northernmost Home Island of Hokkaido; and Operation Blacklist, the three-phase insertion of American occupation forces into Japan. It also contains additional text, relevant archival material, supplemental photos, and new maps, making this the definitive edition of an important historical work.




La Debacle


Book Description

La Debacle is the penultimate novel in Zola's great Rougon-Macquart cycle. A stirring account of profound friendship between two soldiers from opposite ends of the class divide during the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune of 1870-1.




The Downfall


Book Description

First published in 1892, this is the penultimate and longest novel in les Rougon-Macquart series. The story is set against the background of the political and military events that ended the reign of Napoleon III and the Second Empire in 1870, in particular the Franco-Prussian War, the Battle of Sedan and the Paris Commune. Dazzling romance, political intrigue, military conflict -- this kind of top-rate historical fiction is a heady brew that French writer Emile Zola serves up better than anyone before or since. One of the novels in the author's celebrated Les Rougon-Macquart series, The Downfall follows the travails and triumphs of farmer and soldier Jean Macquart, who rises above adversity in a time of terrible discord to find a semblance of peace and happiness.




The Downfall


Book Description

In the middle of the broad, fertile plain that stretches away in the direction of the Rhine, a mile and a quarter from Mülhausen, the camp was pitched. In the fitful light of the overcast August day, beneath the lowering sky that was filled with heavy drifting clouds, the long lines of squat white shelter-tents seemed to cower closer to the ground, and the muskets, stacked at regular intervals along the regimental fronts, made little spots of brightness, while over all the sentries with loaded pieces kept watch and ward, motionless as statues, straining.




The Downfall


Book Description

I. In the middle of the broad, fertile plain that stretches away in the direction of the Rhine, a mile and a quarter from Mulhausen, the camp was pitched. In the fitful light of the overcast August day, beneath the lowering sky that was filled with heavy drifting clouds, the long lines of squat white shelter-tents seemed to cower closer to the ground, and the muskets, stacked at regular intervals along the regimental fronts, made little spots of brightness, while over all the sentries with loaded pieces kept watch and ward, motionless as statues, straining their eyes to pierce the purplish mists that lay on the horizon and showed where the mighty river ran. It was about five o'clock when they had come in from Belfort; it was now eight, and the men had only just received their rations. There could be no distribution of wood, however, the wagons having gone astray, and it had therefore been impossible for them to make fires and warm their soup. They had consequently been obliged to content themselves as best they might, washing down their dry hard-tack with copious draughts of brandy, a proceeding that was not calculated greatly to help their tired legs after their long march. Near the canteen, however, behind the stacks of muskets, there were two soldiers pertinaciously endeavoring to elicit a blaze from a small pile of green wood, the trunks of some small trees that they had chopped down with their sword-bayonets, and that were obstinately determined not to burn. The cloud of thick, black smoke, rising slowly in the evening air, added to the general cheerlessness of the scene.




Downfall


Book Description

The Toa must launch a final battle against the Barraki in order to retrieve the Mask of Life.




Downfall 1945


Book Description

As the final month of fighting in Europe in 1945 dawned the Allies embarked upon a series of mopping up operations, destroying the last centres of German resistance as the essentially defeated Wehrmacht fought on in increasingly desperate conditions, driven on by the explicit no surrender order issued by Hitler. Yet at the same time, the Allied alliance was already on shaky ground, as German resistance was crushed the Allies began to eye each other nervously across a battletorn Europe, with the politically driven military decisions to have a huge impact on the future of the continent. This book traces the final operations of the war, from the liberation of Denmark, the Allied drive towards the Baltic straits, incursions in Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and engagements in Eastern and Western Germany, whilst also analyzing how the Allied strategies in the final days of the war were a hint of the future difficulties that would drive the Cold War.




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