Download or read book Bad Luck In Berlin written by Tom Wood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tom Wood, whose writing “crackles like the early work of Robert Ludlum” (Booklist) returns with a white-knuckle read—and an anti-hero assassin who sets a new standard for delivering brutal, no-holds-barred action… HE GOES BY ONE NAME. HE HAS NO PAST. HIS FUTURE IS MURDER. Victor's been out of commission for six months—but as dangerous as ever and still at the top of his game. A former assassin-for-hire now locked in uneasy alliance with a CIA special unit, Victor is in Berlin preparing for what was supposed to be a simple assignment: taking out the scout of a notorious crime lord. But life—and death—is full of surprises. As Victor tracks his target, he realizes that he's not the only assassin with a special interest in his prey. And if Victor is going to do his job, he has to stop someone else from doing theirs. Includes a preview of Tom Wood’s The Enemy

Download or read book Bad Luck in Berlin written by Tom Wood and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victor has been out of the game for six months - but he's as deadly as ever. He's in Berlin, preparing for his first assignment as a CIA contractor: taking out the scout of a notorious crime lord. No one is supposed to die - not yet - but as Victor tracks his target, he realises he's not the only one interested in the scout . . . and if Victor is going to do his job, he has to stop someone else doing theirs. Packed with roaring action and breathless suspense, this specially priced, exclusive short story is perfect for fans of Tom Wood - and for readers who have yet to discover him.

Download or read book Bad Luck and Trouble written by Lee Child and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2007-05-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEXT BOOK IN THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING JACK REACHER SERIES THAT INSPIRED THE SECOND SEASON OF THE HIT STREAMING SERIES REACHER “Electrifying . . . this series [is] utterly addictive.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times From a helicopter high above the California desert, a man is sent free-falling into the night. On the streets of Portland, Jack Reacher is pulled out of his wandering life and plunged into the heart of a conspiracy that is killing old friends . . . and the people he once trusted with his life. Reacher is the ultimate loner—no phone, no ties, no address. But a woman from his old military unit has found him using a signal only the eight members of their elite team would know. Then she tells him a terrifying story about the brutal death of a man they both served with. Soon Reacher is reuniting with the survivors of his team, scrambling to unravel the sudden disappearance of two other comrades. But Reacher won’t give up—because in a world of bad luck and trouble, when someone targets Jack Reacher and his team, they’d better be ready for what comes right back at them.

Download or read book The Killer written by Tom Wood and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hunter has become the hunted Victor is a freelancer, a professional, a killer---the best there is. He's ice cold, methodical, and deadly. He lives alone. He operates alone. No one knows his background, or even his name. For him, business is a straight transaction. He's given a job; he takes out the target; he gets paid. He's in Paris to perform a standard kill and collect for an anonymous client. The contract is simple, routine, and Victor completes it with trademark efficiency, only to find himself in the middle of an ambush and fighting for his life. Faced with powerful and determined enemies, and caught in the crossfire of an international conspiracy unfolding across four continents, Victor is forced to go on the run across a winter-ravaged Europe. Pursued by the authorities, hired assassins, and intelligence agencies from both sides of the Atlantic, he discovers that no place is safe for him anymore and there is no one he can trust. But Victor is no easy target, and he's every bit as ruthless as those hunting him. He will find out who wants him dead and why, one corpse at a time. Debut author Tom Hinshelwood has written a classic cat-and-mouse thriller for the twenty-first century that takes off from the very first page and never lets up. Filled with adrenaline-charged action worthy of the big screen, The Killer will have readers looking down the barrel of a gun at every turn. The Killer was previously published under the title, "The Hunter".

Download or read book Bad Luck In Berlin written by Tom Wood and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bad Luck Hot Rocks written by Ryan Thompson and published by . This book was released on 2014-11-30 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the curse made famous by the hit show Dead to Me The Petrified Forest National Park in Northeast Arizona protects one of the largest deposits of petrified wood in the world. Despite stern warnings, visitors remove several tons of petrified wood from the park each year, often returning these rocks by mail (sometimes years later), accompanied by a "conscience letter." These letters often include stories of misfortune attributed directly to their theft: car troubles, cats with cancer, deaths of family members, etc. Some writers hope that by returning these stolen rocks, good fortune will return to their lives, while others simply apologize or ask forgiveness. "They are beautiful," reads one letter, "but I can't enjoy them. They weigh like a ton of bricks on my conscience. Sorry...." Bad Luck, Hot Rocksdocuments this ongoing phenomenon, combining a series of original photographs of these otherworldly "bad luck rocks" with facsimiles of intimate, oddly entertaining letters from the park's archives.

Download or read book Tunnel 29 written by Helena Merriman and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He escaped from one of the world’s most brutal regimes.Then, he decided to tunnel back in. In the summer of 1962, a young student named Joachim Rudolph dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin were dozens of men, women, and children—all willing to risk everything to escape. From the award-winning creator of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 podcast, Tunnel 29 is the true story of this most remarkable Cold War rescue mission. Drawing on interviews with the survivors and Stasi files, Helena Merriman brilliantly reveals the stranger-than-fiction story of the ingenious group of student-diggers, the glamorous red-haired messenger, the Stasi spy who threatened the whole enterprise, and the love story that became its surprising epilogue. Tunnel 29 was also the first made-for-TV event of its kind; it was funded by NBC, who wanted to film an escape in real time. Their documentary—which was nearly blocked from airing by the Kennedy administration, which wanted to control the media during the Cold War—revolutionized TV journalism. Ultimately, Tunnel 29 is a success story about freedom: the valiant citizens risking everything to win it back, and the larger world rooting for them to triumph.

Download or read book The Berlin Exchange written by Joseph Kanon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From “the most accomplished spy novelist working today” (The Sunday Times, London), a “heart-poundingly suspenseful” (The Washington Post) espionage thriller set at the height of the Cold War, when a captured American who has spied for the KGB is returned to East Berlin, needing to know who arranged for his release and what they now want from him. Berlin, 1963. An early morning spy swap, not at the familiar setting for such exchanges, nor at Checkpoint Charlie, where international visitors cross into the East, but at a more discreet border crossing, usually reserved for East German VIPs. The Communists are trading two American students caught helping people to escape over the wall and an aging MI6 operative. On the other side of the trade: Martin Keller, a physicist who once made headlines, but who then disappeared into the English prison system. Keller’s most critical possession: his American passport. Keller’s most ardent desire: to see his ex-wife Sabine and their young son. The exchange is made with the formality characteristic of these swaps. But Martin has other questions: Who asked for him? Who negotiated the deal? The KGB? He knows that nothing happens by chance. They want him for something. Not physics—his expertise is out of date. Something else, which he cannot learn until he arrives in East Berlin, when suddenly the game is afoot. Intriguing and atmospheric, with action rising to a dangerous climax, The Berlin Exchange “expertly describes what happens when a disillusioned former agent tries to come in from the cold” (The New York Times Book Review), confirming Kanon as “the greatest writer ever of historical espionage fiction” (Spybrary).

Download or read book On the Run in Nazi Berlin written by Bert Lewyn and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BERLIN, 1942. The Gestapo arrest eighteen-year-old Bert Lewyn and his parents, sending the latter to their deaths and Bert to work in a factory making guns for the Nazi war effort. Miraculously tipped off the morning the Gestapo round up all the Jews who work in the factories, Bert goes underground. He finds shelter sometimes with compassionate civilians, sometimes with people who find his skills useful and sometimes in the cellars of bombed-out buildings. Without proper identity papers, he survives as a hunted Jew in the flames and terror of Nazi Berlin in part by successfully mimicking non-Jews, even masquerading as an SS officer. But the Gestapo are hot on his trail... Before World War II, 160,000 Jews lived in Berlin. By 1945, only 3,000 remained alive. Bert was one of the few, and his thrilling memoir—from witnessing the famous 1933 book burning to the aftermath of the war in a displaced persons camp—offers an unparalleled depiction of the life of a runaway Jew caught in the heart of the Nazi empire.

Download or read book A Time To Die written by Tom Wood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 1444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sixth novel in international bestselling author Tom Wood’s action-packed thriller series featuring the enigmatic assassin Victor, following The Darkest Day, No Tomorrow, and The Game. IT’S NOT HOW LONG YOU’LL LIVE.... Now that professional assassin Victor is indentured to British Intelligence, he is tasked with eliminating the worst of the worst. One such man is Milan Rados, a former Serbian paramilitary commander wanted for war crimes and now head of an organized criminal network in Belgrade. He has escaped justice once already, so it’s Victor's job to take the justice to him. IT’S HOW SOON THEY’LL DIE. Victor might be the best in the business, but with powerful friends and an entire crew to protect him, Rados is a hard man to corner and even harder to kill. To get close to his target, Victor will need more than his deadly skills. An unlikely ally can provide him with the edge he seeks, but there’s a price on Victor’s head—and a killer who won’t quit knows just how to find him....

Download or read book A Quiet Man written by Tom Wood and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-05-27 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One day a man arrives in town. Unassuming. Quiet. The assassin known as Victor is hiding out in a small motel in Canada after a job across the border. A few days laying low and he'll be gone and leave no trace behind. He doesn't count on getting to know a mother and her boy who reminds him of his own troubled childhood. When both vanish, only Victor seems to notice. Once he starts looking for them, he finds himself at odds with the criminals who own the town. They want him gone. Only Victor's going nowhere until he discovers the truth and to them he's just a quiet man asking the wrong questions. But that quiet man is a dangerous man.

Download or read book The Enemy written by Tom Wood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FIRST TIME IN PRINT THE HIRED KILLER. Victor, a former assassin-for-hire, has joined forces with a CIA special unit. His first assignment: Three strangers. Three hits. Fast and clean. Victor’s a natural for this. THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY. It should have been simple. But with each hit Victor is plunged deeper into an unimaginable conspiracy where no one, least of all the people he knows, can be trusted. THE TRIPLE-CROSS YOU WON’T SEE COMING. With the stakes growing higher by the minute, Victor realizes he’s been forced into playing a game he never expected. Because he’s the next target. And there’s no way out.

Download or read book Gone by Dawn written by Tom Wood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deadly assassin Victor returns to fight another night in this action-packed enovella from international bestselling author Tom Wood. "ARE YOU TRYING TO BE A HERO?" Victor is on the run in Bulgaria, with enemies closing in. Injured and exhausted he knows the only way to survive is to escape the country before dawn. But when a young woman shows him unexpected kindness, Victor lingers to repay the favor the only way he knows how. "I ASSURE YOU. I'M THE OPPOSITE." The sleepy Bulgarian border town is not what it seems. Corruption and violence bubble under the surface, lurking in unexpected places. As sunrise approaches, bringing with it a threat from Victor's past with a knack for tracking and killing, Victor finds himself tapping into a fight he never meant to make his...

Download or read book Nightmare in Berlin written by Hans Fallada and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2016-05-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available for the first time in English, here is an unforgettable portrayal by a master novelist of the physical and psychological devastation wrought in the homeland by Hitler’s war. Late April, 1945. The war is over, yet Dr Doll, a loner and ‘moderate pessimist’, lives in constant fear. By night, he is haunted by nightmarish images of the bombsite in which he is trapped — he, and the rest of Germany. More than anything, he wishes to vanquish the demon of collective guilt, but he is unable to right any wrongs, especially in his position as mayor of a small town in north-east Germany that has been occupied by the Red Army. Dr Doll flees for Berlin, where he finds escape in a morphine addiction: each dose is a ‘small death’. He tries to make his way in the chaos of a city torn apart by war, accompanied by his young wife, who shares his addiction. Fighting to save two lives, he tentatively begins to believe in a better future. Written with Fallada’s distinctive power and vividness, Nightmare in Berlin captures the demoralised and desperate atmosphere of post-war Germany in a way that has never been matched or surpassed.

Download or read book Where I Live Now written by Lucia Berlin and published by Godine+ORM. This book was released on 2017-04-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling author of So Long contemplates the human condition in this short story collection for fans of Grace Paley & Alice Munro. The elusive nature of happiness is a compelling theme in Where I Live Now. The survivors in these stories—many of them society's marginal or excluded people, fighting alcohol or drug addiction, bearing emotional scars—recognize it all too well. They mourn the lost dreams of youth, the roads not taken. They suffer the damage life inflicts: the ache of loneliness, the pain of separation, the fear of death. Set mainly in Los Angeles, Lucia Berlin’s gritty working-class stories bridge the gap between the Americas—rich and poor, North and South, Anglo and Hispanic. While her style has been compared to Raymond Carver’s, and her dream- and drink-addicted characters to Richard Yates’s, her fictional territory and fatalistic humor are hers alone. Praise for Where I Live Now “Berlin’s literary model is Chekhov, but there are extra-literary models too, including the extended jazz solo, with its surges, convolutions, and asides. This is writing of a very high order.” —August Kleinzahler, London Review of Books “This remarkable collection occasionally put me in mind of Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, with its sweep of American origins and places. Berlin is our Scheherazade, continually surprising her readers with a startling variety of voices, vividly drawn characters, and settings alive with sight and sound.” —Barbara Barnard, American Book Review “Berlin is marvelously successful, placing her memorable characters in gripping situations, plumbing their messed-up lives for pathos and allowing us to see deeply into their souls.” —Publishers Weekly

Download or read book The Biggest Bluff written by Maria Konnikova and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller • A New York Times Notable Book “The tale of how Konnikova followed a story about poker players and wound up becoming a story herself will have you riveted, first as you learn about her big winnings, and then as she conveys the lessons she learned both about human nature and herself.” —The Washington Post It's true that Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn't even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel, Poker Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings, and convinced him to be her mentor. But she knew her man: a famously thoughtful and broad-minded player, he was intrigued by her pitch that she wasn't interested in making money so much as learning about life. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her reflections on the role of chance had led her to a giant of game theory, who pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to distinguish between what can be controlled and what can't. And she certainly brought something to the table, including a Ph.D. in psychology and an acclaimed and growing body of work on human behavior and how to hack it. So Seidel was in, and soon she was down the rabbit hole with him, into the wild, fiercely competitive, overwhelmingly masculine world of high-stakes Texas Hold'em, their initial end point the following year's World Series of Poker. But then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel's guidance, Konnikova did have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new pursuit, including how to better read, not just her opponents but far more importantly herself; how to identify what tilted her into an emotional state that got in the way of good decisions; and how to get to a place where she could accept luck for what it was, and what it wasn't. But she also began to win. And win. In a little over a year, she began making earnest money from tournaments, ultimately totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She won a major title, got a sponsor, and got used to being on television, and to headlines like "How one writer's book deal turned her into a professional poker player." She even learned to like Las Vegas. But in the end, Maria Konnikova is a writer and student of human behavior, and ultimately the point was to render her incredible journey into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all, she learned, is that skill is enough. Bad cards will come our way, but keeping our focus on how we play them and not on the outcome will keep us moving through many a dark patch, until the luck once again breaks our way.

Download or read book The Luck of the Weissensteiners written by Christoph Fischer and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2012-12-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the sleepy town of Bratislava in 1933 a romantic girl falls for a bookseller from Berlin. Greta Weissensteiner, daughter of a Jewish weaver, slowly settles in with the Winkelmeier clan just as the developments in Germany start to make waves in Europe. The political climate in the multifaceted cultural jigsaw puzzle of disintegrating Czechoslovakia becomes more complex and affects relations between the couple and the families. The story follows their lot through the war with its predictable and also its unexpected turns and events and the equally hard times after. From the moment that Greta Weissensteiner enters the bookstore where Wilhelm Winkelmeier works, and entrances him with her good looks and serious ways, I was hooked. But this is no ordinary romance; in tact it is not a romance at all, but a powerful, often sad, Holocaust story. What makes The Luck of the Weissensteiners so extraordinary is the chance Christoph Fischer gives his readers to consider the many different people who were never in concentration camps, never in the military, yet who nonetheless had their own indelible Holocaust experiences. Set in the fascinating area of Bratislava, this is a wide-ranging, historically accurate exploration of the connections between social location, personal integrity and, as the title says, luck. I cared about every one of this novel's characters and continued to think about them long after I'd finished reading. -- Andrea Steiner, University of California Santa Cruz The Luck of the Weissensteiners is an epic saga set in wartime Eastern Europe. It follows the lives of two families - one Jewish, one Catholic - and their entwined survival amidst the backdrop of the second world war; first the fascist then the communist invasion and occupation of Slovakia, and the horror of the consequences of war. The reader is transported to a world of deception, fear, distrust and betrayal, alongside enduring love and family drama. The characters are vividly painted in the mind of the reader as we follow their journey across Europe at a time of unimaginable challenge and trauma. Weissensteiners is a magnificent tale of human survival. I wish I hadn't read it already so that I may repeat the pleasure of discovering and becoming lost in the story once again.(less)