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Stafford in the Great War (Your Towns & Cities in the Great War)
by Nick ThomasStafford in the Great War tells the fascinating story of a county town and its people between the catastrophic years of 1914–18 .The title was written as a companion volume to the author's earlier work, Stafford at War 1939-45, and adopts the same successful formula. The book examines the work of local men and women on the Home Front, before providing details of the towns contribution in every theatre of the war. Early chapters examine the role of Staffordians who served in the British Expeditionary Force, nicknamed The Contemptible Little Army by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and who took part in the Christmas Truce, 1914. The story of the Stafford Territorials of the Stafford Battery, the Staffordshire Yeomanry and the North and South Staffordshire Regiments is also explained, along with the fate of Kitcheners Volunteer Army.The events surrounding the service of a number of local men are recorded in some detail, along with the exploits of men who fought in all of the armed services and support units. Collectively, their stories help outline the course of the war.Staffordians won 120 gallantry awards during the conflict, and those that are not referred to in the main body of the text may be found in an appendix. Also listed are the names and service details of over 400 men whose names were omitted from the towns war memorial.
Stage Door Canteen
by Maggie DavisLives and loves are intertwined in a novel that follows three women from the theaters and dance halls of New York City during World War II. New York City, the capital of the free world, is dark, its lights turned off as enemy submarines lurk offshore, as close as Coney Island. Three men—a gunner from a B‑17 bomber who is a national hero, a magazine editor uprooted from civilian life and attached to the Allied High Command, and the violence‑stalked captain of a Royal Merchant Navy freighter—find their destinies linked with three volunteer hostesses from New York&’s famous Stage Door Canteen. Genevieve Rose is a beautiful Broadway star in an experimental Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that seems headed for disaster. Elise Ginsberg is an indomitable young refugee from Hitler&’s terror. And Bernadine Flaherty is an ambitious, talented teenage dancer from Brooklyn hoping for her big show-business break. Against Manhattan&’s wartime glamour, GIs fresh from combat in North Africa and the Pacific find themselves dancing with the likes of the Stage Door Canteen&’s Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner. Food, whiskey, and clothes are rationed, and spies are where one least expects to find them. Life is lived for the moment, love is passionate and often random, and those with a chance at happiness make a grab for it. For beyond the frenetic blackout, the entire world is fighting and dying.
Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense
by Tracy C. DavisIn an era defined by the threat of nuclear annihilation, Western nations attempted to prepare civilian populations for atomic attack through staged drills, evacuations, and field exercises. In Stages of Emergency the distinguished performance historian Tracy C. Davis investigates the fundamentally theatrical nature of these Cold War civil defense exercises. Asking what it meant for civilians to be rehearsing nuclear war, she provides a comparative study of the civil defense maneuvers conducted by three NATO allies--the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom--during the 1950s and 1960s. Delving deep into the three countries' archives, she analyzes public exercises involving private citizens--Boy Scouts serving as mock casualties, housewives arranging home protection, clergy training to be shelter managers--as well as covert exercises undertaken by civil servants. Stages of Emergency covers public education campaigns and school programs--such as the ubiquitous "duck and cover" drills--meant to heighten awareness of the dangers of a possible attack, the occupancy tests in which people stayed sequestered for up to two weeks to simulate post-attack living conditions as well as the effects of confinement on interpersonal dynamics, and the British first-aid training in which participants acted out psychological and physical trauma requiring immediate treatment. Davis also brings to light unpublicized government exercises aimed at anticipating the global effects of nuclear war. Her comparative analysis shows how the differing priorities, contingencies, and social policies of the three countries influenced their rehearsals of nuclear catastrophe. When the Cold War ended, so did these exercises, but, as Davis points out in her perceptive afterword, they have been revived--with strikingly similar recommendations--in response to twenty-first-century fears of terrorists, dirty bombs, and rogue states.
Staghound Armored Car 1942-1962
by Steven Zaloga Peter BullThe Staghound was a unique World War II armored vehicle - designed and manufactured in the US, but intended solely for the British army. Since its combat debut in Italy in 1943 until the end of the war it had performed particularly valuable service in a reconnaissance role where its speed and armor ensured that it was able to extricate itself from trouble as required without additional support. This book examines the development of this category of armored cars and offers a detailed analysis of the extensive combat use of the Staghound in British service as well as in the service of other Allied countries including Canada, New Zealand and Poland.
Staging History from the Shoah to Palestine: Three Plays and Essays on WWII and Its Aftermath
by Inez HedgesThis book is a contribution to the emerging field of research-based performance, which seeks to gain a wider audience for issues that are crucial to our understanding of history and to informing our future actions. The book examines the role of theater in portraying the Shoah in France, the French Resistance, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Each of the three chapters consists of an original dramatic work by the author and an accompanying critical essay.
Staging the Third Reich: Essays in Cultural and Intellectual History (Routledge Studies in Second World War History)
by Anson RabinbachA widely celebrated intellectual historian of twentieth-century Europe, Anson Rabinbach is one of the most important scholars of National Socialism working over the last forty years. This volume collects, for the first time, his pathbreaking work on Nazi culture, antifascism, and the after-effects of Nazism on postwar German and European culture. Historically detailed and theoretically sophisticated, his essays span the aesthetics of production, messianic and popular claims, the ethos that Nazism demanded of its adherents, the brilliant and sometimes successful efforts of antifascist intellectuals to counter Hitler’s rise, the most significant concepts to emerge out of the 1930s and 1940s for understanding European authoritarianism, the major controversies around Nazism that took place after the regime’s demise, the philosophical claims of postwar philosophers, sociologists and psychoanalysts—from Theodor Adorno to Hannah Arendt and from Alexander Kluge to Klaus Theweleit—and the role of Auschwitz in European history.
Stalag 383 Bavaria: A History of the Camp, the Escapes & the Liberation
by Stephen WynnStalag 383 was somewhat unique as a Second World War prisoner of war camp. Located in a high valley surrounded by dense woodland and hills in Hofenfels, Bavaria, it began life in 1938 as a training ground for the German Army. At the outbreak of war it was commandeered by the German authorities for use as a prisoner of war camp for Allied non-commissioned officers, and given the name Oflag lllC. It was renamed Stalag 383 in November 1942. For most of its existence it comprised of some 400 huts, 30 feet long and 14 feet wide, with each typically being home to 14 men. Many of the British service men who found themselves incarcerated at the camp had been captured during the evacuations at Dunkirk, or when the Greek island of Crete fell to the Germans on 1 June 1941. Stalag 383 had somewhat of a holiday camp feel to it for many who found themselves prisoners there. There were numerous clubs formed by different regiments, or men from the same town or county. These clubs catered for interests such as education, sports, theatrical productions and debates, to name but a few. This book examines life in the camp, the escapes that were undertaken from there, and includes a selection of never before published photographs of the camp and the men who lived there, many for more than five years.
Stalag Luft I: The PoW Camp for Air Force Personnel, 1940–1945
by Air Ministry PersonnelLocated by the Baltic near the town of Barth in Western Pomerania, Germany, Stalag Luft I was one of a number of Stammlager Luftwaffe, these being permanent camps established and administered by the Luftwaffe, which were used to house Allied air force prisoners of war.Originally built for RAF personnel, by the time the camp was liberated by the Russians in May 1945, the camp contained approximately 7,500 American and 1,300 British and Commonwealth prisoners. The camp had expanded from the original single RAF compound, to a total of three. On 30 April 1945, the prisoners were ordered to evacuate the camp in the face of the advancing Soviet Red Army but refused. After discussions between the senior American and British officers and the Kommandant, it was agreed that to avoid unnecessary bloodshed the guards would depart, leaving the prisoners behind. The next day, the first Soviet troops arrived.This Official History of Stalag Luft I was prepared for the War Office just after the war, but was never released to the general public. It explores all aspects of the camp, from its administration, to the supply of the food and conditions the prisoners endured. Inevitably the author also investigates the subject of escapes, as well as the reprisals that followed.This account provides the reader with an accurate and unprecedented insight into the story of one of the longest-running German PoW camps of the Second World War.
Stalag Luft I: or Vacation With Pay
by Alan Harrison NewcombStalag Luft One, was first published in 1947 as Vacation with Pay (and with the wonderfully tongue-in cheek subtitle: Being an account of my stay at the German rest camp for tired allied airmen at beautiful Barth-on-the-Baltic. Author Alan Newcomb, while on his seventh combat mission as a B-17 co-pilot, when in fall of 1944, he and his crew were forced to bail-out over Germany's Ruhr Valley after their plane was damaged by anti-aircraft flak and on fire. The book, largely written on prison camp toilet paper, is Newcomb's account of his time as a POW in Stalag Luft One, one of Germany's camps for captured Allied aviators. Daily life in the prison is described; especially notable is the high degree of organization of the prisoners and their activities (including digging escape tunnels) by the ranking officers. The prisoners were freed by advancing Russian forces in May 1945. This kindle edition includes the numerous photographs and line-drawings found in the original book.
Stalag Luft III: An Official History of the 'Great Escape' PoW Camp
by Howard GrehanIn the summer of 1944 the Red Army crushed Army Group Centre in one of the largest offensives in military history. Operation Bagration - launched almost exactly three years after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union - was Stalin's retribution for Hitler's Operation Barbarossa. Earlier battles at Stalingrad and Kursk paved the way for Soviet victory, but as Anthony Tucker-Jones demonstrates in this fascinating study, Bagration ensured that the Germans would never regain the strategic initiative. In one fell swoop the Wehrmacht lost a quarter of its strength on the Eastern Front. And in a series of overwhelming assaults, the Red Army recaptured practically all the territory the Soviet Union had lost in 1941, advanced into East Prussia and reached the outskirts of Warsaw. As he reconstructs this massive and complex battle, Anthony Tucker-Jones assesses the opposing forces and their commanders and gives a vivid insight into the planning and decision-making at the highest level. He recreates the experience of the soldiers on the battlefield by using graphic contemporary accounts, and he sets the Bagration offensive in the wider context of the Soviet war effort. He also asks why Stalin's road to retribution proved to be such a long and bloody one - for the Germans, despite their crippling losses, managed to resist for another ten months.
Stalag XXA Torun Enforced March from Poland
by Stephen Wynn“Based largely on a POW diary, this book sheds fresh light on the conditions facing POWs in Poland as the Nazi State collapsed . . . Very Highly Recommended.” —FiretrenchStalag XXA was a Second World War German POW camp for noncommissioned officers located in Nazi occupied Torun, in northern Poland. This book examines in detail what life was like in the camp for those held there, which over the course of the war numbered more than 60,000 men, including Polish, French, Belgians, British, Yugoslavians, Russians, Americans, Italians and Norwegians.The bulk of the book is based on a diary kept by Leonard Parker, a POW at Stalag XXA who was forced to undertake a march from the camp, commencing on January 19 1945, taking himself and his comrades to the Russian port of Odessa. It was a difficult march undertaken in harsh wintery conditions, where lack of food, the cold, and the fear of death were their constant companions. The final leg of their liberation saw the men of Stalag XXA board the Duchess of Richmond at Odessa, before arriving at Greenock, Scotland, on April 17 1945, and finally finding their freedom.“Under the format of a diary this book tells the story of Leonard Parker, his life and daily struggle of living in a prison camp . . . a great read . . . I would recommend this book to all. 5 stars.” —UK Historian
Stalag XXA Torun Enforced March from Poland
by Stephen Wynn“Based largely on a POW diary, this book sheds fresh light on the conditions facing POWs in Poland as the Nazi State collapsed . . . Very Highly Recommended.” —FiretrenchStalag XXA was a Second World War German POW camp for noncommissioned officers located in Nazi occupied Torun, in northern Poland. This book examines in detail what life was like in the camp for those held there, which over the course of the war numbered more than 60,000 men, including Polish, French, Belgians, British, Yugoslavians, Russians, Americans, Italians and Norwegians.The bulk of the book is based on a diary kept by Leonard Parker, a POW at Stalag XXA who was forced to undertake a march from the camp, commencing on January 19 1945, taking himself and his comrades to the Russian port of Odessa. It was a difficult march undertaken in harsh wintery conditions, where lack of food, the cold, and the fear of death were their constant companions. The final leg of their liberation saw the men of Stalag XXA board the Duchess of Richmond at Odessa, before arriving at Greenock, Scotland, on April 17 1945, and finally finding their freedom.“Under the format of a diary this book tells the story of Leonard Parker, his life and daily struggle of living in a prison camp . . . a great read . . . I would recommend this book to all. 5 stars.” —UK Historian
Stalemate: U.S. Marines From Bunker Hill To The Hook [Illustrated Edition] (Marines In The Korean War Commemorative Series #6)
by Captain Bernard C. NaltyIncludes more than 40 maps, plans and illustrations.This volume in the official History of the Marine Corps chronicles the part played by United States Marines during the Korean War from Bunker Hill to the Hook.The origin of this work lies in the continuing program to keep Marines, who are the key to the success of Marine Corps operations, informed of the ways of combat and civic action in Vietnam. The project provides a timely series of short, factual narratives of small unit action, stories which would have lessons learned as an integral part.It's 1952. Marines have been fighting in Korea for just over 2 years. The daring execution of the Inchon Landing, if not forgotten, might as well have been. For instead of conducting amphibious assaults and moving rapidly though North Korean forces, the Marines of the 1st Marine Division are fighting along a main line of resistance (MLR)-outpost warfare-static warfare that consisted of slugfests between artillery and mortars, but always the infantryman moving in small groups attacking and reattacking the same ground.
Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him
by Donald RayfieldStalin did not act alone. The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin's dictatorship, were the result of a tight network of trusted henchmen (and women), spies, psychopaths, and thugs. At the top of this pyramid of terror sat five indispensable hangmen who presided over the various incarnations of Stalin's secret police. Now, in his harrowing new book, Donald Rayfield probes the lives, the minds, the twisted careers, and the unpunished crimes of Stalin's loyal assassins. Founded by Feliks Dzierzynski, the Cheka-the Extraordinary Commission-came to life in the first years of the Russian Revolution. Spreading fear in a time of chaos, the Cheka proved a perfect instrument for Stalin's ruthless consolidation of power. But brutal as it was, the Cheka under Dzierzynski was amateurish compared to the well-oiled killing machines that succeeded it. Genrikh Iagoda's OGPU specialized in political assassination, propaganda, and the manipulation of foreign intellectuals. Later, the NKVD recruited a new generation of torturers. Starting in 1938, terror mastermind Lavrenti Beria brought violent repression to a new height of ingenuity and sadism. As Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading Soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeev, Alexei Tolstoi, Isaak Babel, and Osip Mandelstam were all caught in Stalin's web-courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and "accomplishments" of Stalin's key henchmen and their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power spanning half a century. Though Beria lost his power-and his life-after Stalin's death in 1953, the fundamental methods of the hangmen maintained their grip into the second half of the twentieth century. Indeed, Rayfield argues, the tradition of terror, far from disappearing, has emerged with renewed vitality under Vladimir Putin. Written with grace, passion, and a dazzling command of the intricacies of Soviet politics and society, Stalin and the Hangmen is a devastating indictment of the individuals and ideology that kept Stalin in power.
Stalin and War, 1918-1953: Patterns of Repression, Mobilization, and External Threat (Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe)
by David R. ShearerStalin and War, 1918-1953 is the first book to examine the patterns of radicalized internal violence that characterized the Stalinist regime across the whole of the dictator’s rule, and it is one of the only works to connect patterns of internal violence to the dictator’s perceptions of war and foreign threat. Discussion focuses on the crisis years 1928-1932, 1936-1939, the Great Fatherland War, and the last war crisis period, 1947-1953. Violent repressions under Stalin were cyclical. They peaked and ebbed but, in each case, they were linked to Stalin’s expectation of war and invasion, to his perceived need for urgent internal mobilization, and to intense foreign policy activity. Stalin’s behavior in each of these perceived war crises followed a pattern established during the dictator's experience as a military commander in the Russian revolutionary wars, and especially during the Polish war in 1919 and 1920. Together, these chapters trace a consistent and interconnected logic of war and repression throughout Stalin’s political life. This book will be of interest to professional scholars of Soviet history, twentieth-century history, and World War II history, and it is approachable enough to be appreciated by general readers.
Stalin and the Inevitable War, 1936-1941
by Silvio PonsThis is a study of the responses of the Soviet Union to the European crises which led to World War II. It is based on a substantial body of political and diplomatic documents that has become accessible to scholars since the opening up of former Soviet archives in 1992.
Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War, 1939-1940 (Soviet (Russian) Study of War)
by E. N. Kulkov O. A. RzheshevskyThis is the verbatim record of a secret and hitherto unpublished meeting, held in the Kremlin in April 1940, devoted to a post mortem of the Finnish campaign.
Stalin as Warlord
by Alfred J. RieberAn authoritative account of Stalin as a wartime leader—showing how his paradoxical policies of mass mobilization and repression affected all aspects of Soviet society The Second World War was the defining moment in the history of the Soviet Union. With Stalin at the helm, it emerged victorious at a huge economic and human cost. But even before the fighting had ended, Stalin began to turn against the architects of success. In this original and comprehensive study, Alfred J. Rieber examines Stalin as a wartime leader, arguing that his policies were profoundly paradoxical. In preparation for the war, Stalin mobilized the whole of Soviet society in pursuit of his military goals and intensified the centralization of his power. Yet at the same time, his use of terror weakened the forces vital to the defense of the country. In his efforts to rebuild the country after the devastating losses and destruction, he suppressed groups that had contributed immeasurably to victory. His steady, ruthless leadership cultivated a legacy that was to burden the Soviet Union and Russia to the present day.
Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution
by Robert M. SlusserOriginally published in 1987. In March 1917 young Joseph Stalin, already a high-ranking Bolshevik, returned from Siberian exile in search of greatness and power. But his activities during the months leading up to the October Revolution were full of blunders and misjudgments—failures that in later years Stalin obliterated from the historical record. Stalin in October reassembles the history of 1917 and explains why, on the eve of the revolutionaries' seizure of power, Stalin seemingly dropped out of the picture. "He would always be dogged," Slusser writes, "by a nagging sense of having somehow missed the revolution." The lingering shame was crucial to Stalin's development into a Soviet dictator.
Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
by Rosemary SullivanWinner of the Plutarch Award for Best BiographyNational Book Critics Circle Award FinalistPEN Literary Award FinalistNew York Times Notable BookWashington Post Notable BookBoston Globe Best Book of the YearThe award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history’s most monstrous dictators—her father, Josef Stalin.Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy—the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.As she gradually learned about the extent of her father’s brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States—leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father’s regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Wisconsin.With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana’s daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana’s incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it’s a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father’s name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us.Illustrated with photographs.
Stalin's Folly: The Tragic First Ten Days of Word War II on the Eastern Front
by Constantine PleshakovOn June 22, 1941, radios all over the Soviet Union crackled with the announcement that the country had been attacked by Nazi Germany. But the voice on the airwaves was not the familiar one of Joseph Stalin; it was the voice of his deputy, Molotov. Paralyzed by Hitler's unexpected move, Stalin disappeared completely from public view for the crucial ten days of war on the Eastern Front. In this taut, hour-by-hour account, Constantine Pleshakov draws on a wealth of information from newly opened archives to elucidate the complex causes of the Soviet leader's reaction, revealing the feared despot's unrealized military stratagems as well as his personal vulnerabilities, while also offering a new and deeper understanding of Russian history.
Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov
by Geoffrey RobertsWidely regarded as the most accomplished general of World War II, the Soviet military legend Marshal Georgy Zhukov at last gets the full-scale biographical treatment he has long deserved. A man of indomitable will and fierce determination, Georgy Zhukov was the Soviet Union's indispensable commander through every one of the critical turning points of World War II. It was Zhukov who saved Leningrad from capture by the Wehrmacht in September 1941, Zhukov who led the defense of Moscow in October 1941, Zhukov who spearheaded the Red Army's march on Berlin and formally accepted Germany's unconditional surrender in the spring of 1945. Drawing on the latest research from recently opened Soviet archives, including the uncensored versions of Zhukov's own memoirs, Roberts offers a vivid portrait of a man whose tactical brilliance was matched only by the cold-blooded ruthlessness with which he pursued his battlefield objectives. After the war, Zhukov was a key player on the geopolitical scene. As Khrushchev's defense minister, he was one of the architects of Soviet military strategy during the Cold War. While lauded in the West as a folk hero--he was the only Soviet general ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine--Zhukov repeatedly ran afoul of the Communist political authorities. Wrongfully accused of disloyalty, he was twice banished and erased from his country's official history--left out of books and paintings depicting Soviet World War II victories. Piercing the hyperbole of the Zhukov personality cult, Roberts debunks many of the myths that have sprung up around Zhukov's life and career to deliver fresh insights into the marshal's relationships with Stalin, Khrushchev, and Eisenhower. A remarkably intimate portrait of a man whose life was lived behind an Iron Curtain of official secrecy, Stalin's General is an authoritative biography that restores Zhukov to his rightful place in the twentieth-century military pantheon.From the Hardcover edition.e was lived behind an Iron Curtain of official secrecy, Stalin's General is a full, fair, and authoritative biography that restores Zhukov to his rightful place in the twentieth-century military pantheon.From the Hardcover edition.
Stalin's Gold: A deeply captivating classic crime thriller (The DCI Frank Merlin Series #3)
by Mark EllisVividly atmospheric and brimming with suspense, Mark Ellis presents this insanely captivating wartime thriller of classic espionage.The second instalment in the Frank Merlin Series, following on from Princes Gate.PRAISE FOR THE CRTICALLY ACCALIMED DCI FRANK MERLIN SERIES:'A richly atmospheric, authentic, and suspenseful detective series' - Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author'So immaculately nuanced they genuinely feel like they belong in the cannon of mid-20th century thrillers . . . Another belter!' - Fiona Phillips'A truly spellbinding page turner that keeps you hooked right to the end' - Dorset Book Detective'Brimming with action . . . complex, addictive and highly entertaining . . . I cannot wait to read more books by Mark Ellis' - The Book Cosy Book Club'Brimming with authentic details . . . A compelling tale of crime fiction' - Foreword Reviews'A mammoth read with a Dickensian plethora of characters that I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in . . . meticulously researched . . . deliciously complex' - CARAMEROLLOVESBOOKS___________December 1938. Moscow. Josef Stalin has lost some gold. He is not a happy man. He asks his henchman Beria to track it down. September 1940 London. Above the city the Battle of Britain rages and the bombs rain down. On the streets below, DCI Frank Merlin and his officers investigate the sudden disappearance of Polish RAF pilot Ziggy Kilinski while also battling an epidemic of looting unleashed by the chaos and destruction of the Blitz. Kilinski's fellow pilots, a disgraced Cambridge don, Stalin's spies in London, members of the Polish government in exile and a ruthless Russian gangster are amongst those caught up in Merlin's enquiries. Sweeping from Stalin's Russia to Civil War Spain, from Aztec Mexico to pre-war Poland, and from Hitler's Berlin to Churchill's London a compelling story of treasure, grand larceny, treachery, torture and murder unfolds. Eventually as Hitler reluctantly accepts that the defiance of the RAF has destroyed his chances of invasion for the moment, a violent shoot-out in Hampstead leads Merlin on the final truth....and Stalin to his gold. ___________And don't forget the other titles in the highly praised DCI Frank Merlin series: Princess Gate, Merlin at War and A Death In Mayfair.
Stalin's Gold: A deeply captivating classic crime thriller (The\dci Frank Merlin Ser. #2)
by Mark EllisVividly atmospheric and brimming with suspense, Mark Ellis presents this insanely captivating wartime thriller of classic espionage.The second instalment in the Frank Merlin Series, following on from Princes Gate.PRAISE FOR THE CRTICALLY ACCALIMED DCI FRANK MERLIN SERIES:'A richly atmospheric, authentic, and suspenseful detective series' - Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author'So immaculately nuanced they genuinely feel like they belong in the cannon of mid-20th century thrillers . . . Another belter!' - Fiona Phillips'A truly spellbinding page turner that keeps you hooked right to the end' - Dorset Book Detective'Brimming with action . . . complex, addictive and highly entertaining . . . I cannot wait to read more books by Mark Ellis' - The Book Cosy Book Club'Brimming with authentic details . . . A compelling tale of crime fiction' - Foreword Reviews'A mammoth read with a Dickensian plethora of characters that I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in . . . meticulously researched . . . deliciously complex' - CARAMEROLLOVESBOOKS___________December 1938. Moscow. Josef Stalin has lost some gold. He is not a happy man. He asks his henchman Beria to track it down. September 1940 London. Above the city the Battle of Britain rages and the bombs rain down. On the streets below, DCI Frank Merlin and his officers investigate the sudden disappearance of Polish RAF pilot Ziggy Kilinski while also battling an epidemic of looting unleashed by the chaos and destruction of the Blitz. Kilinski's fellow pilots, a disgraced Cambridge don, Stalin's spies in London, members of the Polish government in exile and a ruthless Russian gangster are amongst those caught up in Merlin's enquiries. Sweeping from Stalin's Russia to Civil War Spain, from Aztec Mexico to pre-war Poland, and from Hitler's Berlin to Churchill's London a compelling story of treasure, grand larceny, treachery, torture and murder unfolds. Eventually as Hitler reluctantly accepts that the defiance of the RAF has destroyed his chances of invasion for the moment, a violent shoot-out in Hampstead leads Merlin on the final truth....and Stalin to his gold. ___________And don't forget the other titles in the highly praised DCI Frank Merlin series: Princess Gate, Merlin at War and A Death In Mayfair.
Stalin's Hammer: Rome (An Axis of Time Novella)
by John BirminghamAlternate history master John Birmingham unleashes an astounding new installment in his Axis of Time series: an original eBook novella that begins when the future and the past collide. The year is 1955, ten years after a battle fleet from 2021 exploded through a wormhole in space--straight into the Battle of Midway. A staggered, war-torn world catches its balance. Uptimers, with their extraordinary technology and strange styles, mingle with the real timers. Universities study the effects on the future. And men like Prince Harry of England find themselves playing pivotal roles in a history that has already happened. Or has it? In the starkly partitioned city of Rome, spies, killers, and mafia foot soldiers cross the dividing line between Allied and Russian Zones. Somewhere in the ancient, underground catacombs two men hunt for one another. One is Stalin's personal assassin, the other a murderous, disillusioned acolyte of the Communist ideal, allied by fate and history with the OSS, MI6, and England's swashbuckling Prince Harry. Harry's own mission takes him to a glittering dinner party and a prize over which the two Russian killers are fighting--a factory owner with a terrifying secret. As the forces of West and East are locked in a stalemate, what this man knows could change everything: Josef Stalin, hiding in a Siberian bunker, is ready to hit the world with a thunderous blow.