MasterChef The Classics with a Twist

***********************The phenomenal international bestseller – 100 million copies of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series sold worldwide.One of the Bookseller’s 30 most influential books of the last 30 years.”What a cracking novel! I haven’t read such a stunning thriller debut for years. Brilliantly written and totally gripping” Minette WaltersWith an Introduction by Val McDermidForty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder – and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet’s disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.Stieg Larsson’s groundbreaking trilogy is continued in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye and The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz

‘The most comprehensive narrative of intelligence compiled … unrivalled’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times’Captivating, insightful and masterly’ Edward Lucas, The TimesThe history of espionage is far older than any of today’s intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The first mention of espionage in world literature is in the Book of Exodus.’God sent out spies into the land of Canaan’. From there, Christopher Andrew traces the shift in the ancient world from divination to what we would recognize as attempts to gather real intelligence in the conduct of military operations, and considers how far ahead of the West – at that time – China and India were. He charts the development of intelligence and security operations and capacity through, amongst others, Renaissance Venice, Elizabethan England, Revolutionary America, Napoleonic France, right up to sophisticated modern activities of which he is the world’s best-informed interpreter. What difference have security and intelligence operations made to course of history? Why have they so often forgotten by later practitioners? This fascinating book provides the answers.

Drawing on his knowledge and long practice of Buddhism, the author reflects on four lines representing fundamental principles of the Zen or Ch’an school of Buddhism: “A special transmission outside the scriptures”, “No dependence on words and letters”, “Direct pointing to the mind”, and “Seeing into one’s own nature and realizing Buddhahood”. He sets out to communicate the essence of each, and to indicate how its meaning can be applied to Western conditions.