"The little-known story of a British diplomat who serves as a spy in South Carolina at the dawn of the Civil War, posing as a friend to slave-owning aristocrats when he was actually telling Britain not to support the Confederacy"--

Between the Confederacy and recognition by Great Britain stood one unlikely Englishman who hated the slave trade. His actions helped determine the fate of a nation. When Robert Bunch arrived in Charleston to take up the post of British consul in 1853, he was young and full of ambition, but even he couldn’t have imagined the incredible role he would play in the history-making events to unfold. In an age when diplomats often were spies, Bunch’s job included sending intelligence back to the British government in London. Yet as the United States threatened to erupt into Civil War, Bunch found himself plunged into a double life, settling into an amiable routine with his slavery-loving neighbors on the one hand, while working furiously to thwart their plans to achieve a new Confederacy. As secession and war approached, the Southern states found themselves in an impossible position. They knew that recognition from Great Britain would be essential to the survival of the Confederacy, and also that such recognition was likely to be withheld if the South reopened the Atlantic slave trade. But as Bunch meticulously noted from his perch in Charleston, secession’s red-hot epicenter, that trade was growing. And as Southern leaders continued to dissemble publicly about their intentions, Bunch sent dispatch after secret dispatch back to the Foreign Office warning of the truth—that economic survival would force the South to import slaves from Africa in massive numbers. When the gears of war finally began to turn, and Bunch was pressed into service on an actual spy mission to make contact with the Confederate government, he found himself in the middle of a fight between the Union and Britain that threatened, in the boast of Secretary of State William Seward, to “wrap the world in flames.” In this masterfully told story, Christopher Dickey introduces Consul Bunch as a key figure in the pitched battle between those who wished to reopen the floodgates of bondage and misery, and those who wished to dam the tide forever. Featuring a remarkable cast of diplomats, journalists, senators, and spies, Our Man in Charleston captures the intricate, intense relationship between great powers on the brink of war.

Roy Hoopes is a career journalist in Washington, DC, and the author of Cain, the Edgar Award-winning standard biography of James M. Cain. His first novel is an historical detective novel featuring James M. Cain and H. L. Mencken as detectives, two Baltimore journalists investigating the deaths and sex scandals in 1923 Harding-administration Washington, DC, in the season before the big Teapot Dome scandal breaks. There is a remarkable relevance of 1920s scandals to todays political environment, but that remains behind the book as two bright literary men playing Holmes and Watson, Mencken and Cain, take the train to DC to get the real scoop. They drink a lot, meet a mysterious sexy redhead named Roxy, a rogue named Gaston B. Means, and get a lot more than they bargained for. They don't solve a crime, but with hard-boiled enthusiasm they expose some of the roots of the malaise of our capitol. All the speaking roles are real historical characters. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A world-famous Australian writer, an inspiration to Robert Hughes and Clive James, a legendary war correspondent who also wrote bestselling histories of exploration and conservation . . . and yet forgotten? In this dazzling book, Thornton McCamish delves into the past to reclaim a remarkable figure, Alan Moorehead. As a reporter, Moorehead witnessed many of the great historical events of the mid-20th century: the Spanish Civil War and both world wars, Cold War espionage, and decolonisation in Africa. He debated strategy with Churchill and Gandhi, fished with Hemingway, and drank with Graham Greene, Ava Gardner and Truman Capote. As well as being a regular contributor to the New Yorker, in 1956 Moorehead wrote the first significant book about the Gallipoli campaign. With its countless adventures, its touch of jet-set glamour and its tragic arc, Moorehead’s story is a beguiling one. Thornton McCamish tells it as a quest – intimate, perceptive and superbly entertaining. His funny, ardent book reveals an extraordinary Australian and takes its place in a fresh tradition of contemporary biography. Winner of the 2017 Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Shortlisted for the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Awards and the 2018 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature Longlisted in the 2016 Walkley Book Awards ‘[McCamish] succeeds beautifully: Our Man Elsewhere is crammed with anecdote and shrewd observation, with the kind of detail and ruminative digression that conventional biographers might consider trivial or irrelevant ... [it] is such a good book that I’m hard put to find anything wrong with it.’ —Inside Story ‘This is one of those rare biographies that will keep you transfixed right to the very last pages, even though in this instance, they are scorchingly sad.’ —Country Style ‘McCamish’s triumph is to apply Moorehead’s own relentless curiosity to his subject, and add a modern prism to the man and his work. McCamish’s writing is elegant, frosted in fresh insights ... marvellous.’ —Herald Sun ‘A detailed, involving and very readable look at the life of a flawed man with a large appetite for life.’ —Books+Publishing ‘Full-hearted, free-striding – this is a book that sings.’ —Helen Garner

GreenKnight is a thriller of love, patriotism, and corruption within the Executive branch of the government, and is the second novel in the Green trilogy, the first being GreenCove. In GreenKnight, Sheldon Flagler Scott finds himself on the Tamiami Trail in southern Florida heading west out of Miami with a hurricane at his back. Hurricane Kitty, a slow-moving, immense storm is approaching the southeast coast of the state. Shell is a special agent for the United States Secret Service pledged to keep the President out of trouble politically. On the way to Tampa, Shell sees a burning car, a white Mercedes, on the edge of the Trail with two dead bodies inside. The trunk is open and inside is a rather large footlocker filled with a fortune in cash and diamonds. The novel concerns itself with drugs, shoot-outs and murders, bombings and waterspouts. Shell discovers a Cuban plot to become a world power and traces the problem to the DEA and a nest of dishonesty, graft, bribery, and fraud in high places.

This collection covers the period February 1862-March 1864, which constituted the final two years and one month that Rear-Admiral Sir Alexander Milne commanded the Royal Navy’s North America and West India Station. Its chief focus is upon Anglo-American relations in the midst of the American Civil War. Whilst the most high-profile cause of tension between the two countries — the Trent Affair — had been resolved in Britain’s favour by January 1862, numerous sources of discord remained. Most turned on American efforts to blockade the so-called Confederacy, efforts that often ran afoul of international law, not to mention British amour-propre. As commander of British naval forces in the theatre, Milne’s decisions and actions could and did have a major impact on the state of affairs between his government and that of the US. While noting in one private exchange with the British ambassador to Washington, Richard, Lord Lyons, that he had been "enjoined to abstain from any act likely to involve Great Britain in hostilities with the United States," Milne added ominously, "yet I am also instructed to guard our Commerce from all illegal interference" and it is plain from his correspondence that both he and the British government were prepared to use force in that undertaking. Thus, between apparently high-handed behaviour by the US Navy and Milne’s and the Palmerston government’s resolve not to be pushed beyond a certain point, the ingredients for a major confrontation between the two countries existed. Yet most of Milne’s efforts were directed toward preventing such a confrontation from occurring. In this endeavour he was joined by Lyons and by the British government. No vital British interest was at stake in the conflict raging between North and South, and thus the nation was unlikely to become directly involved in it unless provoked by rash US actions. Yet there was no shortage of such provocations: the seizure of British merchant vessels bound from one neutral port to another, detaining such ships without first conducting a search of their cargo for evidence of contraband of war, the de facto blockade of British colonial ports, apparent violations of British territorial waters, the seizure of British merchantmen off the neutral port of Matamoros, Mexico, and the use of neutral ports as bases of operations by US warships among them. In responding to these and other sources of dispute between the US and Britain, Milne proved adept at pouring oil on troubled waters, so much so that in a late 1863 letter to Foreign Secretary Lord Russell, Lyons lamented his impending departure from the station: "I am very much grieved at his leaving....No change of admirals could be for the better." This collection centres upon Milne’s private correspondence, especially that between him and Lyons, First Lord of the Admiralty the Duke of Somerset and First Naval Lord Vice Admiral Sir Frederick Grey. It also includes private letters to and from many of Milne’s other professional correspondents and important official correspondence with the Admiralty.

A young girl’s life is torn apart when her parents are killed in the NATO bombing of Belgrade, Serbia, during the 1999 Kosovo War. An embittered Katarina Petrovic grows up with a hatred for Americans and becomes a willing candidate for special training by Russian agents. Alex Baker commanded an Air Force Office of Special Investigations unit until an incident forced him to resign his military commission. Still in his thirties, he finds a new career as the owner of a Manhattan-based travel agency specializing in tour packages. When his father is assassinated, Alex is promised to be kept in the loop regarding the investigation. The OSI, FBI, and CIA begin a global hunt for a female assassin who appears to be targeting American pilots involved in the Belgrade bombing. Alex is suddenly thrust into the middle of the investigation when events suggest he could also be on the assassin’s kill list. Is the woman making threatening phone calls the one who murdered his father? Or is she the alluring Dee Norton he meets supposedly by chance? Piece by piece, the mystery is unraveled, culminating in a thrilling conclusion on the island of Key West.