THE MADMEN OF BENGHAZI, available for the first time in the U.S., is a gripping, racy, ripped-from-the-headlines espionage thriller set in volatile post-Qaddafi Libya. Gérard de Villiers (1929–2013) spent his five-decade career cultivating connections in the world of international intelligence, which allowed him to anticipate geopolitical events before they occurred—and to masterfully blend fiction with an insider’s knowledge of international affairs. Published from 1964 until his death in 2013, his bestselling SAS series of 200 spy novels, starring Malko Linge, was long considered France’s answer to Ian Fleming, with Malko as his James Bond. Its hero, Malko Linge, an Austrian aristocrat, spends his time freelancing for the CIA in order to support his playboy lifestyle. When terrorists try to shoot down a plane carrying Libyan prince Ibrahim al-Senussi, it is clear that someone wants him dead. But the CIA has its own plot for the prince: Now that Qaddafi has been overthrown, al-Senussi is their best bet to set up a constitutional monarchy and stem the Islamist tide in Libya. The CIA, which needs Malko as much as he needs them, sends the Austrian aristocrat to Cairo to learn more about al-Senussi’s plans by seducing his companion, a ravishing British model. This mission is enormously appealing, but also proves enormously dangerous, as the same madman of God who is trying to kill al-Senussi also takes aim at Malko.

As U.S. troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan, and the Taliban is poised to take over, the CIA calls upon the Austrian aristocrat Malko Linge to execute a dangerous and delicate plan to restore stability to the region. On the ground in Kabul, Malko reconnects with an old flame and hires a South African mercenary to assist with his mission. But Malko doesn't know whom he can trust. His every move is monitored by President Karzai's entourage, Taliban leaders, a seductive American journalist--and a renegade within the CIA itself. Before he can pull off his plan, Malko is kidnapped and nearly killed. When he finally manages to escape, he finds himself alone and running for his life in a hostile city.

In this gripping, tightly plotted tale of espionage, Malko Linge investigates the suspicious death of a Russian oligarch in London. Boris Berezovsky is living in exile in London to avoid the wrath of Vladimir Putin. One morning, the unlucky oligarch is found dead in his bathroom, an apparent suicide. Their suspicions aroused, MI5 opens an investigation—but Prime Minister David Cameron orders the case closed. Alarmed at the renewal of Russian Cold War tricks and Moscow’s increasingly close ties to London, the CIA dispatches Malko Linge to investigate Berezovsky’s death and the British cover-up. With help from an alluring former CIA handler, Malko dives into the search for hard evidence of the Kremlin’s involvement in the affair—putting himself directly in the crosshairs of the world’s most efficient assassins.

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold USA Today bestselling story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units. Surprise . . . your target. Kill . . . your enemy. Vanish . . . without a trace. When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world. Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes, assassination. With unprecedented access to forty-two men and women who proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils -- like never before -- a complex world of individuals working in treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers, and saboteurs. Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign policy machine. Written with the pacing of a thriller, Surprise, Kill, Vanish brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work. Jacobsen's exclusive interviews -- with members of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon's generals), its counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities Division's Ground Branch operators who conduct today's close-quarters killing operations around the world -- reveal, for the first time, the enormity of this shocking, controversial, and morally complex terrain. Is the CIA's paramilitary army America's weaponized strength, or a liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation reported in this book, however unsettling, is legal.

This atmospheric noir novel retraces the steps that led to a murder off the coast of Brittany, probing the relationship between law and justice. In a depressed town on France's northern coast, a man named Martial Kermeur has been arrested for the murder of real estate developer Antoine Lazenec after throwing him overboard. Called before a judge, Kermeur goes back to the beginning to explain what brought him to this desperate point: his divorce, his son's acting out, layoffs at his job, and, above all, Lazenec's dazzling project for a seaside resort. The temptation to invest all of your severance pay in a beautiful apartment with a view of the sea is great. But still, it has to be built. In this subtle, enthralling novel, Tanguy Viel examines not only the psychology of a crime, but also the larger social ills that may offer its justification.

A powerful story of war in our time, of love of country, the experience of tragedy, and a platoon at the center of it all. This is a story that starts off close and goes very big. The initial part of the story might sound familiar at first: it is about a platoon of mostly nineteen-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that ends abruptly in catastrophe. Their part of the story folds into the next: inexorably linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the U.S. Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the ability to identify, monitor, catalog, and police people all over the world. First Platoon is an American saga that illuminates a transformation of society made possible by this new technology. Part war story, part legal drama, it is about identity in the age of identification. About humanity—physical bravery, trauma, PTSD, a yearning to do right and good—in the age of biometrics, which reduce people to iris scans, fingerprint scans, voice patterning, detection by odor, gait, and more. And about the power of point of view in a burgeoning surveillance state. Based on hundreds of formerly classified documents, FOIA requests, and exclusive interviews, First Platoon is an investigative exposé by a master chronicler of government secrets. First Platoon reveals a post–9/11 Pentagon whose identification machines have grown more capable than the humans who must make sense of them. A Pentagon so powerful it can cover up its own internal mistakes in pursuit of endless wars. And a people at its mercy, in its last moments before a fundamental change so complete it might be impossible to take back.

When he was just twenty-three, a recent graduate of Stanford University, Richard Engel set off to Cairo with $2,000 and dreams of being a reporter. Shortly thereafter he was working freelance for Arab news sources and got a call that a busload of Italian tourists were massacred at a Cairo museum. This was his first view of the carnage these years would pile on. Over two decades, Engel has been under fire, blown out of hotel beds, and taken hostage. He has watched Mubarak and Morsi in Egypt arrested and condemned, reported from Jerusalem, been through the Lebanese war, covered the whole shooting match in Iraq, interviewed Libyan rebels who toppled Gaddafi, reported from Syria as Al-Qaeda stepped in, and was kidnapped in the Syrian crosscurrents of fighting. He goes into Afghanistan with the Taliban and to Iraq with ISIS. Engel takes chances, though not reckless ones, keeps a level head and a sense of humor, as well as a grasp of history in the making. Reporting as NBC's chief foreign correspondent, he reveals his unparalleled access to the major figures, the gritty soldiers, and the helpless victims in the Middle East during this watershed time.

A PopMatters Best Book of the Year A perceptive study of how Israel’s actions, which run counter to the traditional historical values of Judaism, are putting Jewish people worldwide in an increasingly untenable position, now with a new introduction. More than a decade ago, the historian Tony Judt considered whether the behavior of Israel was becoming not only “bad for Israel itself” but also, on a wider scale, “bad for the Jews.” Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, this issue has grown ever more urgent. In The State of Israel vs. the Jews, veteran journalist Sylvain Cypel addresses it in depth, exploring Israel’s rightward shift on the international scene and with regard to the diaspora. Cypel reviews the little-known details of the military occupation of Palestinian territory, the mindset of ethnic superiority that reigns throughout an Israeli “colonial camp” that is largely in the majority, and the adoption of new laws, the most serious of which establishes two-tier citizenship between Jews and non-Jews. He shows how Israel has aligned itself with authoritarian regimes and adopted the practices of a security state, including the use of technologies such as the software that enabled the tracking and, ultimately, the assassination of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Lastly, The State of Israel vs. the Jews examines the impact of Israel’s evolution in recent years on the two main communities of the Jewish diaspora, in France and the United States, considering how and why public figures in each differ in their approaches.

A sexy, high-stakes thriller in which Malko Linge must choose between his sense of duty and his sense of honor. At a benefit dinner in Monaco, Austrian playboy and CIA freelancer Malko Linge meets an intriguing woman, Zhanna Khrenkov, who has an unusual proposal. She will disclose everything she knows about her husband Alexei’s business, provided Malko kills Alexei’s beautiful, young British mistress. Appalled, he refuses, but then Zhanna reveals that her husband runs a ring of Russian sleeper spies operating in the United States. Naturally, Malko’s CIA handlers would love to have this information, but he feels uncomfortable killing anyone in cold blood—especially a beautiful woman. Traveling from Vienna to London to Moscow and back, aided by his former CIA handler and sometime-lover Gwyneth Robertson, Malko strives to avoid the crosshairs of deadly assassins and—almost as dangerous—jealous lovers.

A two-time Peabody Award-winning writer and producer reveals the intimate, untold stories of his decades at America's most iconic news show.