Kevin Stillwell

Cain Lemaire, a Secret Service agent from New Orleans, has the dream job he's always wanted - until a single night results in a scandal that loses him his post. Needing a new direction, Cain follows his sister to Japan and takes a job in Tokyo as head of security for the CEO of a top company. But what he thought was a simple security assignment unravels into a tangled web of corruption, greed and extortion. Without the wealth of resources he had with the Secret Service, Cain will have to rely on his instincts and training as he races to find justice the way only a born and raised Cajun can.

Cain Lemaire, a Secret Service agent from New Orleans, has the dream job he's always wanted - until a single night results in a scandal that loses him his post. Needing a new direction, Cain follows his sister to Japan and takes a job in Tokyo as head of security for the CEO of a top company. But what he thought was a simple security assignment unravels into a tangled web of corruption, greed and extortion. Without the wealth of resources he had with the Secret Service, Cain will have to rely on his instincts and training as he races to find justice the way only a born and raised Cajun can.

Stafford Lee Penney is the best defence lawyer in Mississippi - he's never lost a case. Until now. Hot on the heels of his latest courtroom victory, his wife is brutally murdered. Devastated, Stafford Lee spirals into a losing streak that forces him to abandon his once brilliant career. But his wife's killer is still on the loose and they seem determined to frame Stafford Lee for their crimes. Rising from rock bottom, he makes a bold return to court - to defend himself in the biggest murder trial this town has ever seen. Stafford Lee must crack the toughest case of his career. And this time, it's personal.

Stafford Lee Penney is the best defence lawyer in Mississippi - he's never lost a case. Until now. Hot on the heels of his latest courtroom victory, his wife is brutally murdered. Devastated, Stafford Lee spirals into a losing streak that forces him to abandon his once brilliant career. But his wife's killer is still on the loose and they seem determined to frame Stafford Lee for their crimes. Rising from rock bottom, he makes a bold return to court - to defend himself in the biggest murder trial this town has ever seen. Stafford Lee must crack the toughest case of his career. And this time, it's personal.

In this remarkable, ground-breaking new book Sean McMeekin marks a generational shift in our view of Stalin as an ally in the Second World War. Stalin's only difference from Hitler, he argues, was that he was a successful murderous predator. With Hitler dead and the Third Reich in ruins, Stalin created an immense new Communist empire. Among his holdings were Czechoslovakia and Poland, the fates of which had first set the West against the Nazis and, of course, China and North Korea, the ramifications of which we still live with today.

Until Barbarossa wrought a public relations miracle, turning him into a plucky ally of the West, Stalin had murdered millions, subverted every norm of international behaviour, invaded as many countries as Hitler had, and taken great swathes of territory he would continue to keep. In the larger sense the global conflict grew out of not only German and Japanese aggression but Stalin's manoeuvrings, orchestrated to provoke wars of attrition between the capitalist powers in Europe and in Asia. Throughout the war Stalin chose to do only what would benefit his own regime, not even aiding in the effort against Japan until the conflict's last weeks. Above all, Stalin's War uncovers the shocking details of how the US government (to the detriment of itself and its other allies) fuelled Stalin's war machine, blindly agreeing to every Soviet demand, right down to agents supplying details of the atomic bomb.