David Downing

THE HEART-STOPPING FINAL INSTALMENT OF THE BESTSELLING STATION SERIES Europe, 1948. The continent is once again divided: into the Soviet-controlled East, and the US-dominated West. John Russell and his old comrade-in-espionage Shchepkin need to find a way out of the dangerous, morally murky world they have both inhabited for far too long. But they cant just walk away: if they want to escape with their lives, they must uncover a secret so damaging that they can buy their safety with silence. In this dazzling conclusion to the series, Downing ratchets up the suspense with a superb plot involving psychopathic mass murderers, a snuff movie that leads to the highest ranks of Soviet power, and Russell and his girlfriend Effis last-ditch attempt to gain freedom.

Robert Harris and Fatherland mixed with a dash of Le Carré PUBLISHING NEWSOne can only marvel at his talent for infusing such a rangy cast of characters with nuance and soul. NEW YORK TIMESBerlin, February 1933.John Russell watches the Reichstag burn, but its no scoop, even for a crime reporter. Four weeks after Hitlers accession, brownshirt mobs stalk the streets and the press prints what the Party tells it. Russell, a former communist with a British passport, should be packing his bags, but while family ties bind him, his assignments draw him closer to the savage heart of the new regime - and the story that only ends one way.A superb sequence of spy novels . . . tight, intelligent plots full of moral ambiguities and a cast of shadowy characters for whom deception is as natural as breathing. The atmosphere of espionage is wonderfully conveyed.THE TIMESAn extraordinary evocation of Nazi Germany C.J. SANSOM In the elite company of literary spy masters Alan Furst and Philip Kerr WASHINGTON POSTOne of the brightest lights in the shadowy world of historical spy fiction BIRMINGHAM POST

Englishman John Russell is a member of the foreign press corps in Berlin and a first-hand witness to the brutal machinations of Hitler and the Nazi party in the build-up to war during the early months of 1939. Unlike many of his colleagues, Russell wishes to remain in Berlin for as long as possible to be close to Effi, his glamorous actress girlfriend, and above all to Paul, his eleven-year-old son who lives with his estranged German wife. When an old acquaintance turns up at his lodging house, Russells life begins to change. Gradually he is persuaded by a combination of threats, financial need and appeals to his conscience to become a spy first for the Soviet Union and then, simultaneously, for the British. The grimness, the constant fear and the skin-deep glitter of pre-war Berlin alleviated by atmospheric excursions to Prague, Danzig, London and the Baltic seashore form a rich backdrop as Russell, a reluctant hero and saviour for some, treads along ever narrowing lines between the Russians, the British and the Gestapo.

Cuáles son los beneficios de los negociosglobales? ¿Reparten las empresas globales sus beneficios de manera uniforme? ¿Puede soportar nuestro planeta un continuado crecimiento económico? Confiamos en los medios de comunicación para obtener información de los negocios a escala mundial. Pero ¿cómo podemos conocer las verdaderas historias que hay detrás de las noticias? Este libro presenta los temas importantes que rodean a los negocios globales, y cómo se han reflejado en los medios informativos.

It is November 1941. Anglo-American John Russell is living in Berlin, tied to the increasingly alien city by his love for two Berliners: his fourteen-year-old son, Paul, and his actress girlfriend, Effi. One of a small and dwindling handful of permitted and much-censored American journalists, Russell has found himself pushed into serving as a point of contact between the anti-Nazi Abwehr and American intelligence. But his real work, as he now sees it, revolves around one crucial question what fate awaits those Berliner Jews who are now being shipped to the east? His investigation has already brought him into perilous proximity with the local communist underground, and will soon involve him in a celebrity murder with global ramifications. As Russell and Effi edge closer to some very dangerous truths, feuding German intelligence services and Americas imminent entry into the war further complicate their struggle to outfox and outlive Hitlers Reich.

April 1945. Hitlers Reich is on the verge of extinction, and its enemies are already plotting against each other. Assaulted by Allied bombs and Soviet shells, ruled by Nazis with nothing to lose, Berlin has become the most dangerous place on earth.Anglo-American journalist John Russell has travelled to Moscow, having escaped from Berlin in 1941 as America entered the war following the attack on Pearl Harbour.Russells eighteen-year-old son Paul, born to a German mother, is on the Oder front line, awaiting the final Soviet onslaught, ready to retreat towards Berlin, and resigned to the certain prospect of either death or imprisonment. Inside Berlin, Russells girlfriend Effi has a Jewish orphan to care for, and the Gestapo on her trail. The advancing Red Army promises liberation, but is also seeking retribution, particularly from German women.To find and save his son and girlfriend, Russell must reach Berlin no later than the Red Army. But only the Soviets can get him there, and the price of their help will threaten both his and the worlds future.

FIENDISHLY CLEVER AND GRIPPING HISTORICAL THRILLER SET IN THE LAST DAYS OF WW2 1945. The Red Army tears through Europe towards Berlin, exacting vengeance on a biblical scale, while the British and the Americans close in from the west. Victory over Hitler seems certain. But deep inside the Kremlin, Stalin worries about a new enemy. When the war is over, how will the Soviet Union protect itself against the overweening American behemoth? Meanwhile, ever more desperate, Hitler paces up and down his study in the Berchtesgaden. He knows he needs a miracle to avoid unthinkable and humiliating defeat. For both, the atom bomb is the answer. And both are willing to sacrifice their best spies to get it.

November 1945. John Russell is walking home through the grey streets of postwar London when his old accomplice, Soviet agent Yevgeny Shchepkin, falls into step beside him. Shchepkin informs Russell that his masters in Moscow have decided its time to pay them back for securing his safe exit from Russia in the last days of the war. Russell must return to Berlin to spy on his former colleagues in the German Communist Party, reporting on any deviation from the Stalinist line. Worse, he is ordered to offer his services to the Americans - in short, to become a double agent on Stalins payroll. But Russell knows too well how short the life expectancy of a double agent is. Together, he and Shchepkin - who has finally lost his faith in the Soviet utopia - hatch a plan to gain their freedom. The stakes are high, both for Russell and his girlfriend Effi, who has accompanied him to Berlin. In a world fuelled by paranoia and on the edge of a new, cold war, they will need all their wits - and some luck - to survive.

In July 1939 Russell returns to Berlin as the newly-appointed Central European correspondent of an American newspaper. With his communist past, German son and English-American parentage hes the perfect catch for any of Europes warring espionage services, and none will take no for an answer. Through the long Berlin summer, through trips to Prague, Warsaw and Moscow tracking Europe s descent into war, Russell seeks to satisfy his secret masters, protect his girlfriend Effi and his son Paul, and retain some sense of his fragile integrity. And if this wasnt difficult enough, a friend needs his help in finding the missing Jewish niece of an employee. With a whole continent headed for self-immolation, saving just one person shouldn t be so difficult...

FIRST IN A STUNNING NEW WW1 SPY SERIES FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING STATION NOVELS Jack McColl is a globe-trotting salesman for a luxury car firm. He is also a part-time spy for the fledgling Secret Service on the eve of the First World War, doing Londons bidding wherever internal or external enemies threaten the security of the British Empire. As 1913 ends he is in China, checking out the German naval base at Tsingtao between automobile demonstrations in Peking and Shanghai. Caitlin Hanley is a young Irish-American journalist with the sort of views that most British men would find dangerously advanced. McColl is no exception, but once captivated he finds himself unwilling to give her up -- even when Caitlins radical politi and family connections threaten to compromise his undeclared career as a spy. Then the pair become involved in a plot that threatens the Empire in its hour of greatest need . . .

Neil Young is arguably the only rock performer and songwriter whose work has retained the respect of a large following while gaining the allegiance of new generations. He has demonstrated a unique ability to combine commercial success with a willful experimentation. His music has encompassed almost every American popular style, from folk to metal, from rockabilly to punk, from rhythm and blues to country; and it is his restless pursuit of new challenges that has led on the one hand to his recognition as one of the few stars who refuses to "sell out," and on the other hand to his being sued by his record company for making albums that were not "characteristic of Neil Young." In "A Dreamer of Pictures," David Downing paints an illuminating and entertaining portrait of this contradictory and enigmatic figure. Here we see his childhood in Canada and his first forays into musicmaking; his ups and downs with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and Crazy Horse; the privations and excesses of life on the road; his unconventional filmmaking and fundraising ventures; his often absurd political pronouncements; his two marriages; his involvement with his younger son''s therapy to combat cerebral palsy; and his continuing musical evolution.Neil Young has taken rock beyond generational boundaries and has helped to establish it as a unique art form; "A Dreamer of Pictures" is thus a portrait not only of Young, but of rock itself.

Enthralling A first-rate espionage novel WILLIAM BOYD1953. Stalin is dead and John Russells days as a double agent for the USSR and the USA are behind him. Now the British journalist lives a quiet life in Los Angeles with his actress wife, Effi, and their daughter, while around them the McCarthy-era hearings are closing in on Hollywood.But someone is following Russell. Is it because of his research into American firms that collaborated with Nazi Germany? Or his earlier espionage work? Or something else? The answer takes John and Effi back to Berlin, now a city divided, where the fight for Stalins succession is on.The latest chapter in the John Russell series, David Downings Union Station is a superbly evocative Cold War thriller.

It took the Japanese fleet twenty-two days to sail from Japan to Pearl Harbor, the same twenty-two days that witnessed the German assault on Moscow and the Crusader battles in North Africa. The Germans failed to knock the Soviets out; the Japanese succeeded in bringing the Americans in. These twenty-two days sealed their mutual fate. With each chapter structured around one of the twenty-two days leading up to Pearl Harbor, SEALING THEIR FATE narrates the battles, the preparations for battle, the diplomatic manoeuvres and the intelligence wars. The story shifts from snowbound Russian villages to the stormy northern Pacific, from the North African desert to Europes warring capitals, and from Tokyo to Washington. The book features a host of ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen, and those political and military figures who played a key role in the war. Taking the momentum of the Japanese fleet, SEALING THEIR FATE works as an exciting countdown. Other countdowns -- the gradual halting of the German advance in Russia, the erosion of Rommels resources in North Africa, the institutionalization of the Holocaust -- is worked into this basic structure. As Winston Churchill memorably remarked Hitlers fate was sealed. Mussolinis fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.

Spring 1915: World War One rages across Europe, and the British Empire is assailed on all frontsdomestic and abroad. Amidst this bloodbath of nations, where one mans flag is another mans shroud, a British spy is asked to do the impossible: seduce and betray the woman he loves, again. Only this time betrayal is a two-way street.Jack McColl, a spy for His Majestys Secret Service, is stationed in India and charged with defending the Empire against Bengali terrorists and their German allies. Belgium, he finds, is not the only country seeking to expel an invader.In England, meanwhile, radical journalist Caitlin Hanley begins the business of rebuilding her life after the execution of her brotheran IRA sympathizer whose terrorist plot was foiled by Caitlins own ex-lover, the very same Jack McColl. The war is changing everything and giving fresh impulse to those causesfeminism, socialism and Irish independencewhich she as a journalist has long supported.The threat of a rising in Dublin alarms McColls bosses as much as it dazzles Caitlin. If another Irish plot brings them back together, will it be as enemies or lovers?

In this fascinating historical thriller, a British journalist (and former spy) is adrift in McCarthy-era Los Angelesuntil his research into a wartime conspiracy brings him face-to-face with the perilous instability of a post-Stalin Berlin.John Russell, an English journalist who specializes in human-interest pieces, had always been a reluctant spy. Its a dangerous lifeespecially when you are tasked with being a double agent for Soviet and American intelligence, in a city as fraught with hazard as Nazi-occupied Berlin. But its been years, now, since Russell was finally able to extricate himself from his life of espionagethrough a shady deal with a high-ranking Soviet official.Now its 1953, and Russell and his familyhis long-time partner, Effi Koenen, a burgeoning star on an American sitcom, and their daughter, Rosa, a young artist on the cusp of adulthoodlive a life of relative comfort in Los Angeles. Feeling somewhat adrift, Russell has just begun work on a book investigating American firms that continued doing business with Germany during Nazi occupation. Then he notices someone is tailing him around Los Angeles. Has someone not taken kindly to his research? Or could it be that the deal Russell struck all those years ago has left him with unfinished business?The answer may lie in Berlin, where John and Effi decide to return for the Third Annual Berlin International Film Festival. Braving the political disorder of a city that was once their home, the two are thrust into a perilous mission to protect the lifeand safetythey worked so hard to build.

In the fourth and final installment of David Downings spy series, Jack McColl is sent to Soviet Russia, where the civil war is coming to an end. The Bolsheviks have won but the country is in ruins. With the hopes engendered by the revolution hanging by a thread, plots and betrayals abound.London, 1921: ExSecret Service spy Jack McColl is in prison serving time for assaulting a cop. McColl has been embittered by the Great War; he feels betrayed by the country that had sent so many young men to die needlessly. He cant stomach spying for the British Empire anymore. Hes also heartbroken. The love of his life, radical journalist Caitlin Hanley, parted ways with him three years earlier so she could offer her services to the Communist revolution in Moscow.Then his former Secret Service boss offers McColl the chance to escape his jail sentence if he takes a dangerous and unofficial assignment in Russia, where McColl is already a wanted man. He would be spying on other spies, sniffing out the truth about MI5 meddling in a high-profile assassination plot. The target is someone McColl cares about and respects. The MI5 agent involved is someone he loathes. With the knowledge that he may be walking into a death trap, McColl sets out for Moscow, the scene of his last heartbreak. Little does he know that his mission will throw him back into Caitlins lifeor that her husband will be one of the men he is trying to hunt down.

Berlin, 1948. Still occupied by the four Allied powers and largely in ruins, the city has become the cockpit of a new Cold War. The legacies of the war have become entangled in the new Soviet-American conflict, creating a world of bizarre and fleeting loyaltiesa paradise for spies. As spring unfolds, a Western withdrawal looks increasingly likely. Berlins German inhabitants live in fear of the Soviet forces who occupy half the city, and whose legacy of violence has ripped apart many families. John Russell works for both Stalins NKVD and the newly created CIA, trying his best to cut himself loose from both before his double-agency is discovered by either. As tensions between the great powers escalate, each passing day makes Russells position more treacherous. He and his Soviet liaison, Shchepkin, seek out one final operationone piece of intelligence so damning it could silence the wrath of one nation and solicit the protection of the other. It will be the most dangerous task Russell has ever taken on, but one way or the other, it will be his last.

By 1939, Anglo-American journalist John Russell has spent over a decade in Berlin, where his son lives with his mother. He writes human-interest pieces for British and American papers, avoiding the investigative journalism that could get him deported. But as World War II approaches, he faces having to leave his son as well as his girlfriend of several years, a beautiful German starlet. When an acquaintance from his old communist days approaches him to do some work for the Soviets, Russell is reluctant, but he is unable to resist the offer. He becomes involved in other dangerous activities, helping a Jewish family and a determined young American reporter. When the British and the Nazis notice his involvement with the Soviets, Russell is dragged into the murky world of warring intelligence services.

Summer, 1939. British journalist John Russell has just been granted American citizenship in exchange for agreeing to work for American intelligence when his girlfriend Effi is arrested by the Gestapo. Russell hoped his new nationality would let him safely stay in Berlin with Effi and his son, but now hes being blackmailed. To free Effi, he must agree to work for the Nazis. They know he has Soviet connections and want him to pass them false intelligence. Russell consents, but secretly offers his services to the Soviets insteadnot for anything too dangerous, though, and only if theyll sneak him and Effi out of Germany if necessary. Its a good plan, but soon things become complicated. A Jewish girl has vanished, and Russell feels compelled to search for her. A woman from his past, a communist, reappears, insisting he help her reconnect with the Soviets, who turn out to demand more than Russell hoped. Meanwhile, Europe lurches toward war, and he must follow the latest storiesto places where American espionage assignments await him.