In the early hours of 30 April 2003, three police L&-Rovers arrived at the door of Alan Barker. Twelve armed & uniformed officers accompanied by four plain-clothes detectives entered the house. They stayed for four hours, turning over rooms, seizing bundles of documents, impounding computers, disks, files & anything else that interested them. The family subjected to this dawn raid were treated as common criminals, the operation resembling so many others in Northern Ireland over the Troubles when police & troops swooped on the homes of terrorist suspects. But Alan Barker was & is no terrorist. In fact, he has spent his adult life fighting terrorism on the streets of his native province. Alan Barker belonged to Special Branch, the RUC's elite unit dedicated to fighting the IRA, the INLA & loyalist terrorists. From the first days of his career in the RUC, when he was almost lured to his death by an IRA Mata-Hari, to his running of agents who inflicted major damage on the Provisionals in Derry, Barker gives a gripping inside account from the front-line struggle against terrorism. He demonstrates how the RUC had inside knowledge of IRA political & military thinking in the build-up to & after the historic 1994 ceasefire, using not only informants but also sophisticated listening devices. The book also details how one of Barker's key intelligence assets, Raymond Gilmour, caused chaos within the ranks of first the Derry INLA & later the IRA. Alan Barker faces the wrath of the State for detailing how the war on terrorism in Britain's backyard resulted ultimately in those who waged that war left feeling betrayed & let down. Shadows will have an explosive impact on the Northern Ireland peace process & those who have shaped its direction for the last decade. ...

Most people would have screamed. Mrs Hathall made no sound. She had seen death many times before, but she had never before seen a death by violence. Heavily, she plodded across the room & descended the stairs to where her son waited. ' There's been an accident, ' she said. ' Your wife's dead.' Chief Inspector Wexford could discover no motive, no reason, no suspect
- al he had were his own intuitive suspicions. Probably he was reading meaning where there was none; probably Angela Hathall really had picked up a stranger, & that stranger had killed her. But why such doubt? Was Wexford becoming cynical & untrusting
- or was this simply one of the most ingenious crimes he had ever tackled?

...

Most people would have screamed. Mrs Hathall made no sound. She had seen death many times before, but she had never before seen a death by violence. Heavily, she plodded across the room & descended the stairs to where her son waited. ' There's been an accident, ' she said. ' Your wife's dead.' Chief Inspector Wexford could discover no motive, no reason, no suspect
- al he had were his own intuitive suspicions. Probably he was reading meaning where there was none; probably Angela Hathall really had picked up a stranger, & that stranger had killed her. But why such doubt? Was Wexford becoming cynical & untrusting
- or was this simply one of the most ingenious crimes he had ever tackled?

...

When Lt. General Rom-o Dallaire received the call to serve as force commander of the UN mission to Rwanda, he thought he was heading off to Africa to help two warring parties achieve a peace both sides wanted. Instead, he & members of his small international force were caught up in a vortex of civil war & genocide. Dallaire left Rwanda a broken man, disillusioned, suicidal, & determined to tell his story. An award-winning international sensation, Shake Hands with the Devil is a landmark contribution to the literature of war: a remarkable tale of a soldier's courage & an unforgettable portrait of modern war. It is also a stinging indictment of the petty bureaucrats who refused to give Dallaire the men & the operational freedom he needed to stop the killing. 'I know there is a God, ' Dallaire writes, 'because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him & I have touched him. I know the devil exists & therefore I know there is a God.' ...

Among Shakespear's many biographers none brings to his subject more passion & feeling for the creative act than Anthony Burgess. He breathes life into Shakespear the man & invigorates his times. His portrait of the age builds upon an almost personal tenderness for Shakespear & his contemporaries (especially Ben Jonson), & on a profound sense of literary & theatrical history. Anthony Burgess's well-known delight in language infuses his own writing about Shakespear's works. & in the verve of his biography he conveys the energy of the Elizabethan age. ...