As the weather gets colder we’re ready to stay indoors with our blankets, beverages and of course a big pile of books! There are so many fantastic books coming out this winter for all sorts of readers, so pop on the kettle and get ready to add a lot more books to your TBR.
Crime & Thrillers
Winter somehow feels like the perfect time to dive into a crime book – here are our top picks!
June
Palazzo
Newly widowed beauty entrepreneur Vivi Savidge’s fortieth birthday is fast approaching, and she plans to celebrate it at the Palazzo Stellina, a historic former convent in the foothills of the Italian Alps run by disgraced chef Marco Bianchi and his elderly grandmother.
Vivi’s little sister, Alice, is flying from Brisbane with her sixteen-year-old twins in tow. Ex-colleague Pete and his new husband, Nick, are coming from Boston, and old friend Caroline is driving from Turin. Every one of them is hiding a shameful secret.
Vivi’s hopes for a relaxing holiday surrounded by those closest to her are soon overshadowed by an anonymous blackmail threat, and she begins to wonder if someone she thought she could trust might just as easily betray her.
Amid a suffocating heatwave, the holiday ignites an explosive cocktail of obsession, jealousy and greed. Before the week is over, secrets will be exposed and the gathering will turn deadly, leaving one victim, a handful of suspects, and a murderer in their midst.
July
We Are All Guilty Here
Welcome to North Falls.
A small town where everyone knows everyone. But nobody knows the truth.
Emmy Clifton has lived here all her life. She thinks she knows her neighbours. She’s wrong.
She thinks it’s just another hot summer night: a night like any other. She’s wrong.
When her best friend’s daughter asks for help, she thinks it’s just some teenage drama. She thinks it can wait. She’s never been more wrong in her life.
As the town ignites in the wake of the girl’s disappearance, Emmy throws herself into the search. But then she realises: You never really know a town until you know its secrets.
Is Emmy ready for the truth?
The Peak
Political hatchet man Charlie will do anything to protect Sebastian, government minister and his best friend since their brutal private school days. Rising to power and prominence through international diplomatic postings and then the rough and tumble of Australian politics, they are as close as brothers – or so Charlie thinks – while both keep the secret that lies at the very heart of their relationship – a secret that in one way or another will change the world.
But then a single phrase in Mandarin is spoken in Sebastian’s ear and he does the unthinkable. As Charlie tries to piece it all together – from their youth spent in Hong Kong to the recent past in Beijing and Washington – things in the outside world start to fall apart too. Planes can’t land, the phone lines go down and the power is out. Then the secret intelligence services comes knocking. Charlie wonders, what the hell did Sebastian do?
From the jostling streets of Hong Kong to Beijing’s shadowy halls of power and the backstabbing Machiavellian workings of Parliament House in Canberra, The Peak is a powerful, propulsive and nailbitingly tense international thriller. Written with an extraordinary insider knowledge of China, the realities of global power and the inner dealings of the Australian Government, The Peak has the authenticity and moral complexity of a Le Carre novel and the narrative power of an Australian Robert Harris.
Murder in Paris
Imagine the past returning to you in fragments.
A hotel room, a pillow, a lifeless body.
Your ordinary, innocent life upended by one flash of memory.
You can’t remember what led to the crime.
All you know is that you must return to the scene, to the clues that lie waiting in Room 11.
But this is a mystery that goes far beyond that room, that night, that murder.
Are you ready to unlock the truth?
From the No.1 international bestselling author of ANNA O comes a story of secret pasts and buried memories. A MURDER IN PARIS is a thriller you’ll never forget …
Murder at the Castle
After a gruelling stint as the most powerful woman in the world, ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel can finally put her feet up. With her husband Achim and their new pug Putin, she has retired to the idyllic village of Kleinfreudenstadt-on-Dumpfsee. But it isn’t easy to settle into country life. Angela’s fellow villagers all seem to want something from her. And baking and hiking just aren’t as exciting as international financial meltdowns, refugee waves or deranged American presidents.
So when local aristo Baron von Baugenwitz is found poisoned and dressed in armour in a castle dungeon locked from the inside, new life stirs in Angela. Finally, a problem that needs solving! Supported by her husband, her bodyguard – and of course Putin – she embarks on a dangerous hunt for the killer. Will she find him? Or will one of the six women suspects finish her off first? Questions only a great detective can answer…
Miss Merkel is on the case …
August
An Inside Job
Master novelist Daniel Silva has thrilled readers with twenty-four thoughtful and gripping spy novels featuring the “much-loved Gabriel Allon” (Booklist) and ingenious plots that have taken him around the globe and back-from the United States to Europe, Russia to the Middle East.
Now, Silva returns with another blockbuster thriller, a powerhouse novel showcasing his superb skill and brilliant imagination that is a must read for both his multitudes of fans and growing legions of converts.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva delivers another action-packed tale of high stakes international intrigue.
High Rise
After a year of searching, rogue ex-cop Jack Carlin has finally found his estranged daughter, Morgan, holed up in the top floor of a rundown, grimy high-rise building.
The trouble is, Jack’s unconventional policing and information-gathering methods in the past has made him some serious enemies.
And what Jack doesn’t know as he heads into the building, intent on saving his daughter, is firstly, that Morgan doesn’t want to be saved – particularly not by him – and secondly, that the entire criminal underworld in the city are on their way too… There’s a bounty on his head, and they’re after his blood – and they don’t mind if Morgan is collateral damage.
As bounty hunters and gang members converge on the building, father and daughter are thrown into a desperate fight for survival through fifteen storeys of deadly enemies – with only each other to rely on. Think: Die Hard meets The Raid, but the funnier, grittier Australian version. Fast, furious and ferocious, this is thriller writing at its nail-biting, unputdownable best.
Fantasy
If you’re looking to escape the cold, may we suggest escaping to another world?
June
Ever Blessed
She was made of magic and wrath …
In a world fractured by belief, the gods lay claim to the Ever – ancient magic that sustains the Known World. But the Ever is failing, and the gods have turned their wrath on the Ever Blessed, those gifted with access to its power.
Captain Elva, warrior princess of Vettona, is her realm’s last hope for peace. Promised in marriage to the handsome yet infuriating Fynton, she must navigate a fragile alliance and her growing feelings for the one man she cannot trust.
Meanwhile, Innes, a witch desperate to conceal her bond with the Ever, embarks on a perilous quest to cure a blight upon the land. But her path collides with a deadly Vettonian warrior, forcing her to choose between a dangerous love and the salvation of her people.
As ancient powers awaken and allegiances crumble, Elva and Innes must decide where their loyalties lie – love or fidelity, freedom or fate – as the wrong choice means losing everything to the vengeance of the gods.
July
Rose in Chains
He’s her greatest enemy… and her deepest desire.
The war is over, the dark forces have won, and the hero who was supposed to save them is dead.
Captured as her castle is overrun by the enemy, Princess Briony Rosewood is stripped of her magic and auctioned off to the highest bidder.
She’s sold to Toven Hearst: scion of a family known for their cruel control of magic – and her long-time, and unresolved, infatuation. Yet despite the horrors of her new world and the role she must learn to play within it, all is not lost.
Help – and hope – may yet arise in the most unlikely of places…
August
Warrior Princess Assassin
Who should you trust?
Warrior King Maddox Kyronan’s fire magic has earned him a ruthless reputation. But now his kingdom is slowly burning, a blaze he cannot control, and his one chance to save it is a marriage alliance with the neighbouring royal family of Astranza and their power to manipulate the weather.
Who should you love?
As war looms on the horizon, Princess Jory’s home needs this alliance. But her family is hiding a dangerous secret: their magic is fading. When she meets her intended he sets her heart aflame, but what will he do when he realises she’s deceiving him?
Who should you kill?
Once a young nobleman causing mischief with Jory in Astranza’s palace, Asher is now part of the Hunter’s Guild. When a lucrative job arises, he can’t refuse – until he sees the targets. Someone wants King Maddox and Princess Jory dead. Now Asher must decide what he’s willing to do to protect the woman he loves and the king she’s about to marry.
House of the Beast
You are a very lucky young lady, to be chosen by the Dread Beast.
Alma would not have chosen the Beast. But when her mother falls ill, she is not left with the luxury of choice. After all, luxury was never something they could afford.
Forced into a desperate bargain with her estranged father and his house, one of the noble families that serve the gods and wield their powers, she irrevocably binds herself to the Dread Beast, the most fearsome of the gods. However, it is a vow made in vain when death comes for her mother anyway.
Now vengeance is Alma’s sole aim. And she has a god on her side – a beautiful, eldritch monster with starlit hair. The Beast that has chosen her.
Literary
Lit lovers rejoice! There are so many fabulous literary fiction books coming out this winter and we can’t wait for you to read them!
June
Rise and Shine
This is a story about marriage. It is also a story about life and love and happiness and the absence of happiness and what we need to do to find it again.
It’s a story about hope, baking, making music, lemon trees, painting, love, divorce, dogs, the families we create for ourselves, and the heat of the Brisbane sun.
It’s a story about August and Noah.
It begins at the end.
Rise and Shine is an utterly surprising delight, a break-up tale that is also a love story; endearing, astringent, talky, wry, wise, uplifting and so original.
Sleep
How much of our lives are ours alone?
Ten-year-old Margaret hides beneath a blackberry bush in her family’s lush backyard while her brother hunts for her in a game of tag. Hers is a childhood of sunlit swimming pools and Saturday morning pancakes but her family life requires careful prudence. Then one fateful summer, everything changes. A line is crossed and the simple pleasures of girlhood slip away.
Twenty-five years later, Margaret hides under her parents’ bed, waiting for her young daughters to find her. She’s newly divorced and navigating life as a co-parent, while discovering the pleasures of a new boyfriend. But some part of her is still under the blackberry bush from all those summers ago, punched out of time. She must now reckon with the echoes between the past and the present, what it means to keep a child truly safe, and the family she carries inside herself as she builds a family of her own.
Beautiful, unflinchingly human and life-affirming, Sleep is about the burden of love and what lies on the other side of silence: the world, rich in possibility.
Make Me Famous
Ever since she was a child, Cléo, the French-American daughter of two academics, has had only one obsession: becoming a famous singer. Over the years, to everyone’s surprise but her own, she overcomes every obstacle and becomes a global superstar with millions of dollars, countless awards, and several Los Angeles villas to her name. But as any celebrity will tell you, getting to the top is one thing; staying there is another.
Now thirty-three years old, Cléo is taking her first real vacation in years, on a remote island with no one else in sight. With the never-ending spin cycle of her life finally on pause and no paparazzi peeking out from behind the coconut palms, she can work on her fourth album in peace. Except that with so much time to think, she can’t help but ruminate on her past—including how, just six months earlier, things started to go very, very wrong . . .
Taking place between New York, Paris, Los Angeles, and the South Pacific, Make Me Famous is a brilliant sophomore novel from Maud Ventura that dives intoxicatingly deep into the machinations of one woman’s complicated mind, and her relentless pursuit of fame.
Rejection
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the thorniest problems of modern life: sex, relationships, identity and the internet.
We see a tryhard male feminist’s passionate allyship turn to a furious and debilitating nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that his feminism isn’t getting him laid; a young woman’s unrequited crush spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of both her sense of self and her group chat; and witness a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship lead to a life-upending mistake.
As these characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways that our delusions can warp our desire for connection.
Written with the accomplished authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a losers’ manifesto, Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte radically redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society and oneself.
July
Revisionists
Upper East Side, Manhattan, 2023: Christine Campbell, former journalist, turns on the television to watch a documentary paying homage to her Pulitzer Prize–shortlisted coverage of the unrest in 1999 in the North Caucasus. She is newly widowed, wealthy and attempting to write a memoir celebrating her bold life and significant achievements in writing about the silencing of women during conflict.
But truth has a way of resurfacing, even when buried deep beneath money, memory and reinvention. When Dr Frankie Pearson, Christine’s oldest – and estranged – friend, knocks on her door, the pair must reconcile their memories and come to terms with the far-reaching and disastrous decisions they both made over twenty years ago. What really happened in that small mountain village in Dagestan in the dying days of the millennium, while Christine was hellbent on getting the scoop of a lifetime?
An elegant, thrilling and brilliantly compelling novel of the consequences of the conflict between a person’s principles and their desire for acclaim, The Revisionists examines the malleability of memory and the slippery nature of the truth – and the lengths that people will go to to avoid facing both.
Bring the House Down
Theatre critic Alex Lyons made his name from his brutal, brilliant reviews.
So when he sees Hayley Sinclair’s dismal one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe, he thinks nothing of dashing off another of his trademark one-star pans for the newspaper. He also thinks nothing of taking her home after the performance, failing at any point to mention who he is.
What he doesn’t expect is for Hayley to revamp her show into a review of Alex’s entire life, exposing what an awful person he really is. Worse, the show is a smash hit, and Alex is about to become national news. But can Hayley bring the establishment down without taking herself with it?
Funny and thrilling, Bring the House Down gives you a front row seat to the downfall of the people who tell us what to think. It’s about art, performance, female rage, and how while revenge may be sweet, it can also be perilous.
Historical
If you’re looking to escape the cold, may we suggest escaping to another world?
August
Until the Red Leaves Fall
Emmy Darling has a secret. She has a few. Her lemon meringue pie is a recipe from a women’s magazine, she’s always wanted to be a playwright, and the best parts of her husband Sebastian’s plays are the scenes she’s written during edits. But when charismatic theatre impresario and leading lady, Virginia van Belle, insists Emmy write about her wartime experiences as the lead play in her 1957 season, Emmy is faced with every writer’s dilemma.
Because Emmy’s biggest secret is that her name is actually Emiko Tanaka. She and her Japanese-Australian family were arrested, brutally split up and held in internment camps by the Australian government after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. And it’s this secret that Virginia wants to bring to the masses.
As Emmy struggles to determine where the edges of truth and fiction blur, Virginia’s vision of the story morphs into something more sensationalised. Emmy can’t ask for Sebastian’s help – he has his own history with Virginia – but she confides in Isadora Westlake, a dancer at a nearby coffee lounge, who knows a thing or two about keeping secrets.
As opening night looms and rewrites threaten to transform Emmy’s personal history into something unrecognisable, wounds of the past are torn open, jeopardising everything Emmy holds dear. As the cast take their places and the curtain goes up, Emmy must decide which is right: tell the story or tell the truth.
Daughters of Batavia
Two women. One shipwreck. And four centuries of secrets.
Shortly before Christmas in 2018, Tess McCarthy, a hard-working English teacher who never does anything out of the ordinary, flies to Western Australia’s remote Abrolhos Islands. She is in search of answers – both to the infamous Batavia shipwreck and her personal family crises.
Amsterdam, 1628. Saskia, an orphaned young Dutchwoman, boards Batavia with relatives, bound for a new and potentially dangerous life in the East Indies – only for her world to first collide with Aris Jansz, the ship’s reluctant under surgeon.
Tess, Saskia and Aris – their lives linked by secrets that span generations – carry the baggage of past losses and the uncertainty of their futures. And, in the most unlikely circumstances, they find qualities that echo through centuries: faith, acceptance, and love.
Romance
These romance books would melt even the coldest of people so they’re the perfect winter reading material!
June
Grumpy Darling
She’s never been kissed. He’s never felt this way about anyone.
Paige has ticked off everything on her senior year bucket list except one tiny thing — she’s never kissed anyone. And her best friend, Grayson Darling, is to blame.
Grayson is the school hockey team’s notorious enforcer, and he’s been scaring away any eligible bachelors that so much as look in Paige’s direction. With time running out, she demands that Grayson stop defending her honour. Instead, he’ll become her dating coach, training her to win the guy of her dreams.
But Grayson has plans of his own. He’s been in love with Paige since they were kids, and his clock is running, too. Coaching Paige might be his last chance to show her how good they’d be together. After all, practice makes perfect.
July
What Did I Miss?
Makayla has many regrets: a Chiko Roll impulse buy, not visiting the Big Pineapple and marrying her high-school dud.
Now, newly divorced, determined to hold on to her independence and facing the Big Three-O, Makayla makes a list of all the things she missed out on while her friends were single and running amok in their twenties.
But when her one-night stand turns up again, and a revenge plot on her ex spirals out of control, she has to decide if some things are worth missing. And if Makayla can’t sort herself out before her birthday, she might face the biggest regret of her life.
A fresh and feisty romantic comedy about what happens when you meet someone special before truly knowing yourself.
Non Fiction
For anyone looking for books grounded in the real world, these are our top picks!
June
Cheng Lei: A Memoir of Freedom
Journalist Cheng Lei spent more than three gruelling years in a Beijing prison after being wrongly accused of espionage. Harrowing, fierce and often darkly humorous, her memoir is about the power of the human spirit; bravery in the face of cruelty and pettiness; the consolations of letters, music and books; and how unexpected friendships and the love of family can unlock the courage we all have within us to prevail.
In August 2020, Cheng Lei was the precise and polished anchor of China’s government-run, English-language Global Business TV show, familiar to millions of viewers. A veteran business journalist, the Chinese-born Australian mother of two young children was at the pinnacle of her career when eight words texted to a friend led to devastating consequences.
Arriving for work one morning, Lei was met by officers from the notorious Ministry of State Security. After searching her apartment, they blindfolded her and drove her to a secret location. Detained, isolated and interrogated, she was cut off from all contact with her family and friends. She simply disappeared from TV screens, her flat, her life.
Lei was eventually coerced into agreeing to a five-year prison term in a country she loved but no longer recognised. On the outside, her story triggered a desperate fight for her release, a diplomatic row and global news. On the inside, her own struggle for freedom and her sanity in the face of the inconceivable had just begun.
It would be ten months before Lei saw her lawyer, a year and a half before a 90-minute show trial, more than two years before she would briefly hear the voices of her children, and three years and two months before she saw the entirety of the sky again – after her release was secured and she made it home to Australia.
Wisdom of Age
A Wisdom of Age was sparked by the many conversations Jacinta Parsons has had recently with older women right around the country about the experience of being a woman and ageing. Over the course of these encounters, it became clear to Jacinta that the conversation about ageing for women is alive and bubbling with a kind of excitement – that is, women are ready to do ageing differently.
For this book, Jacinta mines wisdom directly from those who know how to do it well, those older women who say, This is what feels good.
Capturing the brewing tone of revolution that sits in the hearts of middle-aged and older women, A Wisdom of Age tells a different story about ageing – a story about reclaiming the fierce girl we have inside us; about an unapologetic taking up of space; about speaking out and re-finding our confidence; and finally, about wisdom.
Field Notes From Death’s Door
In her early 30s, Katie Treble felt stuck – in her life, in her career as an emergency doctor, and in a dead-end relationship. Moving from her home in England to sunny Byron Bay hadn’t been the answer she was hoping for. Wanting to kickstart her life and put her starry-eyed idealism into action, she signed up to work for Medecins sans Frontières. She thought it would be an adventure – a chance to find meaning, purpose and maybe do some good in a world gone mad with greed.
Katie was dispatched to the war-torn Central African Republic, to a town called Bria: a remote blood diamond-mining town controlled by rebel militia, one of the poorest, most lawless, and violent places on earth and a grinding humanitarian crisis the world has largely ignored. Arriving to live in an ex-diamond traders’ compound set against a backdrop of poverty, hunger, disease and gunfire, Katie was thrown in the deep end. Sweltering through long shifts in a hospital tent equipped with only the most basic resources, she fought to save an endless stream of patients while her heart broke again and again at how little a human life could be worth.
Survival off-shift meant self-anaesthetising via the basic resources of bad local lager, camaraderie, card games and the odd ill-advised sexual liaison.
Things were already hard enough, but when an army of rebel mercenaries descended on Bria, destroying much of the town and massacring countless civilians, Katie had to dig deep within herself to understand the meaning of resilience, the fundamental nature of human interconnectedness, and when all seems lost, the power of bearing witness as the ultimate act of kindness and compassion.
Things in Nature Merely Grow
‘There is no good way to say this,’ Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.
‘There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.’
There is no good way to say this – because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, ‘a single point in a timeline’. Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death.
This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving. As Li writes, ‘The verb that does not die is to be. Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later, only, now and now and now and now.’ Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li’s indomitable spirit.
July
Somewhere Someone Knows Something
Every 14 minutes in Australia, someone vanishes. Of the 38,000 missing persons reported each year, most return. But for the families of those who don’t, it’s a nightmare they never wake up from.
There are currently 2600 long-term missing Australians. On top of that, 700 unidentified bodies lie in morgues and unmarked graves across the country, silent mysteries waiting to be solved.
In this powerful and gripping collection of real-life cases, Meni Caroutas – a former cop turned investigative journalist – reviews old evidence, hunts new leads and recounts shocking developments surrounding the disappearance or murder of 18 people. From the baffling case of a deceased newborn sent in the mail from Melbourne to Darwin, to the haunting abduction of 16-year-old Gordana Kotevski in 1994, and the chilling possibility of a 14-year-old girl falling victim to notorious serial killer Ivan Milat, these are cases that have left behind shattered parents, traumatised families and grieving friends still searching for answers.
Meni sounds the plea Someone, somewhere, knows something, because this book isn’t just about stories – it’s about truth, hope and the relentless pursuit of justice for those who can no longer speak for themselves.
Sensible Money
ABC finance reporter Emily Stewart’s articles on topics such as budgeting, super and property have racked up millions of combined views thanks to their clear, relatable tone and straightforward, trustworthy information.
While most finance gurus assume a one-size-fits-all approach to financial prosperity, Sensible Emily’s focus is on educating her readers on personal finance and setting out different options, so that they can make their own decisions about what’s right for them and their families.
In Sensible Money she gives you practical tips and tricks to help you set up your financial foundations so you can go from surviving to thriving. She’ll help you destroy your debt, give you strategies to save, and then, when you’re back on your feet, help you budget for your first home, invest in shares and sort out your super.
The financial world is more complex than ever, but with Sensible Emily as your guide, you will feel empowered to navigate your financial future.
August
Back From The Dead
When the coastal freighter MV Blythe Star left Hobart on a routine trip, Mick Doleman was an 18-year-old deckhand working alongside nine other crewmen, all accustomed to the dangers of the sea. But nothing could prepare them for what happened less than 24 hours later.
In the early morning, the Blythe Star started listing, and swiftly sank. Miraculously, all the crewmen escaped, only to be crammed into a tiny life raft at the mercy of the ocean. The ship’s sinking sparked the largest sea and air search at the time, but the crew remained lost – and soon they were given up for dead.
Twelve days later, three ravaged and starving men, including Mick, found help on a remote logging trail in heavy bush on the Tasman Peninsula. Their story was shocking, and set the country alight with questions about their plight. How had they disappeared without trace? How had they survived the un-survivable?
This is an extraordinary story of human endurance in one of the most challenging environments on earth, written by Piia Wirsu, the producer and narrator of ‘From the Dead’, the award-winning season of the ABC podcast Expanse, with Mick Doleman, now the only surviving crewmember of the Blythe Star, who became a global influence in maritime safety.
Guts and Glory
The spirit of Australia can be seen so clearly in how we play and how we fight. From the famous cricket match played on the beach at Gallipoli as a decoy for the evacuation of Australian troops; to the hero of Tobruk, Changi and the Thai Burma railway, Colonel Sir Ernest Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop AC, who so respected his hard-won Wallaby jersey, he insisted on being buried in it; to legendary Test cricketer Keith Miller, fighter pilot in WWII, who famously said ‘Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse, playing cricket is not’ – sport has always been part of our wars.
A collection of vivid, moving, funny, powerful and poignant sporting stories from the wars fought by the Australian Defence Force ranging from WWI right through to the present day, Guts and Glory is a book about the way that sport is so often an intrinsic part of war; how sport provides a means for the diggers to cope with the pressures of the battlefield; how the lessons that we learn playing sport can be applied to the art of leadership and warfare; and how mateship and the Australian character and spirit can be seen in the way we fight and the way we play.
Mission: CIA in the 21st Century
At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasn’t being collected. At the dawn of the information age, the CIA’s officers and analysts worked with outmoded technology, struggling to distinguish the clear signals of significant facts from the cacophony of background noise.
Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIA transformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons and brutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and counterespionage.
The consequences were grave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign agents, the theft of its personnel files by Chinese spies, the penetration of its computer networks by Russian intelligence and American hackers, and the tragedies of Afghanistan and Iraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets – Moscow, Beijing, Tehran – while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force.
A masterpiece of reporting, The Mission includes exclusive on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top spies who served undercover for decades and have never spoken to a journalist before.