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Chasing shadows : cyber espionage, subversion, and the global fight for democracy / by Deibert, Ronald,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In this real-life espionage thriller, cyber security expert Ronald Deibert uncovers the unseemly marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance and reveals how his team of digital sleuths at the Citizen Lab have lifted the lid on dozens of spy cases targeting innocent citizens around the world. He recounts how the Lab exposed the world's pre-eminent cyber-mercenary firm, Israel-based NSO Group -- the creators of the phone-hacking marvel Pegasus -- in a series of human rights abuses, from domestic spying scandals in Spain, Poland, Hungary, and Greece to its implication in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Today, NSO Group, once valued at over a billion dollars, faces plummeting worth and an irretrievably tarnished reputation. Chasing Shadows provides a front-row seat to a dark underworld of digital espionage, sabotage, and subversion where autocrats and dictators peer into their targets' lives with the mere press of a button, spreading their tentacles of authoritarianism through a digital ecosystem that is insecure, invasive by design, poorly regulated, and prone to abuse. The brave activists, opposition figures, and journalists who dare to advocate for basic political rights and freedoms are hounded, arrested, tortured, and sometimes murdered. From the gritty streets of Guatemala City to the corridors of power in the White House, this compelling narrative traces the journey of the Citizen Lab, a pioneering digital watchdog, as it evolved into a globally renowned source of counter-intelligence for civil society and whose exploits are routinely covered in the world's media. But as this small team of sleuths disarmed cyber mercenaries and helped to improve the digital security of billions of people worldwide, their success came with a price. The Citizen Lab's dogged investigations ultimately brought them, too, into the same sinister crosshairs that plagued the victims they worked to protect. Like a John Le Carré novel brought to life and updated for the digital age, this book is a powerful tale of high-stakes espionage, transnational intrigue, and the inevitable toll exacted when one dares to defy oligarchs and dictators. You'll never look at your smartphone the same way again"--
Subjects: Munk Centre for International Studies. Citizen Lab.; Computer crimes.; Computer security.; Disinformation.; Electronic surveillance.; Espionage.; Intelligence service.;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Behind the pickle jar / by McQuaig, Wendy,author.;
Amy Hewston, Assistant Manager of Ultra Luscious Relaxation Spa, is so stressed she can barely function. Her anxiety on overdrive, she finds herself forced to take some time off work, despite her Type A, goal-oriented personality. Her well-meaning husband Matt decides the best road to recovery would be to rent a farmhouse north of the city, where the whole family can relax and regroup. Their two teens are far from onside when their family van pulls into the old farmhouse on Concession 5. While fixing a broken window in the cellar, Amy and Matt come across a diary behind a long-forgotten jar of pickles. The diary belonged to Isabel Huntly who lived in the farmhouse at the turn of the 20th century. As Amy gradually reads through its pages, the history of the century home and the family who lived there takes hold of her psyche. Fascinated by the simple farm lifestyle and the intricate community, in contrast to her own harried existence, there is something about the diary that speaks to her. Suddenly her life choices, which once seemed so clear, are put to the test. She finds herself torn between the need to return to her stressful, high-paced career and her desire to live a simpler life, following her passion for opening a piano bar in a small town. Fraught with indecision, whichever choice Amy makes at this crossroad will affect herself and her family forever. This historical fiction, partially narrated by the old farmhouse itself, takes the reader on a journey through yesteryear, from horse-drawn buggies and church socials to Instagram and iPhones. Many people today can relate to Amy Hewston's hectic life. Her daily struggles, eventual crisis and life-altering decisions, would lead to great discussions over a glass of wine at any book club.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Diary fiction.; Novels.; Diaries; Families; Farmhouses; Women;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The night shift / by Finlay, Alex,author.;
"From the author of the breakout thriller Every Last Fear, comes the electrifying new novel about a pair of small-town murders fifteen years apart--and the ties that bind them. "The night was expected to bring tragedy." So begins one of the most highly-anticipated thrillers of 2022. It's New Year's Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in New Jersey, four teenagers working late at the store are attacked. Only one inexplicably survives. Police quickly identify a suspect, the boyfriend of one of the victims, who flees and is never seen again. Fifteen years later, more teenage employees are attacked at an ice cream store in the same town, and again only one makes it out alive. In the aftermath of the latest crime, three lives intersect: the lone survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who's forced to relive the horrors of her tragedy; the brother of the fugitive accused, who's convinced the police have the wrong suspect; and FBI agent Sarah Keller who must delve into the secrets of both nights-stirring up memories of teen love and lies-to uncover the truth about murders on the night shift. Twisty, poignant, and redemptive, The Night Shift is a story about the legacy of trauma and how the broken can come out on the other side, and it solidifies Finlay as one of the new leading voices in the world of thrillers"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Novels.; City and town life; Murder; Secrecy; Serial murder investigation; Year 2000 date conversion (Computer systems);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Daughters of Shandong / by Chung, Eve J.,author.;
"A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters' harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China, by debut author Eve J. Chung, based on her family story. Daughters are the Ang family's curse. In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother-abused by the family for failing to birth a boy-finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed. Without an Ang male to punish, the land-seizing cadres choose Hai, as the eldest child, to stand trial for her family's crimes. She barely survives their brutality. Realizing the worst is yet to come, the women plan their escape. Starving and penniless but resourceful, they forge travel permits and embark on a thousand-mile journey to confront the family that abandoned them. From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao, and onward to British Hong Kong and eventually Taiwan, they witness the changing tide of a nation and the plight of multitudes caught in the wake of revolution. But with the loss of their home and the life they've known also comes new freedom-to take hold of their fate, to shake free of the bonds of their gender, and to claim their own story. Told in assured, evocative prose, with impeccably drawn characters, Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful, powerful story about the resilience of women in war; the enduring love between mothers, daughters, and sisters; and the sacrifices made to lift up future generations"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Mothers and daughters; Patriarchy; Rich people; Sisters; Torture; War victims; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Beautiful country : a memoir / by Wang, Qian Julie,1987-author.;
"An incandescent and heartrending memoir about Qian Julie Wang's five years living undocumented after immigrating with her parents from China to New York City in 1994. In Chinese the word for the United States, Mei Guo, translates directly to "beautiful country," but when seven-year-old Qian is plucked from her warm and happy childhood surrounded by extended family in China, she finds a world of crushing fear and poverty instead. Unable to speak English at first, Qian is isolated and disregarded, put into special education classes because she doesn't speak the language and humiliated by teachers and classmates when she struggles to pay attention because of hunger or exhaustion. She encounters racism, and people of other races, for the first time, shocked at where her family fits in comparison to their status as educated elites in China. After school she works shifts alongside her mother in Chinatown sweatshops. There is so much about Qian's new home that doesn't make sense, but the rules of survival are drilled into her head: If you see a policeman, you must run in the other direction. If anyone asks--or even if they don't--you tell them you were born here. Do as you're told or we could be separated forever. Understanding impliclity the toll this has taken on her parents, Qian tries desperately to cheer them up and mediate their increasingly heated arguments, certain that if she is good enough, she can hold the family together. In remarkable, unsentimental prose Wang channels her childhood perspective, illuminating the cruelty and indignity of America's immigration system, while also crafting a narrative of resilience from her family's small moments of joy: their first slice of pizza, "shopping days" when the family would unearth unlikely treasures in Brooklyn's trash, and the necessary escape she found in books at the local library. Searing and unforgettable, Beautiful Country is an essential book about the cost of making a home in a hostile land from an astonishing new talent"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Wang, Qian Julie, 1987-; Wang, Qian Julie, 1987-; Chinese Americans; Illegal aliens; Immigrants;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Tell me lies : a novel / by Lovering, Carola,author.;
"A thrilling, sexy coming-of-age story exploring toxic love, ruthless ambition, and shocking betrayal, Tell Me Lies is about that one person who still haunts you -- the other one. The wrong one. The one you couldn't let go of. The one you'll never forget. Lucy Albright is far from her Long Island upbringing when she arrives on the campus of her small California college, and happy to be hundreds of miles from her mother, whom she's never forgiven for an act of betrayal in her early teen years. Quickly grasping at her fresh start, Lucy embraces college life and all it has to offer -- new friends, wild parties, stimulating classes. And then she meets Stephen DeMarco. Charming. Attractive. Complicated. Devastating. Confident and cocksure, Stephen sees something in Lucy that no one else has, and she's quickly seduced by this vision of herself, and the sense of possibility that his attention brings her. Meanwhile, Stephen is determined to forget an incident buried in his past that, if exposed, could ruin him, and his single-minded drive for success extends to winning, and keeping, Lucy's heart. Alternating between Lucy's and Stephen's voices, Tell me lies follows their connection through college and post-college life in New York City. Deep down, Lucy knows she has to acknowledge the truth about Stephen. But before she can free herself from this addicting entanglement, she must confront and heal her relationship with her mother -- or risk losing herself in a delusion about what it truly means to love. With the psychological insight and biting wit of Luckiest girl alive, and the yearning ambitions and desires of Sweetbitter, this keenly intelligent and staggeringly resonant novel chronicles the exhilaration and dilemmas of young adulthood, and the difficulty of letting go, even when you know you should"--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Bildungsromans.; Man-woman relationships; Secrets; Relationhsip addiction;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 3
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Lucky loser : how Donald Trump squandered his father's fortune and created the illusion of success / by Buettner, Russ,author.; Craig, Susanne,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 457-500) and index."Soon after announcing his first campaign for the US presidency, Donald J. Trump [said] ... that life 'has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.' Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except: None of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever. Drawing on over twenty years' worth of Trump's confidential tax information -- including the tax returns he tried to conceal -- alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump's financial rise and fall, and rise and fall again. For decades, he squanders his fortunes on money-losing businesses, only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacks his name above the door of every building, while taking out huge loans he'll never repay. He obsesses over appearances, while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnishes the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and cheats the television producer who not only rescues him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business savant -- the public image that will carry him to the White House"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Trump, Donald, 1946-; Trump, Donald, 1946-; Trump, Donald, 1946-; Trump, Donald, 1946-; Trump family.; Trump Organization (New York, N.Y.); Businesspeople; Corporations; Fathers and sons; Presidents; Presidents; Wealth;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Bad Liar A Novel [electronic resource] : by Hoag, Tami.aut; cloudLibrary;
Masterful #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag is back with a riveting, emotionally powerful new thriller! Small-town labels are hard to shake. Hometown hero. Fallen angel. Can anyone ever escape their past?   A murder victim dumped at the dead end of a lonely country road, face and hands obliterated by a shotgun blast, is not the way sheriff’s detective Nick Fourcade wants to start his week. His only lead takes him to the family of a hometown hero suddenly gone missing. Marc Mercier left his home for a weekend hunting trip and hasn’t been seen since. Meanwhile, sheriff’s detective Annie Broussard begins her first day back on the job after suffering a brutal attack by taking on the case of B’Lynn Fontenot, a mother desperate to find her grown son, a recovering drug addict. Robbie Fontenot has been missing for eight days, but the local police have no interest in the case, telling B’Lynn that an adult has the right to disappear, and a missing addict is no big surprise. But B’Lynn swears her son was turning his life around. Sympathetic to a mother’s anguish, Annie agrees to help B’Lynn, knowing she’s about to start a turf war with the city police. As Annie searches for Robbie Fontenot and Nick investigates the disappearance of Marc Mercier, it quickly becomes apparent that nothing is as it seems in the lives of either man. And it’s still not clear whether either—or neither—of them might be the unidentified murder victim. Old jealousies and fresh deceits, family loyalties gone wrong and love turned sour all lay a twisting trail that leads deep into the Louisiana swamp, endangering all who cross the path of a bad liar.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Police Procedural; Suspense; Crime;
© 2024., Penguin Publishing Group,
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Drive! : Henry Ford, George Selden, and the race to invent the auto age / by Goldstone, Lawrence,1947-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the acclaimed author of Birdmen comes a revelatory new history of the birth of the automobile, an illuminating and entertaining true tale of invention, competition, and the visionaries, hustlers, and swindlers who came together to transform the world. In 1900, the Automobile Club of America sponsored the nation's first car show in New York's Madison Square Garden. The event was a spectacular success, attracting seventy exhibitors and nearly fifty thousand visitors. Among the spectators was an obscure would-be automaker named Henry Ford, who walked the floor speaking with designers and engineers, trying to gauge public enthusiasm for what was then a revolutionary invention. His conclusion: the automobile was going to be a fixture in American society, both in the city and on the farm--and would make some people very rich. None, he decided, more than he. Drive! is the most complete account to date of the wild early days of the auto age. Lawrence Goldstone tells the fascinating story of how the internal combustion engine, a "theory looking for an application," evolved into an innovation that would change history. Debunking many long-held myths along the way, Drive! shows that the creation of the automobile was not the work of one man, but very much a global effort. Long before anyone had heard of Henry Ford, men with names like Benz, Peugeot, Renault, and Daimler were building and marketing the world's first cars. Goldstone breathes life into an extraordinary cast of characters: the inventors and engineers who crafted engines small enough to use on a "horseless carriage"; the financiers who risked everything for their visions; the first racers--daredevils who pushed rickety, untested vehicles to their limits; and such visionary lawyers as George Selden, who fought for and won the first patent for the gasoline-powered automobile. Lurking around every corner is Henry Ford, a brilliant innovator and an even better marketer, a tireless promoter of his products--and of himself. With a narrative as propulsive as its subject, Drive! plunges us headlong into a time unlike any in history, when near-manic innovation, competition, and consumerist zeal coalesced to change the way the world moved."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Automobile driving; Automobile industry and trade; Automobiles; Automobiles; Transportation, Automotive;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Home and away / by Sundin, Mats,1971-author.; Stuart, Amy,1975-author.;
"When Mats Sundin was selected first overall by the floundering Quebec Nordiques in 1989, few knew what to make of the selection. The franchise was struggling, finding themselves in last place with the first overall pick three times (Sundin, Owen Nolan, Eric Lindros). How could a Swede, thought to be soft thanks to the media at the time, lead one of hockey's worst franchises out of the shadows? Quebec never found out. Despite a few short stellar years in Quebec, the enigmatic Sundin was shipped off to the Toronto Maple Leafs in a deal that included former captain Wendel Clark. There, the tall, lanky, unpretentious, and warm European found himself immersed in the fiery cauldron of the Toronto faithful. How did Sundin feel about the trade? About his new city? About taking on the mantle of the captainship? The boy from outside Stockholm became a man in Toronto. Here, he shares for the first time what it was like for him to bounce from franchise to franchise until he found his new home with the Maple Leafs. Sundin grew into a superstar, and the humble hero became a fan favourite, always giving his time to the youngest in the crowd. He shares in these pages stories he's never told anyone about his life in hockey, about how the quiet and thoughtful centre became the nucleus of a Leafs team on the verge of a Stanley Cup final appearance that never came. But Sundin's leadership won over a tough team of stars and an even tougher group of fans to become one of the most popular Maple Leafs of all time. What really happened in the dressing room over the years? How did Sundin interact with teammates, foes, and family? What was it like to play with Tie Domi, Gary Roberts, Curtis Joseph, and others? How did he feel about being part of a team with such high expectations? How did he survive in an ecosphere of violence with his game full of finesse? What made Mats Sundin who he was on the ice, and the man he has now become? He talks for the first time about what it was like to leave Toronto for Vancouver and to return "home" to Toronto for the first time, illuminating his backstory and the new story of how he became the reluctant leader. Why did he wear the #13? (You'll have to read the book to find out.) What's it like to be a huge fish in a small pond in Stockholm after his stellar NHL career? What do his kids think of their dad and his success? Sundin tells all with equal amounts of class and humour."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Sundin, Mats, 1971-; Toronto Maple Leafs (Hockey team); Hockey players; Hockey players;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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