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The deceivers / by Berenson, Alex,author.;
"The Russians don't just want to influence American elections--they want it all. Former CIA agent John Wells confronts a plot of astonishing audacity as New York Times-bestselling author Alex Berenson goes beyond today's headlines to tomorrow's all-too-real threats. It was supposed to be a terrorist sting. The guns were supposed to be disabled. Then why was there so much blood? The target was the American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas Mavericks. The FBI had told Ahmed Shakir that his drug bust would go away if he helped them, and they'd supply all the weaponry, carefully removing the firing pins before the main event. It never occurred to Ahmed to doubt them, until it was too late. When John Wells is called to Washington, he's sure it's to investigate the carnage in Dallas, but it isn't. The former CIA director, now president, Vinnie Duto has plenty of people working in Texas. He wants Wells to go to Colombia. An old asset there has information to share--and it will lead Wells to the deadliest mission of his life, an extraordinary confluence of sleeper cells, sniper teams, false flag operations, double agents high in the U.S. government--and a Russian plot to take over the government itself. If it succeeds, what happened in Texas will only be a prelude"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Spy fiction.; Wells, John (Fictitious character); United States. Central Intelligence Agency; Terrorism; Intelligence officers; Conspiracies;

Arctic storm rising : a novel / by Brown, Dale,1956-author.;
After a CIA covert mission goes badly awry, U.S. Air Force intelligence officer Nicholas Flynn is exiled to guard a remote radar post along Alaska's Arctic frontier. This dead-end assignment is designed to put his career permanently on ice, but Flynn's not the type to fade quietly into obscurity. As winter storms pound Alaska and northern Canada, Russian aircraft begin penetrating deep into friendly airspace. Are these rehearsals for a possible first strike, using Russia's new long-range stealth cruise missiles? Or is some other motive driving the Kremlin to take ever-increasing risks along the hostile Arctic frontier separating two of the world's great powers? When an American F-22 collides with one of the Russian interlopers, things go south fast, in seconds, missiles are fired. There are no survivors. Despite horrific weather, Flynn and his security team are ordered to parachute into the area in a desperate bid to reach the crash sites ahead of the Russians. It's now obvious that the Pentagon and CIA are withholding vital information, but Flynn and his men have no choice but to make the dangerous jump. Soon they're caught in a deadly game of hide-and-seek with Spetsnaz commandos operating covertly on American soil. It seems that the F-22s and their Russian counterparts aren't the first aircraft to have gone missing in these desolate mountains. The Kremlin is hunting for the first prototype of its new stealth bomber, which vanished on what was supposed to be a test flight, while loaded with nuclear-armed stealth cruise missiles. As Russia and the U.S. square off on the brink of all-out-war, it's up to Nick to find the missing bomber, and prevent a potential nuclear holocaust.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); United States. Air Force; Intelligence officers; Aircraft accidents; Exile (Punishment); Bombings;

Red pockets : a tale of inheritance, ghosts, and the future / by Mah, Alice,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A poignant personal narrative about family, cultural history, and ecology, and a quest to understand what we owe our ancestors and our descendants from an unforgettable new voice. "Part of me knew what the hungry ghosts wanted all along, what they still want. It is not vengeance. No, they want something else, but we refuse to listen. They want us to face up to our broken obligations." Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people return to their home villages in China to sweep the tombs of their ancestors. They make offerings of food and incense to prevent their ancestors from becoming hungry ghosts that could cause misfortune, illnesses and crop failures. Yet for the past century, the tombs of many overseas Chinese have been left unattended because of the ruptures of war and revolution. Following a record year of wildfires, Alice Mah returns to her family's rice village in South China, ninety years after her grandfather's last visit and fifty years after her last relative died in the village. While she finds clan members who still remember her family, there are no tombs left to sweep. Instead, there are incalculable clan debts to be paid. In Red Pockets, Mah chronicles her journey from the rice villages of South China to her home in post-industrial England, through the Chinatowns of Western Canada where she grew up, to the isles and industry of Scotland where she now lives. As years pass and fires rage on, she becomes increasingly troubled by her ancestors' neglected graves. Her research on pollution gives way to growing eco-anxiety, culminating in a crisis of spiritual belief. A haunting blend of memoir, cultural history and environmental exploration, Red Pockets confronts the hungry ghosts of our neglected ancestors, while searching for an acceptable offering. What do we owe to past and future generations? What do we owe to the places that we inhabit?"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Mah, Alice.; Mah, Alice; Mah, Alice; Chinese diaspora.; Chinese; Chinese; Intergenerational relations.; Chinese Canadians; Chinese Canadians;

The genius of trees : how they mastered the elements and shaped the world / by Rix, Harriet,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A mind-expanding exploration of how trees learned to shape our world by manipulating the elements, other species, and even humankind, possessing agency beyond anything we might have imagined. For a supposedly stationary life form, trees have demonstrated an astonishing mastery over the environment around them. They've been using fire since prehistoric times. Some tree species have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure their fruits reach large primates, who can spread their seeds over vast distances, while poisoning smaller and less useful mammals. Others can split solid rock and create fertile ground in barren landscapes, effectively building entire ecosystems from scratch. In The Genius of Trees, tree scientist Harriet Rix reveals the inventive ways trees sculpt their environment and explains the science of how they achieve these incredible feats. Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and across the globe, Rix restores trees to their rightful position not as victims of our negligence, but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative. Trees manipulate fundamental elements, other species, and even humankind to achieve their ends, as seen with oaks in Devon, UK, shaping ecosystems through root networks and fungi, those in Amedi, Iraq that can change sex as they get to a certain age, the laurel rainforests of the Canary Islands regulating water cycles, and metasequoias in California influencing microclimates. A recent big surprise has shown that trees have an even greater role in preventing global warming than we thought: trees, which were thought to produce methane, actually consume it. We share one world with trees and one need for survival. This eye-opening journey into the inner lives of nature's most powerful plant is a profoundly new and original way of understanding both the miracles trees perform and the glories of our natural world"--
Subjects: Trees; Trees; Trees;