Cirrus@Austlit

'Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the astonishing untold story of an Australian-born intelligence officer accused by some espionage experts of being the traitor of the century: Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis.

'The longest serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). At one point in the 1940s he was considered one of the top three secret agents in MI6 and controlled its activities, as one journalist put it, ‘for half the world’.

'But in the 1980s journalist Chapman Pincher and retired MI5 intelligence officer Peter 'Spycatcher' Wright posthumously accused Ellis of having operated as a ‘triple agent’ for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1965, while under interrogation in London, Ellis had allegedly made a partial confession that he had worked for the Nazis. The scope of Ellis’s purported betrayal was considered even worse than notorious British traitor and double agent Kim Philby.

'However, Pincher’s and Wright’s accusations against Ellis have never been comprehensively proven. Was Ellis guilty or was an innocent man framed? By confessing did he take the fall for someone else? Or had the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia been fatally compromised by a ‘super mole’?

'Internationally bestselling author Jesse Fink attempts to find out the truth once and for all. The Eagle in the Mirror is not just a long-overdue biography of the unheralded Dick Ellis; it’s a gripping real-life international whodunit.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In the early hours of 19 February 1980, Bon Scott, lead singer of the rock band AC/DC, left The Music Machine in Camden, London, with a man called Alistair Kinnear, whereupon he lost consciousness and was left to sleep in Alistair’s Renault 5, parked outside Alistair’s East Dulwich apartment.

'That evening, Bon’s lifeless body was found, still in the car. He was pronounced dead on arrival at King’s College Hospital.

'Less than two months later, far away in the Caribbean, recording began on Back In Black, AC/DC’s tribute to their fallen bandmate. Worldwide, it would go on to become the biggest selling rock album of all time.

'The legend of the man known around the world simply as ‘Bon’ only grows with each passing year – in death the AC/DC icon has become a god to millions of people – but how much of his story is myth or pure fabrication and how much of the real man do we know?

'There have been books that claim to tell his story. They haven’t even come close.

'Jesse Fink, author of the critically acclaimed international bestseller The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, leaves no stone unturned for Bon: The Last Highway, a book years in the making that finally solves the riddle of the death of Bon Scott.

'The 1977–80 period forged the legend of AC/DC. There wasn’t a harder working band in the music business. But, as Fink startlingly reveals, the relentless AC/DC machine was also threatening to come apart. Fink has answers to the nagging questions rock ’n’ roll fans have been asking since 1980 and reveals secrets that will change music history.

'Bon: The Last Highway is the original, forensic, unflinching and masterful biography Bon Scott has so richly deserved and music fans around the world have been waiting for.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'With sales of over 200 million albums, AC/DC is not just the biggest rock band in the world.

'It's a family business built by three brothers: George, Malcolm and Angus Young.

'And, as with any business, some people prospered while others got hurt along the way.

'The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC is unlike any AC/DC book you've read before. Less a biography, more a critical appreciation, it tells the story of the trio through 11 classic songs and reveals some of the personal and creative secrets that went into their making.

'Important figures from AC/DC's long way to the top open up for the very first time, while unsung heroes behind the band's success are given the credit they are due.

'Accepted accounts of events are challenged while sensational new details emerge to cast a whole new light on the band's history – especially their early years with Atlantic Records in the United States.

'Former AC/DC members and musicians from bands such as Guns N' Roses, Dropkick Murphys, Airbourne and Rose Tattoo also give their perspectives on the Youngs' brand of magic.

'Their music has never pulled its punches. Neither does The Youngs.

'After 40 years, AC/DC might just have got the serious book it deserves. ' (Publisher's blurb)

'One man's story of sex, love and other disorders.

'Like a lot of men, Jesse Fink never thought it would happen to him. But it did. His wife of 10 years and mother of his child walked out on him and into the arms of another man. In that moment he lost his best friend, his soul mate, his family, his identity. His wife's new lover even got his dog.

'What came next was a freefall of the soul that would take him from contemplating cutting his wrists to sleeping with hundreds of women.

'Laid Bare is a brutally honest account of one man's emotional and mental oblivion after separation and divorce. Jesse's search for love and pleasure saw him jump headlong into the freewheeling and sometimes dangerous world of online dating. He visited brothels and massage parlours. He crossed the Pacific for doomed affairs. He disastrously moved in sight unseen with his high-school dream girl, a woman he hadn't spoken to for 25 years but reunited with on Facebook. He flew off to Hollywood to connect with yet another beautiful woman he sparked with online and found himself in the kitchen of the real-life Bridget Jones. And he managed to get his heart broken all over again with a brilliant but turbulent young artist.

'With remarkable frankness, Jesse opens up about his complicity in the failure of his marriage, his battles with OCD, his struggles as a single dad, his sex addiction and his desperate desire to find love. He shares it all - the good, the bad and the ugly. His chance at personal salvation finally comes in the unconditional love of his eight-year-old daughter.

'This time, if he pays attention, he might just get it right.' (From the publisher's website.)