In 1620 pirates are terrorizing the Adriatic coast. Our hero sets out to defeat them.

Sasha Skochilenko is an artist from St. Petersburg, Russia. She was the first to speak out against the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine: she changed the price tags in a supermarket and put information about the war on them. Now Sasha is in prison, facing trial. Through the eyes of her friends Sonia and Lesha we witness the ongoing trial up close, exposing the absurdities and inhumanity of the Russian legal system, and the threats that the group of friends who support Sasha encounter in daily life. Over 18 months they await the final verdict. In November 2023, Sasha is sentenced to another 7 years imprisonment for her artistic rebellion.

Following the court verdict, which saw more members of the gang responsible for Britain’s biggest ever burglary convicted, this is the full, inside story of how they nearly pulled off Easter 2015’s £14 million record-breaking heist. With exclusive access to the elite Flying Squad and their dramatic investigation, including remarkable covert surveillance of the thieves boasting at what they’d done and the moment loot was discovered hidden in a cemetery, this is the definitive story of the Hatton Garden heist.

Once the thriving capital of Imperial China, the city of Datong now lies in near ruins. Not only is it the most polluted city in the country, it is also crippled by decrepit infrastructure and even shakier economic prospects. But Mayor Geng Tanbo plans to change all that, announcing a bold, new plan to return Datong to its former glory, the cultural haven it was some 1,600 years ago. Such declarations, however, come at a devastatingly high cost. Thousands of homes are to be bulldozed, and a half-million of its residents (30 percent of Datong’s total population) will be relocated under his watch. Whether he succeeds depends entirely on his ability to calm swarms of furious workers and an increasingly perturbed ruling elite. The Chinese Mayor captures, with remarkable access, a man and, by extension, a country leaping frantically into an increasingly unstable future.