Books with category Thrilling Investigations
Displaying 6 books

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

2018

by John Carreyrou

Bad Blood is the full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, written by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite facing pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work.

For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at The Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors.

This is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.

A Trick of the Light

2011

by Louise Penny

"Hearts are broken," Lillian Dyson carefully underlined in a book. "Sweet relationships are dead." But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow's garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara's solo show at the famed Musée in Montréal.

Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, is called to the tiny Québec village. There, he finds the art world gathered, and with it, a world of shading and nuance, a world of shadow and light. Where nothing is as it seems. Behind every smile, there lurks a sneer. Inside every sweet relationship, there hides a broken heart.

And even when facts are slowly exposed, it is no longer clear to Gamache and his team if what they've found is the truth, or simply a trick of the light.

Sovereign

2007

by C.J. Sansom

Autumn, 1541. King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to attend an extravagant submission by his rebellious subjects in York. Already in the city are lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak. As well as legal work processing petitions to the King, Shardlake has reluctantly undertaken a secret mission for Archbishop Cranmer – to ensure the welfare of an important but dangerous conspirator who is to be returned to London for interrogation.

But the murder of a York glazier involves Shardlake in deeper mysteries, connected not only to the prisoner in York Castle but to the royal family itself. And when Shardlake and Barak stumble upon a cache of secret documents which could threaten the Tudor throne, a chain of events unfolds that will lead to Shardlake facing the most terrifying fate of the age...

Angels Flight

Harry Bosch finds himself at the center of an explosive case when an activist attorney is killed on the cute little L.A. trolley called Angels Flight, far from Bosch's usual Hollywood turf. The case is so volatile—and the dead man's enemies inside the L.A.P.D. so numerous—that it falls to Bosch to solve it.

As the streets superheat, Bosch's year-old Vegas marriage is unraveling. The hunt for the killer leads Bosch to another high-profile L.A. murder case, one where every cop had a motive. The question is, did any have the guts?

The Two-Bear Mambo

1996

by Joe R. Lansdale

Florida Grange, Leonard's drop-dead gorgeous lawyer and Hap's former lover, has vanished in Klan-infested Grovetown while in pursuit of the real story behind the jailhouse death of a legendary bluesman's blackguard son.

Fearing the worst, Hap and Leonard set out to do the kind of investigating the good ole boy cops can't - or won't - do. In Grovetown, they encounter a redneck police chief, a sadistic Christmas tree grower, and townsfolk itching for a lynching.

Add to this a dark night exhumation in a voodoo graveyard, a thunderstorm of Biblical proportions, and flat-out sudden murder. Hap and Leonard vow to face the hate and find Florida, even if Leonard has to put a hole in anyone who gets in the way. Besides, they've packed a lunch.

Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem

1994

by Philip Kerr

Berlin Noir brings together the first three novels in Philip Kerr’s New York Times bestselling historical mystery series starring the hard-boiled detective Bernie Gunther.

March Violets: We first meet ex-policeman Bernie Gunther in 1936, in a Germany where the Olympic Games are about to start. Some of Bernie’s Jewish friends are beginning to realize they should have left while they could. Gunther himself has been hired to look into two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party. A term of derision, "March Violets" describes late converts to the Nazi cause.

The Pale Criminal: The year is 1938, and Gunther is blackmailed into rejoining the police by Heydrich himself. The investigation delves deeper into the sinister underbelly of Nazi Germany.

A German Requiem: The saddest and most disturbing of the three books, set in 1947, sees Gunther stumbling across a nightmare landscape that conceals even more death than he imagines. Amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovers a legacy of horrors.

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