The Fiorella Files- Dunt, Childers, and Benchley

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How Westminster Works And Why It Doesn’t by Ian Dunt

Anyone sitting down to watch the news will get the sense that something has gone terribly wrong. We have prime ministers who detonate the economy, secretaries of state who are intellectually incapable of doing the job and MPs who seem temperamentally unsuited to the role. Expertise is denigrated. Lies are rewarded. And deep-seated, long-lasting national problems go permanently unresolved. Most of us have a sense that the system doesn’t work, but we struggle to articulate exactly why. Our political and financial system is cloaked in secrecy, archaic terminology, ancient custom and impenetrable technical jargon.

The Riddle Of The Sands by Erskine Childers

The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, extremely popular before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It was a spy novel that “established a formula that included a mass of verifiable detail, which gave authenticity to the story – the same ploy that would be used so well by John Buchan, Ian Fleming, John le Carré and many others.” The physical background is completely authentic – the various Frisian islands and towns named in the book actually exist and the descriptions of them accurate. The same is true for the various “sands” of the title – vast areas which are flooded at high tide but become mudflats at ebb. Navigating a small boat under these conditions requires a specialized kind of skilled seamanship. The plot slowly reveals a suspicion that the Germans are undertaking something sinister in the German Frisian islands. The book has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television.

Jaws by Peter Benchley 

A great white shark terrorizes the beautiful summer getaway of Amity Island, and a motley group of men take to the water to do battle with the beast. A heart-pounding novel of suspense and a brilliant meditation on the nature of humanity, Jaws is one of the most iconic thrillers ever written.