Hugh Miller

This memoir is of the schooldays of one of the most extraordinary minds Scotland has produced, Hugh Miller. Miller rose, if not from absolute poverty, certainly from a modest background, to become both a specialist in the field of geology and a generalist in the wider literary world, covering, as writer and editor, subjects as diverse as poetry, folklore, science, education, religion, history and travel. In his working life he was a stonemason, banking accountant, journalist, editor, lecturer and defender of Christianity against the evolutionists. By the time of his tragic suicide in 1856, Miller's prodigious output had made him among the best known of Victorian literary figures, admired by Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens and John Ruskin. By the latter part of the 19th century, his reputation extended across the world - his books were widely translated, and in America, according to the geologist Sir Archibald Geikie, "They were to be found in the remotest log huts of the far west." In 1879, the great environmentalist John Muir named one of the glaciers of Glacier Bay, Alaska, after the Cromarty stonemason.

Militant religious extremists are taking over the peaceful Vale of Kashmir, dealing in drugs and guns to fund their war. When the mission looks impossible, who do you call? UNACO. The Vale of Kashmir in India, precariously caught between Afghanistan, Pakistan and China, is one of the most serenely beautiful places on earth… and one of the most deadly. When Malcolm Philpott, head of UNACO, the United Nations’ Anti-Crime Organization, receives a tip-off from a local priest that the peace of the valley is being threatened by militant religious extremists and the suspicion of a highly organized drug-trafficking ring, he sends in two of his top agents, Mike Graham and Sabrina Carver, to investigate and question the priest further. But the priest is brutally murdered before they can arrive, and an ex-CIA-trained assassin, turned native, is the principal suspect. Suddenly Mike and Sabrina must undertake the lethal mission of infiltrating the murderous drug convoys and bringing the extremists under control before the volatile situation ignites and fans into an international blood bath.

A US government official is assassinated, a list of names, all male, all German, is found and two men on the list are already dead. What is the connection? When the mission looks impossible, who do you call? UNACO. A young American government employee is murdered in cold blood on a London street. Her death is only the tip of a conspiracy that threatens the life of Andreas Wolff, the computer genius responsible for the security codes for ICON – the computerized criminal identification network. Malcolm Philpott, the enigmatic and powerful head of UNACO, recognizes the grave threat, and assigns his two best agents to the case. Sabrina Carver and Mike Graham must race from New York to London, Morocco and Berlin in their efforts to crack the lethal intrigue that threatens world security and has its roots in the final days of World War Two and the desperate plans of a dying madman.