Books like The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre

Simon Singh traces the sweeping history of cryptography, from Mary Queen of Scots to Navajo Code Talkers and the Internet’s secure commerce, revealing how secrecy has shaped wars, nations, and technology.

Kevin Mitnick, once the world’s most notorious hacker, shares insider insights on social engineering and how human weaknesses can undermine even the strongest technical defenses.

Detective Alex Cross investigates a series of bank robberies with a mysterious criminal named the Mastermind, who demands precise instructions and will kill bank employees if the demands are not followed to the letter.

Elmore Leonard’s fast‑paced crime thriller follows released mobster‑turned‑Hollywood producer Chili Palmer as he navigates the dangerous buzz of the entertainment industry, turning a mid‑day murder into a new film script.

A petty thief, Arthur Simpson, is coerced into smuggling arms into Turkey for a jewel heist, only to be blackmailed by Turkish police into spying on the criminal gang, escalating his peril at every turn.

A woman detective investigates a football player and an English professor accused of murder in the neon-lit streets of San Francisco.

A revealing chronicle of a French couple who, over eight years, netted $2 billion in stolen European art to build a private museum.

The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other "emerging markets" have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world's reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world's population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent. In his first book, The Looting Machine , Tom Burgis exposes the truth about the African development miracle: for the resource states, it's a mirage. The oil, copper, diamonds, gold and coltan deposits attract a global network of traders, bankers, corporate extractors and investors who combine with venal political cabals to loot the states' value. And the vagaries of resource-dependent economies could pitch Africa's new middle class back into destitution just as quickly as they climbed out of it. The ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft; their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline. This catastrophic social disintegration is not merely a continuation of Africa's past as a colonial victim. The looting now is accelerating as never before. As global demand for Africa's resources rises, a handful of Africans are becoming legitimately rich but the vast majority, like the continent as a whole, is being fleeced. Outsiders tend to think of Africa as a great drain of philanthropy. But look more closely at the resource industry and the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world looks rather different.

Parker, the ruthless antihero of Donald Westlake’s crime series, goes under the knife to escape a mob contract and pulls off his biggest heist yet: a New Jersey armored car full of cash.

Parker, the relentless thief, schemes to retrieve a heist’s stolen money hidden in an unused church choir loft, confronting law and rival gangsters in a high‑stakes chase.

A bumbling thief, Dortmunder, returns from the wild, sparking a police chase and a series of crimes across the city.

Three cities, three priceless masterpieces vanish, and three investigators—Gabriel Coffin, Jean‑Jacques Bizot, and Harry Wickenden—race across Rome, Paris, and London to untangle a web of forgeries, double‑crosses, and a conspiracy that rewrites the art world.

An engrossing thriller exploring the complexities of a marriage between a busy mother and a charming developer, set in London.

True‑life chronicle of the FBI’s decade‑long hunt for federal agent Brian Regan, the dyslexic spy who used coded letters to sell U.S. intelligence to Libya, before the Snowden breach changed espionage news.