If you want to look at a range of ‘history’ topics, History as Mystery is good.

Otherwise, my two favourites are Inventing Reality and Make Believe Media.

You can usually get reasonably priced copies of the Parenti books that he published with City Lights Books or The New Press. His other ones can be harder to find and can be expensive because they might be out of print so you can be looking at ‘collector item’ prices. Not always. But some are outrageous.

You could always find the PDFs just to have a look through, etc, before committing to a purchase. That’s what I do.

Does your library do inter-library loans? Sometimes there’s a small fee but it’s a lot cheaper than buying. Depends whether you want to keep it for reference. Just be careful what you order so you don’t end up on a watchlist. Or say that you’re researching 👻🎃 the crimes of the Soviets because you want to make your Halloween outfit authentic 🎃👻.

You’re probably okay unless you’re ordering one of the big names. I doubt most people would know or realise the significance of e.g. Frantz Fanon or David Harvey or Walter Rodney or, dare I say it, Naomi Klein. Marxists got quite good after McCarthyism at pretending they weren’t Marxists with their book titles.

Monthly Review does some good books in modern register.

So do Verso and Haymarket but they’re not exclusively Marxist or ML. I’ve been disappointed with a fair few books from Verso where the anti-Soviet messaging came through strong. Both of them reprint ‘classics’ and aren’t always clear that it’s a reprint.

Personally I appreciate them making some old books available again. This might annoy you if you buy something printed in ‘2019’ and find out it was written in 1919.

Good books you might find in your library are Natives by Akala (it’s about race in Britain), Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (I’ve not read it but I’ve had it recommended by comrades), Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Stuart Hall, Eric Hobsbawm.

I realise you didn’t ask for all this, but thought it might be helpful as you seem to be struggling with a problem that I once faced.

Odd, whenever I check they’re the lowest prices, sometimes even lower than through regular search because of some affiliate coupon. Sometimes you have to try different author/title listings to find the “right” one. In any case, eBay and Amazon will get you pretty cheap most the time.

The Parenti books I’ve read and recommend are Blackshirts and Reds and Inventing Reality. Washington Bullets by Vijay Prishad is in a similar vein and also good.

Somewhat similar to Blackshirts and Reds, perhaps less polemic, Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins.

Mostly unrelated but also good and approachable is My Life by [someone who interviewed] Fidel Castro. A quasi autobiography by someone whose name escapes me at the moment. Pairs well with the Blowback season on Cuba.