An Impeccable Spy


Book Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PUSHKIN HOUSE PRIZE 'The most formidable spy in history' IAN FLEMING 'His work was impeccable' KIM PHILBY 'The spy to end spies' JOHN LE CARRÉ Born of a German father and a Russian mother, Richard Sorge moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. In the years leading up to and during the Second World War, he became a fanatical communist – and the Soviet Union's most formidable spy. Combining charm with ruthless manipulation, he infiltrated and influenced the highest echelons of German, Chinese and Japanese society. His intelligence proved pivotal to the Soviet counter-offensive in the Battle of Moscow, which in turn determined the outcome of the war itself. Drawing on a wealth of declassified Soviet archives, this is a major biography of one of the greatest spies who ever lived.




Red Traitor


Book Description

An electrifying thriller set during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, seen from a bone-chilling vantage point: set somewhere off the Florida coastline, trapped aboard the claustrophobic confines of an isolated Soviet submarine with open orders to fire its nuclear payload. • From the author of Black Sun. The year is 1962, and KGB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin is chasing a white elephant: the long-rumored existence of an American spy embedded at the highest echelon of Soviet power. In a wild-goose chase that has Vasin engaged in high-stakes espionage against a rival State agency, he first hears whispers of an ominous top-secret undertaking: Operation Anadyr. As tensions flare between Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy over Russian missiles hidden in Cuba, four Soviet submarines are ordered to make a covert run at the American blockade in the Caribbean--each sub carrying tactical ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads. Critically acclaimed novelist Owen Matthews has crafted an incredibly taut thriller around one of the most treacherous moments in modern history, where the fate of the world rested on the itchy trigger finger of one lone Soviet naval officer, 100-meters under the sea, out of all contact with his commanders.




Ben-Gurion's Spy


Book Description

-- Library Journal




Spies in the Family


Book Description

A riveting true-life thriller and revealing memoir from the daughter of an American intelligence officer—the astonishing true story of two spies and their families on opposite sides of the Cold War. In the summer of 1975, seventeen-year-old Eva Dillon was living in New Delhi with her family when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Eva had long believed that her father was a U.S. State Department employee. She had no idea that he was handling the CIA’s highest-ranking double agent—Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov—a Soviet general whose code name was TOPHAT. Dillon’s father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s. At the height of the Cold War, the Russian offered the CIA an unfiltered view into the vault of Soviet intelligence. His collaboration helped ensure that tensions between the two nuclear superpowers did not escalate into a shooting war. Spanning fifty years and three continents, Spies in the Family is a deeply researched account of two families on opposite sides of the lethal espionage campaigns of the Cold War, and two men whose devoted friendship lasted a lifetime, until the devastating final days of their lives. With impeccable insider access to both families as well as knowledgeable CIA and FBI officers, Dillon goes beyond the fog of secrecy to craft an unforgettable story of friendship and betrayal, double agents and clandestine lives, that challenges our notions of patriotism, exposing the commonality between peoples of opposing political economic systems. Both a gripping tale of spy craft and a moving personal story, Spies in the Family is an invaluable and heart-rending work. Spies in the Family includes 25 black-and-white photos.




Spies


Book Description

A thrilling, critically-acclaimed account of the Cold War spies and spycraft that changed the course of history, perfect for readers of Bomb and The Boys Who Challenged Hitler. The Cold War spanned five decades as America and the USSR engaged in a battle of ideologies with global ramifications. Over the course of the war, with the threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction looming, billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives were devoted to the art and practice of spying, ensuring that the world would never be the same. Rife with intrigue and filled with fascinating historical figures whose actions shine light on both the past and present, this timely work of narrative nonfiction explores the turbulence of the Cold War through the lens of the men and women who waged it behind closed doors, and helps explain the role secret and clandestine operations have played in America's history and its national security.




The Spy Who Changed History: The Untold Story of How the Soviet Union Won the Race for America’s Top Secrets


Book Description

‘A superbly researched and groundbreaking account of Soviet espionage in the Thirties ... remarkable’ 5* review, Telegraph On the trail of Soviet infiltrator Agent Blériot, in this bestseller, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a thrilling journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation.




The Princess Spy


Book Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER “As exciting as any spy novel” (Daily News, New York), The Princess Spy follows the hidden history of an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS’s most daring World War II spies before marrying into European nobility. Perfect for fans of A Woman of No Importance and Code Girls. When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes. Aline’s life changes when, at a dinner party, she meets a man named Frank Ryan and reveals how desperately she wants to do her part for her country. Within a few weeks, he helps her join the Office of Strategic Services—forerunner of the CIA. With a code name and expert training under her belt, she is sent to Spain to be a coder, but is soon given the additional assignment of infiltrating the upper echelons of society, mingling with high-ranking officials, diplomats, and titled Europeans. Against this glamorous backdrop of galas and dinner parties, she recruits sub-agents and engages in deep-cover espionage. Even after marrying the Count of Romanones, one of the wealthiest men in Spain, Aline secretly continues her covert activities, being given special assignments when abroad that would benefit from her impeccable pedigree and social connections. “[A] meticulously researched, beautifully crafted work of nonfiction that reads like a James Bond thriller” (Bookreporter), The Princess Spy brings to vivid life the dazzling adventures of a spirited American woman who risked everything to serve her country.




And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?


Book Description

“A wonderful portrayal of a brilliant, eccentric man,” this biographical memoir by an award-winning author is the untold story of Dr. Oliver Sacks (People). Lawrence Weschler began spending time with Oliver Sacks in the early 1980s, when he was profiling the neurologist for The New Yorker. Almost a decade earlier, Dr. Sacks had published Awakenings—the account of his long-dormant patients’ miraculous return to life. Over the ensuing four years, the two men worked closely together until, for personal reasons, Sacks asked Weschler to abandon the profile. The two remained close friends over the next thirty years and then, just as Sacks was dying, he urged Weschler to take up the project once again. This book is the result of that entreaty. Weschler sets Sacks’s brilliant personality in vivid relief. We see Sacks rowing and ranting and caring deeply; composing the essays that would form The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and waging intellectual war against a medical and scientific establishment that failed to address his greatest concern: the spontaneous specificity of the individual human soul. Here is the definitive portrait of Sacks, whose entire practice revolved around the single fundamental question he asked each of his patients: How are you? Which is to say, How do you be? A question which Weschler, with this book, turns back on the good doctor himself. “Engrossing. . . . This is Sacks at full blast: on endless ward rounds, observing his post-encephalitic patients . . . exulting over horseshoe crabs and chunks of Iceland spar.” —Barbara Kiser, Nature “Thoroughly engaging and enchanting.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Does a particularly good job intertwining Sacks’s searching empathy with his sheer strangeness.” —New York Times Book Review




Spymaster


Book Description

Oleg Kalugin oversaw the work of American spies, matched wits with the CIA, and became one of the youngest generals in KGB history. Even so, he grew increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system. In 1990, he went public, exposing the intelligence agencyÕs shadowy methods. Revised and updated in the light of the KGBÕs enduring presence in Russian politics, Spymaster is KaluginÕs impressively illuminating memoir of the final years of the Soviet Union.




Stalin's Englishman


Book Description

'MORE RIVETING THAN A SPY NOVEL': THE GRIPPING TRUE STORY OF CAMBRIDGE SPY GUY BURGESS Readers LOVE Stalin's Englishman: 'Fantastically detailed . . . a very quick, absorbing read.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Andrew Lownie's biography of Guy Burgess is that rare achievement - a historical biography of considerable political and human complexity that is also a page turner.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Surely the definitive account of one of the country's most prominent traitors.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Guy Burgess was the most important, complex and fascinating of 'The Cambridge Spies' - Maclean, Philby, Blunt - all brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret documents which he passed to his Russian handlers. In this first full biography, Andrew Lownie shows us how even Burgess's chaotic personal life of drunken philandering did nothing to stop his penetration and betrayal of the British Intelligence Service. Even when he was under suspicion, the fabled charm which had enabled many close personal relationships with influential Establishment figures (including Winston Churchill) prevented his exposure as a spy for many years. Through interviews with more than a hundred people who knew Burgess personally, many of whom have never spoken about him before, and the discovery of hitherto secret files, Stalin's Englishman brilliantly unravels the many lives of Guy Burgess in all their intriguing, chilling, colourful, tragi-comic wonder. PUBLISHED TO GREAT CRITICAL ACCLAIM: Winner of the St Ermin's Intelligence Book of the Year Award. 'One of the great biographies of 2015.' The Times Fully updated edition including recently released information. A Guardian Book of the Year. The Times Best Biography of the Year. Mail on Sunday Biography of the Year. Daily Mail Biography of Year. Spectator Book of the Year. BBC History Book of the Year. 'A remarkable and definitive portrait ' Frederick Forsyth 'Andrew Lownie's biography of Guy Burgess, Stalin's Englishman ... shrewd, thorough, revelatory.' William Boyd 'In the sad and funny Stalin's Englishman, [Lownie] manages to convey the charm as well as the turpitude.' Craig Brown