From the author of the internationally bestselling “supremely effective, cunningly crafted” (The Providence Journal) thriller Traitor, a cerebral, suspenseful, and “different kind of spy novel” (Kirkus Reviews) filled with high-stakes intrigue in Israel’s top intelligence agency. After Ya’ara Stein is forced out of her job at the Mossad—the secret intelligence service of Israel—the Prime Minister offers her a classified job. Known for her aptitude, beauty, and deadliness, Stein is asked to set up a secret unit that will act independently, answerable only to the Prime Minister. This deadly team, filled with bright young men and women recruited and trained by Stein, quickly faces threats both old and new. Descendants of the lethal militant Red Army Faction have returned to terrorize Europe and fears of a radical Islam splinter group force the unit to distinguish between facts and smoke screens. As Stein’s cadets struggle to crush these threats, they soon discover how easily the hunter can become the hunted. A dazzling, tension-filled novel that sheds light on the world hidden just below the surface of our everyday lives, this “multidimensional…authentic” (San Francisco Review of Books) thriller offers a peek behind the curtain of today’s deadliest conflicts. With breathless pacing and shocking twists and turns, it proves that Jonathan de Shalit “has learned well from the likes of Mr. le Carré” (The Wall Street Journal).

“Fascinating, rich, and probing . . . a beguiling and endlessly interesting portrait”—The Wall Street Journal For fans of John le Carré and Ben Macintyre, an exclusive first-person account of one of the Cold War’s most notorious spies “Kuper provides a different and valuable perspective, humane and informative. If the definition of a psychopath is someone who refuses to accept the consequences of his actions, does George fit the definition? There he sits, admitting it was all for nothing, but has no regrets. Or does he?” —John le Carré Few Cold War spy stories approach the sheer daring and treachery of George Blake’s. After fighting in the Dutch resistance during World War II, Blake joined the British spy agency MI6 and was stationed in Seoul. Taken prisoner after the North Korean army overran his post in 1950, Blake later returned to England to a hero’s welcome, carrying a dark secret: while in a communist prison camp in North Korea, he had secretly switched sides to the KGB after reading Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. As a Soviet double agent, Blake betrayed uncounted western spying operations—including the storied Berlin Tunnel, the most expensive covert project ever undertaken by the CIA and MI6. Blake exposed hundreds of western agents, forty of whom were likely executed. After his unmasking and arrest, he received, for that time, the longest sentence in modern British history—only to make a dramatic escape to the Soviet Union in 1966, five years into his forty-two-year sentence. He left his wife, three children, and a stunned country behind. Much of Blake’s career existed inside the hall of mirrors that was the Cold War, especially following his sensational escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison. Veteran journalist Simon Kuper tracked Blake to his dacha outside Moscow, where the aging spy agreed to be interviewed for this unprecedented account of Cold War espionage. Following the master spy’s death in Moscow at age ninety-eight on December 26, 2020, Kuper is finally able to set the record straight.

“Thrilling.”—The Wall Street Journal From the author of the internationally bestselling “supremely effective, cunningly crafted” (The Providence Journal) thriller Traitor, a cerebral and suspenseful novel of high-stakes intrigue in Israel’s top intelligence agency. After Ya’ara Stein is forced out of her job at the Mossad—the secret intelligence service of Israel—she is called upon by the Prime Minister for a classified job. Known for her aptitude, beauty, and deadliness, Stein is asked to set up a secret unit that will act independently, answerable only to the Prime Minister. This streamlined and deadly unit, filled with bright young men and women recruited and trained by Stein, quickly faces threats both old and new. Descendants of the lethal militant Red Army Faction have returned to terrorize Europe and fears of a radical Islam splinter group force the unit to distinguish between facts and smoke screens. As Stein’s cadets struggle to crush these threats, they soon discover how easily the hunter can become the hunted. A dazzling, tension-filled novel that sheds light on the world hidden just below the surface of our everyday lives, this thriller offers a peek into the dark behind the curtain where today’s deadliest conflicts are fought. With breathless pacing and shocking twists and turns, it proves that Jonathan de Shalit “has learned well from the likes of Mr. le Carré” (The Wall Street Journal).

Stalin’s Singing Spy follows the remarkable life of NadezhdaPlevitskaya, a Russian peasant girl who achieved fame as one of Tsar Nicholas II’s favorite singers and infamy as one of Stalin’s agents. Pamela A. Jordan traces Plevitskaya’s life from her childhood in an isolated village to national stardom. She always declared that she was foremost an artist who sang for all people, regardless of their ideological leanings or socioeconomic background. She claimed throughout her career to be fundamentally apolitical, yet decades later in Europe, Plevitskaya was unmasked as one of Joseph Stalin’s secret agents along with her husband, White Russian General Nikolai Skoblin. Their experiences in exile shed light on Stalin’s covert operations and the hardships Russian émigrés faced in interwar Europe, an era of great political and economic turmoil. In addition, this book uncovers the roles that the couple played in one of the Soviets’ major intelligence coups—the 1937 kidnapping of White Russian General Evgeny Miller in Paris. Jordan recreates Plevitskaya’s sensationalized 1938 criminal trial in the Palace of Justice, where she was accused of conspiring to kidnap Miller and portrayed as a Red femme fatale. The first Western biography of Plevitskaya and the first to reconstruct her dramatic trial, this book provides a fascinating window into Soviet-era espionage in interwar Europe.

In the exhilarating tradition of I Am Pilgrim comes a sprawling, international high-stakes thriller that pits the intelligence of one man against one of the most successful spies ever to operate against American interests—“one of 2018’s hottest debuts!” (The Real Book Spy). When a young Israeli walks into an American embassy and offers to betray his country for money and power, he has no idea that the CIA agent interviewing him is a Russian mole. Years later, the Israeli has risen in the ranks to become a trusted advisor to Israel’s prime minister and throughout his career, he’s been forced to share everything with the Kremlin. Now, however, a hint that there may be a traitor in the highest realms of power has slipped out and a top-secret team is put together to hunt him down. The chase leads the team from the streets of Tel Aviv to deep inside the Russian zone and, finally, to the United States, where a most unique spymaster is revealed. The final showdown—between the traitor and the betrayed—can only be resolved by an act of utter treachery that could have far-reaching and devastating consequences for all of humanity.

Analyses mid-twentieth century British spy thrillers as resistance to political oppressionEspionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War British writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, John le Carr Pamela Frankau and filmmaker Leslie Howard combine propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Their spy fictions deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. With politically charged suspense and compelling plots and characters, these writers challenge distinctions between villain and victim and exile and belonging by dramatising relationships between stateless refugees, British agents, and most dramatically, between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crisis.Key FeaturesThe first narrative analysis of mid-twentieth century British spy thrillers demonstrating their critiques of political responses to the dangers of Fascism, Nazism, and CommunismCombines research in history and political theory with literary and film analysisAdds interpretive complexity to understanding the political content of modern cultural productionOriginal close readings of the fiction of Eric Ambler, John Le Carr and British women spy thriller writers of World War II and the Cold War, including Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, and Pamela Frankau as well as the wartime radio broadcasts and films of Leslie Howard

The Cold War was in full force. McCarthyism was at its peak. Caught up in the rapids of history, Maurice Halperin's life spun out of control. Denying the charges but knowing he could never fully clear his name, Halperin fled to Mexico and then, to avoid extradition, to Moscow in 1958. Among the friends he made there were British spy Donald MacLean and Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara. Disenchanted with socialism in the Soviet Union, he accepted Guevara's invitation to come to Havana in 1962.

Racing breathlessly from uncharted CIA prisons to the skyscrapers of Dubai, from stormbeaten oil rigs off the African coast to the ancient caverns beneath the city of Naples, Marc Dane returns in Exile, the explosive thriller from James Swallow, the internationally bestselling author of Nomad. A vicious Serbian gang whose profits come from fake nuclear weapons. A disgraced Russian general, with access to the real thing. A vengeful Somali warlord, with a cause for which he'd let the world burn. A jaded government agency, without the information to stop him. Only one man sees what's coming. And even he might not be able to prevent it . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Found in an envelope in Guillermo Cabrera Infante's house after his death in 2005, Map Drawn by a Spy is the world-renowned writer's autobiographical account of the last four months he spent in his country. In 1965, following his mother's death, Infante returns to Cuba from Brussels, where he is employed as a cultural attaché at the Cuban embassy. When a few days later his permission to return to Europe is revoked, Infante begins a period of suspicion, uncertainty, and disillusion. Unable to leave the country, denied access to party officials, yet still receiving checks for his work in Belgium, Infante discovers the reality of Cuba under Fidel Castro: imprisonment of homosexuals, silencing of writers, the closing of libraries and newspapers, and the consolidation of power. Both lucid and sincere, Map Drawn by a Spy is a moving portrayal of a fractured society and a writer's struggles to come to terms with his national identity.

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR'A deeply human read, wonderfully written, on the foibles of a fascinating, flawed, treacherous and sort of likeable character.' Philippe SandsThose people who were betrayed were not innocent people. They were no better nor worse than I am. It's all part of the intelligence world. If the man who turned me in came to my house today, I'd invite him to sit down and have a cup of tea.George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a Senior Officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain. Yet he was also one of the least known double agents, and remained unrepentant.In 1961, Blake was sentenced to forty-two years imprisonment for betraying to the KGB all of the Western operations in which he was involved, and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain. This was the longest sentence for espionage ever to have been handed down by a British court.On the surface, Blake was a charming, intelligent and engaging man, and most importantly, a seemingly committed patriot. Underneath, a ruthlessly efficient mole and key player in the infamous 'Berlin Tunnel' operation. This illuminating biography tracks Blake from humble beginnings as a teenage courier for the Dutch underground during the Second World War, to the sensational prison-break from Wormwood Scrubs that inspired Hitchcock to write screenplay.Through a combination of personal interviews, research and unique access to Stasi records, journalist Simon Kuper unravels who Blake truly was, what he was capable of, and why he did it.