Historical Mystery Spy

At the height of WWII, five idealistic young Americans receive a mysterious letter from the OSS, asking them if they are willing to fight for their country. The men and women from very different backgrounds - a Texan athlete with German roots, an upper-crust son of a French mother and a wealthy businessman, a dirt-poor Midwestern fly fisherman, an orphaned fashion designer, and a ravishingly beautiful female fencer - all answer the call of duty, but each for a secret reason of his or her own. They bond immediately, in a group code-named Dragonfly.

In this daring debut, Susan Elia MacNeal blends meticulous research on the era, psychological insight into Winston Churchill, and the creation of a riveting main character, Maggie Hope, into a spectacularly crafted novel.

Shot down over Siberia, ex-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is forced into a fight for survival against Aleksandr Zorin, a man whose loyalty to the former Soviet Union has festered for decades into an intense hatred of the United States. Before escaping, Malone learns that Zorin and another ex-KGB officer, this one a sleeper still embedded in the West, are headed overseas to Washington D.C. Noon on January 20th—Inauguration Day—is only hours away.

Bernard Samson suspects there is a traitor within his department of MI6. A jaded but highly skilled British intelligence agent nearing the end of his career, Samson already got KGB major Eric Stinnes to defect. But when a British KGB agent makes a sweeping confession with a suspicious undertone, the finger points straight back to London—where Stinnes is locked up, refusing to talk.

The emperor: Nero, emperor of Rome and feared by his subjects for his temper and cruelty, is in possession of an ancient document predicting that Rome will burn. The spy: Sebastos Pantera, assassin and spy for the Roman Legions, is ordered to stop the impending cataclysm. He knows that if he doesn't, his life - and that of thousands of others - is in terrible danger. The chariot boy: Math, a young charioteer, subject to the wiles and schemes of the emperor and the spy.

After former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone witnesses the theft of one of them, he learns from his old boss, Stephanie Nelle, that a private auction is about to be held where incriminating information on the president of Poland will be offered to the highest bidder - blackmail that both the United States and Russia want, but for vastly different reasons. The price of admission to that auction is one of the relics, so Malone is first sent to a castle in Poland to steal the Holy Lance, a 1,000-year-old spear sacred to not only Christians but to the Polish people.

It's 1937. Fear and suspicion stalk the Continent. A million have died in Stalin's Great Purge and the Nazi terror grips Germany. But British intelligence is still trying to work out who the enemy is. As Europe heads towards war, treason is in the air. British spymasters know there is one Soviet agent in their ranks, codenamed Agent ‘Archie', and there's a frantic search to find them. What they don't know is that he is not the only traitor.

The Knights of the Golden Circle was the largest and most dangerous clandestine organization in American history. It amassed billions in stolen gold and silver, all buried in hidden caches across the United States. Since 1865 treasure hunters have searched, but little of that immense wealth has ever been found. Now, 160 years later, two factions of what remains of the Knights of the Golden Circle want that lost treasure - one to spend it for their own ends, the other to preserve it.

A circus performer turned superspy is caught up in a Cold War web of conspiracy and death when the body of a murdered CIA agent is discovered in a Hawaiian marine park. By any definition, Ringling Wallenda Grove is an extraordinary man. The son of expatriate Russian former circus owners, he mastered the arts of acrobatics, animal training, and magic at a young age; distinguished himself as an officer in World War II; and went on to amass a fortune of several million dollars before going into semiretirement. But there is another side to this man that few know about.

Powerful, prosperous, and expanding ever farther into the untamed world, the Roman Empire has reached its zenith under the rule of the beloved Emperor Trajan. But neither Trajan nor his reign can last forever...

The pope is dead. A conclave to select his replacement is about to begin. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican, but one has fled Rome for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the 4th century and Constantine the Great. Former Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, is at Lake Como, Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that disappeared in 1945. But someone else seems to be after the same letters and, when Malone obtains then loses them, he’s plunged into a hunt that draws the attention of the Knights of Malta.

England, 1553. Richard Fitzwarren is a man determined to forge his own path. Once a man of importance, he was driven from his home with his half brother to scratch out a living as a mercenary. With little prospects, Richard must take whatever work comes his way, even when it leads to being thrown into the middle of a plot for the throne. But when his impulsive sibling draws attention from his wrathful family, the pair barely escapes with their lives.

1942: a German spy comes ashore on a desolate stretch of Lincolnshire beach. But he is hunted down by a young detective, Richard Prince. The secret services have need of a man like him.... In occupied Europe, Denmark is a hotbed of problems for British intelligence. Rumours of a war-ending weapon being developed by the Germans are rife. Sent to Copenhagen, Prince is soon caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Dodging Gestapo agents, SS muscle and the danger of betrayal, his survival - and the war effort - hangs in the balance.

Once a privileged heiress, Annabelle Ross is now struggling to hold her home and her life together through the devastation of the War Between the States. But with a forced marriage and a desolate future on the horizon, her hopes are beginning to dwindle. When she discovers an encrypted note on a dying soldier, she seizes the opportunity to use it to deliver a message of her own. Instead, she’s mistaken for a spy and captured. Can she unravel a conspiracy before her secrets cost a man his life? The complete trilogy of exciting Accidental Spy novels.

Charlie Marder is an unlikely congressman. Thrust into office by his family ties after his predecessor died mysteriously, Charlie is struggling to navigate the dangerous waters of 1950s Washington, DC, alongside his young wife, Margaret, a zoologist with ambitions of her own. Amid the swirl of glamorous and powerful political leaders and deal makers, a mysterious fatal car accident thrusts Charlie and Margaret into an underworld of backroom deals, secret societies, and a plot that could change the course of history.

With the Cold War fought and won, British spymaster Tim Cranmer accepts early retirement to rural England and a new life with his alluring young mistress, Emma. But when both Emma and Cranmer's star double agent and lifelong rival, Larry Pettifer, disappears, Cranmer is suddenly on the run, searching for his brilliant protégé, desperately eluding his former colleagues, in a frantic journey across Europe and into the lawless, battered landscapes of Moscow and Southern Russia, to save whatever of his life he has left.

It's 1977. Ike and Lucy, Senator Charlie and Margaret Marder's kids, are grown up—and in trouble. US Marine Ike has gone somewhat off the grid, working on Evel Knievel's pit crew in Montana, when—after a bar fight—he has to flee a neo-Nazi gang and seek refuge in the woods with a group of Vietnam veterans. Lucy, a reporter, has become the star of the brand-new Washington DC tabloid, the Sentinel, and is breaking all sorts of stories about a serial killer and falling in with the Lyons, the wealthy family that owns the newspaper.

June 1946. As the residents of Winthrop Island prepare for the first summer season after the sacrifice of war, a glamorous new figure moves into the guest cottage at Summerly, the idyllic seaside estate of the wealthy Peabody family. To Emilia Winthrop, daughter of Summerly’s year-round caretaker and a descendant of the island’s settlers, Olive Rainsford opens a window into a world of shining possibility. While Emilia spent the war years caring for her incapacitated mother, Olive traveled the world, married fascinating men, and involved herself in political causes.

In Len Deighton's second novel of the classic spy trilogy, Faith, Hope, Charity, Bernard Samson is trying to readjust his life after his wife, Fiona, defected to the East. As the Berlin Wall begins to crumble, loyalties seem to change along with the freezing wind. Caught between his job and his ethics, his past and his future, and the two women he loves, Samson embarks on his most sensational mission yet—from rural Poland to London Central. In this intricately plotted novel of changing loyalties, deception, and danger, Bernard Samson is in top form. And he has only himself to depend on.

Lily Saint James grew up traveling the European continent, learning languages as she went. In 1938, her mother's abrupt death brings her back home to Washington, DC, and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Lily comes to the attention of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Her knowledge of German, French, and Italian makes her the perfect OSS Agent, and her quick thinking places her as a nanny in the household of an important German Army Colonel, where she is able to gather intelligence for the Allies.