Historical Mystery Spy

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.

1865 - Marietta Hughes never wanted to be a spy, but the family legacy of espionage is thrust upon her as the War Between the States rolls on. Unknown to her, the Knights of the Golden Circle - a Confederate secret society bent on destroying the Union her brother died for - has been meeting in a hidden lair beneath her home. Faced with the secrets of her late husband and his brother, whom she thought she could trust with anything, Marietta's world tilts out of control. Can she right it by protecting a Union agent infiltrating the KGC?

When a beautiful English-speaking young woman named Anya is recruited to be a Russian spy working with the Nazi party, her first thought is that it means she can escape a terrifying situation at home. But when she finds herself sent to work as a land girl in a beautiful corner of England and begins to make friends—ones she knows she may have to betray—she fears she’s made a terrible mistake. The only person she can turn to is her fellow informer, Nikolai, and she finds herself impossibly drawn to his quiet intensity. But being together increases the risk to them both.

In the early days of World War II, nations were forced to choose sides in the epic battle that would change history forever. But for two brothers, fate had already made the choice. Separated as boys, Max and Harry Kelso have grown up to become ace fighter pilots--Max with the German Luftwaffe and Harry in Britain's RAF. Now, the machinery of war has set in motion an intrigue so devious, so filled with peril, that it will require them to question everything they know, everything they hold most dear....

As Europe slides toward war, the faculty of a midwestern university fight a crusade of their own - the campaign against Communism. The local publishing magnate has accused economics professor Jonathan Hogan of being a Red, and the scholar is forced to defend himself in front of the university's elders. They spare him, for Hogan is no Communist - merely a free thinker, open and honest in an age when conformity is the norm.

Freshly graduated from a rigorous training program in all things spy craft, former typist Evelyne Redfern is eager for her first assignment as a field agent helping Britain win the war. However, when she learns her first task is performing a simple security test at Blackthorn Park, a requisitioned manor house in the sleepy Sussex countryside, she can’t help her initial disappointment. Making matters worse, her handler is to be David Poole, a fellow agent who manages to be both strait-laced and dashing in annoyingly equal measure.

She's braved battlefields. She's stolen dispatches from under the noses of heads of state. She's played the worldly courtesan, the naive virgin, the refined British lady, even a Gypsy boy. But Annique Villiers, the elusive spy known as the Fox Cub, has finally met the one man she can't outwit... British spymaster Robert Grey must enter France and bring back the brilliant, beautiful - and dangerous - Fox Cub. His duty is to capture her and her secrets for England.

A phone call prompts Bill Lammiter, a young American playwright, to follow a former girlfriend to Rome. There, Lammiter saves a mysterious Italian girl from a beating and the fat is in the fire. A kidnapping, a battle in a Renaissance villa, a shrewd gamekeeper, a chance snapshot and a touring preppy contribute to the excitement and suspense of this Cold War thriller.

Summer, 1943. Daniel Berkåk works as a courier for the Press and Military Office in Stockholm. On his last cross-border mission to Norway, he carries a rucksack full of coded documents and newspapers, but before he has a chance to deliver anything he is shot and killed and the contents of his rucksack are missing. The Norwegian government, currently exiled in London, wants to know what happened, and the job goes to writer Jomar Kraby, whose first suspect is a Norwegian refugee living in Sweden, whose past that is as horrifying as the events still to come.

Under the Mediterranean sun, a drama begins in a café in Málaga. For Ian Ferrier, an employee of the United States Space Agency on holiday to visit his old friend Jeff Reid, it means the startling discovery that Reid is not just a wine exporter, but rather engaged in smuggling communist defectors to the West. Events take a turn for the worse when Ferrier, a stranger to the deadly world of espionage, must take sole charge of a high-ranking KGB agent. Alone in an frighteningly alien landscape, he can afford no mistakes when choosing whom to trust …

London, 1922. Between gallivanting in his Rolls-Royce and darkening the doorways of London's hotspots, Lord Reginald "Rex" Bankes-Fernsby has almost succeeded in banishing the battlefield nightmares that plague his sleep. Pity he can't say the same about that nagging lack of direction in his life. If only he were like his best friend Freddie—self-assured, suave, and up to his ears in secrets. But when Freddie is murdered, Rex doubts the verdict. Was Freddie really cut down while up to no good, or was he killed in the line of duty?

It is 1913, and those who follow the news closely can see the world is teetering on the brink of war. Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman with an uncanny ear for languages, has always hoped to make a job for himself as a spy. As his sales calls take him from city to great city - Hong Kong to Shanghai to San Francisco to New York - he moonlights collecting intelligence for His Majesty's Navy, but British espionage is in its infancy and Jack has nothing but a shoestring budget and the very tenuous protection of a boss in faraway London.

In 1939, as the armies of Europe mobilized for war, the British secret services undertook operations to impede the exportation of Roumanian oil to Germany. They failed. Then, in the autumn of 1940, they tried again.... So begins Blood of Victory, a novel rich with suspense, historical insight, and the powerful narrative immediacy we have come to expect from best-selling author Alan Furst.

World War II has just ended, and Britain has established the Control Commission for Germany, which oversees their zone of occupation. The Control Commission hires British civilians to work in Germany, rebuild the shattered nation, and prosecute war crimes. Somewhat aimless, bored with her job as a provincial schoolteacher, and unwilling to live with her overbearing mother any longer, 30-something Edith Graham applies for a job with the Commission - but she is also recruited by her cousin Leo, who is in the Secret Service.

1939. Ansel Luxford has everything a person could want—a comfortable career, a brilliant spouse, a beautiful new baby. But he is obsessed by a belief that Europe is on the precipice of a war that will grow to consume the world. The United States is officially proclaiming neutrality in any foreign conflict, but when Ansel is offered an opportunity to move to Washington, D.C., to join a clandestine project within the Treasury Department that is working to undermine Nazi Germany, he uproots his family overnight and takes on the challenge of a lifetime.

Berlin, early 1948: The city, still occupied by the four Allied powers, still largely in ruins, has become the cockpit of a new Cold War, and as spring unfolds its German inhabitants live in fear of the Soviets enforcing a Western withdrawal. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, the legacies of the War have become entangled in the new Soviet-American conflict, creating a world of bizarre and fleeting loyalties, a paradise for spies. John Russell works for both Stalin’s NKVD and the newly-created CIA. He does as little for either as he can safely get away with.

This ninth volume of The Flashman Papers, faithfully edited and transcribed by Fraser, finds that Sir Harry Flashman is back in India, where his saga began. This time, our hero is sent by Her Majesty's Secret Service to spy on the corrupt court of Lahore, on India's Northwest Frontier. Flashy's most challenging exploit yet is as politically shrewd and thoroughly lewd as ever.

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all. What caused the Indian Mutiny?

"The Lion" will be landing. And at New York's JFK Airport, an elite American task force waits as the notorious Libyan terrorist prepares to defect to the West. Then, aboard Flight 175, something goes eerily, horribly wrong - a mere prelude to the terror that is to come. Ex-NYPD cop, now Federal Task Force agent John Corey - together with his formidable and beautiful new partner, Kate Mayfield - will follow a trail of smoke and blood across the country. His quarry: a foe with the cunning of a lion and all the bloodlust of a man.

Love. Violence. Destiny. These powerful themes ricochet through Lorenzo Carcaterra's new novel like bullets from a machine gun. In Gangster, he surpasses even his best-selling Sleepers to create a brutal and brilliant American saga of murder, forgiveness, and redemption.