Soviet Spy

On the trail of Soviet infiltrator Agent Blériot, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a thrilling journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation. On a sunny September day in 1931, a Soviet spy walked down the gangplank of the luxury transatlantic liner SS Europa and into New York. Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enrol at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education.

Inspiration from one of the least known but most terrifying moments in modern history - when the fate of the world lay with a lone, nervous Soviet naval officer 100 meters under the Caribbean sea - lies at the heart of this breathtaking new Cold War thriller from the author of the acclaimed Black Sun.

Shortly after World War II, Congress' House Committee on Un-American Activities began investigating Americans across the country for suspected ties to communism. Among the people called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, none are as controversial as Alger Hiss.

Justin Lifflander dreams of becoming an intelligence officer and joining the Cold War fight against the Russians. Following internships at the State Department and the FBI, he lands a job at the US Embassy in Moscow. But Lifflander's story turns out to be less The Spy Who Loved Me and more Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He sets off for provincial Russia to live outside the gate of a nuclear missile factory and work as an inspector-janitor-chef on the INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty US monitoring team. There he discovers Russians are just as friendly—and suspicious—as their ...

Berlin, 1947: good Soviets Vera and Marya find themselves mired in the covert post-war conflicts that are shaping a new world order. When Marya, an interpreter liaising with the British, gets caught in secret agent Vera's web of deceit, she must make desperate choices to survive—and to protect those she loves. Nine years later, as the Soviets confront their Stalinist past, Vera revisits that pivotal moment, unravelling shocking truths about her sister and herself.

Spies are a feature of countless works of fiction in which they often discover secrets on which the fate of nations hang in the balance. Reality is generally rather more mundane as spies often gather low-level intelligence that only makes sense when it is examined by analysts and compared to information from other sources. Espionage provides clues to what the enemy is planning, but on its own it rarely changes the course of a war. Moreover, real spies are generally anonymous and not the bold, swashbuckling action heroes depicted in fiction.

The extraordinary powers of a female CIA agent lead her into the dangerous heart of the collapsing Soviet Union—and the path of a killer that shouldn't exist. Minsk, 1990. The Soviet Union is crumbling. The scavengers and predators are gathering, eager to pick the meat off the bones of a dying empire.

Kim Philby's life and career has inspired an entire literary genre: the spy novel of betrayal. He was one of the leaders of the British counter-intelligence efforts, first against the Nazis, then against the Soviet Union. He was also the KGB's most valuable double-agent, so highly regarded that today his image is on the postage stamps of the Russian Federation.