Spy Memoir

Police Investigation: In the atlas of world history, it would occupy a small space of time. Without warning a bomb goes off in a shopping complex. Two housewives and three children are left dead. An act of anger and retaliation in a holiday resort, which triggered a violent chain of events.

True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, an American who betrayed his country and crushed his family. Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American, spied for Stalin during the 1930s and '40s. Then, a pawn in Stalin's sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades.

In late 2013, Americans were shocked to learn that a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran in 2007 was there on a mission for the CIA. The missing man, Robert Levinson, appeared in pictures dressed like a Guantánamo prisoner and pleaded in a video for help from the United States.

John le Carré led a life entirely constructed of secrets—not just in his first career, as a British spy and agent runner during the height of the Cold War or in his second, as a world-renowned writer of espionage fiction, but also in his personal involvements. He guarded his private life with fierce determination, fending off all would-be biographers until his ninth decade, when he finally relented and permitted his life story to be written. But there was still one element that he insisted be excluded, even then: the women.

The longest serving spy for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Charles Howard "Dick" Ellis came to New York at the beginning of World War II as deputy to William Stephenson at British Security Coordination (BSC) and helped set up for William Donovan the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), what would eventually evolve into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ellis allegedly received prior warning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and, through the conduit of Stephenson, relayed that warning to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Decorated army officer Major Ed Dames tells the shocking true story of his time asoperations and training officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency's top-secret Psychic Intelligence Unit. Together with his PSI Spyteam, Dames used the practice of remote viewing to uncover accurate and verifiable military intelligence by going where no intel operatives on the ground could go - into the very mind of the enemy.

Why do people keep deep secrets about their lives and ancestry? In Family Declassified, Katherine Fennelly applies her expertise as a social science researcher to answer this question regarding her maternal grandfather, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant who arrived in the US one hundred years ago.

For Leslie Absher, secrecy is just another member of the family. Throughout childhood, her father's shadowy government job was ill-defined, her mother's mental health stayed off limits—even her queer identity remained hidden from her family and unacknowledged by Leslie herself.

In this impressive, well-researched biography, Phelps separates historical fact from long-standing myth to reveal the life of Nathan Hale, a young man who deserves to be remembered as an original American patriot. Using Hale's own journals and letters as well as testimonies from his friends and contemporaries, Phelps depicts the Revolution as it was seen from the ground.

Three Summers is the story of five young cousins who grow closer than sisters as ethnic tensions escalate over three summers in 1980s Bosnia. They navigate the joys and pitfalls of adolescence on their family’s little island in the middle of the Una River. When finally confronted with the harsh truths of the adult world around them, their bond gives them the resilience to discover and hold fast to their true selves.

In 1982, a 20-something named Michael Ross left home to backpack across Europe. Little did he know that his vacation would set in motion a chain of events that would hurl him into a career where the bosses are seasoned spies, and the work is tracking the world’s most dangerous terrorists. The Volunteer is a fast-paced memoir that provides insight into our world, both pre- and post-9/11, told by a man on the front lines in the war against terror.

Cambridge spy Guy Burgess was a supreme networker. He also set a gold standard for conflicts of interest, working variously for the BBC, MI5, MI6, the War Office, the Ministry of Information and the KGB. Yet Burgess was never challenged by Britain's spy catchers: his superiors were convinced he was too much of a liability to have been recruited by Moscow. Now, with a major new release of hundreds of files into the National Archives, Purvis and Hulbert reveal just how this charming establishment insider was able to fool everyone for so long.

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.

Combining biography, history, and politics, Our Man Down in Havana investigates the real story behind Greene's fictional one. This includes his many visits to a pleasure island that became a revolutionary island, turning his chance involvement into a political commitment. Exploiting a wealth of archival material and interviews with key protagonists, Our Man Down in Havana delves into the story behind and beyond the author's prophetic Cuban tale, focusing on one slice of Greene's manic life: a single novel and its complex history.

Few people can say they have seen some of the most significant moments of the 20th century unravel before their eyes. Marita Lorenz is one of them. Born in Germany at the outbreak of World War II, Marita was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp as a child. In 1959, she traveled to Cuba where she met and fell in love with Fidel Castro. Yet upon fleeing to America, she was recruited by the CIA to assassinate Castro. Torn by love and loyalty, she couldn't bring herself to slip him the lethal pills.

An abandoned mansion in Scotland; revelations about her stepfather’s past life; an enigmatic handsome neighbour who is not quite what he appears to be. These are the essential ingredients of Laura’s Hidden Legacy – The Mansion.The year is 1971 and Laura Walter is a contented London art student living a privileged life and on the point of graduating university when tragedy strikes: her parents die in a car crash. As part of her legacy, Laura discovers she has inherited an estate in Scotland in the middle of a forest; an estate about which she had no prior knowledge. Laura’s journey ...

Spies played significant roles on both sides of the American Civil War, and many were women. These fascinating women contributed to the war effort when women could not vote or own property. Yet, Union or Confederate, all of these women had conviction. This audiobook explores the experiences of women whose courage and conviction played a key role in the outcome of the Civil War battle strategies and tactics. Their stories of courage, betrayal, and even love still resonate with women of today. North or South, all the women within lived fascinating lives that deserve to be told.

In September 2001, Christopher Whitcomb was the most visible FBI agent in the world. His bestselling memoir, Cold Zero, had led to novels, articles in GQ, and op-eds in The New York Times. He appeared on Imus in the Morning, Larry King, and Meet the Press; he was nominated for a Peabody reporting for CNBC. He played poker with Brad Pitt while contracting for the CIA.

Robert Baer was known inside the CIA as perhaps the best operative working the Middle East. Dana was originally tasked for Agency background checks, but always wanted more. When Bob and Dayna met on a mission in Sarajevo, it wasn’t love at first sight. But there was something there, a spark. And as the danger escalated and their affection for each other grew, they realized it was time to leave “the Company,” to somehow rediscover the people they’d once been. As worldly as they both were, the couple didn’t realize at first that turning in their Agency ID cards would not be enough to put their covert past behind.

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 42 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