Spy Memoir

"Eloquent… An uplifting, heart-rending, and terrifyingly real account of frontline air combat. A first-rate military memoir." – David Eastman, US Army retired and author. In this true story, Robert Stanek delivers a raw and unforgettable narrative, revealing what it’s like to be in war waged from the skies above. Day by day, step by step, he brings readers into the secretive world of combat fliers, and tells the story of the men and women who flew dangerous combat missions during the largest air war of the 20th century. Experience the extraordinary events through the author’s ...

Why you may ask, would they want to stop you from listening to my story? They say it’s because it tells too many secrets and that I’m a spy … a spy for the Brotherhood! Now you can follow my story from my birth in the Midwestern city of St. Louis, Missouri, to the gang-infested streets of Chicago, Illinois, and into the war-torn jungles of Vietnam.

In Murder in Manchuria, Scott D. Seligman explores an unsolved murder set amid the chaos that reigned in China in the run-up to World War II. The story unfolds against the backdrop of a three-country struggle for control of Manchuria—an area some called China's "Wild East"—and an explosive mixture of nationalities, religions, and ideologies. Semyon Kaspe, a young Jewish musician, is kidnapped, tortured, and ultimately murdered by disaffected, antisemitic White Russians, secretly acting on the orders of Japanese military overlords who covet his father's wealth.

On November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko sipped tea in London's Millennium Hotel. Hours later, the Russian former intelligence officer, who was sharply critical of Russian president Vladimir Putin, fell ill, and within days was rushed to the hospital. Fatally poisoned by a rare radioactive isotope slipped into his drink, Litvinenko issued a dramatic deathbed statement accusing Vladimir Putin himself of engineering his murder.

God & Spies is a firsthand account of America's greatest intelligence coup. Operation Ivy Bells was not a onetime intercept of foreign intelligence but an ongoing operation of multiple Soviet military channels! "How did I end up as a navy diver, 400 feet down in a frigid Russian sea? After making my dad totally disgusted with me, I set out to make him happy. 'Honor thy father' - I struggled with a decision to serve God. 'Lord, I will give my life to you and serve you if you let me make this dive.'"

The Tracking of a Russian Spy exhibits the harrowing consequences that can emerge when love, or something like it, intersects with modern-day espionage. Swenson details the perplexing set of events that follow his encounter with a beautiful stranger in a dusky New York City nightclub. The woman in question is Katya and as the two grow closer Swenson wonders whether there might be more to this woman than she lets on.

The work of a spy-woman is very different from that of a man. First, on the one hand it is easier, because you are less likely to be suspected of intelligence activities. On the other hand, it was harder for female spies, because they were required to gain the trust of high-ranking officials or people of power, by using their beauty, skills of seduction, and by attempting to make the person fall in love with them, so that they revealed their secrets. It could destroy destinies, but it was extremely useful for states and governments.

As war began in Europe in 1939, a naturalized German American was recruited by the Nazis to set up a radio transmitter and collect messages from spies active in the city to send back to Nazi spymasters in Hamburg. This German American, William G. Sebold, approached the FBI and became the first double agent in the Bureau's history, the center of a 16-month investigation that led to the arrest of a colorful cast of 33 enemy agents.

On November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko sipped tea in London's Millennium Hotel. Hours later, the Russian émigré and former intelligence officer, who was sharply critical of Russian president Vladimir Putin, fell ill and within days was rushed to the hospital. Fatally poisoned by a rare radioactive isotope slipped into his drink, Litvinenko issued a dramatic deathbed statement accusing Putin himself of engineering his murder.

Jazzmyn Storm is a spy with a secret she can’t remember...and a man who haunts her dreams. When she wakes up in a U.S. hospital, Jazzmyn discovers she’s missing almost a month of time. Time she spent on a covert assignment in Romania. As she starts to uncover what really happened during those missing weeks, she realizes the truth may be more surprising than she ever imagined. What happens when the people you thought you could trust betray you? That’s bad enough in any relationship, but when you’re a spy it can be deadly.

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.

Wen Ho Lee, a patriotic American scientist born in Taiwan, had devoted almost his entire life to science and to helping improve U.S. defense capabilities. He loved his job at Los Alamos National Laboratory and spent his leisure time fishing, cooking, gardening, and with his family. Then, suddenly, everything changed and he found himself in the spotlight, accused of espionage by members of Congress and the national media and portrayed as the most dangerous traitor since the Rosenbergs.

In November 1974, British MP and former cabinet minister John Stonehouse walked into the sea off a beach in Miami and disappeared, seemingly drowned. Then he was found—on the other side of the world, in Australia—and his extraordinary story began to come to light: a Labour cabinet minister and a devoted family man, also in a long-term affair with his secretary, and a spy for the Czech State Security agency, who had committed fraud and attempted to fake his own death to escape catastrophic business failures.

A gripping tale of betrayal and counterbetrayal that tells the story of the most enigmatic member of the Cambridge spy ring - Donald Maclean. Donald Maclean was a star diplomat, an establishment insider and a keeper of some of the West's greatest secrets. He was also a Russian spy, driven by passionately held beliefs, whose betrayal and defection to Moscow reverberated for decades.

In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessive colleague in a hotel in South Kensington. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising, but that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable. She was one of Britain’s most daring and highly decorated secret agents, and the intelligence she gathered was a significant contribution to the Allied war effort.

He was the Western convert who would plunge deep inside al-Qaeda. He named his first son Osama after 9/11 and became a Jihadist. But then - after a sudden loss of faith - Morten Storm made a life-changing decision. He became a double agent and joined the CIA, MI6 and MI5. Filled with hair-raising close calls and deception, Storm's story builds to the climactic finale when he must betray his friend and mentor al-Awlaki - al-Qaeda's biggest threat to the West.

One morning in May 1671, a man disguised as a parson daringly attempted to seize the crown jewels from the Tower of London. Astonishingly, he managed to escape with the regalia and crown before being apprehended. And yet he was not executed for treason. Instead, the king granted him a generous income, and he became a familiar strutting figure in the royal court's glittering state apartments. This man was Colonel Thomas Blood, a notorious turncoat and fugitive from justice.

Johanna van Haarlem never wanted to abandon her son, Erwin. But the Nazis had occupied Europe and the teenager felt she had little choice. Her father had kicked her out, telling her she could return, without the child—or not at all. Johanna realized that together, she and her newborn wouldn’t survive; separated, at least Erwin had a fighting chance. So she surrendered the baby to an orphanage and tearfully went back home, vowing to return for Erwin one day.

Margeretha Geertruida Zelle, better known to history by the exotic, glamorous name of Mata Hari, was a woman who profited greatly from the power of illusion during much of her brief life. Born to a hatter named Adam Zelle and his wife Antje van der Meulen, Mata Hari moved from a financially rewarding but miserable marriage to circus performances to exotic dancing and celebrity to the role of ostensible international spy in an arc that ended tragically in front of a French firing squad.

The United Kingdom. A story based on real events. Few people are deemed smart enough to be selected and trained as a spy for Her Majesty’s Government, fewer qualify. The author is one such man, who, uniquely, was chosen at the age of 16, the only person still to pass selection without an education through the university system. Andy describes his unbelievable life, from the beginning, as a child, playing in the woods and fields around his home in Maple Cross, Hertfordshire, learning the skills he had no idea he would need in his future spy world.