Pulse-Pounding Political and Espionage Thrillers
Uncover dark mysteries and twisted terrors with this collection of some great espionage novels out there.
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. When Charlie discovers a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of governance, he has to fight not only for his principles and his newfound political career…but for his life.
Kip Largo was once the world's greatest con man. Then he got busted. And spent eight years in jail. And lost his family. And lost everything except his crummy apartment and sense of humor. Now he spends his days working at a third-rate dry cleaner and maintaining a fourth-rate website. But hey, it's an honest living.
Then one day he meets Lauren Napier, beautiful wife of billionaire Ed Napier. Lauren's got a problem. She wants to leave Ed, but doesn't get squat in a divorce. She wants Kip to steal the money. She wants to pay him handsomely for his services. Kip's many things, but dumb isn't one of them. He knows that when a beautiful woman wants something from you, the only thing you're gonna get in return is trouble. So he makes the smart choice and walks away. But then things get complicated.
Kip comes home one day to find his son on his couch. Kip hasn't seen his son in years. Guess what' His son owes money to the Russian Mob. Kip can't say he saw that coming. And his son is short, well, the whole amount. Kip's monthly gross from the website generally tops out at twelve bucks. And suddenly Lauren's proposal isn't looking half bad.
This is Kip's chance to start over, to save his son, to afford a brand new life. But Kips knows that in any heist things never go as planned, and if you don't improvise you'll be caught faster than a one-legged bank robber. But suddenly Kip doesn't know who's conning who, and if he doesn't figure it out, his life could be the ultimate failed con.
Treason
by Newt Gingrich
by Pete Earley
Brooke Grant has been waging war against terrorism since her parents were murdered during 9/11, keenly aware that violence transcends borders. But after a coordinated attack on the president at a Washington power broker’s funeral, she realizes that the enemy is closer than she’d ever imagined, hiding in plain sight. The Falcon has gained a weapon no terrorist has ever wielded before: an American-born traitor burrowed inside the U.S. government itself.
Major Grant’s deadly chess match with the Falcon turns personal when he issues a fatwa against her and those she loves. Can she unmask the traitor and stop the Falcon’s most skilled assassin sent to kill her before he strikes? Or will she fall victim to betrayal by a false friend in this gripping story of treachery, courage, and the patriotic fight against evil?
In this realistic tale of modern-day treason, a nation fights for its life against an internal threat: a fanatical jihadist who uses liberty as a shield while trying to destroy the civilization created in its image. With decades of knowledge in national security and politics, only Newt Gingrich and Pete Earley could spin such a vivid mix of reality and fiction—a page-turner that dares readers to guess where the line between the two is crossed.
A deadly fall on a rugged stretch of California coast. A burglary gone wrong in Virginia. These incidents seem unrelated, but the victims were living undercover, their true identities closely held secrets. They are members of a classified team, the last line of defense against foreign threats. Now, someone is assassinating them, one by one, taking out family members and innocent bystanders to make the deaths seem like accidents.
Captain John Hayes, a special operations legend, has left the military to settle down with his family. But when he pieces together a pattern behind the murders and discovers that his protégée Claire Rhodes, a brilliant assassin, is the prime suspect, he returns to duty to unmask the attackers.
With every success, the killers grow bolder. Their ultimate goal: Lure Hayes and his remaining fellow soldiers to Manhattan, to eliminate them all in a single devastating strike. To save his teammates and thousands of innocent lives, Hayes must find a way to stop a seemingly unstoppable weapon.
Dead Man Switch delivers nonstop twists, turns, and action in a high-stakes thriller about what happens when the fight abroad follows our covert operators home—and their painstakingly constructed double lives are shattered.
From the bestselling author of First Blood comes a spectacular thriller, in which a former Navy SEAL and a Japanese samurai master are bound together in a terrifying past that never happened.
"Pilgrim" is a former CIA agent who is weary from the long years of living in the shadows.
When Ben's business card turns up in the pocket of a dead hit man, Ben and Pilgrim, two complete strangers, realize that they've been framed in an elaborate setup. Unsure who to trust–and pursued by a brutal and vengeful killer–the unlikely partners have no choice but to work together to discover who's targeted them for elimination–and why. But with everything at stake, Ben has no idea that Pilgrim is harboring some shocking secrets of his own–secrets that will soon force Ben to confront the blurred line between best friends and bitter enemies.
CI: Homeland Threat
by David DeBatto
by Pete Nelson
In the fourth novel of this thrilling series, the Pentagon suspects that the brutal murder of the daughter of a revered Army general is tied to a string of deadly assassinations of U.S. military personnel. Counterintelligence Staff Sergeant David DeLuca and his CI team of specialists are brought in to investigate.
In the depths of a Finnish winter, Deveraux–the November Man–is about to be betrayed…
A defecting Russian agent dangles a Gulag prisoner, thought dead for thirty-eight years–in front of the November Man. Suddenly the intelligence forces of the world are locked in a bloody battle, and Deveraux is cut loose by his own people.
From Britain to Ireland to Leningrad, Deveraux and a tough, beautiful reporter slip outside the system to bring the prisoner out–even if it means blowing the lid off the most shocking triple-cross of World War II.
The classic bestselling thriller that introduced the November Man . . .
Devereaux. Both target and triggerman, pawn and master player, the spy who can never come in from the cold . . .
Devereaux. Code name November. Brilliant, lethally cool operative. Years ago regarded as one of America’s most valuable security assets. Now courted by the KGB, attacked by the CIA. Your mission: foil the planned assassination of England’s richest man and its prime minister in a treacherous war of shadows on the Irish Sea, where the first loyalty is to yourself. And the wrong move can be your last . . .
Years of training have transformed Michel Khoury into a skilled intelligence operative. A refugee whose family was murdered by extremists, he has one mission: the peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict that upended his life.
An alluring enigma, he attracts the attention of Helen, a pretty English girl who lives in the adjacent apartment. As their relationship develops, Michel is unable to tell Helen about his past—or the collection of passports and unmarked bills he’s concealed in the bathroom they share.
When Michel’s secrets turn deadly, Helen and Michel find themselves pursued through the streets of London, Berlin and the Scottish countryside, on the run from the very people they thought they could trust.
A critically celebrated novel that “recalls the cool detachment and compelling eye for ordinary detail that characterized the early thrillers of Graham Greene” (Independent on Sunday), Shake Off is that rare breed of riveting tale—of intrigue and suspense, love and betrayal—that announces a bold new voice for our increasingly global times.
Bravo
by Greg Rucka
Still recovering from traumas both physical and emotional, Jad Bell is tasked with bringing in the Uzbek, principal organizer of the terrorist attack that nearly cost Bell his ex-wife and daughter. But the Uzbek’s just the beginning: his employer, the Architect, has already set in motion another, even more devastating attack.
At the center of it all are two women under deep cover. One, as beautiful as she is deadly, has just been dispatched on American soil to execute the Architect’s deadly plans. The other is an American just emerging from a complex web of lies, whose intel may be the only hope Bell has to stop the assault before it begins. But after years of pretending to be somebody else, can she be trusted?
The Day After Tomorrow
by Allan Folsom
The novel that took the nation by storm is now in paperback. Allan Folsom has created an international conspiracy of apocalyptic dimensions that interconnects three intricate and compelling stories spanning two continents and five decades.
Kyle West is a wanted man. Having fled the country to escape the false charges filed against himself and his former boss, billionaire government contractor Christopher Chandler, Kyle’s hiding in Cambodia, living on borrowed time and finding more and more reasons to be paranoid.
When a mysterious stranger named Julian Robinson walks into Kyle’s favorite cafè and offers to swap passports with Kyle, Kyle can’t believe his luck. Robinson looks so much like Kyle it’s almost unreal, and seems in every way the yin to Kyle’s yang: self-assured, charismatic and wealthy beyond measure. Traveling on business, Robinson needs Kyle’s passport to get to Africa, where a lucrative deal awaits. Kyle needs Robinson’s passport to safely flee Cambodia. The swap seems almost too good to be true.
Unfortunately for Kyle, it is. This one decision plunges Kyle into a Pandora’s Box of intrigue that threatens to swallow him whole. Suddenly he finds himself being pursued by Russian oligarchs, Chinese operatives, the CIA, and a beautiful woman trained to kill—all because Robinson certainly isn’t who he seemed. And time is running out for Kyle to discover who he is.
Prominent U.S. Senator James Wyckoff hires former government agents-turned-private security consultants Janson and Kincaid to locate his teenage son Gregory. Gregory’s girlfriend Lynell has been found strangled in a Seoul hotel, and Gregory has fled the city to avoid being arrested for the crime. But Senator Wyckoff insists that his son is innocent, suggesting that Lynell, who was a translator, may have been murdered because of something she overheard at a recent international conference. And when Janson and Kincaid realize they’re being hunted by an assassin, they suspect that this crime–and the cover-up–were orchestrated by a shadowy unit of the U.S. State Department as part of a larger plot to provoke violence between North and South Korea.
When young Jackie Bouvier receives her second assignment from the CIA, she knows it will go better than her first. She managed to survive the Paris job-while looking her best in Givenchy, no less-but now she's completed her official CIA training. So she's excited to show her boss exactly what she can do for her country.
Her new mission: Go undercover in sultry Havana and investigate a young revolutionary named Fidel Castro. But before Jackie can infiltrate the communist cabal, she's in past her hemline in danger. In another exciting adventure, she colludes with Grace Kelly, dances with Frank Sinatra, and flirts with an up-and-coming congressman from Massachusetts.
As the international intrigue escalates, Jackie must use all her finely honed skills to stay ahead of her enemies . . . and make sure spying never goes out of fashion.
Zed is an agent from the future. A time when the world’s problems have been solved. No hunger. No war. No despair.
His mission is to keep it that way. Even if it means ensuring every cataclysm throughout history runs its course-especially The Great Conflagration, an imminent disaster in our own time that Zed has been ordered to protect at all costs.
Zed’s mission will disrupt the lives of a disgraced former CIA agent; a young Washington lawyer grieving over the loss of her brother, a soldier in Iraq; the oppressed employee of a foreign diplomat; and countless others. But will he finish his final mission before the present takes precedence over a perfect future? One that may have more cracks than he realizes?
The Revisionists puts a fresh spin on today’s global crises, playing with the nature of history and our own role in shaping it. It firmly establishes Mullen as one of the most exciting and imaginative writers of his generation.
Abandoned by both his Irish father and Congolese mother, Bruno Salvador has long looked for someone to guide his life. He has found it in Mr. Anderson of British Intelligence. Bruno’s African upbringing, and fluency in numerous African languages, has made him a top interpreter in London, useful to businesses, hospitals, diplomats—and spies. Working for Anderson in a clandestine facility known as the “Chat Room,”Salvo (as he’s known) translates intercepted phone calls, bugged recordings, and snatched voice mail messages.
When Anderson sends him to a mysterious island to interpret during a secret conference between Central African warlords, Bruno thinks he is helping Britain bring peace to a bloody corner of the world. But then he hears something he should not have…
By turns thriller, love story, and comic allegory of our times, The Mission Song is a crowning achievement, recounting an interpreter’s heroically naive journey out of the dark of Western hypocrisy and into the heart of lightness.
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