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| best alan furst books: Night Soldiers Alan Furst, 2008-11-19 Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin’s purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates the European world of 1934–45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944. Night Soldiers is a scrupulously researched panoramic novel, a work on a grand scale. |
| best alan furst books: The Foreign Correspondent Alan Furst, 2006-05-30 From Alan Furst, whom The New York Times calls “America’s preeminent spy novelist,” comes an epic story of romantic love, love of country, and love of freedom–the story of a secret war fought in elegant hotel bars and first-class railway cars, in the mountains of Spain and the backstreets of Berlin. It is an inspiring, thrilling saga of everyday people forced by their hearts’ passion to fight in the war against tyranny. By 1938, hundreds of Italian intellectuals, lawyers and journalists, university professors and scientists had escaped Mussolini’s fascist government and taken refuge in Paris. There, amid the struggles of émigré life, they founded an Italian resistance, with an underground press that smuggled news and encouragement back to Italy. Fighting fascism with typewriters, they produced 512 clandestine newspapers. The Foreign Correspondent is their story. Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers’ hotel. But this is no romantic traged–it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini’s fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine émigré newspaper. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and secured a job as a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor. Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain, reporting on the last campaign of the Spanish civil war. But as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Sûreté, by agents of the OVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondent is a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or murder. The Foreign Correspondent is the story of Carlo Weisz and a handful of antifascists: the army officer known as “Colonel Ferrara,” who fights for a lost cause in Spain; Arturo Salamone, the shrewd leader of a resistance group in Paris; and Christa von Schirren, the woman who becomes the love of Weisz’s life, herself involved in a doomed resistance underground in Berlin. The Foreign Correspondent is Alan Furst at his absolute best–taut and powerful, enigmatic and romantic, with sharp, seductive writing that takes the reader through darkness and intrigue to a spectacular denouement. |
| best alan furst books: Kingdom of Shadows Alan Furst, 2001-10-09 “Kingdom of Shadows must be called a spy novel, but it transcends genre, as did some Graham Greene and Eric Ambler classics.”—The Washington Post Paris, 1938. As Europe edges toward war, Nicholas Morath, an urbane former cavalry officer, spends his days working at the small advertising agency he owns and his nights in the bohemian circles of his Argentine mistress. But Morath has been recruited by his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi, a diplomat in the Hungarian legation, for operations against Hitler’s Germany. It is Morath who does Polanyi’s clandestine work, moving between the beach cafés of Juan-les-Pins and the forests of Ruthenia, from Czech fortresses in the Sudetenland to the private gardens of the déclassé royalty in Budapest. The web Polanyi spins for Morath is deep and complex and pits him against German intelligence officers, NKVD renegades, and Croat assassins in a shadow war of treachery and uncertain loyalties, a war that Hungary cannot afford to lose. Alan Furst is frequently compared with Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and John le Carré, but Kingdom of Shadows is distinctive and entirely original. It is Furst at his very best. Praise for Kingdom of Shadows “Kingdom of Shadows offers a realm of glamour and peril that are seamlessly intertwined and seem to arise effortlessly from the author’s consciousness.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Subtly spun, sensitive to nuances, generous with contemporary detail and information discreetly conveyed. . . . It’s hard to overestimate Kingdom of Shadows.”—Eugen Weber, Los Angeles Times “A triumph: evocative, heartfelt, knowing and witty.”—Robert J. Hughes, The Wall Street Journal “Imagine discovering an unscreened espionage thriller from the late 1930s, a classic black- and- white movie that captures the murky allegiances and moral ambiguity of Europe on the brink of war. . . . Nothing can be like watching Casablanca for the first time, but Furst comes closer than anyone has in years.”—Walter Shapiro, Time |
| best alan furst books: Spies of the Balkans Alan Furst, 2010-06-15 Greece, 1940. In the port city of Salonika, with its wharves and brothels, dark alleys and Turkish mansions, a tense political drama is being played out. As Adolf Hitler plans to invade the Balkans, spies begin to circle—and Costa Zannis, a senior police official, must deal with them all. He is soon in the game, working to secure an escape route for fugitives from Nazi Berlin that is protected by German lawyers, Balkan detectives, and Hungarian gangsters—and hunted by the Gestapo. Meanwhile, as war threatens, the erotic life of the city grows passionate. For Zannis, that means a British expatriate who owns the local ballet academy, a woman from the dark side of Salonika society, and the wife of a shipping magnate. With extraordinary historical detail and a superb cast of characters, Spies of the Balkans is a stunning novel about a man who risks everything to fight back against the world’s evil. |
| best alan furst books: A Hero of France Alan Furst, 2016-05-31 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling master espionage writer, hailed by Vince Flynn as “the best in the business,” comes a riveting novel about the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST 1941. The City of Light is dark and silent at night. But in Paris and in the farmhouses, barns, and churches of the French countryside, small groups of ordinary men and women are determined to take down the occupying forces of Adolf Hitler. Mathieu, a leader of the French Resistance, leads one such cell, helping downed British airmen escape back to England. Alan Furst’s suspenseful, fast-paced thriller captures this dangerous time as no one ever has before. He brings Paris and occupied France to life, along with courageous citizens who outmaneuver collaborators, informers, blackmailers, and spies, risking everything to fulfill perilous clandestine missions. Aiding Mathieu as part of his covert network are Lisette, a seventeen-year-old student and courier; Max de Lyon, an arms dealer turned nightclub owner; Chantal, a woman of class and confidence; Daniel, a Jewish teacher fueled by revenge; Joëlle, who falls in love with Mathieu; and Annemarie, a willful aristocrat with deep roots in France, and a desire to act. As the German military police heighten surveillance, Mathieu and his team face a new threat, dispatched by the Reich to destroy them all. Shot through with the author’s trademark fine writing, breathtaking suspense, and intense scenes of seduction and passion, Alan Furst’s A Hero of France is at once one of the finest novels written about the French Resistance and the most gripping novel yet by the living master of the spy thriller. |
| best alan furst books: Midnight in Europe Alan Furst, 2015-03-17 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Paris, 1938. As the shadow of war darkens Europe, democratic forces on the Continent struggle against fascism and communism, while in Spain the war has already begun. Alan Furst, whom Vince Flynn has called “the most talented espionage novelist of our generation,” now gives us a taut, suspenseful, romantic, and richly rendered novel of spies and secret operatives in Paris and New York, in Warsaw and Odessa, on the eve of World War II. Cristián Ferrar, a brilliant and handsome Spanish émigré, is a lawyer in the Paris office of a prestigious international law firm. Ferrar is approached by the embassy of the Spanish Republic and asked to help a clandestine agency trying desperately to supply weapons to the Republic’s beleaguered army—an effort that puts his life at risk in the battle against fascism. Joining Ferrar in this mission is a group of unlikely men and women: idealists and gangsters, arms traders and aristocrats and spies. From shady Paris nightclubs to white-shoe New York law firms, from brothels in Istanbul to the dockyards of Poland, Ferrar and his allies battle the secret agents of Hitler and Franco. And what allies they are: there’s Max de Lyon, a former arms merchant now hunted by the Gestapo; the Marquesa Maria Cristina, a beautiful aristocrat with a taste for danger; and the Macedonian Stavros, who grew up “fighting Bulgarian bandits. After that, being a gangster was easy.” Then there is Eileen Moore, the American woman Ferrar could never forget. In Midnight in Europe, Alan Furst paints a spellbinding portrait of a continent marching into a nightmare—and the heroes and heroines who fought back against the darkness. Praise for Alan Furst and Midnight in Europe “Furst never stops astounding me.”—Tom Hanks “Furst is the best in the business.”—Vince Flynn “Elegant, gripping . . . [Furst] remains at the top of his game.”—The New York Times “Suspenseful and sophisticated . . . No espionage author, it seems, is better at summoning the shifting moods and emotional atmosphere of Europe before the start of World War II than Alan Furst.”—The Wall Street Journal “Endlessly compelling . . . Furst delivers an observant, sexy, and thrilling tale set in the outskirts of World War II. In Furst’s hands, Paris once again comes alive with intrigue.”—Erik Larson “Too much fun to put down . . . [Furst is] a master of the atmospheric thriller.”—The Boston Globe |
| best alan furst books: The World at Night Alan Furst, 2007-12-18 “First-rate research collaborates with first-rate imagination. . . . Superb.”—The Boston Globe Paris, 1940. The civilized, upper-class life of film producer Jean Casson is derailed by the German occupation of Paris, but Casson learns that with enough money, compromise, and connections, one need not deny oneself the pleasures of Parisian life. Somewhere inside Casson, though, is a stubborn romantic streak. When he’s offered the chance to take part in an operation of the British secret service, this idealism gives him the courage to say yes. A simple mission, but it goes wrong, and Casson realizes he must gamble everything—his career, the woman he loves, life itself. Here is a brilliant re-creation of France—its spirit in the moment of defeat, its valor in the moment of rebirth. Praise for The World at Night “[The World at Night] earns a comparison with the serious entertainments of Graham Greene and John le Carré. . . . Gripping, beautifully detailed . . . an absorbing glimpse into the moral maze of espionage.”—Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times “[The World at Night] is the world of Eric Ambler, the pioneering British author of classic World War II espionage fiction. . . . The novel is full of keen dialogue and witty commentary . . . . Thrilling.”—Herbert Mitgang, Chicago Tribune “With the authority of solid research and a true fascination for his material, Mr. Furst makes idealism, heroism, and sacrifice believable and real.”—David Walton, The Dallas Morning News |
| best alan furst books: Dark Voyage Alan Furst, 2011-10-13 From the master of the wartime espionage novel; a thrilling story of subterfuge at sea May 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter steams up the Tagus river to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa, flies the flag of neutral Spain, and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo. But she is not the Santa Rosa. She is the Noordendam, a Dutch freighter under the command of Captain Eric DeHaan. She sails for the intelligence division of the British Royal Navy and is involved in a secret mission. On board are a Polish engineer and British spy, Spaniards who fought for Franco and Germans who fought against Hitler. For them, this is a last desperate flight to freedom. |
| best alan furst books: Blood of Victory Alan Furst, 2002-08-27 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “[Furst] glides gracefully into an urbane pre–World War II Europe and describes that milieu with superb precision.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times In the autumn of 1940, Russian émigré journalist I. A. Serebin is recruited in Istanbul by an agent of the British secret services for a clandestine operation to stop German importation of Romanian oil—a last desperate attempt to block Hitler’s conquest of Europe. Serebin’s race against time begins in Bucharest and leads him to Paris, the Black Sea, Beirut, and, finally, Belgrade; his task is to attack the oil barges that fuel German tanks and airplanes. Blood of Victory is a novel with the heart-pounding suspense, extraordinary historical accuracy, and narrative immediacy we have come to expect from Alan Furst. Praise for Blood of Victory “Densely atmospheric and genuinely romantic, the novel is most reminiscent of the Hollywood films of the forties, when moral choices were rendered not in black-and-white but in smoky shades of gray.”—The New Yorker “Furst’s achievement is a moral one, producing a powerful testament to fiction’s ability to re-create the experience of others, and why it is so deeply important to do so.” —Neil Gordon, The New York Times Book Review “Richly atmospheric and satisfying.” —Deirdre Donahue, USA Today |
| best alan furst books: Mission to Paris Alan Furst, 2013-06-04 “A master spy novelist.”—The Wall Street Journal “Page after page is dazzling.”—James Patterson NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Late summer, 1938. Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris to make a movie. The Nazis know he’s coming—a secret bureau within the Reich has been waging political warfare against France, and for their purposes, Fredric Stahl is a perfect agent of influence. What they don’t know is that Stahl, horrified by the Nazi war on Jews and intellectuals, has become part of an informal spy service run out of the American embassy. Mission to Paris is filled with heart-stopping tension, beautifully drawn scenes of romance, and extraordinarily alive characters: foreign assassins; a glamorous Russian actress-turned-spy; and the women in Stahl’s life. At the center of the novel is the city of Paris—its bistros, hotels grand and anonymous, and the Parisians, living every night as though it were their last. Alan Furst brings to life both a dark time in history and the passion of the human hearts that fought to survive it. Praise for Mission to Paris “The most talented espionage novelist of our generation.”—Vince Flynn “Vividly re-creates the excitement and growing gloom of the City of Light in 1938–39 . . . It doesn’t get more action-packed and grippingly atmospheric than this.”—The Boston Globe “One of [Furst’s] best . . . This is the romantic Paris to make a tourist weep. . . . In Furst’s densely populated books, hundreds of minor characters—clerks, chauffeurs, soldiers, whores—all whirl around his heroes in perfect focus for a page or two, then dot by dot, face by face, they vanish, leaving a heartbreaking sense of the vast Homeric epic that was World War II and the smallness of almost every life that was caught up in it.”—The New York Times Book Review “A book no reader will put down until the final page . . . Critics compare [Alan] Furst to Graham Greene and John le Carré [as] a master of historical espionage.”—Library Journal (starred review) “Alan Furst’s writing reminds me of a swim in perfect water on a perfect day, fluid and exquisite. One wants the feeling to go on forever, the book to never end. . . . Furst is one of the finest spy novelists working today.”—Publishers Weekly |
| best alan furst books: The Spies Of Warsaw Alan Furst, 2011-08-25 An Autumn evening in 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw railway station. Tonight, he will be with his Polish mistress; tomorrow, at a workers' bar in the city's factory district, he will meet with the military attaché from the French embassy. Information will be exchanged for money. So begins THE SPIES OF WARSAW, with war coming to Europe, and French and German operatives locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attaché, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn in to a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations. Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amidst an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters - Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence, last seen in Furst's THE POLISH OFFICER; the mysterious and sophisticated Doctor Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier's brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed. |
| best alan furst books: A Corpse in the Koryo James Church, 2006-10-17 A rebellious survivor of North Korea's brutal totalitarian regime, Inspector O, a state security officer, risks his life and career to solve a case that begins innocuously enough when he is asked to photograph a certain vehicle. |
| best alan furst books: Red Gold Alan Furst, 2011-08-25 The sequel to THE WORLD AT NIGHT featuring Jean Casson Set in the underworld of Paris in 1941. Reluctant spy Jean Casson returns to occupied Paris under a new identity. He is wanted by the Gestapo therefore must stay away from the civilised circles he knew as a film producer and learn to survive in the shadowy backstreets and cheap hotels of Pigalle. Yet as the war drags on, he finds himself drawn back into the dangerous world of resistance and sabotage . . . |
| best alan furst books: The Book of Spies Anthony Burgess, John Steinbeck, John le Carré, Rebecca West, 2003-05-13 An anthology of the world’s best literary espionage, selected by a contemporary master of the genre, Alan Furst. Here is an extraordinary collection of work from some of the finest novelists of the twentieth century. Inspired by the politics of tyranny or war, each of these writers chose the base elements of spy fiction—highly evolved spy fiction—as the framework for a literary novel. Thus Alan Furst offers a diverse array of selections that combine raw excitement and intellectual sophistication in an expertly guided tour of the dark world of clandestine conflict. These are not just stories of professional intelligence officers. We meet diplomats, political police, agents provocateurs, secret operatives, resistance fighters, and assassins—players in the Great Game, or victims of the Cold War. The Book of Spies brings us the aristocratic intrigues of The Scarlet Pimpernel, in which French émigrés duel with Robespierre’s secret service; the savage political realities of the 1930s in Eric Ambler’s classic A Coffin for Dimitrios; the ordinary citizens (well, almost) of John le Carré’s The Russia House, who are drawn into Cold War spy games; and the 1950s Vietnam of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, with its portrait of American idealism and duplicity. Drawing on acknowledged classics and rediscovered treasures, Alan Furst’s The Book of Spies delivers literate entertainment and excitement on every page. |
| best alan furst books: The Polish Officer Alan Furst, 2010-11-25 From the master of the historical spy thriller, a story set in the heart of the Polish resistance September, 1939. The invading Germans blaze a trail of destruction across Poland. France and Britain declare war, but do nothing to help. And a Polish resistance movement takes shape under the shadow of occupation, enlisting those willing to risk death in the struggle for their nation's survival. Among them is Captain Alexander de Milja, an officer in the Polish military intelligence service, a cartographer who now must learn a dangerous new role: spymaster in the anti-Nazi underground. Beginning with a daring operation to smuggle the Polish National Gold Reserve to the government in exile, he slips into the shadowy and treacherous front lines of espionage; he moves through Europe, changing identities and staying one step ahead of capture. In Warsaw, he engineers a subversive campaign to strengthen the people's will to resist. In Paris, he poses as a Russian poet, then as a Slovakian coal merchant, drinking champagne in black-market bistros with Nazis while uncovering information about German battle plans. And a love affair with a woman of the French Resistance leads him to make the greatest decision of his life. |
| best alan furst books: The Miernik Dossier Charles McCarry, 2008 An unlikely touring party of five friends embark on a road trip to deliver a brand new Cadillac, from Switzerland to the Sudan. All five are attached to the U.N. in Geneva, and all five are more than they claim to be. Among the travellers are Kalash el Khatar, a seven-foot-tall Muslim prince; British intelligence agent Nigel Collins and his beautiful half-English, half-Hungarian girlfriend Ilona Bentley; Paul Christopher; and Tadeusz Miernik, a shy and bumbling Polish scientist who just might also be the leader of a terrorist cell that could set the Cold War alight. Related as a collection of intelligence reports, wire taps, surveillance notes, and conversation transcripts written and recorded by the five characters, the novel reveals a complicated web in which each character spins his or her own deception. From the elegance and refinement of political intrigue in Geneva, to the palaces and terrorist camps of Dar es Salaam, The Miernik Dossier moves through a world of the subtlest plots and the most brutal acts of violence. |
| best alan furst books: Leaving Berlin Joseph Kanon, 2015-03-03 New York Times Notable Book * Named one of NPR and Wall Street Journal's Best Books of the Year * The acclaimed author of The Good German “deftly captures the ambience” (The New York Times Book Review) of postwar East Berlin in his “thought-provoking, pulse-pounding” (Wall Street Journal) New York Times bestseller—a sweeping spy thriller about a city caught between political idealism and the harsh realities of Soviet occupation. Berlin, 1948. Almost four years after the war’s end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the West, a defiant, blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies; in the East, the heady early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the murky compromises of the Cold War. Espionage, like the black market, is a fact of life. Even culture has become a battleground, with German intellectuals being lured back from exile to add credibility to the competing sectors. Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin. But almost from the start things go fatally wrong. A kidnapping misfires, an East German agent is killed, and Alex finds himself a wanted man. Worse, he discovers his real assignment—to spy on the woman he left behind, the only woman he has ever loved. Changing sides in Berlin is as easy as crossing a sector border. But where do we draw the lines of our moral boundaries? At betrayal? Survival? Murder? Joseph Kanon’s compelling thriller is a love story that brilliantly brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life. |
| best alan furst books: They Don't Dance Much James Ross, 1975 Called by Raymond Chandler “a sleazy, corrupt but completely believable story of a North Carolina town,” this tough, realistic novel exemplifies Depression literature in the United States. Falling somewhere between the hard-as-nails writing of James M. Cain and the early stories of Ernest Hemingway, James Ross’s novel was for sheer brutality and frankness of language considerably ahead of his reading public’s taste for realism untinged with sentiment or profundity. In his brilliant Afterword to this new edition, George V. Higgins, author of the recent best-seller Cogan’s Trade, pays tribute to Ross for his courage in telling his story truthfully, in all its ugliness. The setting of They Don’t Dance Much is a roadhouse on the outskirts of a North Carolina town on the border with South Carolina, complete with dance floor, restaurant, gambling room, and cabins rented by the hour. In the events described, Smut Milligan, the proprietor, seeks money to keep operating and commits a brutal murder. |
| best alan furst books: The Snows of Yesteryear Gregor Von Rezzori, 2012-08-15 Gregor von Rezzori was born in Czernowitz, a onetime provincial capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was later to be absorbed successively into Romania, the USSR, and the Ukraine—a town that was everywhere and nowhere, with a population of astonishing diversity. Growing up after World War I and the collapse of the empire, Rezzori lived in a twilit world suspended between the formalities of the old nineteenth-century order which had shaped his aristocratic parents and the innovations, uncertainties, and raw terror of the new century. The haunted atmosphere of this dying world is beautifully rendered in the pages of The Snows of Yesteryear. The book is a series of portraits—amused, fond, sometimes appalling—of Rezzori’s family: his hysterical and histrionic mother, disappointed by marriage, destructively obsessed with her children’s health and breeding; his father, a flinty reactionary, whose only real love was hunting; his haughty older sister, fated to die before thirty; his earthy nursemaid, who introduced Rezzori to the power of storytelling and the inevitability of death; and a beloved governess, Bunchy. Telling their stories, Rezzori tells his own, holding his early life to the light like a crystal until it shines for us with a prismatic brilliance. |
| best alan furst books: A World Lost Wendell Berry, 2010-08 Brilliantly detailed characters and subtle social observations distinguish Berry's unassuming but powerful fifth novel. The T.S. Eliot Award-winning poet, essayist and novelist writes with the authority of a man steeped in the culture of a time an... |
| best alan furst books: The Best of Our Spies Alex Gerlis, 2020-03-02 Ranked #41 on Spycast's list of the Top 50 Best Spy Novels, as voted for by real-life intelligence operatives. The Allies have landed, the liberation of Europe has begun. In the Pas de Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations Executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day. Appalled but determined, Quinn sets off on a perilous hunt through France in search of his wife. Aided by the Resistance in his search, he makes good progress. But, caught up by the bitterness of the war and its insatiable appetite for revenge, he risks total destruction. Based on real events of the Second World War, this is a thrilling tale of international intrigue, love, deception and espionage, perfect for fans of Robert Harris, John le Carré and Len Deighton. |
| best alan furst books: Right as Rain George Pelecanos, 2008-11-16 Derek Strange is a black ex-cop in Washington D.C. who now makes a living running his own private detective agency. He is hired to investigate the killing of an off-duty black policeman by a white police officer -- a killing that was supposedly accidental, but that has opened difficult questions about racism on the force. In the course of that investigation the white officer, Terry Quinn, becomes Strange's friend and then his partner. Together they try to uncover what really happened that night, when Quinn came upon a confusing and treacherous crime scene. Along the way they confront the kingpins of a flourishing drug trade and some of the most implacable, dead-eyed killers ever to grace the pages of a novel. |
| best alan furst books: Present Danger Stella Rimington, 2013-11-05 MI5 intelligence officer Liz Carlyle has just been despatched to Northern Ireland. It's a promotion, and she'll be running agents--her favourite activity--but it also means being separated from Charles Wetherby, her old boss, recently widowed and a very close friend. Attachments in the Intelligence Services are not encouraged: it seems her superiors know more about Liz's life than she thinks. In Belfast, Liz and her team are monitoring the brutal breakaway Republican groups who never accepted the peace process and want to continue their war. Intelligence is focused on the shady Fraternity, with links to drug-running, arms-dealing and organised crime. With some help from Special Branch and a volunteer informant who seems to be legit, the Fraternity's leader is identified as a cold, calculating and ruthless American, hijacking the Cause for his own financial ends. It is a perilous group to become involved with. Especially if your informant turns tail. . . |
| best alan furst books: The Berlin Spies Alex Gerlis, 2020-03-02 The Second World War is coming to a close. But their fight is just beginning... Berlin, 1945: A group of Nazis frantically plot the next steps for their country. SS recruits gather east of the city for an audacious yet ill-fated mission to bring about a Fourth Reich. Three decades later, a young British diplomat in East Berlin is compromised after falling into a honey-trap. He contacts Major Edgar, a veteran British spymaster, who is drawn into an unlikely alliance with his old adversary, Viktor Krasotkin. Soon they are plunged into a world of Nazi war criminals and double agents. With nobody to trust, they must rely on each other. But as Cold War tensions rise, the cracks begin to show. The thrilling final novel in the Spies series, with an astonishing twist, perfect for fans of Jack Higgins, Frederick Forsyth and John le Carré. |
| best alan furst books: Shadow Trade Alan Furst, 1984 |
| best alan furst books: Hard Revolution George Pelecanos, 2004-03-01 In this epic showdown from one of the best crime novelists alive (Dennis Lehane), police officer Derek Strange hunts his brother's killer through a city erupting with rage. |
| best alan furst books: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John le Carré, 2006-08-22 George Smiley’s deadly game Smiley and his people are facing a remarkable challenge: a mole—a Soviet double agent—who has burrowed his way in and up to the highest level of British Intelligence. His treachery has already blown some of their vital operations and their best networks. The mole is one of their own kind. But who is it? |
| best alan furst books: A Quiet Flame Philip Kerr, 2009 Detective Bernie Gunther flees to Peron-era Argentina in the wake of wrongful accusations about his war time activities and reluctantly investigates the double case of a murdered girl and a missing banker's daughter. |
| best alan furst books: The Sweet Forever George Pelecanos, 2011-08-15 One of the 1990s' rising stars of crime fiction delivers a bold, brilliant tale of mystery, revenge, and survival in the 1980s, when cocaine and money ruled the city streets and even the good guys wanted a piece of the action. |
| best alan furst books: Vienna Spies Alex Gerlis, 2020-03-02 A new and terrifying enemy rears its head at last... With the end of the Second World War in sight, the Allies begin to divide up the spoils and it proves to be a dangerous game. The British have become aware that, contrary to prior agreements, the Soviet Union is intent on controlling Austria once the war ends. Major Edgar is tasked with the job of establishing an espionage unit in Vienna to monitor the situation. He sends in two agents – Rolf Eder and Katharina Hoch – to track down Austria's most respected politician and bring him over to the British cause. But the feared Soviet spy Viktor Krasotkin is already in the war-torn city, embarking on exactly the same mission. A taut, tense masterclass in espionage fiction, perfect for fans of John le Carré, Len Deighton and Jack Higgins. |
| best alan furst books: Shame the Devil George Pelecanos, 2009-05-30 Several restaurant workers are murdered by a robber, whose brother is killed by police during the chaotic event. As everyone struggles to heal after the incident, the gunman is determined to kill everyone involved in his brother's death. |
| best alan furst books: April in Paris, 1921 Tessa Lunney, 2018-07-03 Paris in 1921 is the city of freedom, where hatless and footloose Kiki Button can drink champagne and dance until dawn. She works as a gossip columnist, partying with the rich and famous, the bohemian and strange, using every moment to create a new woman from the ashes of her war-worn self. While on the modelling dais, Picasso gives her a job: to find his wife’s portrait, which has gone mysteriously missing. That same night, her spymaster from the war contacts her—she has to find a double agent or face jail. Through parties, whisky, and seductive informants, Kiki uses her knowledge of Paris from the Great War to connect the clues. Set over the course of one springtime week, April in Paris, 1921 is a mystery that combines artistic gossip with interwar political history through witty banter, steamy scenes, and fast action. |
| best alan furst books: Agents of Influence Henry Hemming, 2019-10-08 The astonishing story of the British spies who set out to draw America into World War II As World War II raged into its second year, Britain sought a powerful ally to join its cause-but the American public was sharply divided on the subject. Canadian-born MI6 officer William Stephenson, with his knowledge and influence in North America, was chosen to change their minds by any means necessary. In this extraordinary tale of foreign influence on American shores, Henry Hemming shows how Stephenson came to New York--hiring Canadian staffers to keep his operations secret--and flooded the American market with propaganda supporting Franklin Roosevelt and decrying Nazism. His chief opponent was Charles Lindbergh, an insurgent populist who campaigned under the slogan America First and had no interest in the war. This set up a shadow duel between Lindbergh and Stephenson, each trying to turn public opinion his way, with the lives of millions potentially on the line. |
| best alan furst books: The Mask of Dimitrios Eric Ambler, 2009-05-28 English crime novelist Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when he makes the acquaintance of Turkish police inspector Colonel Haki. It is from him that he first hears of the mysterious Dimitrios – an infamous master criminal, long wanted by the law, whose body has just been fished out of the Bosphorus. Fascinated by the story, Latimer decides to retrace Dimitrios’ steps across Europe to gather material for a new book. But, as he gradually discovers more about his subject’s shadowy history, fascination tips over into obsession. And, in entering Dimitrios’ criminal underworld, Latimer realizes that his own life may be on the line. |
| best alan furst books: The Cairo Affair Olen Steinhauer, 2014-03-20 Sophie Kohl is living her worst nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband Emmett, a mid-level diplomat at the American embassy in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot in the head and killed. Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls. But his heart skips a beat when he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved, calling to ask why her husband has been assassinated. Jibril Aziz, an American analyst, knows more about Stumbler, a covert operation rejected by the CIA years ago, than anyone. So when it appears someone else has obtained a copy of the blueprints, Jibril knows the danger it represents... As these players converge on the city of Cairo, Olen Steinhauer's masterful manipulations slowly craft a portrait of a marriage, a jigsaw puzzle of loyalty and betrayal, against a dangerous world of political games where allegiances are never clear and outcomes are never guaranteed. |
| best alan furst books: The Double Game Dan Fesperman, 2012-10-15 A few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, spook-turned-novelist Edwin Lemaster reveals to young journalist Bill Cage that he'd once considered spying for the enemy. For Cage, a fan who grew up as a Foreign Service brat in the very cities where Lemaster set his plots, the story creates a brief but embarrassing sensation. More than two decades later, Cage, by then a lonely, disillusioned PR man, receives an anonymous note hinting that he should have dug deeper. Spiked with cryptic references to some of his and his father's favorite old spy novels, the note is the first of many literary bread crumbs that soon lead him back to Vienna, Prague, and Budapest in search of the truth, even as the events of Lemaster's past eerily--and dangerously--begin intersecting with those of his own. Why is beautiful Litzi Strauss back in his life after 30 years? How much of his father's job involved the CIA? Did Bill, as a child, become a pawn? As the suspense steadily increases, a long stalemate of secrecy may finally be broken. |
| best alan furst books: The Lantern Bearers Rosemary Sutcliff, 1994-06-30 Threatened by a tide of invaders, the last of the Roman Auxiliaries are to leave Britain forever. But Aquila, a young legionnaire, chooses to stay behind, in order to join the fight to save his native land. |
| best alan furst books: Under Occupation Alan Furst, 2020-06-02 From “America’s preeminent spy novelist” (The New York Times) comes a fast-paced, mesmerizing thriller of the French resistance fighters working secretly and bravely to defeat Hitler. Occupied Paris, 1942. Just before he dies, a man being chased by the Gestapo hands off a strange-looking document to the unsuspecting novelist Paul Ricard. It looks like a blueprint of a part for a military weapon, one that might have important information for the Allied forces. Ricard realizes he must try to get the diagram into the hands of members of the resistance network. As Ricard finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into anti-Nazi efforts and increasingly dangerous espionage assignments, he travels to Germany and along the escape routes of underground resistance safe houses to spy on Nazi maneuvers. When he meets the mysterious and beautiful Leila, a professional spy, they begin to work together to get crucial information out of France and into the hands of the Allied forces in London. |
| best alan furst books: Classic Spy Novels 3-Book Bundle Alan Furst, 2012-05-14 From Alan Furst, often compared to John le Carré, Graham Greene, and Eric Ambler, and praised as the best spy novelist ever, a trio of his classic works Furst, known for panoramic vision, deep authenticity, and a magnificent eye for historical detail, always sets his novels in the twilight world of Europe in the 1930s and first years of World War II, when the British, Russian, German, and many other spy services fought it out in the alleys and grand hotels of Paris, Berlin, and other cities on the Continent. The three classic spy novels in this “read all night” eBook bundle will transport you to the dark conflict between fascists, communists, and the people who fought back against them. Includes a preview of Alan Furst’s new novel, Mission to Paris—with movie stars, elite spies, and German political warfare—on sale in June. “The writing in Mission to Paris, sentence after sentence, page after page, is dazzling. If you are a John le Carré fan, this is definitely a novel for you.”—James Patterson “I am a huge fan of Alan Furst. Furst is the best in the business—the most talented espionage novelist of our generation.”—Vince Flynn NIGHT SOLDIERS Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin’s purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates the European world of 1934–35: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944. Night Soldiers is a scrupulously researched panoramic novel, a work on a grand scale. THE WORLD AT NIGHT Paris, 1940. The civilized, upper-class life of film producer Jean Casson is derailed by the German occupation of Paris, but Casson learns that with enough money, compromise, and connections, one need not deny oneself the pleasures of Parisian life. Somewhere inside Casson, though, is a stubborn romantic streak. When he’s offered the chance to take part in an operation of the British secret service, this idealism gives him the courage to say yes. A simple mission, but it goes wrong, and Casson realizes that he must gamble everything—his career, the woman he loves, life itself. Here is a brilliant re-creation of France—its spirit in the moment of defeat, its valor in the moment of rebirth. KINGDOM OF SHADOWS Paris, 1938. As Europe edges toward war, Nicholas Morath, an urbane former cavalry officer, spends his days working at the small advertising agency he owns and his nights in the bohemian circles of his Argentine mistress. But Morath has been recruited by his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi, a diplomat in the Hungarian legation, for operations against Hitler’s Germany. It is Morath who does Polanyi’s clandestine work, moving between the beach cafés of Juan-les-Pins and the forests of Ruthenia, from Czech fortresses in the Sudetenland to the private gardens of the déclassé royalty in Budapest. The web Polanyi spins for Morath is deep and complex and pits him against German intelligence officers, NKVD renegades, and Croat assassins in a shadow war of treachery and uncertain loyalties, a war that Hungary cannot afford to lose. Alan Furst is frequently compared with Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and John le Carré, but Kingdom of Shadows is distinctive and entirely original. It is Furst at his very best. |
| best alan furst books: Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide Nick Rennison, 2009-01-01 Deciding what to read next when you've just finished an unputdownable novel can be a daunting task. The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide features hundreds of authors and thousands of titles, with navigation features to lead you on a rich journey through some the best literature to grace our shelves. This greatly expanded edition includes the latest contemporary authors and landmark novels, an expanded non-fiction section, a timeline setting historical events against literary milestones, prize-winner and book club lists. An accessible and easy-to-read guide that no serious book lover should be without. The essential guide to the wild uncharted world of contemporary and 20th century writing. Robert McCrum, The Observer |
difference - "What was best" vs "what was the best"? - Englis…
Oct 18, 2018 · On the linked page, best is used as an adverb, modifying the verb knew. In that context, the …
adverbs - About "best" , "the best" , and "most" - English L…
Oct 20, 2016 · I like you best. I like chocolate best, better than anything else. can be used when what one is …
articles - "it is best" vs. "it is the best" - English Language ...
Jan 2, 2016 · This is the best car in the garage. We use articles like the and a before nouns, like car. The word …
expressions - "it's best" - how should it be used? - English La…
Dec 8, 2020 · 3 "It's best (if) he (not) buy it tomorrow." is not a subjunctive form, and some options do not work well. …
word choice - "his best-seller book" or "his best-selling boo…
Jun 12, 2016 · @J.R. If something is a New York Times Best Seller, the whole five word string is the adjective in …
difference - "What was best" vs "what was the best"? - English …
Oct 18, 2018 · On the linked page, best is used as an adverb, modifying the verb knew. In that context, the phrase the best can also be used as if it were an adverb. The meaning is …
adverbs - About "best" , "the best" , and "most" - English Language ...
Oct 20, 2016 · I like you best. I like chocolate best, better than anything else. can be used when what one is choosing from is not specified. I like you the best. Between chocolate, vanilla, and …
articles - "it is best" vs. "it is the best" - English Language ...
Jan 2, 2016 · This is the best car in the garage. We use articles like the and a before nouns, like car. The word "best" is an adjective, and adjectives do not take articles by themselves. Because the …
expressions - "it's best" - how should it be used? - English …
Dec 8, 2020 · 3 "It's best (if) he (not) buy it tomorrow." is not a subjunctive form, and some options do not work well. 3A It's best he buy it tomorrow. the verb tense is wrong with 3A. Better would …
word choice - "his best-seller book" or "his best-selling book ...
Jun 12, 2016 · @J.R. If something is a New York Times Best Seller, the whole five word string is the adjective in use to modify book, although why book is specified is beyond me; perhaps to …
Word choice - Way of / to / for - Way of / to / for - English Language ...
Jun 16, 2020 · The best way to use "the best way" is to follow it with an infinitive. However, this is not the only way to use the phrase; "the best way" can also be followed by of with a gerund: The …
plural forms - It's/I'm acting in your best interest/interests ...
Dec 17, 2014 · have someone's (best) interests at heart (=want to help them): He claims he has only my best interests at heart. be in someone's/something's (best) interest(s) (=bring an advantage …
"Best regards" vs. "Best Regards" - English Language Learners …
Dec 28, 2013 · The rule for formal letters is that only the first word should be capitalized (i.e. "Best regards"). Emails are less formal, so some of the rules are relaxed. That's why you're seeing …
Would be or will be - English Language Learners Stack Exchange
Oct 1, 2019 · It indicates items that (with the best understanding) are going to happen. Would is a conditional verb form. It states that something happens based on something else. Sometimes the …
What is the correct usage of "deems fit" phrase?
Nov 15, 2016 · This plan of creating an electoral college to select the president was expected to secure the choice by the best citizens of each state, in a tranquil and deliberate way, of the man …
