Historical Mystery Spy

Recruited as a codebreaker of enemy ciphers, ex-debutante Osla Kendall spends her days translating Axis military messages and her nights reading mystery novels. When Osla gets her hands on Agatha Christie's most recent work, N or M?, a mysterious signal within its pages catches her eye, and she and her eccentric book club get in touch with the famous but reclusive writer. Osla's outreach is a welcome distraction for Agatha, who feels restless and underestimated toiling away in a London pharmacy.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE FIFTH GEORGE SMILEY NOVEL A mole, implanted by Moscow Centre, has infiltrated the highest ranks of the British Intelligence Service, almost destroying it in the process. And so former spymaster George Smiley has been brought out of retirement in order to hunt down...

Lubji Hoch escapes from the Nazis, moves to Berlin and changes his name to Richard Armitage. After a successful career in the British Army, he takes over a struggling newspaper and with unrivalled ruthlessness begins building his media empire. Meanwhile, Keith Townsend, the son of a millionaire and Oxford educated, returns to Australia from London to take over his father's newspaper with similar ambitions. As both men move their quest for power to the world stage, they realise they are more than a match for one another's brilliance and ambition.

Londra. È notte ed Ethan Cooper, giornalista del Guardian, è alla guida. All'improvviso, sbucato dal nulla, un uomo si lancia sotto la sua macchina. L'asfalto, zuppo di pioggia, rende inutile la frenata: l'impatto è inevitabile, gli effetti devastanti. Resosi conto della gravità dell'incidente, Ethan chiama i soccorsi e raggiunge l'uomo in fin di vita. Questi, con le ultime forze, gli consegna due oggetti e pronuncia alcune frasi incomprensibili. Sentendosi responsabile per quanto accaduto, Ethan comincia allora un'indagine.

Occupied Munich, 1946: Irina, a Cossack refugee, confesses to murdering a GI, but American captain Harry Kaspar doesn't buy it. As Harry scours the devastated city for the truth, it leads him to his long-lost German brother, Max, who returned to Hitler's Germany before the war. Max has a questionable past, and he needs Harry for the cause that could redeem him: rescuing Irina's stranded clan of Cossacks who have been disowned by the Allies and are now being hunted by Soviet death squads - the cold-blooded upshot of a callous postwar policy.

Master and Commander is the first of Patrick O’Brian’s now famous Aubrey-Maturin novels, regarded by many as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. It establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey RN and Stephen Maturin, who becomes his secretive ship’s surgeon and an intelligence agent. It displays the qualities which have put O’Brian far ahead of any of his competitors.

February 1913. Lady Hardcastle and her diminutive but brave lady’s maid, Flo, have been invited by their friend JB McIntyre to spend the weekend at his recently renovated Tudor fort on a remote island off the Devonshire coast. But the holiday quickly turns sinister when first a number of valuable jewels go missing—and then a fellow guest is murdered with a most unusual weapon.

Il contenuto sepolto di un treno nazista... Un vicecomandante delle SS ormai anziano... I segreti di una famiglia ebrea di un candidato alla poltrona presidenziale... L'investigatore per i crimini di guerra ed ex ufficiale della CIA Joe Johnson è più che incuriosito quando scopre l'esistenza di misteriosi collegamenti tra il candidato presidenziale e i fondi a cui la sua famiglia attinge. Assieme a una giornalista e a una vecchia amica, Johnson comincerà un'indagine più grande e personale di quanto si fosse aspettato.

In his new novel, Paulo Coelho, bestselling author of The Alchemist and Adultery, brings to life one of history's most enigmatic women: Mata Hari. HER ONLY CRIME WAS TO BE AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN When Mata Hari arrived in Paris she was penniless. Within months she was the most celebrated...

Jackdaws by Ken Follett is an irresistible novel of the French Resistance, love, courage and revenge set in the Second World War, read by Emilia Fox, who expertly brings the story to life. A Failed Mission Two weeks before D-Day, the French Resistance try to destroy a telephone exchange vital to...

Bloomsbury presents The Spy and the Snake by M J Robotham, read by Clare Corbett. THE NEW TRAILBLAZING NOVEL FROM INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR, MANDY ROBOTHAM One mission. One fake husband. One very real problem. Maggie Flynn has finally earned her place at of MI5—but with promotion comes...

November 1911. Lady Emily Hardcastle is celebrating her birthday by seeing a play at the Duke’s Theatre in Bristol with her maid and confidante, the inimitable Flo. Act One is a triumph. Then Act Two opens with a body on stage—a real one. One of the cast has been brutally murdered during the interval. When other matters get in the way of Inspector Sunderland overseeing the case himself, he asks the ever-resourceful Lady H to keep a watchful eye on the suspects—and his police colleagues.

In wartime England, Lane Winslow has been pulled out of her studies at Oxford and spends her days in London translating for the war office. Things are grim, and it looks like no one is going home for Christmas—that is, not until Lane's commanding officer orders her to drop everything to do just that. He’s loathe to send a woman, but a very important agent needs an escort into the country from an isolated cove in Scotland in just a few days, and Lane’s family connections in the north are the perfect cover for this mission of utmost secrecy.

Kurt Reid may be innocent of the murder he's charged with (and of grand larceny, for that matter), but he's got no time to be thrown in jail and defend himself. Instead, Reid flees to pre-Communist China and Shanghai, the exotic city of mystery and death. Reid takes refuge in a tea house where he meets a Russian woman, Varinka Savischna, whom he manages to rescue from certain death. As beautiful as she is smart, she recruits him in her crusade against Chinese intelligence services.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE FOURTH GEORGE SMILEY NOVEL When the Department - faded since the war and busy only with bureaucratic battles - hears rumours of a missile base near the West German border, it seems the perfect opportunity to regain some standing in the Intelligence world. Desperate...

**Buy The Raven Scholar now - a masterfully woven tale of imperial intrigue from Sunday Times bestselling Antonia Hodgson** WINNER OF THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE THEAKSTON OLD PECULIER CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN CREASEY CWA DAGGER FOR BEST DEBUT...

A watertight packet is discovered by a diver in the waters surrounding Block Island. Unrecovered detritus from the last German U-boat sunk off the coast of Rhode Island, it contains secret codes suggesting that a Nazi spy ring operated in the United States during the darkest days of World War II. If confirmed, it could prove a major embarrassment to the FBI - whose late director, J. Edgar Hoover, once assured the government there were no spies in the country - so the bureau sends one of its best, Unit Chief Todd Oliver, to Newport to investigate.

France, July, 1944: 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, sets off on a perilous hunt through France in search...

The Spy is the third of Clive Cussler's brilliant historical thrillers. 1908, and American engineering geniuses are being killed off one by one . . . When a brilliant battleship gun engineer commits suicide, his disbelieving family turn to legendary Van Dorn Detective Agency. Quickly on the case...

'Does for Elizabeth's reign what CJ Sansom does for Henry VIII's' Sunday Times The third book in the iconic John Shakespeare series, beloved by thousands of readers, from true master of historical fiction, Rory Clements. ------------------------------------------------------- 'Sixteenth-century...