Historical Mystery Spy

He was the most wanted man in the world for decades. Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan-born terrorist, carried out a wave of attacks across Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. A ruthless self-proclaimed revolutionary and notorious womanizer, he claimed to fight for the Palestinian cause and communist ideology, but also worked as a mercenary for rogue regimes and organizations.

World War II London: When Victoire “Paddy” Bennett first walks into the Admiralty’s Room 39, home to the Intelligence Division, all the bright and lively young woman expects is a secretarial position to the charismatic Commander Ian Fleming. But soon her job is so much more, and when Fleming proposes a daring plot to deceive the Germans about Allied invasion plans he requests the newlywed Paddy's help. She jumps at the chance to work as an agent in the field, even after the operation begins to affect her marriage. But could doing her duty for King and country come at too great a cost?

Betrayed by the ruling families of Italy, Ezio Auditore embarks upon an epic quest for vengeance. To eradicate corruption and restore his family's honor, he will learn the art of the Assassins. Along the way, Ezio will call upon the wisdom of such great minds as Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli, knowing that survival is bound to the skills by which he must live.To his allies, he will become a force for change in his fight for freedom and justice.

In Len Deighton's second novel of the classic spy trilogy, Faith, Hope, Charity, Bernard Samson is trying to readjust his life after his wife, Fiona, defected to the East. As the Berlin Wall begins to crumble, loyalties seem to change along with the freezing wind. Caught between his job and his ethics, his past and his future, and the two women he loves, Samson embarks on his most sensational mission yet—from rural Poland to London Central. In this intricately plotted novel of changing loyalties, deception, and danger, Bernard Samson is in top form. And he has only himself to depend on.

Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America - where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain - the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences.

The library holds not only hidden knowledge but also the most unsettling secret the world has ever known, a secret the Templars hope to use to control humankind's destiny. Five keys are needed to access the library-to find them, Ezio must travel to the troubled city of Constantinople, where a growing army of Templars threatens to destabilize the Ottoman Empire.Walking in the footsteps of his predecessor, Altaïr, Ezio must defeat the Templars for the final time. The stakes have never been higher, and what started as a pilgrimage has become a race against time.

It is 1913, and those who follow the news closely can see the world is teetering on the brink of war. Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman with an uncanny ear for languages, has always hoped to make a job for himself as a spy. As his sales calls take him from city to great city - Hong Kong to Shanghai to San Francisco to New York - he moonlights collecting intelligence for His Majesty's Navy, but British espionage is in its infancy and Jack has nothing but a shoestring budget and the very tenuous protection of a boss in faraway London.

The utterly charming Emily Leverton has a dark past and is determined to leave it behind in her respectable new role as a governess. But when she is recruited by a secret network of governesses who spy on the ton, it may just be a way to redeem the dark secrets of her past. An ex-solider turned railroad magnate, Zach hunts killers for the Metropolitan Police by day and dutifully attends balls at night. In neither world has he met a woman with the brazenness to mock him.

The pope is dead. A conclave to select his replacement is about to begin. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican, but one has fled Rome for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the 4th century and Constantine the Great. Former Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, is at Lake Como, Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that disappeared in 1945. But someone else seems to be after the same letters and, when Malone obtains then loses them, he’s plunged into a hunt that draws the attention of the Knights of Malta.

One morning while passing through Grand Central Terminal on her way to work, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. Unable to resist her own curiosity, Grace opens the suitcase, where she discovers a dozen photographs - each of a different woman. In a moment of impulse, Grace takes the photographs and quickly leaves the station. Grace soon learns that the suitcase belonged to a woman named Eleanor Trigg, leader of a network of female secret agents who were deployed out of London during the war.

Rudi Graf is an engineer who always dreamed of sending rockets to the moon. But instead, he finds himself working alongside Wernher von Braun, launching V2 rockets at London for the Nazis from a bleak seaside town in occupied Holland. As the SS increases its scrutiny of the project, Graf, an engineer more than a soldier, has to muster all of his willpower to toe the party line. And when rumors of a defector circulate through the German ranks, Graf becomes a prime suspect.

1940: The Spanish Civil War is over, and Madrid lies ruined, its people starving, while the Germans continue their relentless march through Europe. Britain now stands alone while General Franco considers whether to abandon neutrality and enter the war. Into this uncertain world comes Harry Brett: a traumatised veteran of Dunkirk turned reluctant spy for the British Secret Service. Sent to gain the confidence of old school friend Sandy Forsyth, now a shady Madrid businessman, Harry finds himself involved in a dangerous game - and surrounded by memories.

In this daring debut, Susan Elia MacNeal blends meticulous research on the era, psychological insight into Winston Churchill, and the creation of a riveting main character, Maggie Hope, into a spectacularly crafted novel.

In 1987, as the Cold War reaches a climax, British agent Bernard Samson confronts difficulties at home and on the job as he copes with an affair with a coworker, his wife, ethical conflict, and high-level government scandal.

Elegant and ambitious, Cornelia embodies the essence of the perfect Roman wife. She lives to one day see her loyal husband as Emperor. Her sister Marcella is more aloof, content to witness history rather than make it. But when a bloody coup turns their world upside-down, both women must maneuver carefully just to stay alive.

An American art expert raised in a world of European wealth and privilege, Lanny Budd is dedicated to his socialist ideals and to combatting the twin scourges of Nazism and Fascism. In 1937, a chance encounter in New York with Professor Charles Alston—his boss at the Paris Peace Conference and now one of President Roosevelt’s top advisors—provides Lanny with the opportunity to make a profound difference.

When the Soviet Union collapses, thousands of nuclear warheads go unaccounted for, and it’ll take someone of Jake Grafton’s talents to make sure they don’t end up in the wrong hands. Promoted to deputy director of a new U.S. intelligence agency, the stakes of Jake Grafton’s commission are higher than ever before. With the USSR on the brink of dissolution, a vast nuclear arsenal is suddenly ripe for the taking by mercenaries, rogue nations, and insane Russian nationalists.

Greece, 1940. Not sunny vacation Greece: northern Greece, Macedonian Greece, Balkan Greece, the city of Salonika. In that ancient port, with its wharves and warehouses, dark lanes and Turkish mansions, brothels and tavernas, a tense political drama is being played out. On the northern border, the Greek army has blocked Mussolini's invasion, pushing his divisions back to Albania, the first defeat suffered by the Nazis, who have conquered most of Europe.

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the nineteenth century despite trying his utmost to escape them all. Flashman, soldier, duellist, lover, imposter, coward, cad, and hero triumphs in this first installment of The Flashman Papers.

Celebrated singer Genevieve Dumont is both a star and a smokescreen. An unwilling darling of the Nazis, the chanteuse’s position of privilege allows her to go undetected as an ally to the resistance. When her estranged mother, Lillian de Rocheford, is captured by Nazis, Genevieve knows it won’t be long before the Gestapo succeeds in torturing information out of Lillian that will derail the upcoming allied invasion. The resistance movement is tasked with silencing her by any means necessary - including assassination.