Showing results by author "Robert Littell" in All Categories

"If Robert Littell didn't invent the American spy novel," says Tom Clancy, "he should have." In this spectacular Cold-War-as-Alice-in-Wonderland epic, Littell, "the American le Carre," takes us down the rabbit hole and into the labyrinthine world of espionage that has been the CIA for the last half-century. "Ostensibly a single novel, The Company can also be listened to as an anthology of cracking good spy stories," says ( Publishers Weekly).

Before The Company, Robert Littell made a name for himself with The Defection of A.J. Lewinter. Hailed as "a perfect little gem" and a "concise, smart, and funny [novel that] turns Cold War spy cliches on their head," A.J. Lewinter tells the story of an insignificant American scientist whose defection to the Soviet Union becomes a terrifying political chess match of deceit and treachery. Not to be missed!

Robert Littell has created the CIA "legends" Francis and Carroll - dubbed "The Sisters Death and Night" by their cohorts. But few know what these enigmatic and extremely dangerous operatives do. They plot - and they're plotting the perfect crime. They've located the perfect pawn, the Potter, the exiled ex-head of the KGB sleeper school - and, with artful deception, the Sisters coerce him into betraying his last and best sleeper, the man he considers his son. Once awakened, this sleeper, an assassin living secretly in the US, will launch a mission of death.

Robert Littell creates a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga of the ClA - "The Company" to insiders. The fictional and historical characters of Robert Littell's novel reveal much of the nearly 50 years of this complex and powerful organization. At the heart is a mole hunt involving the CIA, M16, KGB, and Mossad, a stunningly conceived trip down the rabbit hole to the labyrinthine Alice-in-Wonderland world of espionage, a "world where things have no names".

An elite plan is afoot, a plan so secret and dangerous that its existence is known only to a tiny group of specialists within the innermost core of the CIA. There is virtually no paper trail - but somehow the plan has sprung a leak and the plotters must urgently plug it - or face deadly consequences.

Best-selling novelist Robert Littell employs all his considerable skills in telling the story of Kim Philby through the eyes of more than 20 true-life characters. When Kim Philby fled to Moscow in 1963, he became the most infamous double agent in history. A member of Britain's intelligence service since World War II, he had risen to become their chief officer in Washington, D.C. after the war. The exposure of other members of the group of double agents known as the Cambridge Five led to the revelation that he had been working for Russia for even longer than he had been part of MI6.

From youth to adulthood, Rob Littell spent 20 years alongside John F. Kennedy Jr.—through laughter and sorrow, joy and heartbreak. In this moving and poignant memoir of their touching friendship, Rob Littell himself shares his story with listeners.

Charlie Heller is an ace cryptographer for the Company. He's a quiet man with a quiet job in a back office. But when terrorists shoot his fiancee in cold blood and Heller learns that the Agency has decided not to pursue those responsible, his life takes an abrupt turn. He was not a blackmailer but he will force the CIA's hand. He was not an assassin but he will penetrate the Iron Curtain with the intent to kill. Heller is an amateur with a one-in-a-million chance of success.

After the sudden death of his nuclear physicist father and the arrest of his mother during the Stalinist purge of Jewish doctors, young Leon Rozental - intellectually precocious and possessing a disarming candor - is hiding from the NKVD in the secret rooms of the House on the Embankment, a large building in Moscow where many Soviet officials and apparatchiks live and work. One day, after following a passageway, Leon meets Koba, an old man whose apartment is protected by several guards.

L'ex agente della CIA Lemuel Gunn, dopo aver lasciato l'Afghanistan, sceglie di vivere nel New Mexico, a bordo della sua casa mobile, e di lavorare come investigatore privato. È come se volesse alleggerire il mondo della sua presenza. Finché un giorno piomba nella sua vita una giovane donna, elegante e a piedi nudi, come la contessa scalza: il suo nome è Ornella Neppi, e deve trovare al più presto un certo Emilio Gava, rilasciato dal carcere su cauzione e sparito nel nulla.

It's a deadly dilemma for Martin Odum: both remembering and forgetting his past are dangerous options. A discharged CIA agent turned private detective, Odum is struggling through a labyrinth of memories from past identities, "legends", in CIA parlance. Is he really Martin Odum? Or is he Dante Pippen, IRA explosives specialist? Or Lincoln Dittmann, Civil War expert? Or another, hidden legend?

The Stalin Epigram is a masterful rendering of the life of Osip Mandelstam, one of Russia's greatest poets of the 20th century. His heroic protest against the Stalin regime---particularly his outspoken criticism of the collectivization that drove millions of Russian peasants to starvation---finally reached its apex in 1934. When he composed a searing indictment of Stalin in a 16-line poem, secretly passed from person to person through recitation, the poet was arrested.

An Israeli government minister is assassinated in the home of his mistress. Days later, a Mossad officer leads his final raid, killing a Hamas leader in his bed and barely escaping with his life. The action moves into the near future, when world leaders, united under the leadership of a visionary female president of the United States, broker a major compromise between Israel and the Palestinian authority. Their hope is to snuff out the violent flashpoint that fuels global terrorism.