From internationally bestselling author Joseph Kanon, hailed by the Sunday Times as ‘the most accomplished spy novelist working today’, comes a thriller set in WW2 Shanghai, a seductive and corrupt setting defined by wealth, crime and a dazzling nightlife.
What if the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s had actually uncovered a spy? In Washington, 1950, Nick Kotlar's father, a high-level State Department official, faces accusations of treason from an ambitious congressman. As Nick watches their privileged life unravel amidst media frenzy, a key witness against his father dies, prompting Walter to flee, leaving behind a mystery and a stain of defection. Nick is told to consider his father dead, but twenty years later, Walter is alive and reaches out through Molly, a young journalist, with a desperate desire to reconnect. Reluctantly intrigued, Nick agrees to travel with her to Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia for a painful reunion. In Prague, he discovers a world shrouded in danger, where nothing is as it seems—neither the enchanting city nor the woman he falls for, and certainly not the father he thought he had lost. Walter has an impossible request: he wants to return home, and he needs Nick's help. He also holds a crucial secret about the night he vanished and the conspiracy that still endangers them. This tale explores the bonds of family and loyalty that cross borders, as Nick seeks the truth hidden in his past, blending personal drama with historical intrigue.
Jake Geismar cut his teeth as a foreign correspondent in pre-war Berlin. When he returns in 1945 to cover the Potsdam conference he finds the city unrecognisable - streets have vanished beneath the rubble, familiar landmarks truncated by high explosive. But amongst the ruins Berliners survive, including some he knew and, miraculously, his lost love, Lena. But in the way she would not leave with him before the war, Lena won't join him now without finding her husband and Emil has disappeared from the safe care of the Americans who, turning a blind eye to his links with Hitler, want his expertise as a rocket designer for themselves. Trawling through the shambles of the city, through the illegal night clubs and the thriving black market, Jake discovers that the twilight war of intrigue between west and east has already begun and that he could quite easily be one of its first casualties. This is a novel of war, an action thriller, a tale of raw emotion and survival. Above all it is a tour de force of the triumph of humanity over man's depravity.
Amesmerising tale of old Hollywood glamour and post-war espionage from the author of The Good German.
From master of suspense Joseph Kanon, author of the bestsellers Istanbul Passage and Leaving Berlin, an espionage thriller set at the height of the Cold War, when a captured American who has spied for the KGB is swapped by the British for some German students and returns to East Berlin needing to know who arranged his release and what they want from him.
A heart-pounding and intelligent espionage novel about a Nazi war criminal who was supposed to be dead, the rogue CIA agent on his trail, and the beautiful woman connected to them both
"In 1949, Frank Weeks, fair-haired boy of the newly formed CIA, was exposed as a Communist spy and fled the country to vanish behind the Iron Curtain. Now, twelve years later, he has written his memoirs, a KGB- approved project almost certain to be an international bestseller, and has asked his brother Simon, a publisher, to come to Moscow to edit the manuscript. It's a reunion Simon both dreads and longs for. The book is sure to be filled with mischief and misinformation; Frank's motives suspect, the CIA hostile. But the chance to see Frank, his adored older brother, proves irresistible. And at first Frank is still Frank--the same charm, the same jokes, the same bond of affection that transcends ideology. Then Simon begins to glimpse another Frank, still capable of treachery, still actively working for "the service." He finds himself dragged into the middle of Frank's new scheme, caught between the KGB and the CIA in a fatal cat and mouse game that only one of the brothers is likely to survive."--
A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul has spent the war as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even American businessman Leon Bauer has been drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs and courier runs for the Allied war effort. Now as the espionage community begins to pack up and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of post-war life, he is given one more assignment, a routine job that goes fatally wrong, plunging him into a tangle of intrigue and moral confusion. Played out against the bazaars and mosques and faded mansions of this knowing, ancient Ottoman city, Leon's attempt to save one life leads to a desperate manhunt and a maze of shifting loyalties that threatens his own. How do you do the right thing when there are only bad choices to make? Istanbul Passage is the story of a man swept up in the aftermath of war, an unexpected love affair, and a city as deceptive as the calm surface waters of the Bosphorus that divides it.
From the author of The Good German(made in a film starring George Clooney) comes a sweeping novel set in post-war Berlin. 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. Filled with intrigue and the moral ambiguity of conflicted loyalties, Leaving Berlinis a masterfu thriller and a love story that brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life.
Near the end of World War II in Los Alamos, a town set in the shimmering New Mexico desert, an international team of scientists led by Robert Oppenheimer gathered together to build the world's most dangerous weapon--the atomic bomb. Author Joseph Kanon has crafted an ingenious and utterly absorbing thriller, a tale of espionage and love set against the most important undercover government project in America's history. Online promo. HC: Broadway. (Fiction--Espionage/Thriller) Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Adam Miller had had a long war, and when the US Army let him go he made his way to Venice where his mother was trying to recreate her pre-war life. Exhausted both in body and spirit the pace of the ancient city began to heal him, and when he met Claudia, an Italian Jewess, he was ripe for seduction. Claudia's war had been worse, and after Mussolini's downfall she was quickly betrayed to the SS. While she survived her father didn't and to her horror she discovers that the man who was responsible for them being sent to the camp is about to become her new lover's step-father. In a violent confrontation Adam and Claudia are left needing to create an unbreakable alibi, which they do, but to uphold it Adam must establish what really happened to these people and in doing so exposes the ambiguity of morality in peace and in war, and has to grapple with the questions of what is good or evil, what is right or wrong, and does truth really matter?
Berlino, 1949. A quattro anni dalla fine della guerra, la città è ancora piena di macerie. La parte occidentale sopravvive a malapena grazie ai rifornimenti che arrivano per via aerea; a est il desiderio di ricostruzione è compromesso dalla Guerra Fredda. Lo spionaggio e il mercato nero sono all'ordine del giorno. Alex Meier, un giovane scrittore ebreo, è sfuggito ai nazisti prima della guerra e si è rifugiato in America. Ma a causa degli ideali politici della sua giovinezza è ormai nel mirino di McCarthy. Di fronte alla possibilità di essere deportato e di perdere la sua famiglia, fa un affare disperato con la neonata potrà tornare in America dopo che avrà lavorato come agente segreto nella sua Berlino. Ma le cose non vanno un rapimento non riuscito, un agente tedesco ucciso, e Alex si trova a essere un ricercato. Peggio ancora, scopre che il suo vero incarico è spiare la donna che ha lasciato, l'unica che abbia mai amato. Cambiare bandiera a Berlino è facile, ma ci sono limiti morali che non possono essere oltrepassati...
