Soviet Spy

The “riveting, meticulously researched, and beautifully written” (Ben Macintyre, author of The Spy and the Traitor) true story chronicles the first and most legendary prisoner exchange of the Cold War, between East and West at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie “A...

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of a spy who cracked open the Soviet military research establishment and a penetrating portrait of the CIA’s Moscow station, an outpost of daring espionage in the last years of the Cold War While...

Mike Lacondeguy is enjoying quiet semi-retirement until a Georgian winemaker’s dogged pursuit of vengeance and an ancient myth changed everything. In the electrifying conclusion to The New Americans trilogy, THERE YOU GO thrusts Mike Lacondeguy into a world where the boundaries between reality and ancient myths blur, and the pursuit of justice knows no bounds. Mike is beginning to figure out the next phase of his life when he meets Lasha, an enormous enigma from the nation of Georgia. Everyone loves Lasha, and Lasha loves life until Russian soldiers kill his family. Lasha is a renowned ...

ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 The definitive history of Russia’s most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and a revelatory examination of how that hidden history shaped both Russia and the West. More than a century...

THE STRANGEST COLD WAR HEIST YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF—AND IT REALLY HAPPENED. June 1962. An abandoned Soviet drifting ice station groans in the polar night. Two American operatives, half-frozen and hauling armfuls of secret gear, stare into a blizzard and pray they can hear engines. Their ride home isn’t a helicopter or submarine—it’s a lumbering World War II B‑17 that intends to snatch them off the ice with a balloon, a cable, and a V‑shaped hook. Miss once and they die. Hit it, and they’re yanked into the sky like human kites. Skyhooked: The Untold Shocking True Story of ...

New York Times bestselling author Steve Sheinkin presents a follow up to his award-winning book Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon, taking listeners on a terrifying journey into the Cold War and our mutual assured destruction. As World War II comes to a...

An edge-of-your-seat thriller about China's secret role in the space race—written by the New York Times bestselling author of The Apollo Murders and one of the most experienced astronauts alive. Houston, 1975. A new Apollo mission launches into orbit, on course to dock with a Russian Soyuz...

President Truman is nearing the end of his term in office, and Great Britain has a new queen. It is 1952; the Cold War is beginning to heat up, and vital Western military secrets are falling into Soviet hands. The CIA is faced with a delicate dilemma, for the source of the leaks to the KGB has been traced directly to the Queen's chambers.

This program is read by the author. The thrilling, true story of the race to find a leak in the United States Embassy in Moscow—before more American assets are rounded up and killed. Foreword by Gen. Michael V. Hayden (Retd.), Former Director of NSA & CIA. In the late 1970s, the National...

George Koval was born in Iowa. In 1932, his parents, Russian Jews who had emigrated because of anti-Semitism, decided to return home to live out their socialist ideals. George, who was as committed to socialism as they were, went with them. There, he was recruited by the Soviet Army as a spy and returned to the US in 1940. A gifted science student, he enrolled at Columbia University, where he knew scientists soon to join the Manhattan Project, America's atom bomb program.

The romanticized image of the suave gentleman agent is a lethal fiction. The authentic narrative of global espionage is buried in the soot-stained corners of 1940s London slums. In this groundbreaking examination of clandestine spy networks, Laurence Blake exhumes the horrifying, claustrophobic reality experienced by foreign agents embedded within the British Isles during the Second World War. Far removed from glittering casinos, these Soviet spies in Britain fought their shadow war from damp, freezing bedsits, suffocating beneath the weight of profound paranoia and physical deprivation. ...

As the end of the Second World War in Europe looms, a new conflict is in its early stages: who will control Europe when the war ends? Soviet double-agent 'Archie' is now a British diplomat in the United States, feeding information on the Special Relationship back to Moscow Centre. Meanwhile...

In the fall of 1961, KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky defected to West Germany. After spilling his secrets to the CIA, Stashinsky was put on trial in what would be the most publicized assassination case of the entire Cold War. The publicity stirred up by the Stashinsky case forced the KGB to change its modus operandi abroad and helped end the career of Aleksandr Shelepin, one of the most ambitious and dangerous Soviet leaders.

In Operation Whisper, Barnes Carr tells the true story of the most effective Soviet spy couple in America, a pair who vanished under the FBI's nose only to turn up posing as rare book dealers in London, where they continued their atomic spying. The Cohens were talented, dedicated, worldly spies - an urbane, jet-set couple loyal to their service and their friends. Most people they met seemed to think they represented the best of America. The Soviets certainly thought so.

A Cambridge aristocrat. A disgruntled CIA officer. An FBI agent who knelt in church. Three men who sold the West to Moscow – and nearly won. Kim Philby, Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen – three double agents who betrayed their countries for ideology, money, and ego. This is the definitive account of the intelligence failures that let them operate for decades. The official histories celebrate the spies who saved the West. They bury the ones who tried to destroy it. The textbooks mention the Cambridge Five and the CIA moles in a single paragraph. But they never answer the question that haunts...

Before the internet became widely known as a global tool for terrorists, one perceptive US citizen recognized its ominous potential. Armed with clear evidence of computer espionage, he began a highly personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatened national security. But would the authorities back him up? Cliff Stoll's dramatic firsthand account is "a computer-age detective story, instantly fascinating [and] astonishingly gripping" - Smithsonian.

He was a KGB colonel. Then he became MI6’s most valuable spy. And in 1983, his warning saved the world. Oleg Gordievsky, the highest‑ranking Soviet intelligence officer ever to work for the West, lived a lie for eleven years. This is his definitive account – a story of betrayal, courage, and the spycraft that ended the Cold War. History class taught you the dates of the Cold War. The textbooks told you about missiles and summits. But they left out the one man who, from inside the KGB, saw that the Kremlin genuinely believed NATO was about to launch a nuclear first strike. In November ...

The thrilling never-before-told story of Agent Sniper, one of the Cold War's most effective counter-agents Michal Goleniewski, cover name Sniper, was one of the most important spies of the early Cold War. For almost three years, as a Lieutenant Colonel at the top of Poland’s espionage service...

A “devilishly fun” (New York Times Book Review) account of a deadly serious business: the undercover spies and the tactics they developed to survive the Cold War in Moscow, from legendary former-CIA operatives. Antonio Mendez and his future wife Jonna were CIA operatives working to spy on...

Already infamous for the arbitrary, paranoid persecution of its own citizens throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union - as is revealed in John Koeher’s revelatory, eye-opening exposé - also waged a vicious espionage campaign against the Catholic Church and its followers. From the persecution of local priests to an assassination order against Pope John Paul II, the KGB viewed Catholicism as a threat to stability in Eastern Europe and treated the church as an enemy of the State. Lifetime journalist and former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer John Koehler has written the definitive book on this startling history.