Soviet Thriller

In March 1968, Soviet submarine K-129 sinks in the North Pacific. The official cause: mechanical failure. The truth lies three miles underwater. Captain Vladimir Kobzar watches his command dissolve as fifteen unidentified men conduct a satellite transmission test that exposes his submarine to American surveillance. He documents everything in a letter to his seven-year-old daughter—the only record he can control. Three days after the transmission, the submarine sinks with all hands. Six years later, American engineer Sherman Wetmore designs the impossible: a system to lift the wreck from ...

Can Saddam’s Army hold its own… …against the weight of American military might? Tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, paratroopers, and amphibious assault vehicles mobilize to bring the pain for Operation Desert Storm. Will Saddam use chemical and biological weapons to try and even the score? The mighty guns of the USS Iowa and Wisconsin support one final amphibious assault. Will their 36-inch, 2,000-pound shells shatter the Iraqi defenses and open the way for the Marines? The largest tank battle since World War II is brewing. What if America didn’t stop in southern Iraq? ...

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...

A World War II Military Thriller Inspired by True Events of the Winter War In the frozen skies of 1939 Finland, death doesn’t come from above—it hunts in formation. As the Soviet invasion begins, Finnish fighter ace Lieutenant Veikko Niemi takes to the air in his outclassed Fokker D.XXI, battling overwhelming numbers in defense of his homeland. But something is different this time. The Soviet pilots aren't flying blind bombing runs—they’re coordinated, precise, and deadly. Led by the enigmatic Major Grigori Chernyavin, a disgraced stunt pilot returned from Stalin’s purges, the ...

From a #1 bestselling author, a formidable assassin is assigned his most dangerous mission yet in this “home run” of an espionage thriller (David Baldacci, New York Times bestselling author). It is the fall of 1951, and the Korean War is raging. Twenty-six-year-old Nicholai Hel has spent the...

Acclaimed author and historian Alan Furst has written several historical fiction novels, such as Blood of Victory and Kingdom of Shadows. In Dark Star, André Szara is a Polish journalist who becomes a spy for the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. Through Szara’s character, the beginnings of World War II are revealed.

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.

New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.

The Arkady Renko book that started it all: the #1 bestseller Gorky Park, an espionage classic that begins the series, by Martin Cruz Smith, “the master of the international thriller” (The New York Times). It begins with a triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen...

October 1962. The world is on the brink of nuclear war. Dr. Katya Volkov, a KGB psychologist, is summoned to a secret Soviet bunker for a classified experiment: study Major Dmitri Sokolov, a bomber pilot who refused a direct order to launch a nuclear missile is a prisioner on a bunker, waiting for execution. One small room. Cameras in every corner. No privacy. No escape. The official objective: observe the collapse of authority under extreme pressure. Why a highly trained soldier disobeyed? But the real experiment: something far more dangerous. As the temperature rises, rations shrink, and ...

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...

Detective Arkady Renko—“one of the most compelling figures in modern fiction” (USA TODAY)—returns in this tense thriller set amid the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the latest installment of Martin Cruz Smith’s celebrated Arkady Renko series, the legendary Moscow...

From a New York Times bestselling author, astronaut, and fighter pilot comes a "full-throttle, adrenaline-laced espionage page-turner" (Jack Carr, New York Times bestselling author) and Cold War thriller perfect for fans of Top Gun and The Hunt for Red October.Israel, October 1973. As the Yom...

Fresh off his victory in the 1980 Presidential election, Jimmy Carter works with his National Security team to not only defend Western Europe, but prevent this war from going nuclear. Can they stop the escalation? Soldiers from east and west clash in battlefields across the world. Conflicts rage across Central America, the Middle East, and Asia.

The Soviets invade Afghanistan, and the governments of Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev jockey for position on the international stage. CIA operative Fred Poole races against the clock to decode the pieces of a Soviet puzzle that could lead to war.

A dazzling spy thriller about a female CIA agent whose extraordinary facial recognition powers lead her into the dangerous heart of the Soviet Union—and the path of a killer who shouldn’t exist. ​ It is 1990 when Melvina Donleavy arrives in Soviet Belarus on her first undercover mission...

Back from exile, Renko must defeat the powerful black-market crime lords in this third installment to the Arkady Renko series by internationally bestselling author Martin Cruz Smith. Back from exile in the hellish reaches of the Soviet Union, homicide investigator Arkady Renko discovers that his...

Witness the Dawn of Oligarchs—A brutal, cinematic thriller of power, betrayal, and survival in 1990s Russia. In the violent ruins of the Soviet Union, two men are dragged into a collision that will shape the soul of a broken nation. In St. Petersburg, Stepa—a haunted enforcer—will risk everything to protect his wife from the rising brutality around them. In Moscow, Vlad—a cunning political operator—claws his way toward power, only to unleash something far worse. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “One of the finest novels that I have read. Just an amazing work of fiction.” ⭐️...

In the second installment in the Arkady Renko series from internationally bestselling author Martin Cruz Smith, Renko goes up against the Soviet bureaucracy in a complex international web and discovering more than he bargained for. Arkady Renko, former Chief Investigator of the Moscow Town...

A Soviet pilot steals the world’s most guarded aircraft—and lands in the one country that can’t afford to keep him. Major A. M. Morozov brings a MiG-25 “Foxbat” down on a rain-slick strip in northern Japan with one word on his lips: asylum. Within hours, Tokyo is boxed in by impossible demands—Soviet diplomats insisting on immediate access, ministries arguing over sovereignty and treaties, and American officials circling the airframe like it’s a prize that could rewrite the balance of power. While Japan’s quiet fixers—Director Sato, the meticulous Tanaka, and a chain of ...