CITY OF THIEVES by David Benioff

A captivating novel about war, courage, survival — and a

remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.

During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is

arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a

handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being

executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own

lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a

dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his

daughter’s wedding cake.

In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable

deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the

dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to

find the impossible…

MASTER OF RAIN by Tom Bradby

Shanghai, 1926. A city glistening with decadence and rife

with corruption - a humid, bustling society at the cultural

crossroads of British civil servants, American gun runners,

Russian princesses, and Chinese gangsters.

For Richard Field, a young Englishman new to the

international police force, Shanghai represents a brave new

world away from the past he is trying to escape. But his

naiveté is quickly dashed when he is called to the scene of a

brutal crime, in which a young Russian woman, Lena Orlov,

has been found sadistically murdered in her bed.

Field's idealistic instincts push him to investigate the case,

but his attempts are met with apathy - then menace - from

his colleagues. He begins to recognize that some cases in

Shanghai are intended to remain unsolved, and, in a matter

of days, he glimpses the murky depths that lurk beneath a

luminous city.

Field's drive to find the murderer leads him to Lena's

neighbour, Natasha Medvedev. A stunning beauty who fled

her charmed life in tsarist Russia, Natasha escaped the

Revolution but landed, like many of her counterparts, in a

treacherous life in Shanghai.

Natasha travels in an elite circle - one that orbits, Field

knows, around the city’s most feared drug lord, Lu Huang.

As his attraction to the beguiling Natasha grows, he is faced

with a piercing question: can he trust someone whose only

goal is self-preservation? And is it wise to fall in love with a

woman who may herself be the next victim?

Trusting only his Chicago-hardened American partner,

Caprisi, Field follows leads that run into the heart of a

lawlessly corrupt city, slowly uncovering a web of deception

that will leave him reeling…

ANGELS & DEMONS by Dan Brown (ROBERT LANGDON SERIES #1)

An ancient secret brotherhood.

A devastating new weapon of destruction.

An unthinkable target.

When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert

Langdon is summoned to his first assignment to a Swiss

research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol - seared

into the chest of a murdered physicist - he discovers

evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient

secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati - the most

powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth.

The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase

of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy - the

Catholic Church.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the

Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati

announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at

the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under

way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria

Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist

the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.

Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts,

dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and the most

secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-

year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome

toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair - a clandestine

location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation...

THE DA VINCI CODE by Dan Brown (ROBERT LANGDON SERIES #2)

A murder in the silent after-hours halls of the Louvre

museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has

been protected by a clandestine society since the days of

Christ. The victim is a high-ranking agent of this ancient

society who, in the moments before his death, manages to

leave gruesome clues at the scene that only his

granddaughter, noted cryptographer Sophie Neveu, and

Robert Langdon, a famed symbologist, can untangle.

The duo become both suspects and detectives searching

not only for Neveu's grandfather's murderer, but also the

stunning secret of the ages he was charged to protect. Mere

steps ahead of the authorities and the deadly competition,

the mystery leads Neveu and Langdon on a breathless flight

through France, England and history itself…

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS by John Buchan

Adventurer Richard Hannay has just returned from

South Africa and is bored with his London life - until a

murder is committed in his apartment, just days after

the victim had warned him of an assassination plot that

could bring Britain to the brink of war.

An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for

the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native

Scotland, where he must use all his wits to stay one

step ahead of the game - and warn the government

before it is too late...

THE GENESIS CODE by John Case

ITALY: a dying doctor makes a chilling confession to the

priest in a remote hillside village.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: a mother and her young son are

savagely murdered. Their house is then burned down.

JOE LASSITER, the woman's brother, discovers a chain

of similar killings around the world.

What is the link? Who are the shadowy, merciless

killers? And what is the Genesis Code, the secret so

unthinkable that powerful men will do anything to

make sure it remains in the grave?

SHOGUN by James Clavell (ASIAN SAGA #1)

A bold English adventurer.

An invincible Japanese warlord.

A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life, two

ways of love.

All brought together in an extraordinary saga of a time

and a place aflame with conflict, passion, ambition,

lust, and the struggle for power...

GARDEN OF BEASTS by Jeffery Deaver

Paul Schumann is a contract hitman for the mob in 1936.

But with Prohibition over and the gang wars associated with

it coming to an end, Schumann is finding less and less work.

He is contracted for a hit. But this time, he's caught - and

finds that he's been set up.

He's taken to meet an official in Army Intelligence and given

a choice: he can spend the rest of his life in jail, or he can

help his country. He is to pose as a member of the 1936

Olympic team, travel to Berlin, and kill a high-ranking Nazi

close to Hitler.

Schumann has been picked because he's a second

generation German-American and can speak the language

fluently. Or at least that's what they lead him to believe...

GHOSTS OF BUNGO SUIDO by P. T. Deutermann

A World War II naval thriller pitting an American

submarine against daunting odds.

In late 1944, America’s naval forces face what seems an

insurmountable threat from Japan: immense Yamato-class

battleships, which dwarf every other ship at sea. Built in

secrecy, these ships seem invincible, and lay waste to any

challengers.

American military intelligence knows of two such ships, but

there is rumored to be a third, a newly-built aircraft carrier,

ready to launch from Japan’s heavily-defended and mined

Inland Sea. Such a ship would threaten U.S. Pacific forces,

allow Japan to launch air attacks against the U.S. mainland,

and change the course of the war.

No American submarine has penetrated the Inland Sea; five

boats and their crews have perished in the Bungo Suido

strait. Lieutenant Commander Gar Hammond — an

aggressive, attacking leader with a reckless streak — is now

captain of a new submarine. Hammond may be the navy’s

only hope to locate and stop the Japanese super-ship

before it launches - if it even exists...

EYE OF THE RED TSAR by Sam Eastland (INSPECTOR PEKKALA SERIES #1)

Introducing Pekkala: He was the Romanovs’ most trusted

investigator. Now he is Stalin’s greatest fear…

One July, 1918, the imprisoned family of Tsar Nicholas

Romanov was awakened and led down to the basement of

the Ipatiev house. There they were summarily executed.

Their bodies were hidden away, the location a secret of the

Soviet state.

A decade later, one man lives in purgatory, banished to a

forest on the outskirts of humanity. Pekkala, was once the

most trusted secret agent of the Romanovs, the right hand

man of the Tsar himself. Now he is Prisoner 4745P, living a

harsh existence in which even the strongest vanish into the

merciless Soviet winter.

But the state needs Pekkala one last time. The man who

knew the Romanovs best is given a final mission: catch their

killers, locate the royal child rumored to be alive, and give

Stalin the international coup he craves. Find the bodies,

Pekkala is told, and you will find your freedom. Find the

survivor of that bloody night and you will change history.

In a land of uneasy alliances and deadly treachery, Pekkala

is thrust into the past where he once reigned. There he will

meet the man who betrayed him and the woman he loved

and uncover a secret so shocking that it will shake to its

core the land he loves…

THE MALICE OF FORTUNE by Michael Ennis

Against a teeming canvas of Borgia politics, Niccolò Machiavelli

and Leonardo da Vinci come together to unmask an enigmatic

serial killer, as we learn the secret history behind one of the

most controversial works in the western canon - The Prince...

When Pope Alexander dispatches a Vatican courtesan, Damiata,

to the remote fortress city of Imola to learn the truth behind the

murder of Juan, his most beloved illegitimate son, she cannot

fail, for the scheming Borgia pope holds her own young son

hostage. Once there, Damiata becomes a pawn in the political

intrigues of the pope’s surviving son, the charismatic Duke

Valentino, whose own life is threatened by the condottieri, a

powerful cabal of mercenary warlords.

Damiata suspects that the killer she seeks is one of the brutal

condottierri, and as the murders multiply, her quest grows more

urgent. She enlists the help of an obscure Florentine diplomat,

Niccolò Machiavelli, and Valentino’s eccentric military engineer,

Leonardo da Vinci, who together must struggle to decipher the

killer’s taunting riddles: Leonardo with his ground-breaking

“science of observation” and Machiavelli with his new “science

of men.”

Traveling across an Italy torn apart by war, they will enter a

labyrinth of ancient superstition and erotic obsession to discover

at its center a new face of evil — and a truth that will shake the

foundations of western civilization…

EYE OF THE NEEDLE by Ken Follett

One enemy spy knows the secret to the Allies' greatest

deception, a brilliant aristocrat and ruthless assassin -

code name: "The Needle" - who holds the key to

ultimate Nazi victory.

Only one person stands in his way: a lonely

Englishwoman on an isolated island, who is beginning

to love the killer who has mysteriously entered her life.

But her loyalty to the Allied cause may be his ultimate

downfall...

CITY OF SHADOWS by Ariana Franklin

A cultured city scarred by war.

An eastern émigré with scars and secrets of her own.

A young woman claiming to be a Russian grand duchess.

A brazen killer, as vicious as he is clever.

A detective driven by decency and the desire for justice.

A nightmare political movement steadily gaining power...

This is 1922 Berlin.

One of the troubled city's growing number of refugees, Esther

Solomonova survives by working as secretary to the charming,

unscrupulous cabaret owner "Prince" Nick, and she's being

drawn against her will into his scheme to pass a young asylum

patient off as Anastasia, the last surviving heir to the murdered

czar of all Russia.

But their found "princess," Anna Anderson, fears that she's being

hunted - and this may turn out to be more than paranoia when

innocent people all around her begin to die...

THE SECOND OBJECTIVE by Mark Frost

A riveting World War II thriller, based on a shocking real-life

German operation run by "the most dangerous man in Europe."

Fall 1944. Germany is losing, and the Americans are starting to

hope they'll be home for Christmas. Lieutenant Colonel Otto

Skorzeny, "Hitler's Commando," famed for his daring rescue of

the imprisoned Mussolini, has just received orders for Operation

Greif: He is to assemble a new brigade of 2,000 men, all of whom

speak English, and send them behind Allied lines disguised as GIs,

where they will wreak havoc in advance of a savage new

offensive.

And from those 2,000 men, Skorzeny is to select a smaller group,

made up of the twenty most highly skilled commandos fluent in

American culture, to attempt an even more sinister mission - the

second objective - which, if completed, not only would change

the course of the war, but would change the course of history…

Filled with real characters and details only recently released by

the United States military, The Second Objective is historical

fiction at its most pulse-pounding, its most unpredictable, and its

most compulsively readable.

EVENT by David Lynn Golemon (EVENT GROUP FILES #1)

The largest cover-up in American history is about to be

revealed…

The Event Group is the most secret organization in the United

States, comprised of the nation’s most brilliant individuals in the

branches of science, philosophy, and the military.

Led by Major Jack Collins, they are dedicated to uncovering the

hidden truths behind the myths and legends propagated

throughout world history - from underground agencies and

conspiracy theories to extraterrestrial life and UFOs. And now

that a new, unspeakable threat has been revealed, humanity’s

greatest hope for survival lies with Collins and his crew.

This time, the Group faces an enemy of remarkable strength and

power. In order to ensure that history’s errors never be

repeated, the Group must team up with an unlikely ally to stop a

deadly presence known only as the Destroyer of Worlds.

Now, amid the desert wastelands of the American Southwest,

the epic battle between two entities is about to begin…

ISTANBUL PASSAGE by Joseph Kanon

Istanbul, 1945. 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?

11/22/63 by Stephen King

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas,

President Kennedy died, and the world changed.

If you had the chance to change history, would you?

Would the consequences be worth it?

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English

teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money

teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay

from one of the students - a gruesome, harrowing first

person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry

Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his

sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a

smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner,

divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He

enlists Jake on an insane - and insanely possible - mission to

try to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new

world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops,

of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a

beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who

becomes the love of Jake’s life - a life that transgresses all

the normal rules of time…

BLACK OUT by John Lawton (INSPECTOR TROY SERIES #1)

London, 1944. While the Luftwaffe makes its final assault on the

already battered British capital, Londoners rush through the

streets, seeking underground shelter in the midst of the city’s

black out.

When the panic subsides, other things begin to surface along

with London’s war-worn citizens. A severed arm is discovered by

a group of children playing at an East End bomb site, and when

Scotland Yard’s Detective Sergeant Frederick Troy arrives at the

scene, it becomes apparent that the dismembered body is not

the work of a V-1 rocket.

After Troy manages to link the severed arm to the disappearance

of a refugee scientist form Nazi Germany, America’s newest

intelligence agency, the OSS, decides to get involved.

The son of a titled Russian émigré, Troy is forced to leave the

London he knows and enter a corrupt world of bloody

consequences, stateless refugees, and mysterious women as he

unearths a chain of secrets leading straight to the Allied high

command…

THE COMPANY by Robert Littell

Racing across a canvas that spans the legendary Berlin Base in

the 1950s - the front line of the simmering Cold War - to the

Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, the Afghan war, the

Gorbachev putsch, and other major theatres of operation for the

CIA, The Company tells a thrilling story of agents imprisoned in

double lives, fighting an enemy that was amoral, elusive and

formidable.

The Company tells it like it was: CIA agents fighting not only 'the

good fight' against foreign enemies, but sometimes the bad one

as well, with the ends justifying such means as CIA-organized

assassinations, covert wars, kidnappings, and toppling of

legitimate governments.

Behind every manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, though, one

question is constant…

Who is the mole within the CIA?

THE EIGHT by Katherine Neville (MONTGLANE SERVICE SERIES #1)

New York City, 1972 — A dabbler in mathematics and

chess, Catherine Velis is also a computer expert for a Big

Eight accounting firm. Before heading off to a new

assignment in Algeria, Cat has her palm read by a fortune-

teller. The woman warns Cat of danger.

Then an antiques dealer approaches Cat with a mysterious

offer: He has an anonymous client who is trying to collect

the pieces of an ancient chess service, purported to be in

Algeria. If Cat can bring the pieces back, there will be a

generous reward.

The South of France, 1790 — Mireille de Remy and her

cousin Valentine are young novices at the fortress-like

Montglane Abbey. With France aflame in revolution, the

two girls burn to rebel against constricted convent life —

and their means of escape is at hand. Buried deep within

the abbey are pieces of the Montglane Chess Service, once

owned by Charlemagne. Whoever reassembles the pieces

can play a game of unlimited power.

But to keep the Game a secret from those who would abuse

it, the two young women must scatter the pieces

throughout the world…

THE ASSASSINS GALLERY by David L. Robbins (MIKHAL LAMMECK SERIES #1)

New Year’s Eve, 1945. The assassin steps out of the Atlantic

Ocean in the middle of a raging nor’easter. Cool and

efficient, she’s a weapon of war superbly trained in the

ancient arts of subterfuge and murder. And even though

she’s outnumbered, she’s got one major advantage: No one

knows she’s coming.

Professor Mikhal Lammeck’s specialty is the history and

weaponry of assassins. But even Lammeck is caught off

guard when the Secret Service urgently requests his help: A

gruesome double murder and suicide in Massachusetts has

set off alarm bells. It’s only a hunch, but all too soon

Lammeck suspects the unthinkable.

In the waning days of the war, someone wants one last shot

to alter history. An assassin is headed to Washington, D.C.,

to kill the most important soldier of them all: the U.S.

commander in chief.

As Lammeck and a killer at the top of her profession circle

the streets of the capital in the hunt for FDR, one of them

will attempt to kill the world’s most powerful man; the

other, to save him. And between them, for an instant,

history will hang in the balance…

THE TERROR by Dan Simmons

Based on the true story of the Franklin expedition, a

devastating novel that will chill you to your core…

The men on board Her Britannic Majesty's Ships Terror and

Erebus had every expectation of triumph. They were part of

Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition - as scientifically

advanced an enterprise as had ever set forth - and theirs

were the first steam-driven vessels to go in search of the

fabled North-West Passage.

But the ships have now been trapped in the Arctic ice for

nearly two years. Coal and provisions are running low. Yet

the real threat isn't the constantly shifting landscape of

white or the flesh-numbing temperatures, dwindling

supplies or the vessels being slowly crushed by the

unyielding grip of the frozen ocean.

No, the real threat is far more terrifying. There is something

out there that haunts the frigid darkness, which stalks the

ships, snatching one man at a time - mutilating, devouring.

A nameless thing, at once nowhere and everywhere, this

terror has become the expedition's nemesis.

When Franklin meets a terrible death, it falls to Captain

Francis Crozier of HMS Terror to take command and lead

the remaining crew on a last, desperate attempt to flee

south across the ice. With them travels an Eskimo woman

who cannot speak. She may be the key to survival - or the

harbinger of their deaths.

And as scurvy, starvation and madness take their toll, as the

Terror on the ice become ever more bold, Crozier and his

men begin to fear there is no escape…

CHILD 44 by Rob Tom Smith (CHILD 44 TRILOGY #1)

A terrifying story of a paranoid world where no one can be

trusted.

"There is no crime."

In Stalin's Soviet Union, crime does not exist. But still

millions live in fear. The mere suspicion of disloyalty to the

State, the wrong word at the wrong time, can send an

innocent person to his execution.

Officer Leo Demidov, an idealistic war hero, believes he's

building a perfect society. But after witnessing the

interrogation of an innocent man, his loyalty begins to

waver, and when ordered to investigate his own wife, Raisa,

Leo is forced to choose where his heart truly lies.

Then the impossible happens. A murderer is on the loose,

killing at will, and every belief Leo has ever held is

shattered.

Denounced by his enemies and exiled from home, with only

Raisa by his side, he must risk everything to find a criminal

that the State won't admit even exists. On the run, Leo soon

discovers the danger isn't from the killer he is trying to

catch, but from the country he is trying to protect…

CRYPTONOMICON by Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon hacks into the secret histories of nations

and the private obsessions of men, decrypting the forces

that shaped this century…

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical

genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to

detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a

handful of people know it exists, and some of those people

have names like Churchill and Roosevelt.

The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702 -

commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep

the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has

cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a

cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his

German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho

Shaftoe and his forces.

Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-

hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data

haven" in Southeast Asia - a place where encrypted data

can be stored and exchanged free of repression and

scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the

endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails

granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi

submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a

data haven afloat.

But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy

with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable

Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to

unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital

liberty - or to universal totalitarianism reborn…