DonateAre you participating in the 2024 Adult Summer Reading Challenge but need help with this specific bingo square? We’ve got some suggestions for you! Browse through the titles and click to access the catalog record. Happy reading!
The following titles are all international spy thrillers.
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Alias Emma / Ava Glass British intelligence agent Emma Makepeace undertakes her first important assignment from her boss, Charles Ripley. Spies for the Russian military have been killing former Russian scientists now living in the U.K. Ripley wants Emma to protect Michael Primalov, the son of Russian physicists who spied for England. When Emma phones her boss for help, Ripley is suspiciously unavailable; she and Michael are on the run from the Russians–and maybe someone from within the Secret Service.
American Spy / Lauren Wilkinson 1986, the heart of the Cold War. A young Black woman working in an old boys’ club, Marie Mitchell’s FBI career has stalled out and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. Given the opportunity to join a task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. In the year that follows Marie observes Sankara, seduces him– and has a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American.
At Risk / Stella Rimington Britain’s MI5 learns that the Islamic Terror Syndicate may be about to deploy an “invisible” — “an ethnic native of the target country” — who can therefore move around the country unquestioned. Intelligence officer Liz Carlyle realizes that there is indeed an imminent terrorist threat. But this operation will test her as nothing has before. As the desperate hunt continues, it becomes clear that Liz’s intuitive skills, her ability to get deep inside her enemy’s head, are her best hope for tracking down the terrorist. But will that be enough?
Bad Actors / Mick Herron From the series that inspired the Apple TV series Slow Horses. In London’s MI5 headquarters, a scandal is brewing. The Downing Street superforecaster-a specialist who advises the Prime Minister on how policy is likely to be received by the electorate-has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, who was once head of MI5, has been tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads him straight back to Regent’s Park itself, with First Desk Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Taverner overplayed her hand at last? Meanwhile, her Russian counterpart, Moscow intelligence’s First Desk, has cheekily showed up in London and shaken off his escort. Are the two unfortunate events connected?
Box 88 / Charles Cumming Lachlan Kite is a member of BOX 88, an elite transatlantic black ops outfit so covert that not even MI6 and the CIA are certain of its existence–but even the best spy can’t anticipate every potential threat. At the funeral of his childhood best friend, Lachlan falls into a trap that drops him into the hands of a potentially deadly interrogation, with his pregnant wife, also abducted, being held as collateral for the information he’s sworn on his own life to protect.
Codename Villanelle / Luke Jennings The breakneck thriller that inspired the TV series Killing Eve. Villanelle (a codename, of course) is one of the world’s most skilled assassins. A catlike psychopath, she specializes in murdering the world’s richest and most powerful. But when she murders an influential Russian politician, she draws a relentless foe to her tail. Eve Polastri (not a codename) is a former MI6 operative hired by the national security services for a singular task: to find and capture or kill the assassin responsible, and those who have aided her.
Damascus Station / David McCloskey A CIA officer and his recruit arrive in war-ravaged Damascus to hunt for a killer. CIA case officer Sam Joseph is dispatched to Paris to recruit Syrian Palace official Mariam Haddad as a double agent. The two fall into a forbidden relationship, supercharging Haddad’s recruitment and creating unspeakable danger when they enter Damascus to find the man responsible for the disappearance of an American spy. But the cat-and-mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime.
Eye of the Needle / 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. All will come to a terrifying conclusion in this story of suspense, intrigue, and the dangerous machinations of the human heart.
From Russia With Love / Ian Fleming British secret agent James Bond is lured into a trap using the beautiful Russian spy Tatiana Romanova as bait. She’s asked for passage to Paris with Bond as her chaperone in exchange for a top secret decoding machine. To survive the train ride from Istanbul, 007 will need to keep his wits about him and his Beretta close at hand, dealing with SMERSH’s deadliest assassin and their operations chief, Rosa Klebb.
The Human Factor / Graham Greene Maurice Castle is a high-level operative in the British secret service during the Cold War. He is deeply in love with his African wife, who escaped apartheid South Africa with the help of his communist friend. Despite his misgivings, Castle decides to act as a double agent, passing information to the Soviets to help his in-laws in South Africa. In order to evade detection, he allows his assistant to be wrongly identified as the source of the leaks. But when suspicions remain, Castle is forced to make an even more excruciating sacrifice to save himself.
The Hunt for Red October / Tom Clancy The Red October, a Soviet nuclear submarine, is headed West after most of its crew has mutinied. The entire Soviet Atlantic Fleet is ordered to hunt down the submarine and destroy her at all costs. The Americans are determined to find her first and get her safely to port in the intelligence coup of all time. But the Red October has a million square miles of ocean to hide in and a new silent propulsion system that is impossible to detect. Or is it?
A Map of Betrayal / Ha Jin When Lilian Shang, born and raised in America, discovers her father Gary’s diary after the death of her parents, she is shocked by its secrets. She knew that Gary, convicted decades ago of being a mole in the CIA, was the most important Chinese spy ever caught. But his diary–a chronicle of his journey from 1949 Shanghai to Okinawa to Langley, Virginia–reveals the pain and longing that his double life entailed. The trail leads Lilian to China, to her father’s long-abandoned other family. But as Lilian starts to understand that Gary, too, had been betrayed, she finds that it is up to her to prevent his tragedy from damaging yet another generation of her family.
Masquerade / Gayle Lynds Liz Sansborough wakes up one morning in a house she doesn’t know, with a man she doesn’t know, unable to remember her own name or anything that has ever happened to her. Already terrified, she is almost instantly plunged into incredible danger — and discovers that she’s a crack shot and a CIA employee. She must navigate through a world of corrupt secret agents, international terrorism, and mind-altering drugs without knowing who her enemies are or what the truth is.
The Matchmaker / Paul Vidich In a Cold War spy story set in 1989 Berlin, an American woman married to an East German must confront the truth behind his mysterious disappearance when she discovers he was a spy reporting back to an East German counterintelligence officer known as the Matchmaker.
Rules of Engagement / Stacey Abrams (writing as Selena Montgomery) Dr. Raleigh Foster, an operative for a top-secret intelligence organization, knows that her undercover work has its risks. So she doesn’t hesitate when asked to infiltrate Scimitar, the terrorist group that has stolen lethal environmental technology. But when she’s assigned a partner–brooding, sexy Adam Grayson–to pose as her lover, Raleigh discovers that the most dangerous risk of all…is falling in love.
The Spy: A Novel of Mata Hari / Paulo Coelho When Mata Hari arrived in Paris she was penniless. Within months, she was the most celebrated woman in the city. As a dancer, she shocked and delighted audiences; as a courtesan, she bewitched the era’s richest and most powerful men. But as paranoia consumed a country at war, Mata Hari’s lifestyle brought her under suspicion. In 1917, she was arrested in her hotel room on the Champs Elysees, and accused of espionage. Told in Mata Hari’s voice through her final letter, The Spy is the unforgettable story of a woman who dared to defy convention and who paid the ultimate price.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold / John Le Carré In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse– a desk job– Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service– with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.
The Starlet and the Spy / Ji-Min Lee February 1954. Although the Korean War armistice was signed a year ago, most citizens of Seoul still battle to return to some semblance of normalcy. Alice J. Kim, a Korean translator and typist for the American forces still sanctioned in the city, yearns for her life before her country was torn apart. Then Alice’s boss announces that Marilyn Monroe will be visiting Korea on a four-day USO tour, and Alice is to be her translator. Though intrigued, Alice has few expectations. Yet Marilyn, while dazzling and sensual, is also surprisingly approachable. As Marilyn’s visit unfolds, Alice is forced into a reckoning with her own painful past.
The Woman with No Name / Audrey Blake It’s 1942, and Yvonne Rudellat, who is estranged from her husband and distanced from her daughter, and who survived a bomb that destroyed her home, jumps at the chance to join the French Resistance and become one of its first female sabotage agents. Under the code name Jacqueline, Yvonne proves herself to be adept at explosives. After she lands in France for her assignment, she goes on to lead a group of men and women thwarting the Nazis every chance they get. Based on a true story.
Yesterday’s Spy / Tom Bradby London, 1953. Harry Tower is a recently widowed and world-weary British spy, out of favor and down on his luck. He is awakened by a phone call with chilling news. His estranged son Sean has gone missing in Tehran after writing a damning article about the involvement of government officials in the opium trade. Harry springs to action, eager to reunite with his son and atone for past wrongs. When he arrives in Tehran, a city on the brink of a historic coup, Harry joins forces with Sean’s Iranian girlfriend Shahnaz–seemingly the only other person interested in finding the disappeared journalist. Harry’s career as a spy soon proves perfect training for this much more personal mission.