Here are 100 books that The Sisterhood fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a lifelong science fiction fan, and that genre has proved to be a potent gateway to others: espionage thrillers, fantasy horror, category romance, and more. “Spy-fi” in particular has always fascinated me, since it often deals with the intersection (sometimes collision) of new technologies with age-old human needs and wants. And spies operate in the margins and gray areas of society, basically committing crimes while still claiming to be in the service of a greater good. Sometimes HOW and WHY we do things is just as important as WHAT we’re doing.
So, yeah, I saved the big gun for last. I read a lot of Le Carré in high school before I was ready to understand the full texture of his stories, but the vibes have stuck with me to this day.
Magnus Pym both embodies and subverts many tropes from the spy fiction genre, and experiencing this book as a teenager helped me start to make sense of the very personal real-world tensions between “who I am” and “who I appear to be” and “who I want to be.”
I still wrestle with those questions, but my reasons for doing or not doing things haven’t changed all that much. As a wise woman once said: “That’s how we’re going to win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.”
"The best English novel since the war." -- Philip Roth
Over the course of his seemingly irreproachable life, Magnus Pym has been all things to all people: a devoted family man, a trusted colleague, a loyal friend-and the perfect spy. But in the wake of his estranged father's death, Magnus vanishes, and the British Secret Service is up in arms. Is it grief, or is the reason for his disappearance more sinister? And who is the mysterious man with the sad moustache who also seems to be looking for Magnus?
I’m a lifelong science fiction fan, and that genre has proved to be a potent gateway to others: espionage thrillers, fantasy horror, category romance, and more. “Spy-fi” in particular has always fascinated me, since it often deals with the intersection (sometimes collision) of new technologies with age-old human needs and wants. And spies operate in the margins and gray areas of society, basically committing crimes while still claiming to be in the service of a greater good. Sometimes HOW and WHY we do things is just as important as WHAT we’re doing.
Again, I imagine most people are more familiar with the film adaptation of this novel, which kicked off the long-running Jack Ryan franchise. (Trivia break: name all 5 different actors who have portrayed the character on screen!)
And again, when I cracked open the book after seeing the movie, I was (wait for it) TECHNO-THRILLED (see what I did there?) to learn all about nuclear submarine operations. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details, and one little thing can either make or ruin a spy’s day on the job.
Tom Clancy's rich imagination and his remarkable grasp of the capabilities of advanced technology give this novel an amazing ring of authenticity. It is a thriller with a new twist, a "military procedural" with an ingenious, tightly woven plot that revolves around the defection of a Soviet nuclear submarine--the USSR's newest and most valuable ship, with its most trusted and skilled officer at the helm.
A deadly serious game of hide-and-seek is on. The entire Soviet Atlantic Fleet is ordered to hunt down the submarine and destroy her at all costs. The…
I’m a lifelong science fiction fan, and that genre has proved to be a potent gateway to others: espionage thrillers, fantasy horror, category romance, and more. “Spy-fi” in particular has always fascinated me, since it often deals with the intersection (sometimes collision) of new technologies with age-old human needs and wants. And spies operate in the margins and gray areas of society, basically committing crimes while still claiming to be in the service of a greater good. Sometimes HOW and WHY we do things is just as important as WHAT we’re doing.
If you, like the younger me, are only familiar with James Bond 007 via the long-running film franchise, you might also be fascinated to discover the original source material, even if you don’t entirely enjoy it.
To be blunt, Ian Fleming’s novels are steeped in highly problematic historical British colonialism, not to mention being grossly misogynistic and ridiculously violent at times. But they also include a reasonable amount of actual, real-world tradecraft, and that’s what I twigged to when I started checking out the books.
JAMES BOND GOES HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH SMERSH IN A BID TO SECURE A KEY PIECE OF SOVIET INTELLIGENCE
SMERSH, the Russian intelligence unit whose acronym stands for “Death to Spies,” is hell-bent on destroying Special Agent James Bond.
His death would deal a catastrophic hammer blow to the heart of the British Secret Service.
The lure? A beautiful woman who needs 007’s help. Tatiana Romanova is a Russian spy who promises to hand over the prized Spektor decoding machine if Bond aids her defection. Bond suspects a trap but can’t resist the opportunity to give the British the upper hand in…
I’m a lifelong science fiction fan, and that genre has proved to be a potent gateway to others: espionage thrillers, fantasy horror, category romance, and more. “Spy-fi” in particular has always fascinated me, since it often deals with the intersection (sometimes collision) of new technologies with age-old human needs and wants. And spies operate in the margins and gray areas of society, basically committing crimes while still claiming to be in the service of a greater good. Sometimes HOW and WHY we do things is just as important as WHAT we’re doing.
This is the first of a series of novels based on the Queen & Country comic book, created and written by Rucka and originally inspired by the Sandbaggers British TV series. I love the main character, Tara Chace, and I also love how her stories don’t pull punches when it comes to portraying the politics and bureaucracy that sit on top of the actual operations she’s asked to perform.
The world is complicated, but sometimes, if we can focus on solving one single problem, we can make everything just a little bit better—for a while, anyway. The work never ends, and that’s the real job: to persist despite all horrors.
Tara Chace may be the most dangerous woman alive. She can seduce you into believing she’s the woman of your dreams—or kill you with the icy efficiency of an executioner. As the new head of Special Operations for British Intelligence, she no longer has to court death in the field—she wants to.
Throw away the old rules, the old school, the old-boy network. The world of international espionage is about to learn the hard way that spying is no longer merely…
A GENTLEMAN’S GAME
Greg Rucka’s electrifying thrillers have pushed the boundaries of suspense fiction to where few have dared…
I am an author and veteran journalist who reported for The Washington Post for more than two decades, and I write frequently about military history and intelligence. My father worked for the CIA, and I was born in Berlin when he was stationed there as a case officer. Later I was based in Germany as a foreign correspondent when the Berlin Wall came down. So it’s not too surprising that I am interested in Cold War espionage and history. As a reporter, author, and reader, I’ve always been attracted to stories off the beaten track, the ones that most people know little or nothing about.
Sandy Grimes and Jeanne Verterfeuille were part of the CIA team that identified Aldrich Ames, perhaps the most damaging spy in the agency’s history. Not only is the book a riveting account of the detective work that went into Ames’ arrest, it provides a wealth of information about the valuable agents and operations that he betrayed, and the incalculable damage he caused, including the loss of GRU General Dmitriy Polyakov, the highest-ranking spy run by the U.S. during the Cold War.
While there have been other books about Aldrich Ames, Circle of Treason is the first account written by CIA agents who were key members of the CIA team that conducted the intense "Ames Mole Hunt." Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille were two of the five principals of the CIA team tasked with hunting one of their own and were directly responsible for identifying Ames as the mole, leading to his arrest and conviction.
One of the most destructive traitors in American history, CIA officer Aldrich Ames provided information to the Soviet Union that contributed to the deaths of at least…
The defining event in my parents’ lives, World War II has always been in my blood. When I was growing up, it would surface now and again when old comrades came to visit or when we came across souvenirs from the war. My favorite was a carefully etched German map showing sea lanes in the Caribbean, exotic and somehow menacing at the same time. My curiosity piqued, I knew I wanted to be in the thick of history—which meant reading and writing about the war, getting my PhD in history, and becoming a Marine and an intelligence officer.
Biography, especially this riveting biography, is a great way to learn about intelligence in World War II. Bradley looks into dark corners to uncover the almost unbelievable truth about a Soviet spy in the front office of American spy chief William J. Donovan. Like James Grafton Rogers, Bradley tells us what it was like to live and work in Washington during World War II—but with another layer of intrigue and, yes, treachery. 75 years after the fact we tend to forget that a group of privileged Americans like Lee—a Rhodes Scholar and Wall Street lawyer distantly related to Robert E. Leen—once thought that communism might be a viable alternative to capitalism and the economic misery of the depression.
Duncan Chaplin Lee was a Rhodes Scholar, patriot, and descendent of one of America's most distinguished families,and possibly the best-placed mole ever to infiltrate U.S. intelligence operations. In A Very Principled Boy intelligence expert and former CIA officer Mark A. Bradley traces the tangled roots of Lee's betrayal and reveals his harrowing struggle to stay one step ahead of America's spy hunters during and after World War II.Exposed to leftist politics while studying at Oxford, Lee became a committed, albeit covert, member of the Communist Party. After following William Wild Bill" Donovan to the newly formed Office of Strategic Services,…
I am a retired university professor. My research, in which I am still actively engaged, deals with decision-making under deep uncertainty: how to make a decision, or design a project, or plan an operation when major relevant factors are unknown or highly uncertain. I developed a decision theory called info-gap theory that grapples with this challenge, and is applied around the world in many fields, including engineering design, economics, medicine, national security, biological conservation, and more.
This is an interesting collection of essays on the history of the CIA.
A spy agency thrives on deceit and uncertainty, making plans and taking actions when the adversary also thrives on those same elements.
Arranged in chronological order, the essays cover nearly 20 different incidents, describing the challenges, uncertainties, goals, and decisions made by both high-level political decision-makers and practitioners in the field.
Topics covered include early stages in the development of the CIA (founded in 1947), including covert action against the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the Bay of Pigs (1961), the Iran-Contra affair (mid-1980s), up to more recent events with bin Laden, fake news, and more.
A Question of Standing deals with recognizable events that have shaped the history of the first 75 years of the CIA. Unsparing in its accounts of dirty tricks and their consequences, it values the agency's intelligence and analysis work to offer balanced judgements that avoid both celebration and condemnation of the CIA.
The mission of the CIA, derived from U-1 in World War I more than from World War II's OSS, has always been intelligence. Seventy-five years ago, in the year of its creation, the National Security Act gave the agency, uniquely in world history up to that point, a…
As a child I found the history and biography books in our school library, and was enthralled. When I got older and discovered historical archives, the tension between public history in books and the secret or forgotten histories tucked away was irresistible. Writing books has taken me to five continents on journeys into everything from medicinal black markets to the traces of a wartime commercial spy network. For my latest book, digging through classified OSS files showed me what amazing stories still lie waiting for us.
McIntosh takes a fresh approach to espionage, putting aside the trench coats and Mata Haris for the real "Code-room Mata Hari" and other little-known heroines of the war. A veteran of CIA and OSS operations herself, McIntosh knows what she's writing about, and draws from more than 100 interviews with other women operatives. She portrays several dozen here, including the China escapades of Julia McWilliams (known today as Julia Child). It also features the Musac project, with broadcasts targeted at Wehrmacht troops with fake German news and music sung by agent Marlene Dietrichn designed to infiltrate their sympathies.
The daring missions and cloak-and-dagger skullduggery of America's World War II intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), are well documented and have become the stuff of legend. Yet the contributions of the four thousand women who made up one-fifth of the OSS staff have gone largely unheralded. Here for the first time are their fascinating stories, told by one of their own.
A seasoned journalist and veteran of sensitive OSS and CIA operations, Elizabeth McIntosh draws on her own experiences and in-depth interviews with more than one hundred OSS women to uncover some of the most tantalizing stories…
I covered the FBI and CIA for years, first as a print reporter in Washington and then as the head of the NBC News investigative unit. So I have covered my fair share of spy scandals, and with my colleague Pete Williams helped NBC break the story of Robert Hanssen’s arrest. I was immediately drawn to the Ana Montes Cuba spy story when it broke and then learned that Montes had bought her condo from my close friend and college roommate, John. That meant I had spent hours inside Ana’s DC apartment, and that odd connection rooted me in her story in a deeper way.
Dan Golden is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposes how enemies of the United States are using our universities and graduate schools as recruitment centers for a new generation of spies.
Russian, Chinese, and of course, Cuban intelligence services are having a field day exploiting our open system to identify and turn their newest recruits (yes, our government returns the favor abroad.)
Spy Schools has an excellent chapter on Ana Montes, the Cuban agent who is the subject of my book. There’s also juicy information on the American woman who recruited Ana as a spy when they both were attending SAIS, the Johns Hopkins graduate school in Washington.
Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific ortechnological expertise, they"re wooing higher-level academics, not just as analysts but also for clandestine operations. Deterred by student protests and faculty hostility during the Vietnam era, the ClAand other security agencies are back - driven by…
I've always loved spy stories. The best offer complex characters, exotic locales, suspense, and stakes higher than any detective story. I got to know quite a few CIA types during my foreign service career. Some became good friends. I never asked them about their work, but once or twice passed a tidbit their way. Once, the local KGB got the notion I was with the CIA or was somehow prone to persuasion. They were all over me for weeks, making me extremely uncomfortable. The station chief held my hand throughout. So, while I can’t claim a lot of personal knowledge, I’ve had a touch. Here’s my list of favorite spy stories.
Almost criminally neglected, McCarry is the greatest American espionage writer. After serving for ten years as an elite deep-cover agent for the CIA, no one could better write of the “long, twilight struggle” of the Cold War. McCarry doesn’t write thrillers, but spare, character-driven stories about spies and the morally treacherous world in which they work. The Secret Lovers is an absorbing tale of betrayal and a relentless, perilous search for truth. McCarry’s masterpiece.
Minutes after the handoff, the courier’s spine is neatly snapped by an impact with a passing black sedan. Meanwhile in Rome, Christopher's wife Cathy takes a famous film director as a lover to stir her husband out of the stoicism that defines his personality. These two seemingly discrete events set in motion a spiral of operational and personal intrigue that leads Christopher from meetings with an aging agent in the cafes of old Europe to a rendezvous with an operative on the front lines of the Cold War in the Congo as he secretly arranges the publication of a novel…
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