Fiction : Espionage

With her debut novel, At Risk, Stella Rimington established herself as a top-notch thriller writer, and introduced us to Liz Carlyle—a smart, impassioned MI5 intelligence officer whose talents and ambitions are counterbalanced by an abiding awareness of her job’s moral complexities. In Secret Asset, we are plunged back into her high-stakes, high-tension world. Liz has always been particularly skilled at “assessing people,” and when one of her agents reports suspicious meetings taking place at an Islamic bookshop, she trusts her instinct that a terrorist cell is at work. Her boss, Charles Wetherby, Director of Counter-Terrorism, knows to trust Liz’s instincts as well: he immediately puts a surveillance operation into place. So Liz is surprised when Wetherby suddenly takes her off the case. And she’s shocked to hear why: Wetherby has received a tip-off that a mole—a “secret asset”—has been planted in one of the branches of British Intelligence. If this is true, the potential damage to the Service is immeasurable. As her colleagues work to avert an impending terrorist strike, Liz is charged with the momentous task of uncovering and exposing the mole before it’s too late. As she did in At Risk, Stella Rimington once again brings all her experience as the first woman Director General of MI5 to bear in a heart-stopping thriller that takes us deep into a “wilderness of mirrors” where nothing is what it seems and no one can be trusted. more...

Price: $17.95

An oil pipeline leak in the Gulf of Mexico looks like sabotage, and APO is assigned to find the source using any means necessary. Sydney and Dixon visit the drilling platform and discover a likely suspect, but before they can corner him, he flees...in the APO helicopter. It seems the attack was a practice run for something bigger, and Sydney and Dixon must determine the real target before time runs out. There are other matters on the agents' minds too -- Dixon is concerned about his son, Steven, and Sydney is led to wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like to have a "normal" family. But there's no time for wistful thinking when the saboteurs' plot becomes clear...and threatens to throw the country into total chaos. more...

Price: $6.99

In November 1943 the Nazis capture British secret agent John Lockhart while he is on a Resistance mission to German-occupied Crete. They give him a stark choice: betray his country or die. In a decision some might consider treason and moral folly, Lockhart acts out of love and strikes a bargain with his captors: in return for his wife, who is interned in a concentration camp, he will change sides. But he is stunned to learn that his mission is to lead the British Free Corps, a clandestine unit of the SS composed of British fascists and renegades culled from POW camps. Aware that he, like them, will be branded a traitor, Lockhart seeks to redeem himself by destroying a terrifying secret weapon that threatens to change the course of history. more...

Price: $11.99

Taking orders again from Arvin Sloane is enough for agent Sydney Bristow's life to feel turned upside down. But when an old adversary resurfaces and begs specifically for her help, Sydney is forced to confront ever-changing alliances -- and the disturbing question of just how much she and her former enemy have in common. United by an urgent goal but for separate reasons, an inconceivable team is forged. From the luxury hotels of downtown Singapore to the frenetic streets of New Orleans's French Quarter, Sydney finds herself with little time to decide if she's been given the chance to amend ancient history or if she's being lethally played. more...

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Sydney's conscience struggles with her job, which too often asks her to work with criminals she'd much rather put away. She understands the logic -- the small fish versus big fish pragmatism -- but that doesn't make acceptance easier. Someone else is less conflicted and is assassinating APO's shadier contacts. more...

Price: $6.99