Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Spies & Politics

In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay struggles to thwart an assassination plot designed to hasten war between Britain and Germany. Later he is plucked from the trenches first, in Greenmantle, to frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world; and then, in Mr. Standfast, to undertake a vital secret mission against a German spy ring operating among pacifist elements in England. After the war, his adventures continue in The Three Hostages; and then in The Island of Sheep, when an old oath to protect the son of a friend from his days in Africa draws him into new danger.

Hugo Ross is perfect for the job as irascible inventor Ambrose Minstrel’s new secretary: young, completely inexperienced, and with an occasional stutter that makes him seem somewhat dim—a mug, in fact. But from his first day, odd things begin to happen. A stranger offers him an absurd amount for an ordinary pair of field glasses; soon, the written offer is stolen from his room. A lovely girl he runs into in the dark one night outside his new employer’s house warns him not to take the job.

After a lifetime of political disillusionment, Mia Rhodes created an alternative to the two-party system: Ameritocracy. Part American Idol, part Iowa Caucus, her online political competition will find the most popular independent candidate in America and give them a genuine shot to win the presidency. Anyone can run...The American people vote online...The winner receives instant fame and a campaign war chest to battle the Democrats and Republicans in 2020.

Adolf Verloc is a secret agent who provides information and takes care of arriving undercover agents of an un-named government through their embassy. He also runs a shady business selling pornography, comic books, contraceptives, and the like. As well as this, he’s a confidential informant to Chief Inspector Heat of the London police. His family consists of his wife, Winnie, her Mother, and his (presumably) autistic brother-in-law, Stevie.

Conrad builds his story from the inside out, revealing a world of conspirators, police, fanatics, and bystanders whose inner lives are as explosive as any bomb they carry. Each figure—Mr. Verloc, torn between indolence and obligation; Winnie, holding a family together with quiet ferocity; the vulnerable Stevie; and the coldly obsessive Professor—is drawn with psychological depth that turns this political thriller into a devastating human drama.

This gripping thriller takes listeners on an adrenaline-filled journey through the shadowy world of sabotage in 1942 America. Ric Dymond is an inexperienced young FBI agent on a mission to bring a covert and deadly sabotage plot hatched by the German Abwehr to justice. Ric is forced to go undercover and rely on his wits and intuition to uncover the unknown saboteurs, aware that another uncover agent was brutally murdered. But the mission is further complicated when Ric meets an old flame, throwing his resolve and focus into question.

Commander Walter Topham, assigned as an attaché in Japan, is requested by the Secretary of State to deliver a sealed secret document via the Berlin embassy en route to Japan. Topham agrees to travel to Japan via Berlin. He meets and falls in love with the Countess de Ouro Preto on the steamer voyage, not knowing she is part of a conspiracy. He is drugged on the sea journey and attacked while traveling by train to Berlin by plotters who want to prevent the document from reaching Berlin.

Reeling from a terrible loss, Abraham Snow has no time to grieve as he finds himself the target of an old enemy. Unarmed, outgunned, cold, and outnumbered, Snow fights for survival in the middle of nowhere and there’s a cold snap closing in. It’s a fight for survival in a winter mountain wonderland where he comes face to face with his greatest foe for one last confrontation.

When an ex-flunky devises an insane scheme to get back on the good side of crime lord Miguel Ortega, he finds James Sheppard who could make the plan succeed. Unfortunately, Sheppard is really Abraham Snow, to say nothing of allegedly being dead. If Snow walks away from the plan, his family could die. If he goes along with the scheme, he could die, this time for real. Ambition can be a real killer.

February, 1944. Washington, DC. With the war entering its most dangerous phase, Louise Pearlie is thrilled to be reassigned to the London office of the OSS. But in order to take up her new post, she must make a perilous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in the SS Amelia Earhart. Accompanying her on the voyage to Liverpool is an eclectic group of passengers, including the aloof Blanche Bryant, whose husband, Eddie, died in mysterious circumstances on the ship’s voyage out to New York, three months before.

On a bitterly cold night in December, 1943, government girl Louise Pearlie and her friend Joe Prager are enjoying a quiet drink in the Baron Steuben Inn, when a bloodstained body is discovered behind the bar. Although the victim had been a regular customer, no one seems to know anything about him. When it turns out there is a link to Louise’s top-secret work at the OSS, she is ordered to find out as much as possible about the murder while keeping the connection secret from those involved, including the investigating police detective.

The 1940s, Washington, DC. Government girl Louise Pearlie is asked to review the file usage of a missing analyst from the Office of Strategic Services - the United States’ wartime intelligence agency - only to learn he’d drowned in the Tidal Basin days before. The OSS confirms it was an accident, and Louise is sent back to her regular job in the file rooms. Her time spent investigating Paul Hughes at least has one positive outcome, though: Louise meets a young woman in the OSS Reading Room, who asks her to join her “salon".

It’s 1942. Louise Pearlie, a young widow, has come to Washington, DC, to work as a clerk for the legendary OSS, the precursor to the CIA. When, while filing, she discovers a document concerning the husband of a college friend, Rachel Bloch—a young French Jewish woman she is desperately worried about—Louise realizes she may be able to help get Rachel out of Vichy France. But then a colleague whose help Louise has enlisted is murdered, and she realizes she is on her own, unable to trust anyone.

The 1940s, Washington, DC. Government girl Louise Pearlie has a new job inside the OSS - the Office of Strategic Services: recruiting German prisoners of war for a secret mission inside Nazi Germany. It’s a big chance for her, and Louise hopes she can finally escape her filing and typing duties. With the job comes two new colleagues: Alice Osborne, a propaganda expert, and Merle Ellison, a forger from Texas who just happens to speak fluent German. But when the three arrive at Fort Meade to interview the first German POWs to arrive there, their mission is beset by complications.

Young widow Louise Pearlie seizes a chance to escape the typewriters and files of the Office of Strategic Services, the United States’ World War II spy agency, when she’s asked to investigate a puzzling postcard referred to the OSS by the US Censor. She heads off to St. Leonard, Maryland, to talk to the postcard’s recipient, one Leroy Martin. But what seemed like a straightforward mission to Louise soon becomes complicated.

It’s 1942 in Washington, DC. Louise Pearlie is now a chief file clerk at the legendary OSS, the precursor to the CIA, and enjoys being an independent working woman despite wartime privations. But a casual friendship struck up with Alessa di Luca, a secretive war refugee, sucks Louise into a dangerous game of mafia bosses, Nazi spies, banished royalty, and Sicilian aristocracy - placing not only her job but her life in jeopardy.

A year after the adventure of The Thirty-Nine Steps, Major Richard Hannay is plucked from the trenches of the Western Front, and sent on a perilous journey through the very heart of the German empire, to Constantinople. There, he and his small band of missionaries must frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world aimed at dealing a crushing blow to Britain's interests in the East, and winning the war for Germany.

Coming of age during the Great War and seeing her brother shipped off to fight, Jane begins to feel trapped in her merry-go-round of social calls and hotel luncheons. As her desire to do something important for the war effort increases, she is astonished to be recruited by a government agent to keep tabs on her neighbors. And, as it turns out, Jane has a natural talent for being a spy.

Innocent, his own country had called him a murderer. Now murder was his livelihood. John Seldon hired himself out as an assassin, a sharpshooter, to kill a tyrant named Castro in exchange for cash. He did not flinch from his task until the fatal moment, when he found the girl whose love had made him want to live again.

Released not long after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, in the run-up to the 1964 national election, Eugene Burdick's blockbuster political novel, The 480, foresaw the rise of social media and 21st century analytical data manipulation, the use of computer-generated voter profiles to shape-for better or for worse - the outcome of a major national election. Burdick - coauthor of The Ugly American and Fail-Safe - was a true socio-political visionary, ahead of his time by more than half a century.