Autumn 1939, war has been declared, and though bullets and bombs are yet to fly, Frederic Stahl’s decision to shoot a film in Paris seems ill-advised. Soon after his arrival, Stahl is drawn into a clandestine world of foreign correspondents, and spies of every sort. As a celebrity from neutral America - who can travel across the continent freely - Stahl could be very useful indeed ...'Ideally complex, intelligent, hugely intriguing, Furst is in a class of his own' WILLIAM BOYD on Ni...

Susan Cooper talks with Symphony Space's education director about The Dark Is Rising sequence, her series of five thrilling fantasy novels for young readers, among them The Dark Is Rising and 1976 Newbery Medal winner The Grey King.The heroic series, originally published in the 1960s and 70s, is inspired by Arthurian myths and depicts an epic struggle between good ("The Light") and evil ("The Dark") in which children like 11-year-old Sign-Seeker Will Stanton take ...

By turns funny, moving, romantic and surreal, and filled with unexpected twists and turns, each of the tales on this lineup has a magical element.Andrew Lam's "The Palmist", performed by James Naughton. A chance encounter on a bus between a fortune-teller and a teenage boy.W. W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw", performed by John Lithgow. A wonderful ghost story about a trinket with terrible powers.Saki's "The Occasional Garden", performed by Daniel Gerroll. If ...

A new thriller from "the greatest living writer of espionage fiction"-- Houston ChronicleAutumn 1937: War is coming to Europe. French and German intelligence operatives are locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attaché, Colonel Jean-François Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal, and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys ...

Brought to you by Penguin._________________________HANNIBAL LECTER HAS BEEN ON THE RUN FOR SEVEN YEARS.And seven years after he helped FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling bring down Buffalo Bill, her career is collapsing after a disastrous drug bust.Meanwhile, seven years after violently escaping from custody, Hannibal Lecter is hunted by Mason Verger, a psychopathic former client obsessed with feeding him to...

The death of a child and what seems to be a murderous puppet make a perfect case for Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit. As John May and his team interrogate the suspects, Arthur Bryant heads into the secret world of illusions and stagecraft. As a second impossible death occurs, the detectives uncover forgotten museums and London eccentrics. The stage is set for a race against time with a surprising twist…

The unthinkable has happened at London's Peculiar Crimes Unit. In the depths of winter, a member of staff has been found murdered, and everyone who works there is suddenly a suspect. But Arthur Bryant and John May, the eccentric elderly detectives who run London's strangest crime division, aren't on hand to solve the crime. They've ventured into the heart of the English countryside, only to become stranded on a desolate snowbound section of road. As the blizzard worsens, Bryant and May att...

One night, Arthur Bryant witnesses a drunken lady coming out of a pub. The next morning, she is found dead at the exact spot where their paths crossed. Even more disturbingly, the pub has vanished and the street has changed. Bryant is convinced that he saw them as they looked over a century before - is elderly detective losing his mind? Then it becomes clear that a number of women have met their ends in London pubs and the likeliest suspect seems to be a mental patient. But knowing who the...

In the autumn of 1940, Russian émigré journalist I. A. Serebin is recruited in Istanbul by an agent of the British secret services for a clandestine operation to stop German importation of Romanian oil—a last desperate attempt to block Hitler’s conquest of Europe. Serebin’s race against time begins in Bucharest and leads him to Paris, the Black Sea, Beirut, and, finally, Belgrade; his task is to attack the oil barges that fuel German tanks and airplanes. Blood of Victory has all t...

May, 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter streams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa; she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo. Only she is not the Santa Rosa, she is the Noordendam, a Dutch freighter that sails for the Intelligence Division of the British Royal Navy and she will load detection equipment f...

In spymaster Alan Furst's most electrifying thriller to date, Hungarian aristocrat Nicholas Morath—a hugely charismatic hero—becomes embroiled in a daring and perilous effort to halt the Nazi war machine in Eastern Europe.

New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst pens evocative and urbane novels of World War II espionage. Focusing on the European theater, Furst writes about ordinary people struggling to cope with the chaos of the world around them.In the autumn of 1941 as German tanks approach Moscow, Stalin issues a desperate order: all secret operatives behind enemy lines must strike no matter the cost. Into this fray comes Jean Casson—once a wealthy Parisian film producer, now penniless and wa...