My Secret Life in Hut Six: One Woman's Experiences at Bletchley Park by Mair Russell-Jones

$12.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: very good

The story of the World War 2 de-coders of Bletchley Park continues to fascinate. How did Mair Thomas, a musician brought up in the Welsh valleys, find herself in the rarefied atmosphere of Hut Six, surrounded by hundreds of others, all desperately trying to break the German Enigma Code? Sworn to secrecy and working in cramped and uncomfortable conditions, Mair discovered her degree in German and Music was just what was needed. Drawn from the public schools and Oxbridge her background was very different to that of most of her colleagues and she didn't immediately fit in. This captivating memoir unpacks her daily life and explores the relationships she built. My Secret Life in Hut Six provides a fascinating insight into one woman's battle against Nazi Germany vividly capturing an era of danger, strain and day to day difficulties that were brightened occasionally by visits from the top brass, such as Winston Churchill. ...Show more

Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day spies

$12.00 NZD

Category: World War II | Reading Level: very good

The Spycatcher's Encyclopedia of Espionage by Peter Wright

$10.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: very good

MI5 and Me: A Coronet Among the Spooks by Charlotte Bingham

$12.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: very good

From the bestselling author comes a beguiling comic memoir about a young woman who discovers her father is a spy (and was the model for John le Carré's George Smiley) and goes to work as a secretary in 1950s MI5. It seems to me now that everyone who came to our house in those days was a spy. . . When Charlotte Bingham, daughter of an obscure aristocrat, was summoned to her father's office aged eighteen, she never expected to discover that this aloof, soberly-dressed parent was a spy. Even more ominous than The Facts was his suggestion that she should stop drifting around working for the sort of people her mother could never ask to dinner and get a proper job, something patriotic and worthwhile. So Lottie finds herself outside MI5's Mayfair offices in a dreary suit, feeling naked without her false eyelashes. Miserably assigned to the formidable Dragon, Lottie wishes for pneumonia, or anything to release her from the torment of typing. But as another secretary, the serene Arabella, starts illuminating the mysteries of MI5, and Lottie's home fills with actors doubling as spies, Lottie begins to feel well and truly spooked. This hilarious memoir from the bestselling author of Coronet Among the Weeds is a window into 1950s Britain: a country where Russian agents infiltrate the highest echelons, where debutantes are typists and where Englishness is both a nationality and a code of behaviour. Discretion, honour and office politics meet secrecy, suspicion and film stars in this enchanting, extraordinary true story. ...Show more

Philby - The Long Road to Moscow by Patrick Seale; Maureen McConville

$6.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: good

The Fatal Lover - Mata Hari and the Myth of Women in Espionage by Julie Wheelwright

$12.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: good

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant

$16.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: very good

During the desperate winter of 1940, as the threat of German invasion hung over England, the British government mounted a massive, secret campaign of propaganda to weaken the isolationist sentiment in America and manipulate the country into entering the war on England's behalf. Under the command of the now legendary INTREPID, the British planted propaganda in American newspapers, covertly influenced radio stations and wire services, and plotted against American corporations doing business with the Third Reich. They also pushed President Roosevelt to create a similar covert intelligence agency in the US, and played a role in the selection of William Donovan as its head. Now for the first time, with great research and reporting, Jennet Conant reveals that the beloved author Roald Dahl was a member of Churchill's infamous dirty tricks squad, and tells the full story of how he was recruited to spy on the Americans during World War II. ...Show more

New Spies: Exploring the Frontiers of Espionage by James Adams

$14.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: good

The Spy's Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia by Bryan Denson

$14.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: very good

The true account of the Nicholsons, the father and son who sold national secrets to Russia. "One of the strangest spy stories in American history" (Robert Lindsey, author of The Falcon and the Snowman). Investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist Bryan Denson tells the riveting story of the fath er and son co-conspirators who betrayed the United States. Jim Nicholson was one of the CIA's top veteran case officers. By day, he taught spycraft at the CIA's clandestine training center, The Farm. By night, he was a minivan-driving single father racing home to have dinner with his kids. But Nicholson led a double life. For more than two years, he had met covertly with agents of Russia's foreign intelligence service and turned over troves of classified documents. In 1997, Nicholson became the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage. But his duplicity didn't stop there. While behind the bars of a federal prison, the former mole systematically groomed the one person he trusted most to serve as his stand-in: his youngest son, Nathan. When asked to smuggle messages out of prison to Russian contacts, Nathan saw an opportunity to be heroic and to make his father proud. "Filled with fascinating details of the cloak-and-dagger techniques of KGB and CIA operatives, double agents, and spy catchers . . . A poignant and painful tale of family love, loyalty, manipulation and betrayal." --The Oregonian ...Show more

Pistols! Treason! Murder! - The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy by Jonathan Walker

$16.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: very good

'Jon Walker's Pistols deserves to be called our first true work of 'punk history'. Through the dank Venetian alleyways we pursue the elusive and dangerous spy-master Vano in a story that is as lustily exhilarating as the original Sex Pistols'-Iain McCalman Pistols! Treason! Murder!is a highly original biography of Gerolamo Vano, one of Venice's first spy masters. Through surveillance reports and seventeenth-century archives, historian Jonathan Walker uncovers a coded world of politics and espionage, terror and intense paranoia. For survival and in the perfection of his art, Gerolamo Vano developed superb skills in spinning fictions. His deceits led to the arrest and execution of guilty and innocent men alike, before he himself was put on trial in 1622. Walker brings Vano to life and pieces together the universe through which he moved. Interested in pushing the boundaries of how history is told, the book includes playful comic strips, transcripts of imaginary conversations and a bar-crawl around contemporary Venice. Walker's story of intrigue and betrayal will fascinate and enthrall. ...Show more

Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story That Changed the Course of World War II by Ben Macintyre

$10.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: very good

One April morning in 1943, a sardine fisherman spotted the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and set in train a course of events that would change the course of the Second World War. Operation Mincemeat was the most successful wartime deception ever attempted, and ce rtainly the strangest. It hoodwinked the Nazi espionage chiefs, sent German troops hurtling in the wrong direction, and saved thousands of lives by deploying a secret agent who was different, in one crucial respect, from any spy before or since- he was dead. His mission- to convince the Germans that instead of attacking Sicily, the Allied armies planned to invade Greece. The brainchild of an eccentric RAF officer and a brilliant Jewish barrister, the great hoax involved an extraordinary cast of characters including a famous forensic pathologist, a gold-prospector, an inventor, a beautiful secret service secretary, a submarine captain, three novelists, a transvestite English spymaster, an irascible admiral who loved fly-fishing, and a dead Welsh tramp. Using fraud, imagination and seduction, Churchill's team of spies spun a web of deceit so elaborate and so convincing that they began to believe it themselves. The deception started in a windowless basement beneath Whitehall. It travelled from London to Scotland to Spain to Germany. And it ended up on Hitler's desk. Ben Macintyre, bestselling author of Agent Zigzag, weaves together private documents, photographs, memories, letters and diaries, as well as newly released material from the intelligence files of MI5 and Naval Intelligence, to tell for the first time the full story of Operation Mincemeat. ...Show more

The Deniable Agent: Undercover in Afghanistan by Colin Berry

$10.00 NZD

Category: Espionage | Reading Level: very good

As far as Colin Berry's family were concerned, he'd gone to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban to market low-cost modular housing. The truth was much more complicated. In fact, Berry, a former soldier, had been recruited by British intelligence to secretly buy back weapons systems which had been delivered to the Mujahideen during their struggle against the Soviets. His work involved reconnaissance missions to remote mountain villages where he was able to see first hand the ravaging effects of decades of warfare. Back in Kabul, his attempts to train local men to fight the Taliban came to a horrific end when their mission was compromised and they were massacred before they could reach their target. In February 2003, disillusioned with the work he was doing and concerned for his own security, Berry made preparations to leave the country. He was packing his bags when two armed Afghans showed up at his hotel room. He agreed to a final meeting but by the time it had finished both Afghans were dead and Berry himself was seriously wounded. In "The Deniable Agent", Colin Berry gives a riveting insight into the covert world of intelligence. First published 2006. ...Show more