Titles include Alex Preston, Paul Warner and James Wolff on the perils of being an MI6 spy and two tales from Scotland of women on the hunt for answers
A masterful new thriller from the former CIA analyst is informed by a profound understanding of the Middle East and the forces that seek to reshape it
Barry Forshaw and Adam LeBor select their must-read titles
From a posthumous Frederick Forsyth to a new Peter Hain, these page-turners take us from wartime London to modern Israel
Beyond the bonkers plot twists, didactic exposition and barely developed characters, a deft storyteller is at work
Tales from the Ottoman Empire and 1930s Moscow, to the latest in the Slow Horses series
Former spooks or sleuths can’t shake off their old lives in books by Paul Vidich, Alan Parks, Graham Hurley and Mark Ezra, while Mark Ellis and Lily Samson delve into secret worlds
Barry Forshaw and Adam LeBor select their best mid-year reads
Crime in the war-ravaged Balkans of the 1990s, a plot against the UN, geopolitics in Greenland and a Danish police procedural
The return of investigators Horst Schenke and Tom Wilde, Charles Beaumont’s follow-up to ‘A Spy Alone’ — plus the latest from Stella Rimington
David McCloskey cements his place in the top division of spy writers; tradecraft secrets around the world; and arson in the London art world
Capers in Constantinople and Cornwall — plus a chilling story of espionage set in 1930s Vienna — are among the most compelling new spy novels
The dark side of 1930s Europe, a mysterious brothel in present-day Belgravia — plus a topical Syrian-set story from a ‘Spiral’ screenwriter
A posthumous and seamless completion of a volcano thriller that the ‘Jurassic Park’ writer left unfinished after his death in 2008
Adam LeBor selects his best mid-year reads
The UN takes on terrorists, fascism spreads its web — and the mysterious Elly Conway is finally unmasked
From ex-CIA David McCloskey to Tess Gerritsen, spooks and subterfuge, espionage and danger from Moscow to Beirut
Action-packed stories from Russia to Nigeria — plus a new Nurse Ratched and the latest from former astronaut Chris Hadfield
Adam LeBor selects his must-read titles
From the Rwandan genocide to death at the Bank of England, sinister stories of spies, politics and exile
With several cliffhanger chapters, Louise Doughty’s latest novel is a consummate psychological thriller about a female spy navigating the corridors of power
Vividly drawn characters blaze trails across small-town Arkansas and Nazi-occupied Oslo
The first in a new series of thrillers features an ageing Californian hacker in the hunt for a billion-dollar blockchain
