The Cold War divided the world into rival superpowers on the brink of nuclear war, a deadly drama inspiring haunting, compelling prose.
SPYSCAPE hand-picked 20 of the very best espionage books from the shelves of our New York City HQ to mark the era - irresistible thrillers, off-beat stories, and real-life spy tales that will transport you to the heart of the US-Soviet Cold War.
FICTION
1. A Most Clever Girlby Stephanie Marie Thornton It is 1963 and, reeling from the death of her mother and JFK’s assassination, Catherine Gray shows up on Elizabeth Bentley’s doorstep only to become ensnared into her story as a World War II spy.
2.American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI in 1986. She struggles to choose between her honor and her heart in this enthralling espionage drama that deftly hops between New York and West Africa.
3.Atomic Blonde: The Coldest Cityby Antony Johnston MI6 spy Lorraine Broughton is investigating the death of a Berlin agent and the disappearance of a list revealing every agent working there. She finds a powder keg of assassinations and betrayal.
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The Cold War divided the world into rival superpowers on the brink of nuclear war, a deadly drama inspiring haunting, compelling prose.
SPYSCAPE hand-picked 20 of the very best espionage books from the shelves of our New York City HQ to mark the era - irresistible thrillers, off-beat stories, and real-life spy tales that will transport you to the heart of the US-Soviet Cold War.
FICTION
1. A Most Clever Girlby Stephanie Marie Thornton It is 1963 and, reeling from the death of her mother and JFK’s assassination, Catherine Gray shows up on Elizabeth Bentley’s doorstep only to become ensnared into her story as a World War II spy.
2.American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI in 1986. She struggles to choose between her honor and her heart in this enthralling espionage drama that deftly hops between New York and West Africa.
3.Atomic Blonde: The Coldest Cityby Antony Johnston MI6 spy Lorraine Broughton is investigating the death of a Berlin agent and the disappearance of a list revealing every agent working there. She finds a powder keg of assassinations and betrayal.
4. Atomic Love by Jennie Fields Rosalind defied expectations as a Manhattan Project physicist and in her love affair with Thomas. Five years later, her guilt over the bomb and heartbreak are intertwined. That’s when Thomas and an FBI agent show up.
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5.Breachby W.L. Goodwater The Berlin Wall is made entirely of magic in this Cold War fantasy series. When a breach unexpectedly appears in the wall, spies from both sides swarm to the city as World War III looms.
6.City on the Edge by David Swinson Graham, 13, suspects his father is a CIA operative in Beirut in 1972. That’s when two men are murdered. His parents' marriage disintegrates and Graham faces dark forces he doesn’t understand. 7. Our Woman in Moscowby Beatriz Williams Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children in 1948. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected?
8.Strange Skies over East Berlin by Jeff Loveness An American spy encounters a terrifying, inhuman threat in 1973 East Berlin. The Space Race had greater consequences than even the Soviets could have guessed.
9.The Company: A Novel of the CIAby Robert Littell The Company lays bare the history and workings of the CIA, weaving together real-life and fiction to create a wickedly nostalgic saga of the CIA known as ‘the Company’ to insiders.
10. The Hunt for Red Octoberby Tom Clancy Somewhere under the Atlantic, a Soviet nuclear submarine commander has made a fateful decision. The Red October is heading west. The US wants her. The Russians want her back. The chase is on.
11. The Secrets We Keptby Lara Prescott Irina, a young Russian-American secretary, is plucked from the CIA typing pool for a mission to help smuggle Doctor Zhivago into the USSR, where it is banned, and learns how to ferry classified documents.
12. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carrre In the shadow of the Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. Is Leamas, head of Berlin Station, being set up?
NON-FICTION
13.Betrayal in Berlin by Steve Vogel The astonishing true story of Operation Gold, one of the greatest espionage missions of the Cold War which involved a US-British plan to tunnel underground and tap into the landline cables of the Soviet Army HQ in Berlin.
14. Fallout by Steve Sheinkin After the US shows its hand with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the Americans and Soviets begin a neck-and-neck competition to build even more destructive bombs and conquer Space.
15. The Golden Thread by Ravi Somaiya The story behind the death of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld is told in this true story of spies and intrigue surrounding one of the most enduring unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.
16. Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy by Anne Sebba Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were on Death Row and killed in 1953. Both were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the USSR, but evidence has since surfaced.
17.Hollywood Double Agent by Jonathan Gill The Cold War and the Golden Age of Hollywood meet in this story of the remarkable career of Boris Morros, film producer and Russian double agent.
18.Someone Is Out to Get Us by Brian T. Brown From UFOs to Dr. Strangelove, LSD experiments, and Richard Nixon, Brown investigates the paranoid, panicked history of the Cold War. 19.The Moscow Rulesby Jonna and Antonio Mendez Spymaster Tony Mendez and his wife, Jonna, were CIA operatives and masters of disguise helping US spies in Moscow during the 1970s. The Moscow Rules were developed to keep them alive.
20.Tunnel 29by Helena Merriman Joachim Rudolph escaped from one of the world’s most brutal regimes - then tunneled back in under the Berlin Wall. The true story of this remarkable Cold War rescue mission draws on Stasi files and witness accounts.
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