Acclaimed biographer Clare Mulley’s latest book, Agent Zo: the Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka, is published on 16 May, 2024. Clare talks to novelist Carolyn Kirby about the long and remarkable life of Elżbieta Zawacka, or Agent Zo, Polish freedom fighter and one of most successful female spies of the Second […]
The London Bookshop Affair by Louise Fein
London, 1962: The world is teetering on the brink of nuclear war but life must go on. Celia Duchesne longs for a career, but with no means or qualifications, passes her time working at a dusty bookshop. The day a handsome American enters the shop, she thinks she might have found her way out of […]
From Taranto to Pearl Harbor – spies and inspiration
To mark the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Alan Bardos explains how uncovering a tale of spies helped him link Britain’s attack on Taranto in 1940 to the Japanese strike – and inspired his new novel, Rising Tide. I have always been captivated by the daring and skill of the Fleet […]
Resurrection by David Gilman
Somewhere in the Sahara, on the desolate border between Sudan and Chad, a P51 Mustang with long-range drop tanks slowly emerges from the dunes. Inside, the skeletalised remains of a man missing for three decades. His flying jacket bears no insignia, a worn leather attaché case lies by his side, held securely by a manacle […]
Operation Fortitude by Hilary Green
France, 1944, and Agent Kim Maxwell has a new mission. She’s investigating the death of Bernard Leblanc, a local SOE leader. It looks like an accident, but Kim knows better. Her HQ is the Bistro Le Renard Rouge. The Red Fox. And the chef is none other than her lover and fellow agent Roland, AKA […]
The Silk Code by Deborah Swift
England in 1943: deciding to throw herself into war work, Nancy Callaghan joins the Special Operations Executive in Baker Street. There, she begins solving ‘indecipherables’ – scrambled messages from agents in the field. Then Nancy meets Tom Lockwood, a quiet genius when it comes to coding. Together they come up with the idea of printing […]
The Messenger of Measham Hall
For Nicholas Hawthorne, the Catholic heir to Measham Hall in Derbyshire, subterfuge is part of everyday life. But there are deeper and darker secrets even than his family’s outlawed religion: why is his father, Sir William, so reclusive? What became of his mother, and his aunt Alethea? And who fatally betrayed his cousin Matthew? Nicholas […]
The Silk Code by Deborah Swift
England in 1943: deciding to throw herself into war work, Nancy Callaghan joins the Special Operations Executive in Baker Street. There, she begins solving ‘indecipherables’ – scrambled messages from agents in the field. Then Nancy meets Tom Lockwood, a quiet genius when it comes to coding. Together they come up with the idea of printing […]