"A master thriller and a remarkable portrait of a twisted character." -Time For Arthur Rowe, the trip to the charity fete was a joyful step back into adolescence, a chance to forget the nightmare of the Blitz and the aching guilt of having mercifully murdered his sick wife. He was surviving alone, outside the war, until he happened to win a cake at the fete. From that moment, he is ruthlessly hunted by Nazi agents and finds himself the prey of malign and shadowy forces. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Alan Furst. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Salonika, 1940. To the bustle of tavernas and the smell of hashish, a secret war is taking shape. In the backrooms of barbers, envelopes change hands, and in the Club de Salonique the air is thick with whispers. Costa Zannis is the city's dashing chief detective - a man with contacts high and low, in the Balkans and beyond. And as unknown ships and British 'travel writers' trickle through the port, he is a man very much in demand. Having helped defeat Italy in the highlands of Macedonia, Zannis returns to a city holding its breath. Mussolini's forces have retreated - for now - but German sights are fixed firmly on the region. And as the situation in Germany worsens, Zannis becomes involved in an audacious plot - smuggling Jews to Istanbul, through the back door of Europe. The British hear he can penetrate the continent's closed borders, and soon Zannis is embroiled in the resistance, and in a reckless love affair that could jeopardise everything. With a remarkable cast of operatives, SPIES OF THE BALKANS is a brilliant espionage novel from Alan Furst.

THE TIMES '100 BEST SUMMER READS' 'Magnificent' Sunday Times 'Gripping... the twists and intrigue keep coming' Observer 'As ever, Furst vividly evokes a sense of time and place' Mail on Sunday (Must-Read Books of the Year) Occupied Paris, 1942. In the dark, treacherous city, the German occupying forces are everywhere-and so are French resistance fighters, working secretly to defeat Hitler. Just before he dies, a man being chased by the Gestapo hands off a strange-looking document to the unsuspecting novelist Paul Ricard. It looks like a blueprint of a part for a military weapon - one that might have important information for the Allied forces - and Ricard realizes he must try to get it into the hands of members of the resistance network. As he finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into anti-German efforts, Ricard travels deep into enemy territory and along the escape routes of underground resistance safe houses, spying on Nazi maneuvers. And when he meets the mysterious and beautiful Leila, a professional spy, they begin to work together to get crucial information out of France and into the hands of the Allied forces in London. ALAN FURST - The master of the historical spy novel 'Alan Furst is in a class of his own' William Boyd 'Furst is an addiction' The Times 'If you are a John le Carre' fan, this is definitely for you' James Patterson 'Furst's ability to recreate the terrors of espionage is matchless' Robert Harris 'America's preeminent spy novelist' New York Times 'Furst never stops astounding me' Tom Hanks 'How I envy anybody who has not yet discovered Furst's writing' Telegraph

The sequel to THE WORLD AT NIGHT featuring Jean Casson Set in the underworld of Paris in 1941. Reluctant spy Jean Casson returns to occupied Paris under a new identity. He is wanted by the Gestapo therefore must stay away from the civilised circles he knew as a film producer and learn to survive in the shadowy backstreets and cheap hotels of Pigalle. Yet as the war drags on, he finds himself drawn back into the dangerous world of resistance and sabotage . . .

A novel of adventure and intrigue in wartime Europe Paris, 1938. Nicholas Morath, former Hungarian cavalry officer, returns home to his young mistress in the 7th arrondissement. He's been in Vienna where, amid the mobs screaming for Hitler, he's done a quiet favour for his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi. Polanyi is a diplomat and, desperate to stop his country's drift into alliance with Nazi Germany, he trades in conspiracy - with SS renegades, Abwehr officers, British spies and NKVD defectors, leading Morath deeper and deeper into danger as Europe edges towards war.

The author of TV Book Club's SPIES OF THE BALKANS returns with a hugely evocative thriller set in wartime Paris. Frederic Stahl, born of Viennese intelligentsia, ran away to sea at the age of seventeen. Embarking in America, his matinee idol looks and Old-World charm took him to Hollywood, and a life of movies and women. But by autumn 1939, the unease in Europe has spread even to Stahl's glamorous enclave. War has been declared, and though bullets and bombs are yet to fly, his decision to shoot a film in Paris seems ill-advised. The Parisians know this is their last spring and a time to be passionate. Soon after his arrival, Stahl is drawn into a clandestine world of foreign correspondents, exiled Spanish republicans and, of course, spies of every sort. For as a celebrity from neutral America - who can travel across the continent freely - Stahl could be very useful indeed ... Returning to the Brasserie Heiniger, and some of the colourful cast from THE WORLD AT NIGHT, this is a headily atmospheric portrait of a continent in the grip of The Phony War.

'Complex, intelligent, hugely intriguing - Alan Furst is in a class of his own' William Boyd 'Furst's ability to recreate the terrors of espionage is matchless' Robert Harris 'Furst never stops astounding me' Tom Hanks Chosen as one of the 50 Best Modern Crime Novels by Marcel Berlins, crime reviewer, The Times Bulgaria, 1934. Khristo Stoianev sees his brother kicked to death by a gang of fascist thugs. Taking a risk on the promise of Communism, he flees to Moscow and is trained as an agent of the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service. His first mission is to go to Catalonia, where he is soon caught up in the bloody horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo must again take flight, this time to Paris, where he is a small player on the wrong end of a social scene that is simultaneously decadent and doomed. One of the twentieth century's greatest spy novels, Night Soldiers is a thrilling portrait of one man's extraordinary adventures and of Europe teetering on the brink of the Second World War. 'Alan Furst's mastery of the espionage novel puts him beyond any would-be rival' Literary Review 'A spy novel, a war story, an adventure, a survivor's tale - Night Soldiers is all this and more' Seattle Times

From the master of the wartime espionage novel; a thrilling story of subterfuge at sea May 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter steams up the Tagus river to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa, 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. But she is not the Santa Rosa. She is the Noordendam, a Dutch freighter under the command of Captain Eric DeHaan. She sails for the intelligence division of the British Royal Navy and is involved in a secret mission. On board are a Polish engineer and British spy, Spaniards who fought for Franco and Germans who fought against Hitler. For them, this is a last desperate flight to freedom.

Spring, 1941. Britain is losing the war. Paris is occupied by the Nazis, dark and silent at night. But when the clouds part, and moonlight floods the city, a Resistance leader called Mathieu steps out to begin his work. The fighters of the French Resistance are determined not to give up. These courageous men and women - young and old, aristocrats and nightclub owners, teachers and students - help downed British airmen reach the border with Spain. In farmhouses and rural churches, in secret hotels, and on the streets, they risk everything to open Europe's sealed doors and lead Allied fighters to freedom. But as the military police heightens surveillance, Mathieu and his team face a new threat, dispatched from the Reich to destroy them all.

The next great page-turner from the master of the noir spy novel. By 1939, thousands of Italian intellectuals, teachers and lawyers, journalists and scientists, had fled Mussolini's fascist government and found refuge in Paris. There, amidst the poverty and difficulty of emigre life, they joined the Italian resistance, founding an underground press that smuggled news and encouragement back to their lost homeland. In Paris, in the winter of 1939, a murder/suicide at a lovers' hotel hits the tabloid press. But this is not a romantic tragedy, it is the work of OVRA, Mussolini's fascist secret police, and meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine newspaper published by Italian emigres. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and found work as a foreign correspondent for the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor. Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain, reporting on the tragic end of the Spanish civil war, but, as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Surete, by agents of OVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondent is a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or murder. The Foreign Correspondent is the story of Carlo Weisz and a handful of anti-fascists -- the army officer known as Colonel Ferrara, who fights for a lost cause in Spain, Arturo Salamone, the shrewd leader of a resistance group in Paris, and the woman who becomes the love of his Weisz's life, herself involved in a doomed resistance underground in Berlin, at the heart of Hitler's Nazi empire.

Utterly gripping spy thriller set in the glittering world of European high society, just before the Second World War. November, 1940. I.A. Serebin, a writer from Odessa and former decorated Hero of the Soviet Union, is on his way to Istanbul following a cryptic letter from a former lover. Ostensibly there on official business for the International Russian Union, an emigre organisation based in Paris, he is drawn into a clandestine world of international spies and political players. With war in Europe drawing nearer, Serebin is recruited by the British secret services - his mission to stop the export of Romanian oil to Germany. In a race against time, Serebin's journey will take him from the glittering salons of Paris to the back alleys of Bucharest and the Black Sea ports, in a covert operation to staunch the flow of oil, the precious 'blood of victory'.

T.J. and Blake have started their new business-Treasure Finders. Their first client, Mildred Russell, contacts them after seeing their poster at the local grocery store. Mildred has guarded a letter from Private Bernie Winslow dated 1951. The letter tells Mildred that he hid something of great value specifically for her in the event of his death. But the letter includes a code and only Mildred has the key to crack the code. Follow the adventures of T.J. and Blake as they crack the code and unearth the treasure hidden for over fifty years. Will they find it before the insidious Matthew who is driven by his love of money? * What is the key to cracking the code in Bernie's letter? * Where can the treasure be found so many years later? * What did Bernie hide for Mildred and her alone? Find out in T.J. and Blake's first big adventure, The Big Tip.

During the unparalleled days of the emancipation of the Hebrews from slavery a young man was being prepared for a historic role. Born under the oppressive whip of Egyptian taskmasters, Joshua the son of Nun steps onto the stage of history a virtual unknown. Chosen by Moses to be at his side, he learns from the iconic leader lessons that are still relevant for us today. A.J. Furst thoughtfully explores the untold story of Joshua's development in becoming the successor to Moses. From being chosen to lead an inexperienced army in battle against a well established king . . . to walking on the mountain of God . . . to exploring the land promised to his ancestor Abraham, take a second look at leadership lessons with application to anyone involved in serving others.

Dr. Simpson and his family travel to Ghana on a humanitarian medical mission. He is helping to establish a clinic that will be handed over to the local community. While treasure hunting, T.J. and Blake discover a mysterious object buried in a farmer's field infested with venomous snakes. Kofi Adofo is a farmer trying to care for his family. The elected chief and elders have given a parcel of land to the foreigners for building a clinic-land that Kofi has farmed for years. He feels betrayed by his own people in favor of the white doctors. What will Kofi do to protect his way of life? Will the deadly snakes kill the Treasure Finders? What will become of the clinic? Kofi's Plot takes you to Ghana on an adventure that includes intrigue, suspense and mystery.

Andre Szara, survivor of the Polish pogroms and the Russian civil wars, is a journalist working for Pravda in 1937. War in Europe is already underway and Szara is co-opted to join the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence agency. He does his best to survive the tango of pre-war politics by calmly obeying orders and keeping his nose clean. But when he is sent to retrieve a battered briefcase the plot thickens and is drawn into even more complex intrigues. Szara becomes a full-time spymaster and as deputy director of a Paris network, he finds his own star rising when he recruits an agent in Berlin who can supply crucial information. DARK STAR captures not only the intrigue and danger of clandestine life but the day-to-day reality of what Soviet operatives call special work.

An Autumn evening in 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw railway station. Tonight, he will be with his Polish mistress; tomorrow, at a workers' bar in the city's factory district, he will meet with the military attache from the French embassy. Information will be exchanged for money. So begins THE SPIES OF WARSAW, with war coming to Europe, and French and German operatives locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attache, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn in to a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations. Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amidst an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters - Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence, last seen in Furst's THE POLISH OFFICER; the mysterious and sophisticated Doctor Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier's brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed.

Paris 1940. The civilised, upper-class life of film producer Jean Casson ends with the German occupation of the city. Out of money and almost out of luck, Casson attempts to work with a German film company but finds himself drawn into the dark world of espionage and double agents. More used to evading jealous husbands than the secret police, Casson beomes a reluctant spy, torn between honour, patriotism, love and survival.

From the master of the historical spy thriller, a story set in the heart of the Polish resistance September, 1939. The invading Germans blaze a trail of destruction across Poland. France and Britain declare war, but do nothing to help. And a Polish resistance movement takes shape under the shadow of occupation, enlisting those willing to risk death in the struggle for their nation's survival. Among them is Captain Alexander de Milja, an officer in the Polish military intelligence service, a cartographer who now must learn a dangerous new role: spymaster in the anti-Nazi underground. Beginning with a daring operation to smuggle the Polish National Gold Reserve to the government in exile, he slips into the shadowy and treacherous front lines of espionage; he moves through Europe, changing identities and staying one step ahead of capture. In Warsaw, he engineers a subversive campaign to strengthen the people's will to resist. In Paris, he poses as a Russian poet, then as a Slovakian coal merchant, drinking champagne in black-market bistros with Nazis while uncovering information about German battle plans. And a love affair with a woman of the French Resistance leads him to make the greatest decision of his life.

"A master spy novelist."--"The Wall Street Journal"
"Page after page is dazzling."--James Patterson
"NEW YORK TIMES" BESTSELLER
Late summer, 1938. Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris to make a movie. The Nazis know he's coming--a secret bureau within the Reich has been waging political warfare against France, and for their purposes, Fredric Stahl is a perfect agent of influence. What they don't know is that Stahl, horrified by the Nazi war on Jews and intellectuals, has become part of an informal spy service run out of the American embassy. "Mission to Paris "is filled with heart-stopping tension, beautifully drawn scenes of romance, and extraordinarily alive characters: foreign assassins; a glamorous Russian actress-turned-spy; and the women in Stahl's life. At the center of the novel is the city of Paris--its bistros, hotels grand and anonymous, and the Parisians, living every night as though it were their last. Alan Furst brings to life both a dark time in history and the passion of the human hearts that fought to survive it.
Praise for "Mission to Paris"
"The most talented espionage novelist of our generation."--Vince Flynn
"Vividly re-creates the excitement and growing gloom of the City of Light in 1938-39 . . . It doesn't get more action-packed and grippingly atmospheric than this.""--The Boston Globe"
"One of Furst's] best . . . This is the romantic Paris to make a tourist weep. . . . In Furst's densely populated books, hundreds of minor characters--clerks, chauffeurs, soldiers, whores--all whirl around his heroes in perfect focus for a page or two, then dot by dot, face by face, they vanish, leaving a heartbreaking sense of the vast Homeric epic that was World War II and the smallness of almost every life that was caught up in it."--"The New York Times Book Review"
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"A book no reader will put down until the final page . . . Critics compare Alan] Furst to Graham Greene and John le Carre as] a master of historical espionage."--"Library Journal" (starred review)
"Alan Furst's writing reminds me of a swim in perfect water on a perfect day, fluid and exquisite. One wants the feeling to go on forever, the book to never end. . . . Furst is one of the finest spy novelists working today."--"Publishers Weekly"

Paris, 1938. Democratic forces are locked in struggle as the shadow of war edges over Europe. Cristian Ferrar, a handsome Spanish lawyer in Paris, is approached to help a clandestine agency supply weapons to beleaguered Republican forces. He agrees, putting his life on the line. Joining Ferrar in his mission is an unlikely group of allies: idealists and gangsters, arms dealers, aristocrats and spies. From libertine nightclubs in Paris to shady bars by the docks in Gdansk, Furst paints a spell-binding portrait of a continent marching into a nightmare - and the heroes and heroines who fought back.