Why did Hitler chose not to invade England when he had the chance? Europe, 1940: It's late summer and Belgium has been overrun by the German army. Posing as a friar, a British operative talks his way into the monastery at Villers-devant-Orval just before Nazi art thieves plan to sweep through the area and whisk everything of value back to Berlin. But the ersatz man of the cloth is no thief. Instead, that night he adds an old leather Bible to the monastery's library and then escapes. London, 2017: A construction worker operating a backhoe makes a grisly discovery-a skeletal arm-bone with a rusty handcuff attached to the wrist. Was this the site, as a BBC newsreader speculates, of "a long-forgotten prison, uncharted on any map?" One viewer knows better: it's all that remains of a courier who died in a V-2 rocket attack. The woman who will put these two disparate events together-and understand the looming tragedy she must hurry to prevent-is Russian historian and former Soviet chess champion Larissa Mendelovg Klimt, "Lara the Bookworm," to her friends. She's also experiencing some woeful marital troubles. In the course of this riveting thriller, Lara will learn the significance of six musty Dictaphone cylinders recorded after D-Day by Noel Coward-actor, playwright and, secretly, a British agent reporting directly to Winston Churchill. She will understand precisely why that leather Bible, scooped up by the Nazis and deposited on the desk of Adolf Hitler days before he planned to attack Britain, played such a pivotal role in turning his guns to the East. And she will discover the new secret pact negotiated by the nefarious Russian president and his newly elected American counterpart-maverick and dealmaker-and the evil it portends. Oh, and she'll reconcile with her husband.

Gary Stephens is brought into a government-sanctioned cover-up when he discovers that his father helped fake the Apollo 11 moon landing in the 1960s. After China announce a space mission to place their own flag next to the one US astronauts planted during the Apollo 11 mission, few people bat an eyelid. Shortly after this statement Charlie Stephens, a 81-year-old former filmmaker, is murdered. The incident is made to look like an accident, but why? Going through his father's effects, Gary Stephens - a director of beer and yogurt ads - discovers seven cans of old 35mm film. Dated before the landing, they're identical to the footage NASA claims was shot by the Apollo 11 crew. The US flag is not and has never been in the Sea of Tranquillity, and only Tricky Dick and a handful of others knew it. Why was the real nature of the Apollo 11 mission kept hidden? And what measures will be taken to keep the secret buried?

In 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon . . . didn't they? After China announce a space mission to place their own flag next to the one US astronauts planted during the Apollo 11 mission, few people bat an eyelid. Shortly after this statement Charlie Stephens, a 74-year-old former filmmaker, is murdered. The incident is made to look like an accident, but why? Going through his father's effects, Gary Stephens discovers reels of 35mm celluloid showing the Apollo mission was faked - there's no US flag on the moon, and only a handful of people know it. For his own safety Gary is brought into Mission Dark Side, a government-sanctioned cover-up to send a crew to the moon to plant the flag before the Chinese reach it . . . but there are those out to sabotage the mission and cause the US a national embarrassment.