Stuart

I read Norwegian wood the year after I had been to Japan as a teenager, and the book, and that trip combined were responsible for a now 25 year long fascination with and eduction in Japan and Japanese. I dread re-reading it because I don’t think it could ever live up to that kind of impact, but I will always love it for what it did for me as a directionless teenager looking for a sense of direction and for a place t place my passion. I know Murakami is often critiqued for writing the same novel over and over again, but it’s a good novel, and this is perhaps the best version of it.

I co-wrote the foreword to this book and Erin is a friend of mine so I am super biased, but I think this is a great primer in how to think about experimentation, and how to practically go about it. Also, I have 10 copies, so if you’d like one let me know and I’ll ship one to you :)

it’s been 15 years since I read this and I still think about it all the time. Maybe it’s time for a second read…

During the Decade of Plagues, pandemics brought civilization to a standstill. The only way out was the Aspis chip: a wearable mRNA vaccine factory, able to immunize you against new viruses on the fly. But not everyone wanted it. They created an open alternative: Darkome, an underground community of biohackers modifying their own genes and bodies. Inara came of age in a Darkome village – but only an Aspis could keep her rare cancer in check, updating her immune system at a pace with her cancer's evolution. Accepting it went against everything Darkome stood for. She had to choose between her community and her life. Now Inara's Aspis appears to have malfunctioned. She can edit her own DNA to be stronger, faster, smarter. It could be the genetic breakthrough of the millennium, but only if she can figure out how it works ... and to stay ahead of those who will stop at nothing to possess her secret. Pursued by Aspis, Darkome radicals and the government, her new abilities may be the only way for Inara to survive. But they may cost her everything, including her humanity.

A timely reimagining of the story of Dionysus-Greek god of ecstasy, revelry, and ruin-and a captivating queer love story for readers of The Song of Achilles and Elektra.

Raised in a Greek legion, Phaidros has been taught to follow his commander's orders at all costs. But when Phaidros rescues a baby from a fire at Thebes's palace, his commander's orders cease to make sense: Phaidros is forced to abandon the blue-eyed boy at a temple, and to keep the baby's existence a total secret.
Years later, struggling with panic attacks and flashbacks, Phaidros is enlisted by the Queen to find her son, Thebes' young crown prince, who has vanished to escape an arranged marriage. The search leads him to a blue-eyed witch named Dionysus, whose guidance is as wise as the events that surround him are strange. In Dionysus's company, Phaidros witnesses sudden outbursts of riots and unrest, and everywhere Dionysus goes, rumors follow about a new god, one sired...

Now a major motion picture from Fernando Meirelles, the Academy Award-nominated director of *City of God*

The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle--young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect among his own colleagues, but a target for Tessa's killers as well.

A master chronicler of the betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, John le Carre portrays the dark side of unbridled capitalism as only he can. In The Constant Gardener he tells a compelling, complex story of a man elevated through tragedy as Justin Quayle--amateur gardener, aging widower, and ineffectual bureaucrat--discovers his own natural resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.

Amazon.com Review

British diplomat Justin Quayle, complacent raiser of freesias and doting husband of the stunning, much younger Tessa, has tended his own garden in Nairobi too long. Tessa is Justin's opposite, a fiery reformer, “that rarest thing, a lawyer who believes in justice,” whose campaigns have earned her a nickname: “the Princess Diana of the African poor.” But now Tessa has turned up naked, raped, and dead on a mysterious visit to remote Lake Turkana in Kenya. Her traveling companion (and lover?), the handsome Congolese-Belgian doctor Arnold Bluhm, has vanished. So has Quayle's complacency.

Tessa had been compiling data against a multinational drug company that uses helpless Africans as guinea pigs to test a tuberculosis remedy with unfortunately fatal side effects. Her report was destroyed by her husband's superiors; was she? It's all somehow connected to the sinister British firm House of ThreeBees, whose ad boasts that it's “buzzy for the health of Africa!” John le Carré symbolically associates ThreeBees with an ominous buzz in the Nairobi morgue: “Over [the corpses], in a swaying, muddy mist, hung the flies, snoring on a single note.”

The home office tries to take Quayle in out of the cold. He cleverly eludes their clammy embrace, turns spy, and takes off on a global chase to avenge Tessa and solve her murder. Le Carré has lost none of his gift for setting vivid scenes in far-flung places expertly described: London, Germany, Saskatchewan, Kenya. His sprinting thriller prose remains in great shape. And thanks to his 16 years in the British Foreign Office, his merciless send-up of its cutthroat intrigues and petty self-delusions is unbelievably good–or rather, believably so. This is global do-gooder satire on a literary par with Doris Lessing's The Summer Before the Dark.

But you want to know if The Constant Gardener is as good as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Very nearly. Africa's nightmare is more complex than the cold war chess match, and the world pharmaceutical circus is tougher to dramatize than the old spy-versus-spy-versus-spymaster game. Still, le Carré can write a smart, melancholy page-turner, and his moral outrage (the real subject of his books) burns as brightly as ever. –Tim Appelo

As the world seems to move ever further beyond the comparatively clear-cut choices of the Cold War into a moral morass in which greed and cynicism seem the prime movers, le Carr ‘s work has become increasingly radical, and this is by far his most passionately angry novel yet. Its premise is similar to that of Michael Palmer's Miracle CureDcynical pharmaceutical firm allied with devious doctors attempts to foist on the world a flawed but potentially hugely profitable drugDbut the difference is in the setting and the treatment. Le Carr has placed the prime action in Africa, where the drug is being surreptitiously tested on poor villagers. Tessa Quayle, married to a member of the British High Commission staff in corruption-riddled contemporary Kenya, gets wind of it and tries in vain to blow the whistle on the manufacturer and its smarmy African distributor. She is killed for her pains. At this point Justin Quayle, her older, gentlemanly husband, sets out to find out who killed her, and to stop the dangerous drug himselfDat a terrible cost. Le Carr ‘s manifold skills at scene-setting and creating a range of fearsomely convincing English characters, from the bluffly absurd to the irredeemably corrupt, are at their smooth peak here. Both The Tailor of Panama and Single & Single were feeling their way toward this wholehearted assault on the way the world works, by a man who knows much better than most novelists writing today how it works. Now subject and style are one, and the result is heart-wrenching. (Jan. 9) Forecast: Admirers of the author who may have found some of the moral ambiguities and overelaborate set pieces of his last two books less than top-drawer le Carr will welcome a return to his best form. There is a wonderfully charismatic and idealistic heroine, which will bolster female readership, and the appearance of the book shortly after the release of a movie of Tailor (starring Jamie Lee Curtis) is bound to create an extra rush of media attention. Be prepared for the biggest le Carr sales in years.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gwendolen Harleth es la mayor de cinco hermanas, que la admiran. Es hermosa, egoísta y malcriada, y cree poseer grandes cualidades. Cortejada por los jóvenes de su localidad, su destino cambiará cuando se cruce con el de Daniel Deronda, un joven aristocrático que vive con su tío y que posee con una disposición natural a ayudar a los demás.

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Sin embargo, el joven vive atormentado al ignorar su verdadero origen. Tras conocer a Daniel y escuchar sus consejos, Gwendolen siente deseos de corregirse, pero la aparición de una chica judía, salvada por Daniel poco antes de morir ahogada en el río, inicia un difícil triángulo amoroso, con el agravante de que el judaísmo era despreciado en la sociedad británica y trataba de recuperar su esplendor.

La caracterización psicológica de los personajes hace de esta novela una obra maestra de la literatura victoriana.

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Um adolescente precisa investigar horrores indizíveis para solucionar uma série de acontecimentos sinistros numa cidadezinha antes que haja uma nova vítima. A Casa da Noite é a estreia triunfal de Jo Nesbø no terror, uma história sobre coragem e destruição, com uma boa dose de reviravoltas.

Após a trágica morte dos pais, Richard Elauved, um garoto de 14 anos, é mandado para a casa dos tios na cidadezinha isolada de Ballantyne.

Não demora muito para ele ser tratado como um pária na escola. E tudo piora quando um colega de turma, Tom, desaparece e Richard se torna o principal suspeito do suposto crime; afinal, é fácil colocar a culpa no garoto esquentadinho recém-chegado da cidade grande. Ainda mais porque ele foi a última pessoa a ver Tom, e ninguém acredita em seu relato: segundo Richard, Tom estava passando um trote para um número aleatório da lista quando foi sugado pelo receptor da cabine telefônica – algo digno de filme de terror.

Ninguém acredita, exceto Karen, sua única amiga e por quem secretamente nutre uma paixão. Ela o encoraja a seguir as pistas que a polícia se recusa a investigar. Assim, Richard encontra o endereço do tal telefone: uma casa abandonada no meio da floresta do Espelho. Ele vai até lá, mas a casa é assustadora, com telhados que lembram os chifres do diabo, com um carvalho que de tão grande atravessou o teto, e onde há um rosto sinistro, pálido, que o encara de uma janela do andar superior. O que ele sente ali é estranho, como se estivesse se olhando num espelho...

Quando outro colega da escola desaparece, Richard precisa encontrar um jeito de provar sua inocência – e preservar sua sanidade – conforme lida com uma terrível magia que, além de tentar tomar conta da cidade, parece querer destruí-lo.

Mas há um porém: Richard talvez não seja o narrador mais confiável da própria história...

A Casa da Noite é uma narrativa sinistra sobre solidão, coragem, amizade, destruição e loucura. Sobre o que podemos e o que não podemos ver. É uma história sobre uma casa sombria em uma floresta ainda mais sombria.

“Uma história sobre amadurecimento que se torna cada vez mais assustadora, repleta de tensão e revelações.” – Sunday Express

Jo Nesbø é um dos maiores autores de thrillers do mundo, com grandes best-sellers como O leopardo, O fantasma, Polícia, O filho, A sede, Macbeth, Boneco de Neve e Faca. Seus livros já foram traduzidos para mais de 50 idiomas e venderam mais de 60 milhões de exemplares no mundo. Antes de se tornar autor de thrillers, Jo Nesbø jogava futebol no Molde, time da primeira divisão da Noruega, mas seu sonho de jogar profissionalmente no Tottenham foi arruinado quando rompeu os ligamentos do joelho aos 18 anos. Depois de três anos de serviço militar, fez faculdade de administração e formou a banda Di Derre. O grupo chegou ao topo das listas da Noruega, mas Jo Nesbø continuou trabalhando como analista financeiro, processando números durante o dia e tocando durante a noite. Quando foi contratado por uma editora para escrever uma biografia contando a vida na estrada com sua banda, Jo Nesbø apareceu com a trama do primeiro livro do detetive Harry Hole: O morcego.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians is a chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.
A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

“The object of life is impossible; one cuts out fabrication and creates reality. A mirror is held to the back of the head and one's hand has to move the opposite way from what was intended.” In these closing lines from Impossible Object, one has embodied both Nicholas Mosley's subject of love and imagination, as well as his unmatched lyric style. In eight carefully connected stories that are joined by introspective interludes on related subjects, the author pursues the notion, through the lives of a couple seen by different narrators, that “those who like unhappy ends can have them, and those who don't will have to look for them.”

"Go back to Whitehall and look for more spies on your drawing boards."

George Smiley is no one's idea of a spy—which is perhaps why he's such a natural. But Smiley apparently made a mistake. After a routine security interview, he concluded that the affable Samuel Fennan had nothing to hide. Why, then, did the man from the Foreign Office shoot himself in the head only hours later? Or did he?

The heart-stopping tale of intrigue that launched both novelist and spy, Call for the Dead is an essential introduction to le Carré's chillingly amoral universe.

Review

‘Brilliant. Realistic. Constant suspense ... excellent writing' – Observer ‘Intelligent, thrilling, surprising ... makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard' – Sunday Telegraph

Praise for Call for the Dead

“A finely wrought and compelling admixture of three types of crime writing: the novel of action and excitement that we commonly call a thriller, the spy story, and the detective story.”– P. D. James, from the Foreword

“A subtle and acute story of counter-espionage marked by restraint, indirection, and intelligence.”– The New York Times Book Review

Praise for John Le Carré

“Le Carré is more than just a great storyteller– he captures the Zeitgeist itself.”– Tom Wolfe

“No other contemporary novelist has more durably enjoyed the twin badges of being both well-read and well-regarded.”– Scott Turow

“He is one of the half-dozen best novelists now working in English.”– Chicago Sun-Times

“Le Carré is one of the best novelists– of any kind– we have.”– Vanity Fair

“A brilliant linguistic artist with a keen eye for the exotic and not-so-exotic locale, a crafty, moralizer with an occasional bent for sentiment.”– The Wall Street Journal

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Em Os Radley, Matt Haig, autor best-seller de A biblioteca da meia-noite, explora as facetas do amor fraterno e da ambição em um thriller vampiresco espirituoso e tocante.

Peter, Helen e seus filhos adolescentes, Clara e Rowan, moram num bairro tranquilo e pacato, levando uma vida bem monótona. De longe, são uma família como outra qualquer. Mas a verdade é que Peter e Helen escondem um terrível segredo, capaz de virar o mundo dos filhos de cabeça para baixo.

Certa noite, Clara se vê compelida a cometer um ato de violência inimaginável — e estranhamente prazeroso —, e é nesse momento que ela e o irmão enfim compreendem por que não conseguem dormir e por que precisam passar protetor solar fator 50 antes de sair de casa. Enquanto tentam lidar com as dificuldades inerentes à sua condição, os Radley se veem ameaçados por uma investigação policial que pode acabar com tudo o que construíram.

Para piorar, quando o irmão desonesto e sedutor de Peter, Will, chega para tirar a polícia da cola de Clara, a situação sai do controle, e a família se vê na corda bamba entre a decisão de manter a linha e a ânsia por se entregar à sua verdadeira natureza.

Os Radley é uma história eletrizante que mistura suspense e ironia, explorando a batalha entre desejo e autocontrole e os limites que alguém seria capaz de transpor para proteger os filhos. Uma reflexão sobre as vontades que reprimimos, os segredos que guardamos e os laços que nos unem apesar de tudo.

“Divertido, assustador e terrivelmente familiar.” — Alfonso Cuarón

“Deliciosamente excêntrico.” — Financial Times

“Uma ficção visceral, no sentido mais sedutor da palavra.” — Sunday Telegraph

Matt Haig (Sheffield, 3 de julho de 1975) é um romancista e jornalista inglês. Ele escreveu livros de ficção e não-ficção para crianças e adultos, muitas vezes no gênero de ficção especulativa. É um autor best-seller internacional com livros publicados em mais de 30 idiomas.

John le Carré has earned worldwide acclaim with extraordinary spy novels, including The Russia House, an unequivocal classic. Navigating readers through the shadow worlds of international espionage with critical knowledge culled from his years in British Intelligence, le Carré tracks the dark and devastating trail of a document that could profoundly alter the course of world events.

In Moscow, a sheaf of military secrets changes hands. If it arrives at its destination, and if its import is understood, the consequences could be cataclysmic. Along the way it has an explosive impact on the lives of three people: a Soviet physicist burdened with secrets; a beautiful young Russian woman to whom the papers are entrusted; and Barley Blair, a bewildered English publisher pressed into service by British Intelligence to ferret out the document's source. A magnificent story of love, betrayal, and courage, The Russia House catches history in the act. For as the Iron Curtain begins to rust and crumble, Blair is left to sound a battle cry that may fall on deaf ears.

From Publishers Weekly

A dissident Soviet physicist asks a down-at-the-heels, jazz-loving London publisher to issue his insider's study of the chaotic state of Soviet defense. “The master of the spy novel has discovered perestroika , and the genre may never be the same again,” observed PW .
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A mysterious manuscript purporting to prove the Soviet defense system is unworkable is smuggled out of Moscow. It was intended for a flaky English publisher, a womanizing saxophone-playing boozer, but the smuggler has turned it over to British intelligence. In order to prove its authenticity, they recruit the publisher as an amateur spy and send him to Moscow to reestablish contact with the author. But the “truth” Barley Blair finds there is love and a purpose for his shambles of a life. As always with le Carre, this is a compelling spy story, a marvelous entertainment that is also as intelligent, witty, and brooding as many more self-consciously and less satisfying literary novels. It may not be the equal of The Quest for Karla trilogy or of a A Perfect Spy but it bears all the marks of a master, of the man who has both redefined and reanimated the espionage genre. BOMC main selection.
- Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

INSIDE THE WORLD OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS - AND MURDER... 
Angel Dare went into Witness Protection to escape her past — not as a porn star, but as a killer who took down the sex slavery ring that destroyed her life. But sometimes the past just won't stay buried.
When a former co-staris gunned down, it's up to Angel to get his son, a hotheaded MMA fighter, safely through the unforgiving Arizona desert, shady Mexican bordertowns, and the seductive neon mirage of Las Vegas...

A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar.  Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister's personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it.

Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be—or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher (“Kit”) Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit's daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?

Review

“At the moment a new generation is stumbling upon his work, le Carré is still writing at something close to the top of his game.... [A Delicate Truth] is an elegant yet embittered indictment of extraordinary rendition, American right-wing evangelical excess and the corporatization of warfare. It has a gently flickering love story and jangling ending. And le Carré has not lost his ability to sketch, in a line or two, an entire character.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Magazine

“The narrative dominoes fall with masterly precision....As ever, le Carré's prose is fluid, carrying the reader toward an inevitable yet nail-biting climax.”—Olen Steinhauer, The New York Times Book Review

“A ripping, fun yarn.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Loyalty to the crown is tested; consciences are checked; and nothing is more terrifying than, as this novel's protagonist puts it, ‘a solitary decider' asking himself how on earth he talked himself into this mess.”—The Daily Beast

“A career's worth of literary skill and international analysis.....No other writer has chartered...the public and secret history of his times.”—The Guardian (UK)

“Remarkable....[A Delicate Truth] displays the mastery of the early and the passion of late Le Carré.”—Robert McCrum, The Observer  (UK)

“Writing of such quality that...it will be read in one hundred years....[Le Carré] found his canvas in espionage, as Dickens did in other worlds. The two men deserve comparison.”—Daily Mail  (UK)

“Le Carré further establishes himself as a master of a new, shockingly realistic kind of noir.”—Booklist (Starred)

“This is a guaranteed hair-raising cerebral fright, especially for anyone who enjoyed Robert Harris's The Ghost or who just knows his or her email account has been hacked.”—Library Journal (Starred)

“Le Carré focuses on the moral rot and creeping terror barely concealed by the affable old-boy blather that marks the pillars of the intelligence community.”—Kirkus Reviews (Starred)

“A great story in sterling prose.”—Publishers Weekly

New York Times bestselling author John le Carré (A Delicate Truth and Spy Who Came in from the Cold) was born in 1931 and attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. He taught at Eton and served briefly in British Intelligence during the Cold War. For the last fifty years he has lived by his pen. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.

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A casa de bonecas e outras histórias, originalmente The dove's nest, é uma coletânea de contos finalizados e inacabados, publicados postumamente. Com histórias que remetem à infância da escritora e o toque de sarcasmo específico de Mansfield, o quarto livro lançado da coleção de Katherine Mansfield pela Editora Cabriolé apresenta seus 21 contos em sua ordem original, organizados pelo primeiro curador de Mansfield, o marido John Middleton Murry.

Kathleen Mansfield Murry (nascida Beauchamp; 14 de outubro de 1888 – 9 de janeiro de 1923), foi uma escritora e crítica neozelandesa que foi uma figura importante no movimento modernista. Suas obras são celebradas em todo o mundo e foram publicadas em 25 idiomas.[1]

Two ex-military nurses, one human and one alien, share a friendship in a city following an alien invasion.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery comes an unforgettable beach read about love, secrets, betrayal and the family we're born into—and the one we choose for ourselves, perfect for fans of Emily Giffin and Mary Kay Andrews.
What would you do if you caught your brother cheating on your best friend?
While Beth is proud of her Malibu beach shop, Surf Sandwiches, she's even prouder of her charismatic brother Rick, who rose from foster care through surgical residency. She makes subs, he saves lives. Life takes a turn for the happy after she finds out Rick is dating her new best friend, Jana. Then Jana's handsome brother adds even more sparkle to Beth's days...and nights.
But when she catches Rick with another woman—like, with-with—her visions of an idyllic family future disappear in one awful instant. Either she betrays her brother, or she keeps his secret and risks losing the man she loves and her...

The first Angel Dare novel, MONEY SHOT, earned universal acclaim: finalist for the Edgar, Anthony and Barry Awards, won the Crimespree Award and chosen by fans as their favorite Hard Case Crime title of all time. Angel's story continued in CHOKE HOLD and – after almost 15 years – it comes to a blazing conclusion in THE GET OFF.
WILL THE CHANCE FOR A NEW LIFE BE ANGEL'S LAST SHOT?
Tagged as a cop killer when a mission of vengeance goes wrong, Angel Dare finds herself on the run, with an unexpected burden: she's pregnant. Her desperate flight takes Angel across the American west, where cattle barons lock horns with rodeo bullfighters and life can end suddenly and brutally. A renegade couple living off the grid near the border might offer a chance of escape – but can Angel reach them in time...?

When the shadowy circumstances of a relative's death are brought to light, Jane and Lila are plunged into the recesses of an underground drug operation with links to a burgeoning fascist movement. 
The Pool sisters have gone into business together: a down-home if unequal P.I. enterprise. That is, until Lila is tipped off to an explosive piece of news. An old friend of their Aunt Ruth's—a lawyer and academic who'd committed suicide years ago—believes that Ruth was murdered. Prior to her death, Ruth had represented a chemist who'd been struggling to patent a dangerous synthetic opioid. But once the client, Travis Nutt, was poised to lose, he went rogue and unleashed the adulterant as a street drug with the power of cartel funding behind him. Can the twins now bring this cult-like billionaire to justice?
Meanwhile, the rest of the Pool family is staying busy. Jane, newly divorced, and doing things for herself for a change, has...

“Vivid, dense, powerful imagery ... hard to put down!” — Washington Post“A complex, bizarre, and unique vision of the near future with a kaleidoscopic mix of politics, pop, and paranoia.” — Bruce Sterling
“John Shirley was cyberpunk's patient zero, first locus of the virus, certifiably virulent. A Carrier.” — William Gibson
With Eclipse Penumbra, the second volume in John Shirley's cyberpunk trilogy, A Song Called Youth returns to the World War III era, in which a nuclear strike has decimated Europe. The survivors are dominated by the Christian Fascist Second Alliance, a fundamentalist international security organization attempting to impose apartheid across Europe. Their master plan for a new world order, Project Total Eclipse, involves seizing control of FirStep, an orbiting space colony with the potential to extend their domination throughout the world. All that stands in their way are the rebels of the New Resistance, a gang...

A taut, suspenseful historical thriller set in the months of WWII: Did Japan also have an atomic weapon, and did America bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to pre-empt an attack on its fleet?
A masterful historical thriller set during the waning months of World War II, The Second Sun poses a provocative question: Did Japan test an atomic weapon, and did America know about it in advance of its own decision to drop two nuclear bombs?
March 1945: After a career of commanding destroyers in the Pacific theater of WWII, Captain Wolfe Bowen is based in Washington, DC, working for the Chief of Naval Operations. Bowen receives an urgent call from the commander of the naval shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: A German U-boat has been captured and brought to port. But what grabs Bowen's attention is the presence of two Japanese civilians on board, along with the massive size of the U-boat itself. What these civilians know about the cargo of the U-boat, as well as its...

A #1 New York Times bestseller for 34 weeks and the book that launched John le Carré's career worldwide

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service—with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.

Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.

Amazon.com Review

It would be an international crime to reveal too much of the jeweled clockwork plot of Le Carré's first masterpiece, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. But we are at liberty to disclose that Graham Greene called it the “finest spy story ever written,” and that the taut tale concerns Alec Leamas, a British agent in early Cold War Berlin. Leamas is responsible for keeping the double agents under his care undercover and alive, but East Germans start killing them, so he gets called back to London by Control, his spy master. Yet instead of giving Leamas the boot, Control gives him a scary assignment: play the part of a disgraced agent, a sodden failure everybody whispers about. Control sends him back out into the cold–deep into Communist territory to checkmate the bad-guy spies on the other side. The political chessboard is black and white, but in human terms the vicinity of the Berlin Wall is a moral no-man's land, a gray abyss patrolled by pawns.

Le Carré beats most spy writers for two reasons. First, he knows what he's talking about, since he raced around working for British Intelligence while the Wall went up. He's familiar with spycraft's fascinations, but also with the fact that it leaves ideals shaken and emotions stirred. Second, his literary tone has deep autobiographical roots. Spying is about betrayal, and Le Carré was abandoned by his mother and betrayed by his father, a notorious con man. (They figure heavily in his novels Single & Single and A Perfect Spy.) In a world of lies, Le Carré writes the bitter truth: it's every man for himself. And may the best mask win. –Tim Appelo

“The best spy story I have ever read.”

(Graham Greene )

“First-rate and tremendously exciting.”

(Daphne du Maurier )

“Le Carré is one of the best novelists—of any kind—we have.”

(Vanity Fair )

“Written . . . with a pitiless, elegant clarity, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a first-rate thriller and more.”

(Time )

Durante los primeros años de la II Guerra Mundial, John Kemp, un joven estudiante de clase humilde, llega desde un pequeño núcleo de provincias a la ciudad universitaria donde cursará sus estudios. En medio de un ambiente lúgubre, deprimido y profundamente intimidatorio elegirá, como salvoconducto emocional, a una chica anónima sobre la que dibujará una identidad alternativa, y la bautizará con el nombre de Jill. A partir de ese momento, comenzará el movimiento feroz de una espiral obsesiva sobre ella hasta que los acontecimientos experimentan un giro sorpresivo que pondrán al protagonista contra las cuerdas. Su vida y sus aspiraciones, así como sus deseos y anhelos darán paso a un relato poético y grandioso de la mano de uno de los maestros de la literatura inglesa del siglo XX.

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