Kirjahaku

Alan Furst - hailed 'an addiction' by THE TIMES and 'in a class of his own' by William Boyd - returns with a thrilling new novel set during the tense build-up to World War II.

In 1941, E. M. DeHaan, the captain of the Noordendam, a Dutch tramp freighter, is recruited by the Dutch Naval Intelligence Section for a series of dangerous secret missions against the Germans that take the ship and its crew behind enemy lines in Europe and North Africa, disguised as a neutral Spanish freighter that becomes a haven for fugitives. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 65,000 first printing.

From Alan Furst, whom The New York Times calls "America's preeminent spy novelist," comes an epic story of romantic love, love of country, and love of freedom-the story of a secret war fought in elegant hotel bars and first-class railway cars, in the mountains of Spain and the backstreets of Berlin. It is an inspiring, thrilling saga of everyday people forced by their hearts' passion to fight in the war against tyranny. By 1938, hundreds of Italian intellectuals, lawyers and journalists, university professors and scientists had escaped Mussolini's fascist government and taken refuge in Paris. There, amid the struggles of migr life, they founded an Italian resistance, with an underground press that smuggled news and encouragement back to Italy. Fighting fascism with typewriters, they produced 512 clandestine newspapers. The Foreign Correspondent is their story. Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers' hotel. But this is no romantic traged-it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini's fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine migr newspaper. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and secured a job as a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor. Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain, reporting on the last campaign of the Spanish civil war. But as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French S ret , by agents of the 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 antifascists: 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 Christa von Schirren, the woman who becomes the love of Weisz's life, herself involved in a doomed resistance underground in Berlin. The Foreign Correspondent is Alan Furst at his absolute best-taut and powerful, enigmatic and romantic, with sharp, seductive writing that takes the reader through darkness and intrigue to a spectacular denouement.

NOW A MINISERIES ON BBC AMERICA STARRING DAVID TENNANTWar is coming to Europe. French and German intelligence operatives are locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, in Warsaw, the new military attach , Colonel Jean-Fran ois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal, and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of the city. 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. Risking his life, Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amid an extraordinary cast of venal characters, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed.

Greece, 1940. In the port city of Salonika, with its wharves and brothels, dark alleys and Turkish mansions, a tense political drama is being played out. As Adolf Hitler plans to invade the Balkans, spies begin to circle--and Costa Zannis, a senior police official, must deal with them all. He is soon in the game, working to secure an escape route for fugitives from Nazi Berlin that is protected by German lawyers, Balkan detectives, and Hungarian gangsters--and hunted by the Gestapo. Meanwhile, as war threatens, the erotic life of the city grows passionate. For Zannis, that means a British expatriate who owns the local ballet academy, a woman from the dark side of Salonika society, and the wife of a shipping magnate. With extraordinary historical detail and a superb cast of characters, Spies of the Balkans is a stunning novel about a man who risks everything to fight back against the world's evil.

"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 "A book no reader will put down until the final page . . . Critics compare Alan] Furst to Graham Greene and John le Carr 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

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Paris, 1938. As the shadow of war darkens Europe, democratic forces on the Continent struggle against fascism and communism, while in Spain the war has already begun. Alan Furst, whom Vince Flynn has called "the most talented espionage novelist of our generation," now gives us a taut, suspenseful, romantic, and richly rendered novel of spies and secret operatives in Paris and New York, in Warsaw and Odessa, on the eve of World War II. Cristi n Ferrar, a brilliant and handsome Spanish migr , is a lawyer in the Paris office of a prestigious international law firm. Ferrar is approached by the embassy of the Spanish Republic and asked to help a clandestine agency trying desperately to supply weapons to the Republic's beleaguered army--an effort that puts his life at risk in the battle against fascism. Joining Ferrar in this mission is a group of unlikely men and women: idealists and gangsters, arms traders and aristocrats and spies. From shady Paris nightclubs to white-shoe New York law firms, from brothels in Istanbul to the dockyards of Poland, Ferrar and his allies battle the secret agents of Hitler and Franco. And what allies they are: there's Max de Lyon, a former arms merchant now hunted by the Gestapo; the Marquesa Maria Cristina, a beautiful aristocrat with a taste for danger; and the Macedonian Stavros, who grew up "fighting Bulgarian bandits. After that, being a gangster was easy." Then there is Eileen Moore, the American woman Ferrar could never forget. In Midnight in Europe, Alan Furst paints a spellbinding portrait of a continent marching into a nightmare--and the heroes and heroines who fought back against the darkness. Praise for Alan Furst and Midnight in Europe "Furst never stops astounding me."--Tom Hanks "Furst is the best in the business."--Vince Flynn "Elegant, gripping . . . Furst] remains at the top of his game."--The New York Times "Suspenseful and sophisticated . . . No espionage author, it seems, is better at summoning the shifting moods and emotional atmosphere of Europe before the start of World War II than Alan Furst."--The Wall Street Journal "Endlessly compelling . . . Furst delivers an observant, sexy, and thrilling tale set in the outskirts of World War II. In Furst's hands, Paris once again comes alive with intrigue."--Erik Larson "Too much fun to put down . . . Furst is] a master of the atmospheric thriller."--The Boston Globe

The alternative le Carré: Alan Furst returns with his most commercial novel to date, a nail-biting spy story set against the French Resistance. It was Top 20 in hardback.

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

'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 HanksChosen as one of the 50 Best Modern Crime Novels by Marcel Berlins, crime reviewer, The TimesBulgaria, 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

'One of the best novels of the year ... brilliant' ROBERT HARRIS. Reissued behind Alan Furst's new novel, MIDNIGHT IN EUROPE.