Books with category Cold War Drama
Displaying 6 books

Edge of Eternity

2014

by Ken Follett

Edge of Eternity is the sweeping, passionate conclusion to Ken Follett’s extraordinary historical epic, The Century Trilogy.

Throughout these books, Follett has followed the fortunes of five intertwined families – American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh – as they navigate the tumultuous twentieth century. The story reaches one of the most tumultuous eras of all: the 1960s through the 1980s, a time of enormous social, political, and economic upheaval.

From civil rights, assassinations, and mass political movements, to Vietnam, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, presidential impeachment, revolution, and rock and roll, the novel captures it all.

East German teacher Rebecca Hoffman discovers she’s been spied on by the Stasi for years and commits an impulsive act that will affect her family for the rest of their lives.

George Jakes, the child of a mixed-race couple, chooses to join Robert F. Kennedy’s Justice Department, finding himself at the center of both the civil rights battle and a much more personal struggle.

Cameron Dewar, the grandson of a senator, seizes the chance to engage in espionage, only to find the world more dangerous than he imagined.

Dimka Dvorkin, a young aide to Nikita Khrushchev, becomes a key figure as the United States and the Soviet Union race to the brink of nuclear war, while his twin sister, Tania, embarks on a journey from Moscow to Cuba to Prague to Warsaw, leaving her mark on history.

With Follett's masterful storytelling, the historical backdrop is brilliantly researched and vividly rendered, bringing us into a world we thought we knew but will see anew.

The Company

2007

by Robert Littell

Robert Littell does for the CIA what Mario Puzo did for the Mafia. The Company is an engrossing, multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic yet utterly entertaining and candid saga, bringing to life, through a host of characters—both historical and imagined—the nearly 50 years of this secretive and powerful organization.

In a style both intelligent and ironic, Littell tells it like it was: CIA agents fighting not only 'the good fight' against foreign enemies, but sometimes the bad one as well, with the ends justifying such means as CIA-organized assassinations, covert wars, kidnappings, and toppling of legitimate governments.

Behind every manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, though, one question spans the length of the book: Who is the mole within the CIA? This astonishing novel captures the life and death struggle of an entire generation of CIA operatives during a long Cold War.

Skeleton Key

Alex Rider has been through a lot for his fourteen years. He's been shot at by international terrorists, chased down a mountainside on a makeshift snowboard, and has stood face-to-face with pure evil. Twice, young Alex has managed to save the world. And twice, he has almost been killed doing it.

But now Alex faces something even more dangerous. The desperation of a man who has lost everything he cared for: his country and his only son. A man who just happens to have a nuclear weapon and a serious grudge against the free world. To see his beloved Russia once again be a dominant power, he will stop at nothing. Unless Alex can stop him first...

Uniting forces with America's own CIA for the first time, teen spy Alex Rider battles terror from the sun-baked beaches of Miami all the way to the barren ice fields of northernmost Russia. Come along for the thrilling ride of a lifetime.

The Matarese Circle

2004

by Robert Ludlum

The Matarese Circle is an international circle of killers that threatens to take over the world within just two years. Only two rival spies have the power to stop them: Scofield, CIA, and Talaniekov, KGB. They share a genius for espionage and a life of explosive terror and violence.

Though these sworn enemies once vowed to terminate each other, they must now become allies. Only they possess the brutal skills and ice-cold nerves vital to their mission: destroy the Matarese.

Fail-Safe

Something has gone wrong. A group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons is streaking past the fail-safe point, beyond recall, and no one knows why. Their destination—Moscow.

In a bomb shelter beneath the White House, the calm young president turns to his Russian translator and says, "I think we are ready to talk to Premier Kruschchev." Not far away, in the War Room at the Pentagon, the secretary of defense and his aides watch with growing anxiety as the luminous blips crawl across a huge screen map. High over the Bering Strait in a large Vindicator bomber, a colonel stares in disbelief at the attack code number on his fail-safe box and wonders if it could possibly be a mistake.

First published in 1962, when America was still reeling from the Cuban missile crisis, Fail-Safe reflects the apocalyptic attitude that pervaded society during the height of the Cold War, when disaster could have struck at any moment. As more countries develop nuclear capabilities and the potential for new enemies lurks on the horizon, Fail-Safe and its powerful issues continue to respond.

Windmills of the Gods

1987

by Sidney Sheldon

Windmills of the Gods is a classic best-selling thriller that races from the halls of the White House to the romance-filled streets of Paris, and the shady menace of Cold War Bucharest. A young woman, a newly appointed ambassador, finds herself facing unseen and powerful enemies plotting her and her children's destruction.

Mary Ashley, a beautiful and accomplished scholar, has suddenly become the U.S. ambassador to an Iron Curtain country. She is on the glinting edge of East-West confrontation and is about to dramatically change the course of world events if she lives.

Marked for death by the world's most proficient and mysterious assassin, Mary is plunged into a nightmare of espionage, kidnapping, and terror. In this thrilling journey, only two people—both powerfully attractive and ultimately enigmatic men—can offer her help. But one of them wants to kill her.

The action races from Washington D.C. to Buenos Aires, from Paris and Rome to Bucharest, as Mary struggles against her unseen assassins and the apparent treachery of the men she trusts. This is a gripping tale of suspense and international intrigue that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

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