Spy Stories

AFTER THE MOURNING

by Barbara Nadel

read by Martyn Read

running time 9hrs 35mins

Undertaker Francis Hancock enters the world of Romany gypsies in a tale of murder, magic and Nazi spies set in Epping Forest during the Blitz.

BAD ACTORS

by Mick Herron

read by Sean Barrett

running time 10hrs 28mins

In MI5 a scandal is brewing and there are bad actors everywhere. A key member of a Downing Street think-tank has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, one-time First Desk of MI5's Regent's Park, is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to Regent's Park HQ itself, with its chief, Diana Taverner, as prime suspect. Meanwhile her Russian counterpart has unexpectedly shown up in London but has slipped under MI5's radar. Over at Slough House, the home for demoted and embittered spies, the slow horses are doing what they do best: adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation. In a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing is the norm, bad actors are bending the rules for their own gain. If the slow horses want to change the script, they'll need to get their own act together before the final curtain.

CARTE BLANCHE: A JAMES BOND NOVEL

by Jeffery Deaver

read by Toby Stephens

running time 13hrs 30mins

The face of war is changing. The other side doesn't play by the rules much anymore. There's thinking, in some circles, that we need to play by a different set of rules too. Fresh from Afghanistan, James Bond has been recruited to a new agency. Conceived in the post-9/11 world, it operates independent of Five, Six and the MoD, with its very existence deniable. Its aim: to protect the Realm, by any means necessary. The Night Action alert calls Bond from dinner with a beautiful woman. GCHQ has decrypted an electronic whisper about an attack scheduled for later in the week: casualties estimated in the thousands, British interests adversely affected. And 007 has been given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to fulfil his mission.

THE DARKLING SPY

by Edward Wilson

read by Paul Moriarty

running time 12hrs

London, 1956. Spymaster Henry Bone is convinced that 'Butterfly' is the Holy Grail of Cold War Intelligence. However, Butterfly is an aristocratic pervert whose political tastes are as ugly as his sexual preferences. Worst of all, he has the ability to identify traitors - and every serving British spy who helped them.

EAST OF HOUNSLOW

by Khurrum Rahman

read by Waleed Akhtar

running time 10hrs 50mins

Javid - call him Jay - is a dope dealer living in West London. He goes to mosque on Friday, and he's just bought his pride and joy - a BMW. He lives with his mum, and life seems sweet. But his world is about to turn upside-down. Because MI5 have been watching him, and they think he's just the man they need for a delicate mission. One thing's for sure: now he's a long way east of Hounslow, Jay's life will never be the same again.

FAITH

by Len Deighton

read by James Lailey

running time 12hrs

Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the first novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITY. Bernard has known that he is not getting the full picture from London Central ever since discovering that his wife Fiona was a double agent. Werner Volkmann has been cast out by London Central as untrustworthy. Yet Werner still seems able to pick up information that Bernard should have been told...

THE GALLEONS' GRAVE

by Martin Stephen

read by Michael Tudor Barnes

running time 13hrs 51mins

In 1588 Philip of Spain assembles a great fleet to defeat England and Queen Elizabeth. Young Henry Grisham has inside knowledge, through his work as an agent for Francis Walsingham, but this is likely to endanger his life.

HARRY'S GAME

by Gerald Seymour

read by Michael Rabin

running time 9hrs 45mins

A British cabinet minister is gunned down on a London street by an IRA assassin. In the wake of national outcry, the authorities must find the hitman. Undercover agent Harry Brown is sent into the heart of enemy territory to infiltrate the terrorists.

ILLEGAL ACTION

by Stella Rimington

read by Hilary Spiers

running time 8hrs

When MI5 intelligence officer Liz Carlyle learns of a Russian government plot to kill super-rich Nikita Brunovsky - a man who openly criticises the Putin regime from his London base - it's a race against time to track down the killer. The Foreign Office dreads any kind of incident and Liz must work fast to protect him.

JACK OF SPIES

by David Downing

read by Clive Mantle

running time 11hrs 45mins

Jack McColl is a part-time spy for the fledgling Secret Service on the eve of the First World War. Caitlin Hanley is a young Irish-American journalist and McColl is captivated. But the pair become involved in a plot that threatens the Empire in its hour of greatest need...

KEEPING THE WOLF OUT

by Philip Palmer

read by Miscellaneous

running time 11hrs 30mins

Budapest, 1963. Special Investigator Bertalan Lázár and his wife, spymaster Franciska Lázár, face formidable challenges as they try to navigate a path through the dangerous underworld of Cold War-era Hungary. Catching the criminals is difficult enough, but there are other more threatening battles raging in higher places.

LEGACY

by Alan Judd

read by Edward Peel

running time 11hrs 30mins

Charles Thoroughgood has left the army to be trained by MI6 in the arts of the Cold War. Nothing could prepare him, however, for the unexpected inheritance left him by his late father, which leads him into the murky world of Soviet espionage at the height of the nuclear threat to the West.

THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF SHORT SPY NOVELS

by Miscellaneous authors

read by Jim Swingler

running time 22hrs 55mins

A collection of twelve spy novellas featuring, amongst others, James Bond (in Octopussy), Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden (The Traitor), Modesty Blaise (The Giggle-Wrecker) and Sherlock Holmes (The Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans).

NIGHT FLIGHT TO PARIS

by David Gilman

read by Matt Addis

running time 13hrs 45mins

It’s 1943 and for agents of the Special Operations Executive, a mission to Nazi-occupied Paris is a death sentence. So why has unlikely spy Harry Mitchell volunteered to return to the city? With disaster afflicting his mission from the outset, it will take all his ingenuity to get into the capital... unaware that every step he takes is a step closer to a trap.

OCTOPUSSY AND THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS; AND OTHER STORIES

by Ian Fleming

read by Lucy Fleming

running time 3hrs 30mins

The British Secret Service has many enemies. Whether it's a sniper in East Berlin, a Russian agent secretly bidding for a Faberge egg, or a retired major in Jamaica with a treacherous secret, it is down to James Bond to neutralize the threat. In these stories the dirty world of international espionage tests Bond's skills to the extreme.

THE PARTISAN

by Patrick Worrall

read by Ben Allen

running time 16hrs 30mins

It is the summer of 1961, and the brutal Cold War between East and West is becoming ever more perilous. Two young prodigies from either side of the Iron Curtain, Yulia and Michael, meet at a chess tournament in London. They don't know it, but they are about to compete in the deadliest game ever played. Shadowing them is Greta, a ruthless resistance fighter who grew up the hard way in the forests of Lithuania, but who is now hunting down some of the most dangerous men in the world. When the world is accelerating towards an inevitable and catastrophic conflict, what can just four people do to prevent it?

A QUIET LIFE

by Natasha Walter

read by Karen Cass

running time 15hrs 30mins

Laura Leverett arrives from America in 1939, for a new life in England. Edward Last is the kindred spirit Laura has been waiting for. But the secret he is carrying will test Laura’s ideals to their limits and take them across oceans before tearing them apart…

REAL TIGERS

by Mick Herron

read by Sean Barrett

running time 10hrs 50mins

London's Slough House is where disgraced MI5 operatives are reassigned to spend the rest of their spy careers pushing paper. But when one of them is kidnapped by a former soldier bent on revenge, Jackson Lamb's agents soon uncover a web of intrigue that involves not only a group of private mercenaries but also the highest authorities in the Security Service.

SAFE HOUSES

by Dan Fesperman

read by Dan Fesperman

running time 13hrs 30mins

West Berlin, 1979. Helen Abell oversees the CIA's network of safe houses amidst a dangerous city in the grip of the Cold War. Helen's world is upended when she overhears a meeting that hints at shadowy realities far beyond her comprehension. Her attempts to expose the dark truths about what she has witnessed will bring about repercussions that reach across decades and continents into the present day.

THUNDERBALL

by Ian Fleming

read by Jason Isaacs

running time 7hrs 45mins

SPECTRE is a merciless new enemy - a group of the world's toughest criminals, headed by the brilliant Ernst Stavro Blofeld. When two NATO atom bombs go missing, Bond must unravel SPECTRE's intricate plans and prevent a global catastrophe.

UNCLE TARGET

by Gavin Lyall

read by Harvey Ashby

running time 9hrs

This is the fourth thriller by Gavin Lyall to feature Major Maxim and it centres on a plot by a Jordanian army battalion to capture the prototype of Britain’s most sophisticated tank and reveal the secret to the Russians. Packed with action, suspense and authentic local colour.

VAGABOND

by Gerald Seymour

read by John O'Mahony

running time 18hrs 30mins

Danny Curnow, known in the army family by his call sign, Vagabond, ran agents - informers. Now he lives in quiet isolation and works as a guide to tourists visiting the Normandy's D-Day beaches. Violence in Northern Ireland is on the rise again and now, fifteen years later, the stakes are higher and the risks greater. Danny will have to prove that he is as hard and ruthless as before.

A WAR OF FLOWERS

by Jane Thynne

read by Julie Teal

running time 13hrs 45mins

August, 1938. British actress, Clara Vine, is in Paris, mingling with society and passing snippets of information to her contacts in the British embassy. When Clara is approached by a British operative who asks her to befriend Eva Braun, Hitler's girlfriend, she knows that she is putting herself in danger. But Clara will do everything in her power to protect her country. Book 3 of the 'Clara Vine' series, sequel to 'The Winter Garden' (11376)

YESTERDAY'S SPY

by Tom Bradby

read by George Weightman

running time 10hrs

Nothing good ever comes from a midnight phone call. For washed-up spy Harry Tower, it is the worst news at the worst possible time. His son, Sean, has gone missing in troubled Iran after writing an exposé about government corruption. Their relationship has never recovered since Harry's wife's suicide, for which Sean holds his father responsible. And Harry, with his career on the verge of disintegration, needs to find him and put things right. When Harry arrives in Tehran, he finds a city on the cusp of revolution. But the reasons for Sean's disappearance may be even more sinister than Harry first suspected. Before long, he is on the run - not only from a faceless enemy, but from his own past. Which will catch up with him first?

ZOO STATION

by David Downing

read by Terrence Hardiman

running time 13hrs 50mins

When an old acquaintance turns up at John Russell’s hotel his life begins to change. He is persuaded by threats and financial needs to become a spy - first for the Soviet Union and then, simultaneously, for the British. First book of the series.