espionage

Guy Burgess was the most important, complex, and fascinating of The Cambridge Spies--Maclean, Philby, Blunt--brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret documents which he passed to his Russian handlers.

I spy.  This month the focus is on espionage, real and fictional.

From the bestselling author of Istanbul Passage--called a "fast-moving thinking man's thriller" by The Wall Street Journal--comes a sweeping, atmospheric novel of postwar East Berlin, a city caught between political idealism and the harsh realities of Soviet occupation. Berlin 1948. Almost four years after the war's end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the West, a defiant, blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies; in the East, the heady early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the murky compromises of the Cold War. Espionage, like the black market, is a fact of life. Even culture has become a battleground, with German intellectuals being lured back from exile to add credibility to the competing sectors. Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin. But almost from the start things go fatally wrong. A kidnapping misfires, an East German agent is killed, and Alex finds himself a wanted man. Worse, he discovers his real assignment--to spy on the woman he left behind, the only woman he has ever loved. Changing sides in Berlin is as easy as crossing a sector border. But where do we draw the lines of our moral boundaries? Betrayal? Survival? Murder? Filled with intrigue, and the moral ambiguity of conflicted loyalties, Joseph Kanon's new novel is a compelling thriller and a love story that brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life.

"Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers. The war is over. Bernie Gunther, our sardonic former Berlin homicide detective and unwilling SS officer, is now living on the French Riviera. It is 1956 and Bernie is the go-to guy at the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat, the man you turn to for touring tips or if you need a fourth for bridge. As it happens, a local writer needs just that, someone to fill the fourth seat in a regular game that is the usual evening diversion at the Villa Mauresque. Not just any writer. Perhaps the richest and most famous living writer in the world: W. Somerset Maugham. And it turns out it is not just a bridge partner that he needs; it's some professional advice. Maugham is being blackmailed--perhaps because of his unorthodox lifestyle. Or perhaps because of something in his past, because once upon a time, Maugham worked for the British secret service, and the people now blackmailing him are spies."--.

What We're Reading August 2014

Reading suggestions from Canton Public Library staff.

The Mangle Street murders by M.R.C. Kasasian

Double agent: the first hero of World War II and how the FBI outwitted and destroyed a Nazi spy ring by Peter Duffy

The end of your life book club by Will Schwalbe

The Late Starters Orchestra by Ari L. Goldman

Far gone by Laura Griffin

New True Crime

Look What's In Large Print: May 2014

Spy vs Spy.  Espionage.  State Secrets. Romance.  Who do you trust?

Covert warriors [large print] by W.E.B. Griffin ; with William E. Butterworth IV

Look What's in Large Print: January, 2014

2013 New York Times Bestsellers are available in Large Print.

The Hit [large print] by David Baldacci

Fly Away [large print] by Kristin Hannah

Life After Life [large print]: a novel by Kate Atkinson

Gone Girl [Large print]: a novel by Gillian Flynn

Inferno [Large print]: a novel by Dan Brown

The Racketeer [Large Print] by John Grisham

Look What's In Large Print: November 2013

Spies, espionage, suspense, thrillers...

Agent 146 [Large print]: the true story of a Nazi spy in America by Erich Gimpel ; foreword by Charles Whiting

Rules of betrayal [Large print]: a novel by Christopher Reich

The wolf at the door [Large print] by Jack Higgins

Pirate alley [large print]: a novel by Stephen Coonts

Deliver us from evil [Large print] by David Baldacci

If You Like Thrillers...

If you are a fan of Vince Flynn or Brad Thor, a reader of politicial or military thrillers, enjoy stories with an edge may we suggest...

Love me to death: a novel of suspense by Allison Brennan

All necessary force: a Pike Logan thriller by Brad Taylor

Secret sanction: a novel by Brian Haig

A perfect evil by Alex Kava

Free fall by Kyle Mills

Sworn to silence by Linda Castillo

Sleuth It! Mystery Lovers Meet Up

Are you a fan of Sara Paretsky, Jeff Lindsay, Charlaine Harris or John LeCarre? Willing to share some of your favorite authors with other Mystery fans? Maybe it’s time to try a new mystery writer and you're looking for suggestions? Join us as we talk books on Saturday, July 27 from 2:00-3:00 PM in Canton Public Library’s Purple Room.

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