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Harlot's Ghost

Norman Mailer · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Noble House

James Clavell · 1,142 pages

The setting is Hong Kong, 1963. The action spans scarcely more than a week, but these are the days of high from kidnapping and murder to financial double-dealing and natural catastrophes -- fire, flood, and landslide. Yet they are days filled as well with all the mystery and romance of Hong Kong -- the heart of Asia -- rich in every trade... money, flesh, opium, power.

Cold War EraSprawling EpicEspionageHistorical Fiction
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Libra

Don DeLillo · 456 pages

In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will g

Cold War EraEspionageLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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The Talbot Odyssey

Nelson DeMille · 584 pages

For forty years Western intelligence agents have known a terrible secret: the Russians have a mole -- code name Talbot -- inside the CIA. At first, Talbot is suspected of killing European agents. Then a street-smart ex-cop uncovers a storm of espionage and murder on the streets of New York, while in a Long Island suburb a civic demonstration against the Russian mission masks a desperate duel of n

Cold War EraSprawling EpicEspionageMale Lead
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The Company

Robert Littell · 894 pages

From the back cover: Welcome to the Company - better known as the CIA to outsiders. With a sharp eye for the pathos and absurdity of the spy game, internationally renowned novelist Robert Littell seamlessly weaves together history and fiction to create a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga that races across a landscape spanning the legendary Berlin Base of the 1950s, the Soviet invasion

Cold War EraEspionageSprawling EpicHistorical Fiction
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The Untouchable

John Banville · 410 pages

(From the Hardcover edition) Twenty years after his "retirement," ex-spy Victor Maskell attempts to come to terms with what has happened to his life by embarking on his memoirs. This is the plot which fuels Banville's stunning new novel--a story that goes beyond the mere facts of espionage to penetrate the intricate heart of the spy.

Cold War EraEspionageLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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The Parsifal Mosaic

Robert Ludlum · 768 pages

Cold War EraEspionageSprawling EpicMale Lead
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The Innocent

Ian McEwan · 270 pages

It was 1955 and the corpse of post-war Berlin was crawling with spies. A British Post Office technician began his descent into ever deeper echelons of electronic surveillance beneath the surface of Berlin. The author also wrote "The Child in Time".

Cold War EraEspionageLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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Expo 58

Jonathan Coe · 273 pages

An English public employee becomes embroiled in a Soviet plot while he oversees the construction of an authentic British pub being showcased at the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels.

Cold War EraEspionageLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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The Lacuna

Barbara Kingsolver · 528 pages

In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico-from a coastal

Cold War EraSprawling EpicLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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Early Warning

Jane Smiley · 475 pages

Family patriarch Walter Langdon has died, and his children have fanned out across the country. The narrative moves year by year from 1953 to 1986, encompassing Cold War blinkeredness, Sixties rebellion, and escalating wealth into the Eighties.

Cold War EraSprawling EpicLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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An Honorable Man

Paul Vidich · 278 pages

"This gripping first novel in a spy thriller series, set in Washington D.C. at the height of the Red Scare, investigates a double agent in the CIA whose betrayals threaten to compromise the two lead investigators, the Agency, and the entire nation"-- Washington D.C., 1953. As the Cold War heats up, the CIA is reeling from a double agent within their midst. Someone is selling secrets to the Soviet

Cold War EraEspionageHistorical FictionConspiracy
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The Sum of All Fears

Tom Clancy · 914 pages

Peace may finally be at hand in the Middle East -- as Jack Ryan lays the groundwork for a plan that could end centuries of conflict. But ruthless terrorists have a final, desperate card to play; with one terrible act, distrust mounts, forces collide, and the floundering U.S. president seems unable to cope with the crisis. With the world on the verge of nuclear disaster, Ryan must frantically seek

Cold War EraEspionageSprawling EpicConspiracy
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Curtain of Death

W.E.B. Griffin, William E. Butterworth IV · 531 pages

When two WACs are accosted by Soviet NKGB agents from an officers' club in 1946 Munich and kill three of their attackers to escape, the incident triggers shock waves that have major repercussions throughout a fledgling CIA.

Cold War EraEspionageHistorical FictionConspiracy
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Golden Fox

Wilbur Smith · 473 pages

Cold War EraEspionageSprawling EpicHistorical Fiction
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The Tears of Autumn

Charles McCarry · 276 pages

Influential secret agent Paul Christopher pursues a dangerous theory about the assassination of President Kennedy, an investigation that threatens American foreign policy.

Cold War EraEspionageHistorical FictionMale Lead
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The Odessa File

Frederick Forsyth · 334 pages

The life-and-death hunt for a notorious Nazi criminal unfolds against a background of international arms deals. As the story leads to its final dramatic confrontation on a bleak winter's hill-top, the question every reader asked at the end of The Day of the Jackal will inevitably be asked again: Can this be fiction?

Cold War EraEspionageHistorical FictionMale Lead
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When the Doves Disappeared

Sofi Oksanen · 320 pages

Cold War EraEspionageLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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Istanbul Passage

Joseph Kanon

"From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Stardust, The Good German, and Los Alamos--a gripping tale of an American undercover agent in 1945 Istanbul who descends into the murky cat-and-mouse world of compromise and betrayal that will come to define the entire post-war era. A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul has spent the war as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even American b

Cold War EraEspionageHistorical FictionConspiracy
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A Map of Betrayal

Ha Jin · 347 pages

"From the award-winning author of Waiting: a spare, haunting tale of espionage and conflicted loyalties that spans half a century in the entwined histories of two countries--China and the United States--and two families as it explores the complicated terrain of love and honor. When Lilian Shang, born and raised in America, discovers her father's diary after the death of her parents, she is shocked

Cold War EraEspionageLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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Old Flames

John Lawton · 448 pages

Cold War EraEspionageHistorical FictionConspiracy
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Our Man in Havana

Graham Greene · 240 pages

Wormold's daughter had reached an expensive age - so he accepted a mysterious Englishman's offer of extra income. All he has to do is run agents, file reports, and spy. But his fake reports have an alarming tendency to come true.

Cold War EraEspionageLiterary FictionMale Lead
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The Tower

Uwe Tellkamp · 1,015 pages

In derelict Dresden a cultivated, middle-class family does all it can to cope amid the Communist downfall. This striking tapestry of the East German experience is told through the tangled lives of a soldier, surgeon, nurse and publisher. With evocative detail, Uwe Tellkamp masterfully reveals the myriad perspectives of the time as people battled for individuality, retreated to nostalgia, chose to

Cold War EraSprawling EpicLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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Cold War EraEspionageConspiracyMale Lead
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Edge of Eternity

Ken Follett · 1,120 pages

Cold War EraSprawling EpicEspionageHistorical Fiction

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