Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists: Spy and Political Thrillers

For decades, Taiwan has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. An independent nation to the rest of the world, it is considered a rogue province by the PRC. Previous governments have tried to conquer the island using economic force and diplomatic pressure, but new Chinese President Li Jian Jun is done fooling around. He’s devised a secret military operation to take the island. Only one man knows how to stop Li’s mad and bloody plan for reunification and that’s Minister of Defense Qin Haiyu.
(Description from Amazon)

The search for a 16th-century Vatican debt known as the Pledge of Christ leads Cotton Malone into a high-stakes quest involving the lost Medici lineage, while the future of Italy's prime minister and the papacy hang in the balance, all depending on the Medici's possible return.
(Description from NoveList)

Follows a senior MI6 agent's race to unmask a Russian mole in the UK government while proving the innocence of her team in a young woman's murder. (Description from NoveList)

Paul Brightman is a man on the run, living under an assumed name in a small New England town with a million-dollar bounty on his head. When his security is breached, Paul is forced to flee into the New Hampshire wilderness to evade Russian operatives who can seemingly predict his every move.
(Description from NoveList)

The Central Intelligence Agency is in crisis. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Congress is questioning the organization's necessity. Interim CIA director Thomas Stansfield must fight for his agency's survival while explaining why the previous candidate for his job was found murdered in a French hotel--surrounded by booze, cash, and dead men.
(Description from NoveList)

Fifty years after revealing Odessa’s secrets, Peter Miller is retired and has cared for grandson Georg since his son and daughter-in-law died in a tragic car accident; now Georg’s reputation for fearless journalism in growing fast, and Odessa has been replaced by Medusa, which has even higher levels of secret power.
(Description from NoveList)

When a hacked database known as the Files upends the intelligence community, with careers destroyed and assassinations spreading from Europe to the U.S., Treadstone sends Jason Bourne to get or destroy them before the Chinese or the Russians--and Bourne's ex-lover, treacherous spy Johanna, may be the only one who can help him.
(Description from NoveList)

When former spy Maggie Bird retired to the seaside hamlet of Purity, Maine, she settled in for a quiet life with breathtaking views. But enemies from her past soon threatened to destroy everything. After a teenager vanishes—and Maggie’s neighbor becomes the prime suspect—she joins the investigation, determined to prove her friend’s innocence.
(Description from NoveList)

The Gray Man, aka assassin Court Gentry, must face miles of frozen wasteland and the Russian police state to free his lover, ex-spy Zoya Zakharova, from Penal Colony IK22.
(Description from NoveList)

David Cartwright, long buried, has left his library to the Spooks' College in Oxford, and now it turns out that one of the books has gone missing. Or perhaps it never existed. Now River, once a "slow horse" of Slough House, MI5's outpost for demoted and disgraced spies, has some time to kill while awaiting medical clearance to return to work, and investigating the secrets of his grandfather's library seems a harmless activity.
(Description from NoveList)

CIA operations officer Michael Dunne is tasked with infiltrating an Italian news organization that smells like a front for an enemy intelligence service. It is headed by an American journalist, but the self-styled "people's bandits" run a cyber operation unlike anything the CIA has seen before. Fast, slick and indiscriminate, they steal secrets from everywhere and anyone, and exploit them in ways the CIA can neither understand or stop.
(Description from catalog)

A novel based on the real-life story of socialite-spy Nancy Wake features the astonishing woman who killed a Nazi with her bare hands and went on to become one of the most decorated women in WWII. - description from Novelist

The President of the United States is up for reelection, and her husband is on trial for murder. Is the First Gentleman a killer? A pair of brilliant investigative journalists set out to answer that burning question about the NFL star-turned-political spouse.
(Description from NoveList)

Joining the elite Bletchley Park codebreaking team during World War II, three women from very different walks of life uncover a spy's dangerous agenda years later against the backdrop of the royal wedding of Elizabeth and Philip.
(Description from catalog)

A twisting, sophisticated World War II novel following a spy who goes undercover as a part of MI5. But in chasing the secrets of others, how much will she lose of herself?
(Description from catalog)

Pike Logan uncovers a geopolitical scheme that has spiraled out of control in India in this latest pulse-pounding thriller from New York Times bestselling author and former special forces officer Brad Taylor.
(Description from NoveList)

"From New York Times bestselling and Harvey Award-winning graphic novelist Matt Kindt comes this deluxe hardcover edition of the meta-spy thriller exploring the geography of espionage through interconnected short stories that can be read sequentially and out-of-order. Super Spy is Pulp Fiction meets James Bond-fifty-two interwoven short stories about cyanide, pen guns, heartbreak, and betrayal. Each story follows the life of a spy during World War II. Spanning the globe from Spain to France and Germany, this book takes the reader on a tour of the everyday life of the spy. From the small lies and deceptions to the larger secrets that everyone hides, Super Spy reveals the nature of espionage and how an individual can be lost and also find redemption. A children's book is something more than it seems . . . a woman swims the English Channel to deliver a deadly secret . . . a German spy desperately seeks escape for herself and her daughter . . . and a spy continues to serve his country even beyond death."-- Provided by publisher.