Mark your calendars and join us on Thursday, December 7 at
7pm for a live reading of Charles Dickens’ beloved story, “A Christmas Carol.” Your favorite neighborhood librarians, shop
owners, and friends will appear as characters in the story. The reading should last approximately one
hour and live music will accompany.
Admission is free and cider, hot chocolate, and cookies will be
available!
This week, the Genre Reading Group met to discussion spy/espionage
novels!
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
Cayce Pollard is a new kind of prophet—a world-renowned
“coolhunter” who predicts the hottest trends. While in London to evaluate the
redesign of a famous corporate logo, she’s offered a different assignment: find
the creator of the obscure, enigmatic video clips being uploaded to the
internet—footage that is generating massive underground buzz worldwide.
Still haunted by the memory of her missing father—a Cold War security guru who disappeared in downtown Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001—Cayce is soon traveling through parallel universes of marketing, globalization, and terror, heading always for the still point where the three converge. From London to Tokyo to Moscow, she follows the implications of a secret as disturbing—and compelling—as the twenty-first century promises to be...
Still haunted by the memory of her missing father—a Cold War security guru who disappeared in downtown Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001—Cayce is soon traveling through parallel universes of marketing, globalization, and terror, heading always for the still point where the three converge. From London to Tokyo to Moscow, she follows the implications of a secret as disturbing—and compelling—as the twenty-first century promises to be...
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse—mathematical genius
and young Captain in the U.S. Navy—is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an
outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of
those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse
and Detachment 2702—commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep the
Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's
fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse
and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and
his forces.
Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's
crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven"
in Southeast Asia—a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free
of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the
endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy,
to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the
dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive
conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code
called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future
of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn.
A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most
accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound
and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between
World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark
day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought and creative daring; the
product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.
All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer
Six years ago in Vienna, terrorists took over a hundred
hostages, and the rescue attempt went terribly wrong. The CIA's Vienna station
gathered intel during those tense hours, assimilating facts from the ground and
from an agent on the inside. So when it all went wrong, the question had to be
asked: Had their agent been compromised, and how?
Two of the CIA's case officers in Vienna, Henry Pelham and
Celia Harrison, were lovers at the time, and on the night of the hostage crisis
Celia decided she'd had enough. She left the agency, married and had children,
and now lives in idyllic Carmel-by-the-Sea. Henry is still a case officer in
Vienna, and has traveled to California to see her one more time, to relive the
past, maybe, or to put it behind him once and for all.
But neither of them can forget that long-ago question: Had their agent been compromised? If so, how? Each also wonders what role tonight's dinner companion might have played in the way the tragedy unfolded six years ago.
The James Bond Series by Ian Fleming
The James Bond literary franchise is a series
of novels and short stories, first published in 1953 by Ian Fleming, a
British author, journalist, and former naval intelligence
officer. James Bond, often referred to by his code name, 007, is a
British Secret Service agent; the character was created by journalist
and author Ian Fleming, and first appeared in his 1953 novel Casino
Royale; the books are set in a contemporary period, between May 1951 and
February 1964. Fleming went on to write a total of twelve novels and two
collections of short stories, all written at his Jamaican home Goldeneye and
published annually. Two of his books were published after his death in 1964.
1. Casino Royale
2. Live and Let Die
3. Moonraker
4. Diamonds Are Forever
5. From Russia, with Love
6. Doctor No
7. Goldfinger
8. For Your Eyes Only
9. Thunderball
10. The Spy Who Loved Me
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
12. You Only Live Twice
13. The Man with the Golden Gun
14. Octopussy and The Living Daylights
2. Live and Let Die
3. Moonraker
4. Diamonds Are Forever
5. From Russia, with Love
6. Doctor No
7. Goldfinger
8. For Your Eyes Only
9. Thunderball
10. The Spy Who Loved Me
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
12. You Only Live Twice
13. The Man with the Golden Gun
14. Octopussy and The Living Daylights
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well
as six other awards, The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the
year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared
to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic
of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two
minds,” a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to
America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other
Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist
superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of
identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love
and friendship.
Whirlwind by Joseph Garber
Charlie McKenzie was the best in the business of CIA dirty
work -- until he was double-crossed by his bosses and jailed to cover up a
mammoth intelligence blunder. Now they want him back. And Charlie wants to get
even.
A Russian spy has stumbled upon the most important U.S.
military breakthrough since the atomic bomb -- a top-secret technology called
Whirlwind -- and only the disgraced former operative has the skills necessary
to retrieve it. But Charlie already knows too much. And once Whirlwind is back
in Company hands, his enemies intend to betray him again -- and put him out of
the game permanently.
However, Charlie McKenzie has other plans. And he won't be
that easy to kill.
Mata Hari: the name breathes mystery, intrigue and sexual
allure. Who better to play the notorious World War I spy than Greta Garbo, the
enigmatic, exquisite screen icon called The Swedish Sphinx? Garbo is
mesmerizing as the dancer-turned-German secret agent in a wartime Paris
seething with secrets and betrayal. The notable supporting cast includes Lionel
Barrymore as a Russian general besotted with her, Lewis Stone as an icy master
spy, and Ramon Novarro as a handsome aviator who wins the heart Mata Hari did
not know she possessed. With the world at war, love was her weapon. And the
only men she couldn't seduce were the 12 in the firing squad that ended her
tragic and tumultuous life.
Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive draws on the rich palette of
Poe's evocative imagery and sharply drawn plots to tell the real story of the
notorious author. Featuring Tony Award-winning actor Denis O'Hare, the film
explores the misrepresentations of Poe as an alcoholic madman. It reveals the
way in which Poe tapped into what it means to be a human in our modern and
sometimes frightening world.
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
MI6’s man in Havana is Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner
salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his
job, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and
dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories
start coming disturbingly true…
First published in 1959 against the backdrop of the Cold War, Our Man in Havana remains one of Graham Greene’s most widely read novels. It is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire of government intelligence that still resonates today.
First published in 1959 against the backdrop of the Cold War, Our Man in Havana remains one of Graham Greene’s most widely read novels. It is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire of government intelligence that still resonates today.
The Polish Officer by Alan Furst
September 1939. As Warsaw falls to Hitler’s Wehrmacht,
Captain Alexander de Milja is recruited by the intelligence service of the
Polish underground. His mission: to transport the national gold reserve to
safety, hidden on a refugee train to Bucharest. Then, in the back alleys and
black-market bistros of Paris, in the tenements of Warsaw, with partizan
guerrillas in the frozen forests of the Ukraine, and at Calais Harbor during an
attack by British bombers, de Milja fights in the war of the shadows in a world
without rules, a world of danger, treachery, and betrayal.
A Legacy of Spies by John Le Carre
Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George
Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living
out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a
letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War
past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the
toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim
Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinized by a
generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its
justifications.
Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.
Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas
watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the
head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of
retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for
revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is
set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence
Service—with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to
make the game play out just as Control wants. Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from
the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.
The Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva
Gabriel Allon is a master art restorer and sometime officer
of Israeli intelligence.
1. The Kill Artist
2. The English Assassin
3. The Confessor
4. A Death in Vienna
5. Prince of Fire
6. The Messenger
7. The Secret Servant
8. Moscow Rules
9. The Defector
10. The Rembrandt Affair
11. Portrait of a Spy
12. The Fallen Angel
13. The English Girl
14. The Heist
15. The English Spy
16. The Black Widow
17. House of Spies
2. The English Assassin
3. The Confessor
4. A Death in Vienna
5. Prince of Fire
6. The Messenger
7. The Secret Servant
8. Moscow Rules
9. The Defector
10. The Rembrandt Affair
11. Portrait of a Spy
12. The Fallen Angel
13. The English Girl
14. The Heist
15. The English Spy
16. The Black Widow
17. House of Spies
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