Alan Furst Libros

From Alan Furst, whom The New York Times calls “America’s preeminent spy novelist,” comes an epic story of romantic love, love of country, and love of freedom–the story of a secret war fought in elegant hotel bars and first-class railway cars, in the mountains of Spain and the backstreets of Berlin. It is an inspiring, thrilling saga of everyday people forced by their hearts’ passion to fight in the war against tyranny. By 1938, hundreds of Italian intellectuals, lawyers and journalists, university professors and scientists had escaped Mussolini’s fascist government and taken refuge in Paris. There, amid the struggles of émigré life, they founded an Italian resistance, with an underground press that smuggled news and encouragement back to Italy. Fighting fascism with typewriters, they produced 512 clandestine newspapers. The Foreign Correspondent is their story. Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers’ hotel. But this is no romantic traged–it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini’s fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine émigré newspaper. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and secured a job as a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor. Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain, reporting on the last campaign of the Spanish civil war. But as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Sûreté, by agents of the OVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondent is a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or murder. The Foreign Correspondent is the story of Carlo Weisz and a handful of antifascists: the army officer known as “Colonel Ferrara,” who fights for a lost cause in Spain; Arturo Salamone, the shrewd leader of a resistance group in Paris; and Christa von Schirren, the woman who becomes the love of Weisz’s life, herself involved in a doomed resistance underground in Berlin. The Foreign Correspondent is Alan Furst at his absolute best–taut and powerful, enigmatic and romantic, with sharp, seductive writing that takes the reader through darkness and intrigue to a spectacular denouement. From the Hardcover edition.

'A wonderfully evocative picture of wartime Paris and the moral maze of resistance' Mail on Sunday

From the master of the wartime espionage novel; a thrilling story of subterfuge at sea

The story of Polish officer Captain Alexander De Milja, who is recruited into the Polish secret service just before the Germans overrun Warsaw. As the war progresses, De Milja is involved in a number of missions against the Germans, constantly risking his own life for the sake of a free Europe.

Paris, 1938. Nicholas Morath, former Hungarian cavalry officer, returns home to his young mistress in the 7th arrondissement. He's been in Vienna where, amid the mobs screaming for Hitler, he's done a quiet favour for his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi. Polanyi is a diplomat and, desperate to stop his country's drift into alliance with Nazi Germany, he trades in conspiracy - with SS renegades, Abwehr officers, British spies and NKVD defectors, leading Morath deeper and deeper into danger as Europe edges towards war.

Frederic Stahl, a young man from Vienna, escapes to America and becomes a Hollywood star. As war looms in Europe in 1939, he decides to film in Paris, immersing himself in a world of correspondents, exiled republicans, and spies. This story captures the tension of a continent on the brink during The Phony War.

Set against the backdrop of 1930s Europe, a young man's murder ignites a series of dramatic events for his brother, Khristo Stoianev. After joining the NKVD and fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Khristo faces the looming threat of Stalin's purges, prompting his escape to Paris. The narrative intricately weaves historical events with personal turmoil, exploring themes of loyalty, betrayal, and the impact of political upheaval on individual lives.

"Autumn 1941: In a shabby hotel off the place Clichy, the course of the war is about to change. German tanks are rolling toward Moscow. Stalin has issued a decree: All partisan operatives are to strike behind enemy lines--from Kiev to Brittany. Set in the back streets of Paris and deep in occupied France, Red Gold moves with quiet menace as predators from the dark edge of war--arms dealers, lawyers, spies, and assassins--emerge from the shadows of the Parisian underworld. In their midst is Jean Casson, once a well-to-do film producer, now a target of the Gestapo living on a few francs a day. As the occupation tightens, Casson is drawn into an ill-fated mission: running guns to combat units of the French Communist Party. Reprisals are brutal. At last the real resistance has begun. Red Gold masterfully re-creates the shadow world of French resistance in the darkest days of World War II."--Back cover

A tale set in World War II Macedonia finds senior police official Costa Zannis working with a resistance cell and secret operatives from various European regions to organize an escape route from Berlin to neutral Turkey. By the author of The Spies of Warsaw.