Product Description
Charles McCarry has long been heralded as one of the select espionage writers who shines as a brilliant and unique novelist in his own right. Second Sight is the seventh in the series that follows the legendary spy Paul Christopher–a man ensnared by a line of work that never fails to exert its insidious influence outside professional boundaries.

Throughout the Arab world, U.S. agents are being kidnapped and brain-drained by an unidentified enemy armed with a diabolical new drug. Christopher’s old friend and superior in “The Outfit” calls him out of quiet retirement with a command he feels he must obey. But what begins for Christopher as a global manhunt swiftly turns into something far closer to home. For the key to the danger he must defuse is a secret buried deep in his own perilous past.

In a breathtaking, nerve-twisting plot that spins its way from pre-Nazi Germany to Vietnam, old scores have to be settled, grim reckonings must be made. And at the bottom of it all, a ravishing, strangely gifted Berber woman reappears like a half-forgotten memory, holding Paul Christopher’s fate in her hands. McCarry’s mastery is unmatched as he weaves past and present together in this world of secrets.

About the Author
Charles McCarry is the author, most recently, of the acclaimed thriller Old Boys. He established an international reputation as a novelist with the publication of his worldwide bestseller The Tears of Autumn in 1975 and is the author of nine other critically acclaimed novels, including The Miernik Dossier, The Secret Lovers, and The Better Angels. During the Cold War, he was an intelligence officer operating under deep cover in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Synopsis
Bagdad, Arizona, is a town once prosperous but now in decay, a place where the lives of those shackled by age or circumstance are played out against the backdrop of the visible horizon. A weird event attracts the media and puts Bagdad back on the map.

This is a fun adventure novel set in the Jewish kingdom of the Khazars. It follows the adventures of Zelikman and Amram. They find themselves in the middle of a struggle for control of the Khazar Empire, supporting the son Filaq of the deposed (killed) former ruler. The son soon turns out to be a daughter, and the fortunes of all go from bad to worse.
It reminds be very much of novels written pre WWII, in its wording and innocence.
A very enjoyable novel, with enough twists and turns to keep you hooked. The only let down is, I found it a bit short, and it does seem like part of a larger tale, and Gentlemen of the Road could well just be a middle section of a greater and larger work.

Product Description
Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, sprang from an early passion for the derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books. Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollicking spirit of legendary adventures–from The Arabian Nights to Alexandre Dumas to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories–in a wonderful new novel brimming with breathless action, raucous humor, cliff-hanging suspense, and a cast of colorful characters worthy of Scheherazade’s most tantalizing tales.

They’re an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can–as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. No strangers to tight scrapes and close shaves, they’ve left many a fist shaking in their dust, tasted their share of enemy steel, and made good any number of hasty exits under hostile circumstances.

None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire. Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-tempered young royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so will demand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and foolhardy bravado . . . not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at least supply the former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to become generals in a full-scale revolution? The only certainty is that getting there–along a path paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of–will be much more than half the fun.

About the Author
Michael Chabon is the author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; Wonder Boys, which was made into a critically acclaimed film; The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize; The Final Solution: A Story of Detection; and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. He is also the author of two short-story collections and a young adult novel, Summerland. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

I’d like to think this is the kind of spy book Umberto Eco would write. Well-researched, plausible plot. This is not James Bond. Instead, the reader is draw into a facinating puzzle: how does somebody sneak into a top secret military base in Siberia? And, how do you get out? Johnny Porter is an unforgetable character and the scenery and action is crisply told.

Synopsis
Canadian-Indian, brilliant linguist, physically courageous, Johnny Porter finds a summons on his desk in Oxford to embark upon a mission only he can accomplish - to infiltrate a research station hidden deep under the Siberian permafrost, and so secret that no scientist ever leaves it alive.

I purchased this book many moons ago from a junk shop. It is the first U.K. edition (1968) and I’ve not read it for years. It is always a pleasure to dip back into reads from the past and this was no exception. It captures the state of Russia during the Tzars and their battle for control by the suppression of all and any by oppression and murder that sparks the passions of the ignorant masses. A classic novel that stands the test of time.

Product Description
A classic that won Malamud both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book AwardThe Fixer (1966) is Bernard Malamud’s best-known and most acclaimed novel — one that makes manifest his roots in Russian fiction, especially that of Isaac Babel.Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit.