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Recommendations based on The Spy Who Came In from the Coldby John le Carré
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
by John le Carré
A retired spy is called back into action to uncover a mole in the British Secret Service.
Control , chief of the Circus, suspects one of the five senior intelligence officers at the Circus to be a long-standing Soviet mole and assigns code names with the intention that should his agent ... (Wikipedia)
Smiley's People
by John le Carré
Retired spy Smiley is thrust back into the world of espionage to uncover a deadly conspiracy.
John le Carre's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge and have earned him – and his hero, British ... (Goodreads)
Call for the Dead
by John le Carré
A spy thriller about a British agent's investigation into a diplomat's mysterious death.
Following a wartime excursion undercover, first in Germany and then in Switzerland , George Smiley returns to England and marries Lady Ann Sercombe. Although a devout husband, Ann is serially ... (Wikipedia)
The Day of the Jackal
by Frederick Forsyth
An assassin attempts to kill the president of France in a thrilling race against time.
The book begins in 1962 with the (historical) failed attempt on de Gaulle 's life plotted by, among others, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart : ... (Wikipedia)
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
A Franciscan friar investigates a series of murders in a medieval monastery, uncovering a sinister plot.
In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)
The Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler
Private eye investigates a complex case involving a wealthy family and blackmail.
Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the home of the wealthy and elderly General Sternwood, in the month of October. He wants Marlowe to deal with an attempt by a bookseller named Arthur ... (Wikipedia)
The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
Detective Sam Spade must solve a mysterious case involving a precious artifact and a deadly trio of criminals.
‘Sam’ Spade is a private detective in San Francisco , in partnership with Miles Archer. The beautiful "Miss Wonderley" hires them to follow Floyd Thursby, who has run off with her sister. Archer ... (Wikipedia)
The Quiet American
by Graham Greene
A journalist's exploration of a conflict between a French colonial regime and Vietnamese nationalists.
Thomas Fowler is a British journalist in his fifties who has covered the French war in Vietnam for more than two years. He meets a young American idealist named Alden Pyle, a CIA agent working ... (Wikipedia)
Casino Royale
by Ian Fleming
A secret agent is sent on a mission to defeat a dangerous criminal mastermind.
M , the enigmatic leader of the British Secret Service , assigns James Bond , a young agent newly promoted to "007" status after killing a Norwegian double agent during the war , to bankrupt Le ... (Wikipedia)
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)
Under the Volcano
by Malcolm Lowry
A day in the life of an alcoholic British consul in Mexico, struggling with his inner demons and relationships.
Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. His debilitating malaise is drinking, an activity that has overshadowed his life. On the most fateful day of the consul's ... (Goodreads)
Our Man in Havana
by Graham Greene
A humorous tale of espionage in Cold War Cuba, as a vacuum cleaner salesman attempts to outwit the British Secret Service.
Graham Greene's classic Cuban spy story, now with a new package and a new introduction, First published in 1959,, Our Man in Havana, is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a ... (Goodreads)
East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
Exploration of the timeless struggle between good and evil, set against a backdrop of a family saga.
In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas ... (Goodreads)
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
A journey into the depths of the human psyche, exploring the darkness of colonialism.
Aboard the Nellie , anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend , Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow ... (Wikipedia)
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
A butler reflects on his past, grappling with the lost opportunities of a life devoted to service.
The novel tells, in first-person narration , the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (who is recently deceased, and whom Stevens ... (Wikipedia)
For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
A soldier's story of courage and survival in the Spanish Civil War.
The novel graphically describes the brutality of the Spanish Civil War. It is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist, Robert Jordan. It draws on Hemingway's own ... (Wikipedia)
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
A violent and bloody western epic, exploring the depths of human depravity.
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." ... (Barnes & Noble)
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
A soldier's harrowing experience of the horrors of war.
The book tells the story of Paul Bäumer, who belongs to a group of German soldiers on the Western Front during World War I . The patriotic speeches of his teacher Kantorek had led the whole class to ... (Wikipedia)
The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
A family drama exploring the complexities of relationships, aging and life’s choices.
The novel shifts back and forth through the late 20th century, intermittently following spouses Alfred and Enid Lambert as they raise their children Gary, Chip, and Denise in the traditional ... (Wikipedia)
Dubliners
by James Joyce
Collection of stories about everyday life in Dublin, exploring the Irish psyche.
This work of art reflects life in Ireland at the turn of the last century, and by rejecting euphemism, reveals to the Irish their unromantic realities. Each of the 15 stories offers glimpses into the ... (Goodreads)
The Odessa File
by Frederick Forsyth
The uncovering of a sinister Nazi plot, while searching for the truth of a young boy's death.
In November 1963, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy , Peter Miller, a German freelance crime reporter, follows an ambulance to the apartment of Salomon Tauber, a Holocaust survivor ... (Wikipedia)
The Bourne Identity
by Robert Ludlum
An amnesiac assassin must uncover his past and true identity in a deadly search for the truth.
The preface of the novel consists of two real-life newspaper articles from 1975 about terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as " Carlos the Jackal ." The story opens with gunfire on a boat in the ... (Wikipedia)
American Pastoral
by Philip Roth
A man's experience of the American Dream gone wrong, as his daughter's political radicalism unravels his family life.
Seymour Irving Levov is born and raised in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey , in 1927 as the elder son of a successful Jewish American glove manufacturer, Lou Levov, and his wife Sylvia. ... (Wikipedia)
Gorky Park
by Martin Cruz Smith
A thrilling murder mystery, set in the Soviet Union, uncovering secrets and conspiracies.
The story follows Arkady Renko , a chief investigator for the Moscow militsiya , who is assigned to a case involving three corpses found in Gorky Park , an amusement park in Moscow. The victims - two ... (Wikipedia)
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A humorous exploration of life's absurdities, through a madcap journey of a protagonist.
Kilgore Trout is a widely published, but ignored and virtually invisible writer who is invited to deliver a keynote address at a local arts festival in distant Midland City. Dwayne Hoover is a ... (Wikipedia)
Farewell, My Lovely
by Raymond Chandler
A hard-boiled detective's adventures as he investigates a complex case of murder and corruption.
Private detective Philip Marlowe is investigating a dead-end missing person case when he sees a felon, Moose Malloy, barging into a nightclub called Florian's, looking for his ex-girlfriend Velma ... (Wikipedia)
Berlin Game
by Len Deighton
A British spy in Cold War Berlin must uncover a traitor in his own agency. Full of twists and turns, it's a classic espionage thriller.
The time is the early 1980s. A highly placed agent in East Germany codenamed "Brahms Four" wants to come to the West. Brahms Four is one of Britain's most reliable, most valuable agents behind the ... (Wikipedia)
Stoner
by John Williams
An academic's life of quiet desperation, finding solace in literature.
William Stoner is born on a small farm in 1891. After high school, the county agent advises he go to agriculture school. Stoner enrolls in the University of Missouri , where all agriculture students ... (Wikipedia)
The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
A collection of stories about the Vietnam War, interweaving the past and present.
In 1979, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato —a novel about the Vietnam War—won the National Book Award. In this, his second work of fiction about Vietnam, O'Brien's unique artistic vision is again ... (Goodreads)
No Country for Old Men
by Cormac McCarthy
A gripping tale of violence and pursuit in Texas' desolate landscape.
The plot follows the interweaving paths of the three central characters (Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh , and Ed Tom Bell) set in motion by events related to a drug deal gone bad near the ... (Wikipedia)
