Here are 100 books that Mobius fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a former U.S. Army service member and a student of life, espionage and intelligence have often been staples in my research (as a creative writer), the cornerstones of my professional experience (as a combat veteran and slum baby), and a central theme in most of my novels. I’ve always enjoyed dissecting the inherent struggles of mankind and their inevitable fallouts—the pain, the joy, the misguided hopes and leaps of faith. Espionage and intelligence weaponize these sentiments. They transform them into actionable information and, sometimes, life-altering schemes.
That is what drives my work and sparks my interest in this subject matter: the psychological warfare we subject ourselves—and others—to.
This book takes a comic yet piercing look at espionage.
Jim Wormold, a vacuum-cleaner salesman in pre-revolutionary Cuba, is recruited by MI6 out of desperation and fabricates his spy reports. He invents agents, sketches of weaponized vacuum parts, and absurd clandestine plots—all to keep the money coming and satisfy his daughter’s extravagances.
What makes the novel shine is its satire of the spy apparatus—how credulity, vanity, and bureaucratic inertia turn fiction into danger. Greene balances light humor with real human stakes: financial strain, moral compromise, a man pretending to be something he is not. Even decades after its writing, Our Man in Havana remains sharp, funny, and deeply relevant in its critique of power, truth, and illusion.
This is both your main course and palate cleanser. Absolutely riveting!
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. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I spent 21 years in the Central Intelligence Agency as a linguist, analyst, and speechwriter. It was a love-hate relationship. I found the culture of the place fascinating and sometimes maddening. The intellectual challenge was addictive. I met some of the best people I’ve ever known and a few of the worst. I learned about high stakes and moral ambiguity, intellectual integrity and bald careerism, selfless service, and rollicking arrogance. I discovered that the intelligence world is a world apart yet an eerily accurate reflection of broader society. I’ve chosen books written by authors who spent time in intelligence work and crafted novels that define and sometimes defy the spy genre.
This book introduced me to the magnificent John le Carré and his grey man, George Smiley. The atmosphere is cold and heavy, the hero is unassuming, and the light he holds against the darkness is small and flickering.
To unravel the truth, Smiley focuses on one piece of information that doesn’t fit. He doesn’t stop until that last piece falls into place and presents him with a wrenching choice.
After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the man's death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan's widow to find out what could have led him to such desperation. But on the very day that Smiley is ordered off the enquiry he receives an urgent letter from the dead man. Do the East Germans - and their agents - know more about this man's death than the Circus previously imagined?
Le Carre's debut novel, Call for the Dead, introduced…
I spent 21 years in the Central Intelligence Agency as a linguist, analyst, and speechwriter. It was a love-hate relationship. I found the culture of the place fascinating and sometimes maddening. The intellectual challenge was addictive. I met some of the best people I’ve ever known and a few of the worst. I learned about high stakes and moral ambiguity, intellectual integrity and bald careerism, selfless service, and rollicking arrogance. I discovered that the intelligence world is a world apart yet an eerily accurate reflection of broader society. I’ve chosen books written by authors who spent time in intelligence work and crafted novels that define and sometimes defy the spy genre.
I never met Alex Finley, but we worked for some of the same people, and her book triggered a flood of memories for me. Black humor thrives in counterterrorism work—partly because laughing is a more acceptable way to release tension in the workplace than crying or punching tech support.
This is broad satire but with a hefty dose of authenticity. Anyone who has worked in a bureaucracy will laugh at this novel, but if you’ve worked in an intelligence bureaucracy, you’ll be snorting coffee from your nose.
Victor Caro is a counterterrorism officer with the CYA, caught in a world where job security trumps national security. On assignment in West Africa in a post-9/11 world, he is tasked with hunting down the terrorist Omar al-Suqqit, who is looking to launch his group of ragtag militants onto the international jihadi stage. But chasing a terrorist proves an easier challenge than managing his agency’s bureaucracy. Omar, meanwhile, faces his own bureaucratic struggles as he joins forces with a global terrorist group that begins micro-managing its franchises in an effort to streamline attacks. When Victor appears on his own country’s…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I spent 21 years in the Central Intelligence Agency as a linguist, analyst, and speechwriter. It was a love-hate relationship. I found the culture of the place fascinating and sometimes maddening. The intellectual challenge was addictive. I met some of the best people I’ve ever known and a few of the worst. I learned about high stakes and moral ambiguity, intellectual integrity and bald careerism, selfless service, and rollicking arrogance. I discovered that the intelligence world is a world apart yet an eerily accurate reflection of broader society. I’ve chosen books written by authors who spent time in intelligence work and crafted novels that define and sometimes defy the spy genre.
I love this book because it doesn’t dress up espionage in a tuxedo or pretend that the world is black and white. Ashenden is a novel about humanity and hard choices rather than high-speed chases and spy gadgetry.
It is about one human lever in a relentless machine. Maugham gives us small tragedies and cold moments alone with the conscience. His literary genius makes a single death off-stage more resonant than an explosion.
When war broke out in 1914, Somerset Maugham was dispatched by the British Secret Service to Switzerland under the guise of completing a play. Multilingual, knowledgeable about many European countries and a celebrated writer, Maugham had the perfect cover, and the assignment appealed to his love of romance, and of the ridiculous. The stories collected in Ashenden are rooted in Maugham's own experiences as an agent, reflecting the ruthlessness and brutality of espionage, its intrigue and treachery, as well as its absurdity.
I have always been suspicious of government and corporate power, but it was only when my officemate in graduate school started teaching me about digital technologies that I really focused on the power relations involved in institutionalized surveillance. Eventually, I discovered the cypherpunk movement, which opposes surveillance. I wanted to know what they knew, so I started to read everything I could about surveillance. I found that few journalists and almost no academics attended to the powerful message of the cypherpunks, so I decided that I would write the first academic book about the movement, hoping that I could do my part to raise awareness about this crucial issue.
I read Bamford’s work because I wanted to understand the history of the NSA, and I was not disappointed. I loved learning, in excruciating detail, about the surveillance techniques and programs of the NSA before the internet.
This book shattered my impression that the NSA was a responsible agency that turned “bad” during the War on Terror. Bamford showed me that modern-day NSA mass surveillance, as revealed by Edward Snowden, actually represents the normal workings of the NSA rather than merely being an aberration. The most important lesson, though, was that the NSA has worked so hard to suppress the public use of encryption, the most important anti-surveillance technology we have.
In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, James Bamford exposes the inner workings of America's largest, most secretive, and arguably most intrusive intelligence agency. The NSA has long eluded public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking disregard for the law. With detailed information on the NSA's secret role in the Korean Airlines disaster, Iran-Contra, the first Gulf War, and other major world events of the 80s and 90s, this is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage.
In my teenage years, it was sci-fi (and later fantasy) comedies that made me fall in love with reading. There was just something about exploring worlds where anything could happen mixed with the joy of laughter that kept drawing me back in. Naturally, in the many...many...years that followed, I've read countless novels from a wide variety of genres, but sci-fi comedy will always hold a special place in my heart.
Is it even a list of sci-fi books if you don’t include a story with a rogue artificial intelligence? Sure, it’s not necessarily the funniestpremise, but when you throw in the fact that the A.I. in question has the mind of a six-year-old, the heroes trying to catch him are essentially his daycare providers, and the author is Scott Meyer, creator of the webcomic Basic Instructions and the Magic 2.0 series, and you’re sure to have a good time.
From the author of the popular Magic 2.0 series comes the witty tale of a mischievous A.I. gone rogue.
Al, a well-meaning but impish artificial intelligence, has the mind of a six-year-old and a penchant for tantrums. And the first one to discover just how much trouble Al could cause is Hope Takeda, the lab assistant in charge of educating and socializing him. Day care is a lot more difficult when your kid is an evolving and easily frightened A.I.
When Al manages to access the Internet and escape the lab days before his official unveiling, Hope and her team…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Passionate military members are my jam, and I feel pretty confident writing about them. First, I write erotic romance myself, giving me something of an inside view of what makes a good erotic romance with a military vibe. Second, I read a lot of them. Even if the story is a mite slow, you’ve got that alpha military guy who’s going to pull the story out. Or at least, that’s the way it’s worked in every military erotic romance I’ve read. Last, as I mentioned earlier, I was raised in the Navy. I’ve seen lots of men in uniform and the sight never fails to give me a thrill. I think I recognize that passion when I see it.
Deadly Deception is not technically about a member of the military, but Jonathan O’Halleran is guided in his actions by his recent time in the SEALs, so I say it counts. This book is fast action as Jonathan seeks a traitor who is responsible for bringing death to his family. Very steamy, so you know I liked it! Really good writing, which is always something I look for.
Navy SEAL Jonathan O’Halleran’s world is upended by tragic loss. Civilian life as a single father and hunting down the traitor responsible for bringing death to his family’s doorstep are only temporary distractions from his grief, anger, and guilt.
A tough as hell woman who doesn’t know how to trust …
Andréa Swain is a brilliant, stubborn NSA Interrogations Tactics Specialist with serious daddy issues. She is yanked from the front lines in Afghanistan and ordered to work with a surly Navy SEAL who blames her for his friend’s death.
I’m just a book-loving girl working in a corporate world who’s sick to death of the inaccurate representations of technology in fiction. FYI, tracing a phone call is instantaneous, no need to keep that pesky murderer on the line these days. Technology is so ingrained in our daily lives and most people have very limited knowledge of what it actually does, so I became fascinated with the idea of using real modern-day tech in murder mysteries. I got so obsessed with the idea I decided to write it. No Sci-Fi of future tech, it may seem farfetched, but all the electronic wizardry used in my novels is real and accurately represented.
Ah, Dan Brown. Love him or hate him, he’s a paragon of the modern thriller. Let’s go way back to 1998. It was pre-DaVinci Code, and he released his first novel, Digital Fortress. For the time period, it was a unique idea. A woman cryptologist at the NSA gets embroiled in a high-stakes murder mystery and the only way through is to solve the code. There are a lot of issues with this book, primarily that the author couldn’t be bothered to check his work and misuses bits and bytes throughout the whole novel which makes the code-breaking premise ridiculous. But to be fair, this was 1998 and for a first novel, it’s still a fun ride. So, if you’re a Dan Brown fan or love a fast-paced easy read give it a try. If you have even a basic understanding of how encryption works you may…
A former National Security Agency programmer threatens to release a mathematical formula that will allow organized crime and terrorism to skyrocket, unless the code-breaking computer that is used to keep them in check but that violates civil rights is not exposed to the public.
I have always been suspicious of government and corporate power, but it was only when my officemate in graduate school started teaching me about digital technologies that I really focused on the power relations involved in institutionalized surveillance. Eventually, I discovered the cypherpunk movement, which opposes surveillance. I wanted to know what they knew, so I started to read everything I could about surveillance. I found that few journalists and almost no academics attended to the powerful message of the cypherpunks, so I decided that I would write the first academic book about the movement, hoping that I could do my part to raise awareness about this crucial issue.
This may be the first book about surveillance that I ever read, and it left a lasting impression on me. I was shocked by the details in Greenwald’s analysis of the NSA documents provided to him by Edward Snowden. I was convinced that something had to be done about mass surveillance.
It was really the later chapters of the book that hooked me. I appreciated Greenwald’s description of the scale of NSA surveillance and the social harms that result from mass surveillance practices. I was also awakened to some of the problems in mainstream journalism when Greenwald recounted his experiences publishing on the Snowden documents. Though some journalists, like Bamford and Burnham, have been willing to challenge the government on surveillance, Greenwald taught me that such journalists are quite rare.
A groundbreaking look at the NSA surveillance scandal, from the reporter who broke the story, Glenn Greenwald, star of Citizenfour, the Academy Award-winning documentary on Edward Snowden
In May 2013, Glenn Greenwald set out for Hong Kong to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have astonishing evidence of pervasive government spying and insisted on communicating only through heavily encrypted channels. That source turned out to be the 29-year-old NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency's widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I have always been suspicious of government and corporate power, but it was only when my officemate in graduate school started teaching me about digital technologies that I really focused on the power relations involved in institutionalized surveillance. Eventually, I discovered the cypherpunk movement, which opposes surveillance. I wanted to know what they knew, so I started to read everything I could about surveillance. I found that few journalists and almost no academics attended to the powerful message of the cypherpunks, so I decided that I would write the first academic book about the movement, hoping that I could do my part to raise awareness about this crucial issue.
Westin’s book completely blew me away the first time I read it. I felt like I had discovered a long-lost time capsule containing everything I needed to know about the technological and social changes that created the foundations for surveillance in the United States today.
Since Edward Snowden, I tended to think about surveillance in terms of the internet and the National Security Agency. But Westin showed me that surveillance is much broader—socially and historically—than the NSA’s surveillance of the internet. Westin provided me with a template for analyzing surveillance.
Westin distinguishes physical surveillance from data surveillance, and he examines the difference between corporate and government surveillance. Most importantly, I found his recommendations for protecting privacy in the face of increased surveillance powers incredibly relevant even today.
"He was the most important scholar of privacy since Louis Brandeis."—Jeffrey Rosen
In defining privacy as “the claim of individuals…to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about them is communicated,” Alan Westin’s 1967 classic Privacy and Freedom laid the philosophical groundwork for the current debates about technology and personal freedom, and is considered a foundational text in the field of privacy law.
By arguing that citizens retained control over how their personal data was used, Westin redefined privacy as an individual freedom, taking Justice Louis Brandeis’ 19th century definition of privacy as a legal right and…
