Here are 54 books that Royal Assassin fans have personally recommended if you like
Royal Assassin.
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Loyalty and betrayal—and spies—are at the heart of some of the greatest stories ever told. Some years ago, I wrote a book about treason in the early United States, and that’s how I found what little is known about the secret mission to capture Arnold. My background as a historian gave me the tools to fill in the missing pieces. I read everything there is about Arnold and espionage during the Revolution, from 250-year-old journals to the latest scholarship, and retraced Arnold’s footsteps in cities, towns, and battlefields. Only then could I imagine how the history really felt, and I put it all together into my book.
Of all the books about Arnold I’ve read, this might be my favorite. Eric Lehman primarily focuses on what comes after Arnold sides with the British.
Arnold is not satisfied with defecting and lying low. Instead, he leads massive raids against the Americans—his former brothers-in-arms—in Richmond, Virginia, and New London, Connecticut. This latter attack—and the focus of Lehman’s book—is particularly brutal since New London is just 11 miles downriver from Arnold’s hometown of Norwich.
Arnold knew the people of New London, yet he arrived by sea to burn the city and terrorize the population. This book is loaded with historical detail, but Eric Lehman is a brilliant storyteller, and it is hard to put down.
On September 6, 1781, Connecticut native Benedict Arnold and a force of 1,600 British soldiers and loyalists took Fort Griswold and burnt New London to the ground. The brutality of the invasion galvanized the new nation, and "Remember New London!" would become a rallying cry for troops under General Lafayette. In Homegrown Terror, Eric D. Lehman chronicles the events leading up to the attack and highlights this key transformation in Arnold-the point where he went from betraying his comrades to massacring his neighbors and destroying their homes. This defining incident forever marked him as a symbol of evil, turning an…
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’ve been fascinated by thrillers since I was first allowed to read them. My childhood bookcase was full of Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean, and every Nevil Shute novel. Later, these were joined by many others, not least John Le Carré. Banking gave me an insight into the murky world of money, bringing with it real-life stories as compelling as those I love reading about. My obsession with the genre is not only with elegant, complex plots but also with what motivates the characters to take the extraordinary risks they do in such challenging environments. The five thrillers I’ve chosen are my absolute favorites. I hope you enjoy them.
I absolutely love the portrayal of a deeply flawed character thrown into the murky world of espionage. For me, Magnus Pym epitomizes the double standards of British and American society, desperate to protect themselves during the Cold War while revealing the inner conflict between self, family, and country.
I also love how the tension builds and builds as Pym, the double agent, rises through the Secret Service and risks everything.
"The best English novel since the war." -- Philip Roth
Over the course of his seemingly irreproachable life, Magnus Pym has been all things to all people: a devoted family man, a trusted colleague, a loyal friend-and the perfect spy. But in the wake of his estranged father's death, Magnus vanishes, and the British Secret Service is up in arms. Is it grief, or is the reason for his disappearance more sinister? And who is the mysterious man with the sad moustache who also seems to be looking for Magnus?
I have been writing about Russia for the past 20 years for all the UK national newspapers, The Spectator and contributed to several TV documentaries. I am fascinated by Russia which is a unique country and has been a major influence on the world for the past 100 years. Based on new documents, my book Londongrad - From Russia with Cash revealed how Russian Oligarchs made their wealth, moved it out of Russia,hid their fortunes and then parked and spent it in London. My new book - Agents of Influence - provides an insight into how the KGB influenced the West based on new archives.
Many people have wondered why so many upper-class Englishmen brought up in the heart and highest echelons of the British Establishment betrayed their country.
This book provides the answers and examines how their treachery influenced British foreign policy and cultural and political institutions until the end of the Cold War. It also reads extremely well and is full of colourful asides and anecdotes.
What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet hands?
With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents, this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and its allies.
Enemies Within is a new history of the influence of Moscow on Britain told through the stories of those who chose to spy for the Soviet Union. It also challenges entrenched assumptions about abused trust, corruption and Establishment cover-ups that began with the Cambridge Five and the disappearance of Guy Burgess and Donald…
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…
My books are about American constitutional history, especially the parts or people that are typically overlooked. In these polarized times, there is both wisdom and comfort that can be found in looking at our past. One lesson from looking back is that there was no “golden age” in which Americans all got along. Democracy is sometimes messy, sometimes violent, and almost always involves fierce disagreements. Judged at a distance, there is great drama and great satisfaction in looking at how prior generations addressed their problems. I hope you enjoy the books on my list!
Professor Larson is America’s leading expert on treason and wrote this book for non-lawyers. He starts with treason in England, discusses the views of the Founding Fathers, and then goes through many entertaining treason cases or examples. Some involve familiar historical names like Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, and Jefferson Davis. Others involve notorious celebrities such as Tokyo Rose and Jane Fonda. A fun book on a serious subject.
A concise, accessible, and engaging guide to the crime of treason, written by the nation's foremost expert on the subject
Treason-the only crime specifically defined in the United States Constitution-is routinely described by judges as more heinous than murder. Today, the term is regularly tossed around by politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle. But, as accusations of treason flood the news cycle, it is not always clear what the crime truly is, or when it should be prosecuted.
Carlton F. W. Larson, a scholar of constitutional law and legal history, takes us on a journey to understand…
I’ve always wanted to create stories since I was young, inspired by Clive Cussler, Matthew Reilly, and the action movies of the 80’s and 90’s. After serving for 10 years in the Marine Corps infantry, I decided to combine my passion for storytelling with my military experience. Having deployed five times overseas and serving two years as an infantry instructor, I aim to inject a sense of military realism into fast-paced and action-packed stories. I don’t know it all and I’m always looking for veterans who have written military thrillers to get a different perspective on how the military works elsewhere.
I’ve always been an admirer of US military history and how fast the technology advances. A concern that became more apparent during my time of service was the threat of being electronically compromised, jammed, or hacked. This book scratched that itch of wondering what would happen if the US military’s most advanced fighter jet were used against us.
The author was a former US Naval Aviator and a TOPGUN graduate, so when the main character is piloting a F-35 fighter jet, I know what I’m reading is close to the truth. I just loved the level of detail that goes into how fighter pilots fly, talk, and shoot.
After a Navy pilot inexplicably loses control of his stealth fighter, he stumbles upon a global conspiracy, and embarks on a thrilling chase filled with espionage and betrayal.
“A high-octane and adrenaline-powered thriller... Strap in and hold on!” ―Jack Carr, Former Navy SEAL sniper and #1 New York Times bestselling author of the James Reece Terminal List series
TOP GUN instructor Colt Bancroft has just catapulted off the USS Abraham Lincoln, his F-35C Joint Strike Fighter trailing blue and yellow flame as he climbs into the night sky off the California coast.
I’m passionate about spying. It was an absolute privilege for me to have been able to spend my life in the shadows, so to speak. I was undercover my entire career doing espionage and covert action operations for our country and the CIA. I discovered very early on that I had a particular fascination for the arcane and Byzantine subspecialty of counterintelligence. It’s hard to describe the exhilaration I felt when we nabbed an American traitor and brought him or her to justice. It doesn’t get any better than that.
This case makes me very angry. As a former CIA officer myself, I felt deeply the malignancy of this betrayal from within. I was riveted by Denson’s account of how Howard James Nicholson, a CIA clandestine service colleague, let his personal problems and amorality get the better of him. Selling out to the Russians was certainly not the right answer for him, nor was dragging his son into spying. Denson has written a compelling counterintelligence treatise.
The riveting true story of the father-and-son co-conspirators who sold US national secrets to Russia.
Jim Nicholson was the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage. A single father, respected mentor, and brilliant case officer, he was also a double agent selling thousands of state secrets to the Russians. However, it was from behind the bars of a federal prison that he conducted his greatest betrayal. Just 12 years after Jim's conviction, his youngest son, Nathan, was arrested for the same crime.
Through interviews, private letters, and access to Jim's personal journal, Pulitzer Prize finalist Bryan Denson pieces together a…
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…
I inhabit the past. You may find me lurking in my four-hundred-year-old Devon cottage, or spot me thinly disguised as the formidable Mistress Agnes, a good wife of a certain age who leads a somewhat chaotic life during the mid-seventeenth century. I write, I read, I research, I share my passion, I write some more. My life revolves around reading, writing and researching history. Having spent the past forty-five years unravelling my own family’s story and loving both historical and crime novels, what could be better than a book that combines all these elements. I have to say that if genealogy was as dangerous a career as some of these books imply, no one would be advised to take it up!
In The Last Queen of England, fact, and fiction are intertwined as genealogist Jefferson Tayte races against time to solve a puzzle, set by members of The Royal Society, relating to the rightful heir to the throne. Can Tayte crack the code and solve the mystery before there is yet another murder? Can he avoid becoming yet another victim of the conspiracy?
While on a visit to London, American genealogist Jefferson Tayte's old friend and colleague dies in his arms. Before long, Tayte and a truth-seeking historian, Professor Jean Summer, find themselves following a corpse-ridden trail that takes them to the Royal Society of London, circa 1708.
What to make of the story of five men of science, colleagues of Isaac Newton and Christopher Wren, who were mysteriously hanged for high treason?
As they edge closer to the truth, Tayte and the professor find that death is once again in season. A new killer, bent on restoring what he sees as the…
I love a book where the good guys are pure-hearted and the bad guys are evil, but there's something so fascinating about a story where the lines of good and evil blur and bend. I firmly believe that everyone is the hero in their own story… and everyone is the villain in at least one other person’s story. My Tales of Thamorr duology features multiple heists and hijinks, and every member of our crew has plans to betray their fellows. My goal in writing stories where no one is the ‘good guy’ is to create a reading experience where you want to root for everyone and no one at the same time.
The main character in The Kingdom of Liars is the son of a traitor. He lives a life scamming and scraping to get by, and he’s not the most likable of people, on the whole. (I say this with love).
The story is filled with political maneuvering, double dealings, and self-serving characters you’ll find yourself rooting for… even if you also kind of hate them. This book also has one of the cooler magic systems I’ve seen in a while: the price for using magic is memory, so with every bit of magic you wield, you lose a bit more of yourself.
It’s a fascinating tale that is the first book in a trilogy!
Michael Kingman has been an outsider for as long as he remembers. The court which executed his father also exiled him and his family. They branded him a traitor, and the nobles who had been his friends turned their backs, prepared to let the legendary Kingman family die on Hollow's city streets.
Only they survived.
And it should come as no surprise to Hollow Court, or the King, that they've been searching for the truth ever since. History is written by the winners, truth buried beneath lies until it's Forgotten. Justice seems impossible in a city where the price of…
As an avid reader, I'm curious about where books come from and what they do. How does a story get to be a book? How does someone become an author? What is happening to us as we read? I worked in publishing, and eventually, I started teaching other people how to become editors and publishers. As a faculty member, I had time to study and write about book history. I joined the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing when it was formed and became its president. The conferences helped me to learn about the history of books throughout the world and from pre-print times to the present.
As a writer and teacher, I’ve always classified plagiarism as a high crime and misdemeanor. It’s the academic equivalent of treason. Thomas Mallon covers well-known and unknown instances, word thieves punished and not. The book is highly entertaining but deadly serious about the harm done by plagiarists and by those who do not take their crimes seriously.
"The definitive book on the subject" of plagiarism (The New York Times) is updated with a new afterword about the Internet.
What is plagiarism, and why is it such a big deal? Since when is originality considered an indispensable attribute of authorship? Stolen Words is a deft and well-informed history of the sin every writer fears from every angle. Award-winning author Thomas Mallon begins in the seventeenth century and pushes forward toward scandals in publishing, academia, and Hollywood, exploring the motivations, consequences, and emotional reverberations of an intriguing and distressingly widespread practice. In this now-classic study, Mallon proves himself to…
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’m fascinated by what people make of political events at home and abroad. The rapid expansion of public opinion in later eighteenth-century Britain, in tandem with the explosion of the press—newspapers, books, sermons, plays, poetry, novels, magazines, and cartoons—makes it a wonderful period to explore. People in the past were no less complex and sophisticated than we are; they simply lived in different circumstances, opportunities, and constraints, with different assumptions and priorities. My British Visions of America, 1775–1820 (2013) also deals with the British trying to understand foreign affairs, while The Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence, 1750–1810, eds Fitzpatrick, Macleod and Page is full of events at home and abroad.
Poor George III: ridiculed in caricatures and the object of attempted assassinations!
This enormous book is a real page-turner. Its aim is to show that the changing meanings of words had a huge impact on the politics of the 1790s in Britain. The fourteenth-century statute of treason listed among its crimes that of ‘imagining the king’s death.’
In the reign of Edward III, that meant actually planning the death of the monarch, but by the 1790s, the word ‘imagine’ had taken on the modern definition of ‘envisaging’ or ‘fantasising.’ This much wider definition of ‘imagining’ had dire consequences for reformers who had no intention of arranging the death of the king but whose language might be loose enough to open them up to the charge of ‘imagining’ it.
It is high treason in British law to 'imagine' the king's death. But after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, everyone in Britain must have found themselves imagining that the same fate might befall George III. How easy was it to distinguish between fantasising about the death of George and 'imagining' it, in the legal sense of 'intending' or 'designing'? John Barrell examines this question in the context of the political trials of the mid-1790s and the controversies they generated. He shows how the law of treason was adapted in the years following Louis's death to punish what was…
