Here are 100 books that The Director fans have personally recommended if you like
The Director.
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For the record, I’m not a spy. I’m a Lithuanian-American writer who had a dickens of a time validating WWII-era family papers about the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. I don’t speak Lithuanian, so I relied on English-language sources where Lithuania was sometimes little more than a footnote. As I learned more about the Soviet occupation and life after independence, I became convinced that it’s almost impossible to talk about Lithuania without considering the geopolitical tension that comes with having Russia as a neighbor. This grew into a love of spycraft, political strategy, history, international tensions, Lithuania, Eastern Europe, Russia… and pierogis.
This book is set in Lebanon during the 1970s when tradition, an etiquette of secrets, and shifting alliances were the norm.
The story is compelling because it captures the Middle East before it was transformed by decades of conflict and political turmoil. CIA officer Tom Rodgers is a better Bond, relying on wit and intelligence instead of gadgetry. He’s a spy’s spy in a novel rich with intrigue, tradecraft, and human insight.
Agents of Innocence is the book that established David Ignatius's reputation as a master of the novel of contemporary espionage. Into the treacherous world of shifting alliances and arcane subterfuge comes idealistic CIA man Tom Rogers. Posted in Beirut to penetrate the PLO and recruit a high-level operative, he soon learns the heavy price of innocence in a time and place that has no use for it.
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
For the record, I’m not a spy. I’m a Lithuanian-American writer who had a dickens of a time validating WWII-era family papers about the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. I don’t speak Lithuanian, so I relied on English-language sources where Lithuania was sometimes little more than a footnote. As I learned more about the Soviet occupation and life after independence, I became convinced that it’s almost impossible to talk about Lithuania without considering the geopolitical tension that comes with having Russia as a neighbor. This grew into a love of spycraft, political strategy, history, international tensions, Lithuania, Eastern Europe, Russia… and pierogis.
Meet Milow Weaver. Anything by Steinhauer appeals to me, but Milow is one of my favorite spies.
He’s a person with flaws who is trying to escape the dark world of espionage for the sake of his family and his future. His nemesis, a Chinese agent, remains a mysterious, although fearsome, force.
The use of spy craft is exquisite and the novel is clever. I think you’ll like it.
Superb new CIA thriller featuring black ops expert Milo Weaver and acclaimed by Lee Child as 'first class - the kind of thing John le Carre might have written'.
In today's CIA, there are hotspots everywhere. And wherever there's trouble, there's a Tourist: the men and women who do the CIA's dirty work. They're the Company's best - and until he burnt out, Milo Weaver was the best of them all.
Milo has spent the last four years behind a desk, tracking the elusive killer known as 'The Tiger'. When the Tiger unexpectedly gives himself up, it's because he wants…
For the record, I’m not a spy. I’m a Lithuanian-American writer who had a dickens of a time validating WWII-era family papers about the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. I don’t speak Lithuanian, so I relied on English-language sources where Lithuania was sometimes little more than a footnote. As I learned more about the Soviet occupation and life after independence, I became convinced that it’s almost impossible to talk about Lithuania without considering the geopolitical tension that comes with having Russia as a neighbor. This grew into a love of spycraft, political strategy, history, international tensions, Lithuania, Eastern Europe, Russia… and pierogis.
What do you get when you combine a disgruntled employee, alligators, organizational politics, and espionage? A compelling look into the culture of the CIA.
Strong characters lead this hunt for a mole within the CIA. Two of the most interesting are women who are radically different from each other. One is rooted organizational politics. The other is determined to save the organization by finding a mole and righting a wrong.
It’s both entertaining and insightful. McCloskey takes a strategic and intellectual approach to the story, which is, for me, refreshing.
A Russian arrives in Singapore with a secret to sell. When the Russian is killed and Sam Joseph, the CIA officer dispatched for the meet, goes missing, operational chief Artemis Procter is made a scapegoat for the disaster and run out of the service. Months later, Sam appears at Procter's doorstep with an explosive secret: there is a Russian mole burrowed deep within the highest ranks of the CIA.
As Procter and Sam investigate, they arrive at a shortlist of suspects made up of both Procter's closest friends and fiercest enemies. The hunt requires Procter to dredge up her checkered…
Transforming Pandora, women's fiction with a metaphysical undercurrent, is written with humour and a light touch. As the plot slips between two time frames, separated by more than thirty years, the reader explores her life and loves: her ups and downs.
For the record, I’m not a spy. I’m a Lithuanian-American writer who had a dickens of a time validating WWII-era family papers about the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. I don’t speak Lithuanian, so I relied on English-language sources where Lithuania was sometimes little more than a footnote. As I learned more about the Soviet occupation and life after independence, I became convinced that it’s almost impossible to talk about Lithuania without considering the geopolitical tension that comes with having Russia as a neighbor. This grew into a love of spycraft, political strategy, history, international tensions, Lithuania, Eastern Europe, Russia… and pierogis.
Geeks are my kind of people. Add exotic locations, a sexy Chinese operative, and industrial espionage for the simmering foundation of The Expat.
Michael Wang is an ambitious engineer enticed to Beijing by the promise of success. Once there, he gradually learns he’s being manipulated, and that’s just the start of it. He becomes a pawn in a swirling game of espionage-chess.
The surprise ending made it one of my favorite and most memorable spy reads.
A fresh and vivid new voice brings a contemporary edge to the classic espionage novel.
At twenty-six, Princeton grad Michael Wang is trapped. Stifled under the bamboo ceiling at General Motors, he’s working quietly on a breakthrough in self-driving car technology that he hopes will catapult him out of obscurity. Disaffected and largely friendless in San Francisco, he’s dogged by resentment towards the Ivy Leaguers who never accepted him and his colleagues at GM who see him as passive and faceless.
I’m a Canadian novelist and historian who became addicted to spy novels in my early teens. I first read John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle when I should have been studying for my Grade 10 Math exams. Since then, I’ve read everything in the genre that I could get my hands on. As an army officer, I’ve always had a strong interest in security matters. On top of this, military service gave me opportunities for travel as well as meeting and working closely with a diverse range of people, all of which have stoked my interest in the world’s second-oldest profession.
McCarry has never had the wide acclaim that my first two picks have had, and that’s a shame.
The Tears of Autumn is set in late 1963. Kennedy has been assassinated, and Vietnam has come to a fast boil. McCarry’s protagonist, Paul Christopher, an introspective poet and burned-out spy, takes it upon himself to find out the truth behind the rumor that the Vietnamese were behind Kennedy’s killing.
It’s a novel that spans continents and provides professional insight into the motivation and temperament of the spy world. Like Le Carré, McCarry’s style is sparse, lean, and enthralling. In a world beset by conspiracy theories, disinformation, and fake news, The Tears of Autumn is superb.
A re-release of the best-selling thriller originally published twenty years ago finds influential secret agent Paul Christopher pursuing a dangerous theory about the assassination of JFK, an investigation that threatens American foreign policy. By the author of Old Boys. 20,000 first printing.
I'm a military historian and an author. To get inspiration for my writing, I spent 35 years in Special Forces (as a "Green Beret") and as a CIA officer in strange places working with interesting people. I first wrote non-fiction but I needed US Government approval for everything. So, following the saying “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth,” I tell my tales as “faction”—stories reflecting a reality most people don’t know or understand. I write about “Us Versus Them”—stories about teamwork—and the result is The Snake Eater Chronicles. I leave it to the reader to decide where fact ends and fiction begins.
Muir’s Gambit
is a prequel to
Beckner’s blockbuster movie Spy Game (with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford).
Not your
traditional “spy thriller,” it follows a dark thematic arc of two spies, fueled
by whisky and cigarettes, talking on the front porch of a beach house after the
assassination of a comrade.
It is layered with a gritty (and sometimes absurdist)
intellectual/philosophical study of the moral cost of living a life of lies. All in search of a
truth that is hidden from everyone but one man.
Told with flashbacks to events
in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and Hong Kong, it is a story fraught with human
emotion—love, heartbreak, grief, regret—and the fragility of memory. A story
told with authentic tradecraft and serpentine strategy, it evokes—more than any
other book I’ve read—the reality, challenges, and moral pitfalls of working in
a clandestine intelligence organization.
Mateo Taurasi and his family fled their island home when their people turned to sorcery. Mateo’s own magic is tame but it’s still banned in the Vaeringan Empire...and his family still use it every day in their cosy teahouse. The last thing they need is an Imperial barging in to…
I am a retired university professor. My research, in which I am still actively engaged, deals with decision-making under deep uncertainty: how to make a decision, or design a project, or plan an operation when major relevant factors are unknown or highly uncertain. I developed a decision theory called info-gap theory that grapples with this challenge, and is applied around the world in many fields, including engineering design, economics, medicine, national security, biological conservation, and more.
This is an interesting collection of essays on the history of the CIA.
A spy agency thrives on deceit and uncertainty, making plans and taking actions when the adversary also thrives on those same elements.
Arranged in chronological order, the essays cover nearly 20 different incidents, describing the challenges, uncertainties, goals, and decisions made by both high-level political decision-makers and practitioners in the field.
Topics covered include early stages in the development of the CIA (founded in 1947), including covert action against the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the Bay of Pigs (1961), the Iran-Contra affair (mid-1980s), up to more recent events with bin Laden, fake news, and more.
A Question of Standing deals with recognizable events that have shaped the history of the first 75 years of the CIA. Unsparing in its accounts of dirty tricks and their consequences, it values the agency's intelligence and analysis work to offer balanced judgements that avoid both celebration and condemnation of the CIA.
The mission of the CIA, derived from U-1 in World War I more than from World War II's OSS, has always been intelligence. Seventy-five years ago, in the year of its creation, the National Security Act gave the agency, uniquely in world history up to that point, a…
Green tracers in the sky over Baghdad. My first political memory is the start of the Gulf War in 1991. I remember writing angry essays criticizing the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003 for my high-school assignments. I have always been interested in US foreign policy and in how presidents make decisions. During my PhD, as I was working on a chapter on the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I discovered the extent and–frankly–the madness of some of the plots the CIA and the White House concocted against Fidel Castro. More recently, the US government’s use of assassination and “targeted killings” have become the focus of my research.
The book's subheading reads A Novel of the CIA. I would go further. This is ‘The Novel of the CIA,’ especially of the CIA between its founding and the early 1990s. It is a masterful combination of real and fictitious spies and covert operations.
The portrayal is so precise, the blending so seamless, that I found myself–and yes, I am supposedly an expert on this–double-checking whether certain operations had taken place. Nonfiction books on the CIA are one of my favorite things, but here, you experience the characters from much closer. I felt their desperation when operations collapsed, or agents were betrayed, or their elation after the rarer successes.
I felt the smoke in James Angleton’s room as he hunted for the missing mole; whether he managed to capture the mole or not will be for you to discover, but the book will stay with you both literally (it’s…
The New York Times bestselling spy novel The Company lays bare the history and inner workings of the CIA. This critically acclaimed blockbuster from internationally renowned novelist Robert Littell seamlessly weaves together history and fiction to create a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga of the CIA-known as "the Company" to insiders. Racing across a landscape spanning the legendary Berlin Base of the '50s, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, Afghanistan, and the Gorbachev putsch, The Company tells the thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an amoral, elusive, formidable enemy-and each other-in an internecine battle within…
When I realized I didn’t have what it takes to join the CIA, I made it my life mission to find out everything it takes to be a spy—which, of course, made it necessary to watch every show and read every espionage story ever told. In the process, I discovered a passion for uncovering truth, as well as a love of writing. After writing three young adult spy novels, I feel like I’ve found the linguist, code breaker, and crime fighter in myself. My work for LitJoy Crate has given me the ability to know a good story when I read it, and then recommend that book to book lovers everywhere.
I fell in love with the main character, Loveday (no pun intended), in the first few pages. She’s strong and tough, like all spies should be, and sarcastic—which is so fun to read.
I love her motivation as a spy, but she does have one flaw: she's in love with another member of the team and has been keeping him off missions to keep him safe. This makes me like her even more because she wants to protect him. Overall, the action, explosions, love story between Loveday and Vale, and the spy world had me reading until the very end.
I can’t wait to jump into the next book in the series.
Known only to the CIA and her handler father, Loveday aspires to be the greatest teenage spy who ever lived. In a hidden bunker under a swanky hotel, she and her team train and execute missions without being noticed by the outside world.
When Loveday and her team are recruited for their first international mission, it's their big chance to prove their worth to the CIA. But when her comms specialist boyfriend, Vale lobbies for a shot at field work, Loveday is caught between duty and forbidden passion. She knows putting…
This delightful fable about the Golden Age of Broadway unfolds the warm story of Artie, a young rehearsal pianist, Joe, a visionary director, and Carrie, his crackerjack Girl Friday, as they shepherd a production of a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream towards opening night.
I am a psychiatrist, novelist, and former diplomat, who served overseas in Europe, Russia, Mexico, and India. My diplomatic travels took me to over 70 countries over many decades. I have always been passionate about spy thrillers, because they highlight the intrigue, drama, psychology, and history of different cultures, which brings out the humanity, courage, and tragedy of the characters therein. The best spy thrillers also capture a sense of place, culture, and history, and possess an authenticity that gives them a broader, universal appeal.
Lawler, as a former CIA case officer, brings tremendous authenticity and verve to his spy novels, and The Traitor’s Tale is no different.
I loved the fast-moving, vibrant plot, and I appreciated the characters, both the protagonists (especially Ambrose, Shawnee Chasing Hawk, and Gary Trichter). I enjoyed the intricate plot of espionage, recruitment, betrayal, a love story, and its finale.
Lawler’s book appealed to me because it reveals the very human side of espionage, which, in the end, is about relationships between human beings—between intelligence officers and their agents/spies.
Ambrose Knight--a highly decorated CIA case officer, top spy recruiter, and member of The Guild--is suspected of espionage and treated as a pariah by many Agency colleagues and friends. After several months of purgatory, he's exonerated when another case officer's treachery is revealed. Embittered by the accusations and Agency racial discrimination due to his African American ethnicity, Knight volunteers to the Russian intelligence service and begins living a double life."The Red Queen", a senior female FBI agent who heads the CIA's Counterespionage Group (the mole hunters), claims that Knight is in fact still a spy and has been all along,…
