Elizabeth Thorpe, codenamed Cynthia, was a glamorous American socialite recruited by MI6 to obtain intelligence from the Polish Foreign Ministry and from the Italian and Vichy French embassies in Washington. Her method was to seduce whatever targets could provide her with vital intelligence, a practice in which she hardly ever failed, enabling her to secure first the French and then the Italian naval codes. In the landings in North Africa, she was credited with having saved the lives of hundreds of Allied soldiers. This unique account by a British spymaster of his relationship with Cynthia, detailing his subsequent involvement with Kim Philby and the Cambridge spies and his dealings with his counterparts in the CIA and French intelligence, was entrusted by him to a junior colleague on the basis that it was not to be published until everyone in it was dead. Necessarily anonymous and impossible to fully verify, though most of it undoubtedly did happen and is part of the historical record, A Spy Called Cynthia provides a special insight into the world of intelligence and one of its most effective practitioners.

An enthralling tribute to the largely unsung women agents who worked undercover to help win WWII told with aplomb.

“Ben Macintyre’s rollicking, spellbinding Agent Zigzag blends the spy-versus-spy machinations of John le Carré with the high farce of Evelyn Waugh.”—William Grimes, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) “Wildly improbable but entirely true . . . [a] compellingly cinematic spy thriller with verve.”—Entertainment Weekly ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Entertainment Weekly ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. In 1941, after training as German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted M15, the British Secret service, and for the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began. Based on recently declassified files, Agent Zigzag tells Chapman’s full story for the first time. It’s a gripping tale of loyalty, love, treachery, espionage, and the thin and shifting line between fidelity and betrayal.

Relates the life of a woman who lived in Washington D.C.'s political culture and witnessed some of the most important moments of the twentieth century.

Told for the first time in picture book form is the true story of James Lafayette—a slave who spied for George Washington's army during the American Revolution. But while America celebrated its newfound freedom, James returned to slavery. His service hadn't qualified him for the release he'd been hoping for. For James the fight wasn't over; he'd already helped his country gain its freedom, now it was time to win his own.