Thriller

Max Radinsky believes he has found the perfect life in Athens, Greece, until his girlfriend, Yasmine, is forced to flee the city. Joining her on the run, Max becomes caught in a dangerous international pursuit. Neither is trained for espionage, and as rival intelligence agencies close in, their desperate journey across Greece turns into a fight for survival. Meanwhile, Lachlan Kite, head of the covert intelligence service BOX 88, receives an unexpected plea for help from Martha Raine, a former lover he has not seen in more than twenty years. Her son Max has disappeared, and Kite finds himself drawn back into fieldwork to locate the young couple. What he uncovers is far more dangerous than a missing-person case: Yasmine holds a secret that could destabilise the Middle East for a generation, and Israeli intelligence operatives have orders to kill her on sight. The fourth novel in Cumming’s BOX 88 series, Icarus 17 combines a high-stakes international chase with the personal consequences of a spy’s past. Moving between Greece and the world of covert intelligence, it explores loyalty, betrayal, and the devastating cost of secrets that powerful institutions will do anything to protect.

Waiting for the Eurostar in Paris, Mark is travelling home to London with his four-year-old daughter, Molly, and teenage stepdaughter, Freya. During a game of “Eye Spy,” Molly suddenly identifies a stranger as a “Bad Man.” Mark initially dismisses her words as a child’s imagination, but when he spots the same man boarding their train with a suspicious-looking suitcase, unease turns to fear. As the train speeds through the Channel Tunnel, Mark begins to suspect that the stranger poses a genuine threat. Trapped in a confined space with hundreds of passengers and no easy way to escape, he must work out who the man is and what he wants. But as unsettling connections to Mark’s past emerge, the danger becomes increasingly personal, and protecting his daughters becomes a race against time. Unfolding over a tense train journey, Eye Spy combines claustrophobic suspense with an emotional story about parenthood, trust, and the lengths someone will go to protect their family. C. M. Ewan transforms an ordinary trip into a terrifying ordeal where a child’s innocent observation could be the only warning that matters.

When Hemisphere Airlines Flight 777, one of the world’s most advanced passenger jets, vanishes over the North Pole, its disappearance triggers an international crisis. Sabotaged and forced down onto the frozen Arctic ice, the aircraft leaves its surviving passengers stranded in one of the planet’s most unforgiving environments. But the crash conceals a secret far more dangerous than the disaster itself: a revolutionary military technology capable of shifting the global balance of power. Among the survivors are CIA operative Kasey Sheridan and Brett Sharpe, a former fighter pilot now working as the plane’s first officer. As they struggle to keep the injured alive and escape the freezing wilderness, American, Russian, and Chinese intelligence forces race towards the wreckage. Each government is determined to secure the secret technology, regardless of the human cost. With temperatures falling and enemy forces closing in, Sheridan and Sharpe must navigate a deadly landscape where survival and international security are inseparable. Cold Zero combines Arctic survival suspense with high-stakes espionage, exploring technological warfare, geopolitical rivalry, and the catastrophic consequences of a conflict between nuclear powers.

Mark Wolfe was once one of Britain’s greatest spies. Now working behind a desk at MI6 headquarters in London, he has settled into a quiet life as a civil servant, keeping his dangerous past hidden from his family. His routine changes when he discovers that his daughter, Jody, shares his ambition to join the intelligence service. But MI6 has recruited her without his knowledge, and Mark soon begins to suspect that something is wrong. When Jody disappears during a mission in Afghanistan, the intelligence service appears unwilling to help. Worse, officials suggest that she may have betrayed her country. Refusing to accept their explanation, Mark returns to the world of espionage he thought he had left behind. With limited support and enemies he cannot easily identify, he sets out to find his daughter and uncover the truth. Moving between London and Afghanistan, A Spy in the Blood explores the cost of secrecy, the fragile bonds between parents and children, and the moral compromises of intelligence work. Paul Warner combines the tension of a contemporary spy thriller with a deeply personal story about how far a father will go to protect his family.

American journalist Danielle “Dani” Moreau arrives in Accra, Ghana, hoping to revive her career by investigating corruption in the country’s oil industry. Still reeling from a personal tragedy, she expects to uncover a conventional political scandal. Instead, an encounter with James Aidoo, the idealistic son of a prominent Ghanaian politician, draws her into a far more dangerous story. Dani discovers a covert struggle between American and Chinese intelligence agencies over control of the underwater fibre-optic cables that carry the world’s digital communications. As she investigates, she encounters double agents, corrupt officials, and operatives with violent pasts. What begins as a journalistic investigation becomes a fight for survival, with the consequences reaching far beyond Ghana’s borders. Set against the bustling streets and political complexities of West Africa, The Silver Fish combines espionage with contemporary geopolitical intrigue. Connor Martin explores the hidden infrastructure of global power, examining how technology, intelligence, and competing national interests shape the modern world—and the personal cost of pursuing the truth.

On the Greek island of Vidos, just off the coast of Corfu, a secluded community of former MI6 officers lives in enforced retirement. These men and women have been exiled from the intelligence service—some too damaged by their past, others too compromised to be trusted. Surrounded by the beauty of the Ionian Sea, they attempt to settle old grudges, rekindle lost relationships, and forget the dangerous lives they once led. But their fragile peace collapses when one of the residents is found dead. As suspicion spreads through the community, former allies begin questioning one another, and buried secrets from decades of espionage threaten to surface. The island becomes a trap for people who have spent their lives deceiving others, where old betrayals carry deadly consequences and nobody’s version of the past can be trusted. Inspired by the hidden history of British intelligence, A Stranger in Corfu combines an atmospheric Mediterranean setting with the moral ambiguity of Cold War espionage. Alex Preston explores loyalty, betrayal, and the difficulty of escaping one’s past, asking what remains of people whose entire lives have been built around secrets.

The head of British Intelligence, Sir William Rentoul, is only six months away from retirement when an anonymous complaint threatens to expose a disastrous covert operation. Already struggling with an increasingly unreliable memory, he must now contend with parliamentary scrutiny, a trail of assassinations, and secrets that could bring the intelligence establishment to its knees. Enter Aphra McQueen, a sharp and unconventional parliamentary researcher tasked with investigating the complaint. Her inquiry leads her into a covert operation involving CASPIAN, an elusive assassin responsible for killing Iranian dissidents across Europe. As the investigation unfolds, Aphra discovers that the case is far more complicated than it first appears—and that she herself may be concealing crucial information. With intelligence agencies scrambling to contain the fallout, an unsuspecting British-Syrian dentist becomes entangled in a dangerous international conspiracy. Told in part through the sardonic voice of an almost omniscient narrator known as the “spirit of spying,” Spies and Other Gods combines espionage, dark humour, and institutional satire. James Wolff examines the uneasy relationship between secrecy and accountability, revealing the human weaknesses and moral compromises behind the machinery of intelligence.

London becomes a battleground when the long-standing alliance between American and British intelligence begins to unravel. A new CIA director arrives determined to disrupt the agency and rethink its relationship with MI6. When the veteran chief of the CIA’s London Station is forced out, he makes an extraordinary decision: to work for the British instead. His betrayal is uncovered by his successor, Artemis Aphrodite Procter, who suddenly finds herself caught between a treacherous former superior and an increasingly ruthless leadership back in Washington. As intelligence sources begin dying and the identities of covert agents are exposed, Procter and her team must uncover who is leaking secrets—and why. Their investigation draws them into a dangerous world of private intelligence companies, technological surveillance, and competing agendas, where allies become adversaries and loyalty can be fatal. In this fifth novel featuring Artemis Procter, David McCloskey explores the fragile relationship between intelligence agencies and the political forces that shape their work. Combining intricate espionage operations with a story of institutional betrayal, London Station asks what happens when serving your country means disobeying the people who claim to represent it.

Money can buy almost anything—but it cannot guarantee love, loyalty, or a clean family reputation. Jia Song, the ambitious daughter of Korean immigrant bodega owners, has spent her life chasing the luxuries she once admired from behind a shop counter. Now a rising star at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, she is closer than ever to the glamorous future she imagined. But her latest assignment plunges her into the spectacularly messy private lives of the Parks, a Korean American family whose billion-dollar beauty empire is threatened by scandal. The family patriarch wants a divorce from his terminally ill wife, while their three adult children wage war against their father and one another. Jia has just thirty days to investigate the family’s finances, uncover the truth, and protect her clients’ interests. As her investigation takes her from New York to Seoul and beyond, she discovers that the Parks’ wealth conceals secrets far darker than she expected. Glamorous, sharp-witted, and full of betrayal, Park Avenue explores ambition, family loyalty, and the price of success. Behind the designer handbags and extravagant lifestyles lies a question Jia must confront herself: what if getting everything you’ve ever wanted means losing sight of what truly matters?

Hidaya Abuayash, a Palestinian woman studying at an American university, believes she is finally building a safe and stable future. Having left behind her family and painful memories in Palestine, she hopes to complete her education, obtain American citizenship, and start a family with her husband, Idris. Her carefully constructed life collapses when an argument with Idris takes a terrifying turn. After he pulls a gun on her and reveals that he has been working as an FBI informant, spying on students at her university, Hidaya stabs him in the back. Faced with the consequences of his death, she fears that reporting what happened will not protect her. Her precarious immigration status and Palestinian identity could leave her vulnerable to suspicion, discrimination, and deportation. With the help of her best friend, Layyan, and Layyan’s brother, Ahmed, Hidaya attempts to conceal the killing. But as the three become entangled in an increasingly complicated web of secrets, their trust in one another begins to fracture. When social media unexpectedly draws Hidaya into the public eye, the risk of exposure grows, and revelations about Idris’s past force her to question everything she thought she knew. Blending psychological suspense with questions of surveillance, prejudice, and belonging, Black Widow, White Shroud explores the vulnerabilities faced by Muslim and Palestinian communities in America. It examines how immigration status can become a source of power over people’s lives, and how the search for safety can force individuals into morally complicated choices.

In a world where popularity determines survival, Mishin Mizushima is a teenage girl who struggles to meet Japan’s unforgiving standards of beauty and social status. Unpopular at school and abandoned emotionally by her mother, she occupies the lowest rung of a ruthless social hierarchy dominated by glamorous, powerful girls. But when a new teacher introduces a seemingly simple instruction—students must form pairs, and no two people can pair together twice—the established order begins to collapse. Those left without partners face a terrifying consequence: execution. Blending the vicious social politics of Mean Girls with the deadly competition of Squid Game, Chiren Kina’s dark, candy-coloured thriller explores bullying, conformity, beauty standards, and the desperate human need to belong. Beneath its exaggerated, unsettling premise lies a sharp examination of how easily social exclusion can become a matter of life and death.

Zainab is an expert driller accustomed to working in an industry where women must constantly prove their competence. When she is offered the opportunity to oversee a high-stakes offshore oil rig operation, she leaves behind her pregnant sister and heads out to sea, determined to demonstrate that she has earned her place at the top. But the assignment quickly becomes a test of both her professional abilities and her moral convictions. She is the only woman among a crew of hardened men who resent her authority, and the rig itself is teetering on the edge of disaster. As Zainab investigates the technical problems threatening the operation, she discovers that the danger extends beyond the machinery. Corporate greed, careless decision-making, and the crew’s determination to complete the job as cheaply and quickly as possible threaten everyone’s lives. With her warnings repeatedly dismissed, she must decide how far she is willing to go to prevent a catastrophe. Drawing on the author’s own experience as a drilling engineer, this gripping literary thriller explores sexism, ambition, environmental responsibility, and the human cost of unchecked capitalism. Against the vast and unpredictable power of the ocean, Zainab confronts a world in which professional authority and ethical responsibility are constantly at odds. The novel asks what it means to stand by one’s principles when the people in power refuse to listen.