A riveting novel of international suspense from acclaimed author and veteran diplomat Matthew Palmer. Twenty years after the Srebrenica massacre that claimed the life of his friend and colleague, Eric Petrosian is back in Sarajevo at the American embassy, and the specter of war once again hangs over the Balkans. The Bosnian Serb leader, who had for a time been seeking a stable peace, has turned back to his nationalist roots and is threatening to pull Bosnia apart in a bloody struggle for control . . . and behind him is a shadowy mafia figure pulling the strings. As Eric is dragged deeper into the political maelstrom and uncovers a plot of blackmail and ruthless ambitions, Eric is faced with an impossible choice: use the information he’s uncovered to achieve atonement for the past or use it to shape the future.

A riveting novel of international suspense from acclaimed author and veteran diplomat Matthew Palmer. Twenty years after the Srebrenica massacre that claimed the life of his friend and colleague, Eric Petrosian is back in Sarajevo at the American embassy, and the specter of war once again hangs over the Balkans. The Bosnian Serb leader, who had for a time been seeking a stable peace, has turned back to his nationalist roots and is threatening to pull Bosnia apart in a bloody struggle for control . . . and behind him is a shadowy mafia figure pulling the strings. As Eric is dragged deeper into the political maelstrom and uncovers a plot of blackmail and ruthless ambitions, Eric is faced with an impossible choice: use the information he’s uncovered to achieve atonement for the past or use it to shape the future.

One of NPR's Best Books of 2014! After witnessing a devastating incident in Darfur, Alex Baines is stripped of his security clearance and relegated to a desk job. He’s about to resign when his former mentor—now the current Ambassador to the Congo—offers him an opportunity to start over. But the post isn’t what Alex imagined. The US company Consolidated Mining seems to be everywhere. When a hostage situation involving a survey team arises, Alex is sent in, finding himself in the middle of the conflict with a guerilla leader and Marie Tsiolo, a native geologist on the team. As violence escalates in the region, Alex struggles to balance the interests of the U.S. with the greater good of the people of the Congo—and somehow stay alive.

A tense, complex, and twisting diplomatic thriller in which one woman must choose between morality and compromise—and in either case, the consequences may be deadly. Katarina “Kate” Hollister is a second-generation Foreign Service officer, recently assigned to Kyrgyzstan. She’s not there by chance. Kate is a Foreign Service brat who attended high school in the region; her uncle is the U.S. ambassador to the country, and he pulled a few strings to get her assigned to his mission. U.S.–Kyrgyz relations are at a critical juncture. U.S. authorities have been negotiating with the Kyrgyz president on the lease of a massive airbase that would significantly expand the American footprint in Central Asia and could tip the scale in “the Great Game,” the competition among Russia, China, and the United States for influence in the region. The negotiations are controversial in the United States because of the Kyrgyz regime’s abysmal human-rights record. The fate of the airbase is balanced on a razor’s edge. Amid these events, Kate’s uncle assigns her to infiltrate an underground democracy movement that has been sabotaging Kyrgyz security services and regime supporters. Washington has taken an interest in the movement, her uncle conveys, and may find it worth supporting if they understand more about the aims and leadership. And Kate has an in—many followers of the movement were high school classmates of hers. But it soon becomes clear that nothing about Kate’s mission is as it seems . . . and that she might need to lay her life on the line for what she knows is right.

This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst. One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The Adagio had been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that it had been rebuilt by a different composer into something new and worthwhile gives the cellist hope. Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for his weekly walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his family on the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t know, tries to make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is waiting. Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the next shot will land on the bridges or streets they must cross, unwilling to talk to their old friends of what life was once like before divisions were unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the pseudonymous name of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the cellist from a hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his memorial to the victims. In this beautiful and unforgettable novel, Steven Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to create a story that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit under extraordinary duress.

An NPR Best Book of the Year From a veteran insider with over twenty years’ experience in the U.S. Foreign Service comes a taut, insightful thriller of global intrigue and behind-the-scenes international politics. Sam Trainor’s career of overseas work coupled with a penchant for being outspoken has left him on the outside of the competitive Washington establishment. Formerly the top South Asia expert in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Trainor has moved to the private sector, working as an analyst for the consulting firm Argus Systems. But Sam soon discovers that for all their similarities, the government and their hired contractors have vastly different motives. As he struggles to adjust to a more corporate, profit-driven version of the work that had been his life, he stumbles across an intelligence anomaly—the transcript of a phone conversation about the fastest ways to upend the delicate political balance keeping India and Pakistan from all-out war. Yet Sam knows that conversation can’t have occurred—because he is having an affair with one of the alleged participants. As he digs into the source of this misinformation, he realizes that more is at stake than just bad intel. Someone is deliberately twisting the intelligence to stoke the simmering conflict between India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed rivals that have already fought multiple wars. And Sam’s new employer could be up to its neck in it.

'Rimington tells her story with the crisp authority one would expect of James Bond's M' New York Times Book Review Recovering from a gruelling terrorist investigation, Liz Carlyle has been posted to MI5's counter-espionage desk. Her bosses hope the change of scene will give her some breathing space, but they haven't counted on Putin's increased aggression towards the West. Soon Liz is on the hunt for a Russian spy who threatens to plunge Britain back into the fraught days of the Cold War. Meanwhile, MI6 has hired Jasminder Kapoor, a controversial young civil rights lawyer, to explain issues of privacy and security to the public. But in this world of shadowy motives and secret identities, Jasminder must be extra-careful about whom she can trust ... THE DEVIL'S BARGAIN, the brand-new thriller from Stella Rimington, is out now.