NCW Libraries

A sweeping multigenerational novel about idealism, betrayal, and family secrets set in the U.S. and Russia, from one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists
When the Great Depression hits, Florence Fein leaves Brooklyn College for a job in Moscow—and the promise of love and independence. But once in Russia, she quickly becomes entangled in a country she can’t escape. Many years later, Florence’s son,...

"We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions...

January 1946: Two WACs leave an officers' club in Munich, and four Soviet NKGB agents kidnap them at knifepoint in the parking lot and shove them in the back of an ambulance. That is the agents' first mistake, and their last. One of the WACs, a blond woman improbably named Claudette Colbert, works for the new Directorate of Central Intelligence, and three of the men end up dead and the fourth wounded. The "incident," however, will send shock waves...

"Our American Friend is a propulsive Cold War era spy thriller crossed with a fictional biography of a First Lady. Spanning from the 1970s to the present day, traveling from Moscow and Paris to Washington and New York, Anna Pitoniak's novel is a gripping page-turner about power and complicity and how sometimes, the fate of the world is in the hands of the people you'd never expect"--

"Paris, in April of 1968. The cafes are alive with talk of revolution, but for Scottish-American Will Flemyng-a spy working in the British Embassy-the crisis is personal. A few words from a stranger on the Metro change his life. His family is threatened with ruin and he now faces the spy's oldest fear: exposure. Freddy Craven is the hero and mentor Flemyng would trust with his life, but when he is tempted into a dark, Cold War labyrinth, he chooses...

The Cold War heats up when a KGB defector exposes Operation Glass, a potentially devastating Soviet plot to activate sleeper agents across the UK. The charismatic but paranoid head of MI-5, known simply as 'Daddy', assembles a secret committee of spies and intelligence officers to investigate. They're the only colleagues he trusts in a world of double agents and lies, but has he chosen well?

The epic and monumental love story Paullina Simons began with her adored international bestseller The Bronze Horseman comes to a breathtaking conclusion. The Summer Garden is the third volume in Simons's magnificent trilogy-a Russian Thorn Birds-which follows a love that survived the terrible siege of Leningrad during World War Two, a heartbreaking separation and a glorious reunion in America, only to be supremely tested by the hatred, fear, and uncertainty...

"A historical account of the end of the Cold War, including the events that sparked conflict and led to peace, the competition for global ideological supremacy, and the lingering aftermath"--

"The Cold War came to an abrupt end at the close of the 20th century thanks to the shared vision and efforts of two men: Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan. While seemingly very different, they shared much, including a philosophy of freedom and the belief that they had been called to bring an end to the Soviet regime. This calling they believed had a divine source, and hence referred to their efforts as the Divine Plan."--