Espionage

Signed 15-year anniversary edition with an exclusive foreword by the author, and an essay by Tim Shipman. With sprayed edges, ribbon marker and lovely endpapers.

Slough House is the outpost where disgraced spies are banished to see out the rest of their derailed careers. Known as the 'slow horses' these misfits have committed crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal while on duty. In this drab and mildewed office these highly trained spies don't run ops, they push paper.

Not one of them joined the Intelligence Service to be a slow horse and the one thing they have in common is they want to be back in the action.

Special Agent Paul Chavasse is about to start a much-deserved holiday when he is abruptly pulled back to active duty. He knows that if he’s being called into action, a job has gone badly wrong – and it’s about to get a lot worse. Somewhere in Germany is hidden a manuscript that could rock Western Europe to its foundations: the testament of Martin Bormann.

As Hitler’s private secretary – and an influential member of the Third Reich – the terrible secrets Bormann carried into oblivion are about to be revealed. Many who are now in power have much to lose. With instructions to secure the manuscript at all costs, British Intelligence's toughest trouble-shooter soon discovers that he isn't the only one trying to get his hands on the book.

And his rivals will go to any lengths – any lengths – to beat him to it.

Set in the missing decade between two iconic instalments in the George Smiley saga, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice is an extraordinary, thrilling return to the world of spy fiction's greatest writer, John le Carré.

It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West's spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only on a more peaceful life.

And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumour in Whitehall – unconfirmed and a little scandalous – that George Smiley might almost be happy. But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found.

Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Susanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But in his absence the shadows of Moscow have lengthened. Smiley will soon find himself entangled in a perilous mystery that will define the battles to come, and strike at the heart of his greatest enemy…