Charles McCarry Books In Order

Paul Christopher Books In Publication Order

  1. The Miernik Dossier (1973)
  2. The Tears of Autumn (1974)
  3. The Secret Lovers (1977)
  4. The Better Angels (1979)
  5. The Last Supper (1983)
  6. The Bride of the Wilderness (1988)
  7. Second Sight (1991)
  8. Shelley’s Heart (1995)
  9. Old Boys (2004)
  10. Christopher’s Ghosts (2007)

Paul Christopher Books In Chronological Order

  1. The Bride of the Wilderness (1988)
  2. The Last Supper (1983)
  3. Christopher’s Ghosts (2007)
  4. The Miernik Dossier (1973)
  5. The Secret Lovers (1977)
  6. The Tears of Autumn (1974)
  7. The Better Angels (1979)
  8. Shelley’s Heart (1995)
  9. Second Sight (1991)
  10. Old Boys (2004)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Double Eagle (1979)
  2. Lucky Bast*ard (1998)
  3. Ark (2011)
  4. The Shanghai Factor (2013)
  5. The Mulberry Bush (2015)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Citizen Nader (1972)
  2. The Great Southwest (1980)
  3. Paths of Resistance (With: Isabel Allende,Gore Vidal) (1989)
  4. Inner Circles; How America Changed the World (1992)
  5. From the Field (1997)

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Charles McCarry Books Overview

The Miernik Dossier

Paul Christopher is cool, urbane, clear sighted a perfect American agent in deep cover in the twilight world of international intrigue. But now even he does not know which side is good or bad in a maze of double and triplecross. A small group of international agents embark on a car trip in a Cadillac, from Switzerland to the Sudan a comical Polish exile whose fear is no joke, a beautiful Hungarian seductress whose fiery sexuality makes her almost too hot to handle, and a North African prince whose appetite for women and lust for power are limitless. Christopher only knows that he has to find whose finger is on the trigger of bloody terrorism and Cold War takeover and God help everyone if he makes a mistake.

The Miernik Dossier is a compelling and distinctive thriller the first by the widely celebrated Charles McCarry and the introduction to his eminent agent, Paul Christopher. Finally back in paperback, readers can meet Paul Christopher again or for the first time. There’s a Mc Carry revolution underway.

The Tears of Autumn

‘As soon as he began publishing fiction more than three decades ago, Charles McCarry was recognized as a spy novelist of uncommon gifts’ wrote Charles Trueheart in The Washington Post. Tears of Autumn, McCarry’s riveting novel of espionage and foreign affairs, was a major bestseller upon its first publication in 1975. Spun with unsettling plausibility from the events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and featuring secret agent Paul Christopher, it’s a tour de force of action and enigma. Christopher, at the height of his powers, believes he knows who arranged the assassination, and why. His theory is so destructive of the legend of the dead president, though, and so dangerous to the survival of foreign policy that he is ordered to desist from investigating. But he is a man who lives by, and for, the truth and his internal compunctions force him to the heart of the matter. Christopher resigns from the Agency and embarks on a tour of investigation that takes him from Paris to Rome, Zurich, the Congo, and Saigon. Threatened by Kennedy’s assassins and by his own government, Christopher follows the scent of his suspicion one breath behind the truth, one step ahead of discovery and death.

The Secret Lovers

A nervous courier delivers the handwritten manuscript of a dissident Russian novel to Paul Christopher early one morning in West Berlin. Minutes after the handoff, the courier’s spine is neatly snapped by an impact with a passing black sedan. Meanwhile in Rome, Christopher s wife Cathy takes a famous film director as a lover to stir her husband out of the stoicism that defines his personality.

These two seemingly discrete events set in motion a spiral of operational and personal intrigue that leads Christopher from meetings with an aging agent in the cafes of old Europe to a rendezvous with an operative on the front lines of the Cold War in the Congo as he secretly arranges the publication of a novel that could bring the Soviet system to its knees and races to identify the leak that compromised the messenger and possibly his entire mission.

Since his reemergence with the publication of Old Boys, Charles McCarry has been once again heralded as one of the select few espionage novelists who manages to break out of his genre to shine as a brilliant novelist in his own right. The Secret Lovers is McCarry at his best an exploration of the epic scope of ‘the great game,’ but also a riveting psychological portrait of a man ensnared by a profession that never failed to exert its insidious influence outside the professional boundaries that, like the facade of diplomacy that outwardly held the Cold War in check, could never contain its violence essence.

The Better Angels

When Charles McCarry’s The Better Angels was first published almost thirty years ago, one reviewer lamented that his premise that terrorists would use passenger filled airliners as tools of terror was so incredible as to be an obstacle to the reader’s suspension of disbelief. In retrospect, this was to be just one of many of the novel’s facets that would prove to be prophetic.

The novel takes place in an election year, close to the turn of the century, in a deeply polarized America. The presidential race matches a tall, lantern jawed liberal against a far right former businessman with deep ties to the energy industry. The principal threat to the country comes from Islamic terrorists who are almost impossible to track down, are led by an Arab prince made rich by oil, and are desperate to acquire nuclear bombs to use against Israel or major American cities.

And the similarities don’t end there. Written at the height of the Cold War, McCarry’s foresight and crisp language produced a masterpiece perhaps more applicable to the world today as it was when first written.

The Last Supper

On a rainy night in Paris, Paul Christopher’s lover Molly Benson falls victim to a vehicular homicide minutes after Christopher boards a jet to Vietnam. To explain this seemingly senseless murder, The Last Supper takes its readers back not only to the earliest days of Christopher’s life, but also to the origins of the CIA in the clandestine operations of the OSS during World War II. Moving seamlessly from tales of refugee smuggling in Na*zi Germany, to OSS coordinated guerilla warfare against the Japanese in Burma, to the chaotic violence of the Vietnam War, McCarry creates an intimate history of the shadow world of deceit and betrayal that penetrates the psyches of the men and women who live within it.

Perhaps the most richly complex of McCarry’s renowned Paul Christopher novels, The Last Supper is an epic recreation of the history of an organization ensnared by a culture of conspiracy, deceit, and senseless violence.

The Bride of the Wilderness

In early 18th century America, London born Fanny and the French soldier Philippe ancestors of McCarrys famous recurring spy Paul Christopher brave savage Indians and other adventures.

Second Sight

‘As much a part of our national literature as the works of Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, and Ernest Hemingway.’ Otto Penzler, The New York Sun, May 17, 2006

Since his reemergence with the publication of Old Boys, Charles McCarry has been heralded as one of the select few novelists of espionage who manage to break out of his genre to shine as a brilliant and unique novelist. Second Sight is seventh in the series that follows the legendary spy Paul Christopher a man ensnared by a line of work that never failed to exert its insidious influence outside professional boundaries.

Now retired and living the quiet life as a loving husband in Washington, D.C., Christopher has survived battlefields of World War II, undercover Cold War killing grounds, and imprisonment in China. But now, throughout the Arab world, U.S. agents are being kidnapped and brain drained by an unidentified enemy armed with a diabolical new drug. Christopher’s old friend and superior in ‘the Outfit’ calls with a command he feels he must obey. But what begins for Christopher as a global manhunt swiftly turns into something far closer to home. For the key to the danger he must defuse is a secret buried deep in his own perilous past.

Shelley’s Heart

A political thriller from the master of espionage

The first presidential election of the twenty first century, bitterly contested by two men who are implacable political rivals but lifelong personal friends, is stolen through computer fraud. On the eve of the Inauguration, the losing candidate presents proof of the crime to his opponent, the incumbent President, and demands that he stand aside. The winner refuses and takes the oath of office, thereby setting in motion what may destroy him and his party, and bring down the Constitution.

From this crisis, master storyteller Charles McCarry, author of the classic thrillers The Tears of Autumn and The Last Supper weaves a masterpiece of political intrigue. Shelley’s Heart is so gripping in its realism and so striking in its foresight that McCarry’s devoted readers may view this tale of love, murder, betrayal, and life or death struggles for the political soul of America as an act of prophecy.

Old Boys

Charles McCarry is considered by many to be the master of world-class spy fiction, garnering praise from peers and critics alike for his riveting novels. Christopher Buckley wrote that McCarry ”is not only one of the best writers in America but one of the most important. He dazzles, from epigraph to epilogue,” and the Los Angeles Times hailed his work as ”first rate, in the tradition of the best espionage fiction, John Buchan to Eric Ambler and John le Carre.”

In this magnificent novel, Charles McCarry returns to the world of his legendary character Paul Christopher–the savvy intelligence agent as skilled at choosing a fine wine as he is at tradecraft, at once sophisticated and dangerous, and no stranger to the world of dirty tricks. Now Paul Christopher has mysteriously disappeared. Months pass and a memorial service is held for him in Washington. But a group of his retired colleagues–the ”Old Boys” from the Outfit–refuse to believe Christopher is dead. Led by Christopher’s cousin Horace, the Old Boys embark on a thrilling worldwide search for the master spy and an ancient scroll that may reveal an unspeakably dangerous truth.

Christopher’s Ghosts

With Christopher’s Ghosts, a novel that’s cinematic scope and penetrating depth transcend the bounds of even the greats works in its genre, Charles McCarry has surpassed his own matchless reputation as an espionage novelist. The grand tale begins in Europe in the late thirties, where a young Christopher and his family are struggling against the rise of Na*zi totalitarianism in Berlin, even as he wrestles with a doomed love affair and bears witness to an unspeakable atrocity committed by a remorseless S.S. officer. The action spans oceans and time to the height of the Cold War in Europe, when the S.S. man emerges out of the ruins of postwar Germany to destroy the last living witness to his crime. It’s a case of tiger chasing tiger as Christopher is pursued by the only man alive who can match his tradecraft or his instincts. As he edges toward the final confrontation with this mortal enemy, Christopher is forced to operate in the one theater he had thought he had mastered his own past. With ferocious suspense, masterful pacing, and a penetrating insight into the blood soaked spectacle of twentieth century Europe, Charles McCarry delivers a haunting parable of a man confronted with the ghosts of an entire generation’s brutal history.

Lucky Bast*ard

Lucky Bast*ard is the suspenseful and hilarious story of a gifted politician with dangerous friends and a zipper problem. The author is Charles McCarry, a writer widely acclaimed for his richly perceptive novels of political intrigue. John Fitzgerald Adams, known by the voters who love him as Jack, has good reason to believe he is the illegitimate son of JFK. His goal is the same as that of any Kennedy: to reclaim the presidency…
and enjoy as many women as possible along the way. Jack possesses an instinctual political genius, an unerring knack for charming voters and advancing his own interests. But Jack, up from poverty, cannot make it to the Oval Office without money and support. Luckily, he becomes the beneficiary of the largesse of two maverick Russians who recognize Jack’s talent and invest considerable resources in his rise to power. Jack also relies on a strong willed wife, an ardent radical who masterminds his political moves while guarding against the threat that his wild libido will destroy his career. As Jack marches toward the presidency, others who realize the truth about his sinister connections try to stop him. But will anyone believe them? Charles McCarry has long been recognized as the dean of Washington’s novelists, ‘a magical writer, the very best in this field’ Martha Gellhorn, Sunday Telegraph. With Lucky Bast*ard, McCarry has written the novel of his career, a thrilling and imaginative vision of power and conspiracy in the age of Clinton.

From the Field

Unexpected Eloquence The National Geographic archive, long renowned as a mother lode of superb photography and fascinating information, has also yielded the wonderful writing that stands alone in this collection. From the Field presents a wide ranging selection of writings by world class figures: novelists and naturalists, poets and presidents, explorers and adventurers, and pioneers. Each piece is a gem of its kind; taken together they add up to a chronicle of a hundred years of discovery and a capsule history of National Geographic itself. Here’s just a glimpse of the riches that you’ll find among the scores of authors and articles collected in this wonderful anthology: Alexander Graham Bell Aerial Locomotion Joseph Conrad Geography and Some Explorers David Lamb: A Season in the Minors Charles A. Lindbergh To Bogota and Back by Air Archibald MacLeish The Thrush on the Island of Barra James Fallows: Vatican City Diane Ackerman: In Praise of Squirrels Jane Goodall The Imperiled Mountain Gorilla William O. Douglas West from the Khyber Pass Theodore Roosevelt Wild Man and Wild Beast in Africa Amelia Earhart My Flight from Hawaii Geoffrey C. Ward India’s Wildlife Dilemma Robert E. Peary The Discovery of the Pole Willie Morris: Faulkner’s Mississippi William Least Heat Moon Oregon’s Outback Barry Lopez: California Desert David Remnick Moscow: The New Revolution Paul Theroux: Down the Zambezi

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