The Big Green Tent: a Novel / Ludmila Ulitskaya, translated by Polly Gannon, 579 pp.

A big, rambling novel about many things: Soviet repression, secrecy, betrayal, art, and, most of all, friendship. Sanya, Ilya, and Mikha come of age in 1950s Moscow, Alone, they are outcasts, but together they form the Trianon, and build a lifelong friendship. Each has an intense artistic obsession: Sanya with music, Ilya with photography, and Mikha with poetry. Because they are intelligent, sensitive, and curious, they become involved in activities that put them on the wrong side of the KGB.

But this is no carefully plotted novel of intrigue; the fear of detention and death is real here but strangely muted. More important here are the relationships, among the men, between the men and the women they love, and with teachers, family and friends. Covering more than forty years and exploring the lives of a large cast of characters, this novel is a slow pleasure. The characters' devotion to art leads them to samizdat, the distribution of censored material through secret means which led many to be arrested during the period. In spite of the context, the characters and the larger tone of the novel remain earnest rather than cynical.

Crooked

Crooked / Austin Grossman 355 pgs.

An alternative history featuring Richard Nixon.  Nixon is one of the most improbable presidents.  This book explains all by revealing the supernatural secret behind his assent to power.  Told in his own words, this remarkable story tells of his assent to power and how it all fell apart.  Was he saving us? or just embarrassing us?

Another home run by Grossman, who also wrote Soon I will be Invincible.  Looking forward to the movie!

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Gorky Park / Martin Cruz Smith 373 pp.

This has been on my list for a long time.  A lot has changed since this was published in 1981, but it reads well even post-Cold War.  Arkady Renko is Moscow's chief homicide investigator when three bodies are found in Gorky Park, a popular pleasure center near Red Square.  The investigation is enjoyably complex and involves nasty encounters with the KGB and, because it's Moscow in 1980, Americans too, as though that city and its people couldn't exist without a capitalist foil.   Renko is an archetypical investigator: tough, smart, with impeccable ethics and tortured relationships with women. But the character's predictable contours enhance the story, somehow, perhaps leaving Cruz Smith freer to craft an intricate plot and saturate it with an amazing level of local detail.  I don't know if it was accurately researched but I hope so - I finished the book almost feeling like I'd visited the time and place.  If you've never read this, I strongly recommend it.

The Tourist

The Tourist/Olen Steinhauer 408 pg.

I listened to this one on audio and could not help but try to sneak it in any chance I got. This is a great spy story that follows Milo Weaver, a CIA "tourist" which is a super secret department of black ops people. It really did a good job of showing the "expendibility" of the agents and the story was filled with intrigue and action but also very good with the human side. I had never even heard of this author but will certainly read more. - Christa

Spy wars: moles, mysteries, and deadly games

Spy wars: moles, mysteries, and deadly games/Tennent H. Bagley 313 pg.

I've always loved the spy stuff and this book was great except after reading it you wonder how the CIA could be so stupid...yea, I guess I can see it. Anyway, this book covers a certain KGB defector, Yuri Nosenko, who was clearly a KGB plant. In the end, the CIA refused to second guess themselves and instead built this guy up to be the greatest source they ever had. Funny how when you try to cover up your mistakes, you often make even bigger ones. Even if you just read the final couple of chapters, it is a great lesson on the concept of "group think" and how people can be persuaded by others and there lack of desire to look like they had been wrong all along. - Christa

The Defector by Daniel Silva

The Defector by Daniel Silva, Thriller, 469 pages 10 hours, 58 minutes.
The latest of Silva's thrillers featuring Israeli super-agent Gabriel Allon, this one is, again, filled with frantic action, danger, and hyperbole. Fun and fast paced, but sometimes a little over the top with seemingly unnecessary killing and excessive hand-wringing by the good guys, and thuggish brutality by the bad guys. Decent narration by Phil Gigante.