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This page lists novels by Alan Furst.

The cover images are for the first US edition and for a recent paperback or digital edition.

By Alan Furst
- novels
- omnibus editions

Edited by Alan Furst
- anthologies

Your Day in the Barrel

Alan Furst

1976

"Roger Levy is an enterprising young man in business for himself. In fact, his is a kind of modern American success story, although it just happens that his business is dealing dope around the various colleges and universities in Pennsylvania. So when he he is stopped, his van searched and his "merchandise" discovered by the Pennsylvania police, he has no choice but to appear to cooperate when offered his freedom in exchange for complicity in an apparent CIA murder scheme. Back home in New York the case is on, and it is only with the help if his lawyer, his street sense and a lot of his own hard-earned cash that Levy is finally able to identify and evade the enemy, uncover the unlikely source of the plot and come away with enough capital to fulfill his own version of the American dream - to retire and live above his own Chinese restaurant, its kitchen avaliable to him 24 hours a day. Set in the last days of the sixties, Your Day in the Barrel is at once a fond spoof of the suspense genre and a fiercely contemporary thriller."

The Paris Drop

Alan Furst

1980

"In the world of commercial espionage there are only buyers and sellers. What have you got and what do you want for it? Surely, this is no place for Roger Levin, who's making a simple delivery-$100,000 in untraceable bills to Paris, no questions asked. But the City of Light proves a dangerous if romantic place, and Levin finds himself caught among Arab assassins, expatriate wheeler-dealers, double agents, and femme fatales, who know where to sell a heart after they've stolen it. He was definitely in over his head, and getting curious. Could it be that the City College class ring he promised to deliver for his uncle was less harmless than it appeared? Levin strikes back with his two best weapons-a wicked sense of street smarts and a savage sense of humor. But the buyers and sellers take him apart piece by piece, until he finds, underneath the irony, underneath the poses, his wandering conscience."

The Caribbean Account

Alan Furst

1981

Shadow Trade

Alan Furst

1983

"Guyer, a former intelligence officer dismissed by the Central Intelligence Agency, sets up his own business in clandestine operations and becomes caught up in the intrigue, ruthless politics, duplicity, and power games of private intelligence companies."

Night Soldiers

Alan Furst

1988

A Night Soldiers novel

"Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates the European world of 1934-45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944."

Dark Star

Alan Furst

1991

A Night Soldiers novel

"Andre Szara, survivor of the Polish pogroms and the Russian civil wars, is a journalist working for Pravda in 1937. War in Europe is already underway and Szara is co-opted to join the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence agency. He does his best to survive the tango of pre-war politics by calmly obeying orders and keeping his nose clean. But when he is sent to retrieve a battered briefcase the plot thickens and is drawn into even more complex intrigues. Szara becomes a full-time spymaster and as deputy director of a Paris network, he finds his own star rising when he recruits an agent in Berlin who can supply crucial information. Dark Star captures not only the intrigue and danger of clandestine life but the day-to-day reality of what Soviet operatives call special work."

The Polish Officer

Alan Furst

1995

A Night Soldiers novel

"September, 1939. The invading Germans blaze a trail of destruction across Poland. France and Britain declare war, but do nothing to help. And a Polish resistance movement takes shape under the shadow of occupation, enlisting those willing to risk death in the struggle for their nation's survival. Among them is Captain Alexander de Milja, an officer in the Polish military intelligence service, a cartographer who now must learn a dangerous new role: spymaster in the anti-Nazi underground. Beginning with a daring operation to smuggle the Polish National Gold Reserve to the government in exile, he slips into the shadowy and treacherous front lines of espionage; he moves through Europe, changing identities and staying one step ahead of capture. In Warsaw, he engineers a subversive campaign to strengthen the people's will to resist. In Paris, he poses as a Russian poet, then as a Slovakian coal merchant, drinking champagne in black-market bistros with Nazis while uncovering information about German battle plans. And a love affair with a woman of the French Resistance leads him to make the greatest decision of his life."

The World at Night

Alan Furst

1996

A Night Soldiers novel

"Paris 1940. The civilised, upper-class life of film producer Jean Casson ends with the German occupation of the city. Out of money and almost out of luck, Casson attempts to work with a German film company but finds himself drawn into the dark world of espionage and double agents. More used to evading jealous husbands than the secret police, Casson beomes a reluctant spy, torn between honour, patriotism, love and survival."

Red Gold

Alan Furst

1999

A Night Soldiers novel

"Set in the underworld of Paris in 1941. Reluctant spy Jean Casson returns to occupied Paris under a new identity. He is wanted by the Gestapo therefore must stay away from the civilised circles he knew as a film producer and learn to survive in the shadowy backstreets and cheap hotels of Pigalle. Yet as the war drags on, he finds himself drawn back into the dangerous world of resistance and sabotage."

Kingdom of Shadows

Alan Furst

2000

A Night Soldiers novel

"Paris, 1938. Nicholas Morath, former Hungarian cavalry officer, returns home to his young mistress in the 7th arrondissement. He's been in Vienna where, amid the mobs screaming for Hitler, he's done a quiet favour for his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi. Polanyi is a diplomat and, desperate to stop his country's drift into alliance with Nazi Germany, he trades in conspiracy - with SS renegades, Abwehr officers, British spies and NKVD defectors, leading Morath deeper and deeper into danger as Europe edges towards war."

Blood of Victory

Alan Furst

2003

A Night Soldiers novel

"November, 1940. I.A. Serebin, a writer from Odessa and former decorated Hero of the Soviet Union, is on his way to Istanbul following a cryptic letter from a former lover. Ostensibly there on official business for the International Russian Union, an émigré organisation based in Paris, he is drawn into a clandestine world of international spies and political players. With war in Europe drawing nearer, Serebin is recruited by the British secret services - his mission to stop the export of Romanian oil to Germany. In a race against time, Serebin's journey will take him from the glittering salons of Paris to the back alleys of Bucharest and the Black Sea ports, in a covert operation to staunch the flow of oil, the precious 'blood of victory'."

Dark Voyage

Alan Furst

2004

A Night Soldiers novel

"May 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter steams up the Tagus river to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa, flies the flag of neutral Spain, and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo. But she is not the Santa Rosa. She is the Noordendam, a Dutch freighter under the command of Captain Eric DeHaan. She sails for the intelligence division of the British Royal Navy and is involved in a secret mission. On board are a Polish engineer and British spy, Spaniards who fought for Franco and Germans who fought against Hitler. For them, this is a last desperate flight to freedom."

The Foreign Correspondent

Alan Furst

2006

A Night Soldiers novel

"In Paris, in the winter of 1939, a murder/suicide at a lovers' hotel hits the tabloid press. But this is not a romantic tragedy, it is the work of OVRA, Mussolini's fascist secret police, and meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine newspaper published by Italian émigrés. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and found work as a foreign correspondent for the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor. Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain, reporting on the tragic end of the Spanish civil war, but, as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Surete, by agents of OVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondent is a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or murder."

The Spies of Warsaw

Alan Furst

2008

A Night Soldiers novel

"At the French embassy, the new military attaché, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn in to a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations. Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amidst an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters - Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence; the mysterious and sophisticated Doctor Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier's brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed."

Spies of the Balkans

Alan Furst

2010

A Night Soldiers novel

"Salonika, 1940. To the bustle of tavernas and the smell of hashish, a secret war is taking shape. In the backrooms of barbers, envelopes change hands, and in the Club de Salonique the air is thick with whispers. Costa Zannis is the city's dashing chief detective - a man with contacts high and low, in the Balkans and beyond. And as unknown ships and British 'travel writers' trickle through the port, he is a man very much in demand. Having helped defeat Italy in the highlands of Macedonia, Zannis returns to a city holding its breath. Mussolini's forces have retreated - for now - but German sights are fixed firmly on the region. And as the situation in Germany worsens, Zannis becomes involved in an audacious plot - smuggling Jews to Istanbul, through the back door of Europe. The British hear he can penetrate the continent's closed borders, and soon Zannis is embroiled in the resistance, and in a reckless love affair that could jeopardise everything."

Mission to Paris

Alan Furst

2012

A Night Soldiers novel

"Late summer, 1938. Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris to make a movie. The Nazis know he's coming--a secret bureau within the Reich has been waging political warfare against France, and for their purposes, Fredric Stahl is a perfect agent of influence. What they don't know is that Stahl, horrified by the Nazi war on Jews and intellectuals, has become part of an informal spy service run out of the American embassy. Mission to Paris is filled with heart-stopping tension, beautifully drawn scenes of romance, and extraordinarily alive characters: foreign assassins; a glamorous Russian actress-turned-spy; and the women in Stahl's life. At the center of the novel is the city of Paris--its bistros, hotels grand and anonymous, and the Parisians, living every night as though it were their last."

Midnight in Europe

Alan Furst

2014

A Night Soldiers novel

"Paris, 1938. Democratic forces are locked in struggle as the shadow of war edges over Europe. Cristián Ferrar, a handsome Spanish lawyer in Paris, is approached to help a clandestine agency supply weapons to beleaguered Republican forces. He agrees, putting his life on the line. Joining Ferrar in his mission is an unlikely group of allies: idealists and gangsters, arms dealers, aristocrats and spies. From libertine nightclubs in Paris to shady bars by the docks in Gdansk, Furst paints a spell-binding portrait of a continent marching into a nightmare - and the heroes and heroines who fought back."

A Hero of France

Alan Furst

2016

A Night Soldiers novel

"Spring, 1941. Britain is losing the war. Paris is occupied by the Nazis, dark and silent at night. But when the clouds part, and moonlight floods the city, a Resistance leader called Mathieu steps out to begin his work. The fighters of the French Resistance are determined not to give up. These courageous men and women - young and old, aristocrats and nightclub owners, teachers and students - help downed British airmen reach the border with Spain. In farmhouses and rural churches, in secret hotels, and on the streets, they risk everything to open Europe's sealed doors and lead Allied fighters to freedom. But as the military police heightens surveillance, Mathieu and his team face a new threat, dispatched from the Reich to destroy them all."

Three Great Novels

Alan Furst

2010

Combines the three novels: Kingdom of Shadows; Dark Star; and The Polish Officer.

The Book of Spies: An Anthology of Literary Espionage

Editor: Alan Furst

2003

An anthology of excerpts from espionage novels.

"An action-packed anthology celebrates finest works of literary espionage in a collection that features contributions by Eric Ambler, Anthony Burgess, Joseph Conrad, Maxim Gorky, Graham Greene, John le Carré, Compton Mackenzie, W. Somerset Maugham, Charles McCarry, Baroness Orczy, John Steinbeck, and Rebecca West, among other notable writers."