In the summer 1991, a Russian couple who deal in icons are found murdered in a villa in Berlin. There is evidence that the woman has been tortured before being killed. In Moscow, an officer in the new security service of the Russian Federation is despatched to German to find a rogue agent of the former KGB who has disappeared. Back in Berlin, an American art historian, Francesca McDermott, flies in to curate a major retrospective exhibition of Russian avant-garde art. The exhibition is the brain-child of Berlin’s new minister of culture, Stefan Diederich, a former dissident whom Francesca had known before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Stefan tells her that the price for Russian co-operation in mounting the exhibition is that she work with a Russian art historian, Andrei Serotkin. Serotkin turns out to have all the qualities of which the liberal-minded, feminist Francesca disapproves – he is a chain-smoking male chauvinist – but after he saves her from rape in Berlin’s Tiergarten she feels an involuntary attraction. He is also mysterious and has some kind of hold over Stefan Diederich. It is a time when Russia is in chaos, its assets plundered by cronies of Boris Yeltsin, and Berlin jittery because of the revelations that are emerging from the Stasi files. (Source: http://www.pierspaulread.co.uk/fictio...)

The intelligent and gripping thriller of treason and sexual intrigue in the south of France is back in print. After a despicable act of treason causes the slaughter of a British-led detachment of mercenaries in Indonesia, the list of suspects is narrowed to two young diplomats at the British Embassy in Jakarta. One of them, brilliant and charming Cambridge graduate Willy Ludley, disappears to Argentina, so it is assumed he is the traitor; case closed. The other suspect advances in his career and a decade later is up for an embassy post in Washington. The Foreign Office must now clear up any questions about his possible connection to the Indonesian affair. Simon Milson, of the Foreign Office and an old friend of Ludley's from Cambridge, catches the assignment. If Ludley can be confirmed as the traitor, the other suspect will be cleared. Milson contrives to drop in on Ludley and his wife at their home in Nice, the Villa Golitsyn, turning up with a runaway schoolgirl in tow. Amidst an increasing febrile atmosphere, fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol, intense philosophical conversations, and myriad sexual temptations, Ludley and Milson struggle with their principles and their pasts in this elegant and masterful thriller, first published in 1981, set equally in the sun-drenched Mediterranean and a moral no-man's land.

An intellectual thriller putting forth the supposition that Christ did not rise from the dead. It questions what effect this revelation would have on the individual believer, on the Church as a whole and on the political stability of the world. Read has also written "A Season in the West".

July 20, 1894. The German military attaché in Paris receives a visit from a seedy-looking man who claims to be a French army officer in desperate need of money, offering to sell them military secrets. Captain Alfred Dreyfus was a rising star in the French artillery command. Reserved yet intelligent and ambitious, Dreyfus had everything: a family, money, and a clear path to a prestigious post on the General Staff. However, Dreyfus had enemies as a result of his ambition. Many of them came from the impoverished Catholic aristocracy and disliked Dreyfus because he was rich, bourgeois, and, above all, a Jew. On the basis of flimsy evidence, Dreyfus was placed under arrest for the crime of high treason. Not long afterward, he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life on the legendary, lethal Devil's Island. The saga of Dreyfus's many trials-he was not exonerated until 1906, twelve years after first being arrested-the fight to free him, and the intrigues on both sides, is a fast-moving mystery story rife with heroes and villains, loose women, loyal wives, bisexual men, tricksters, and charlatans. But this was no mere sideshow. The anti-Semitism and deceit on display in the Dreyfus case was an ominous prelude to the Holocaust and the long, bloody twentieth century to come. In an era when religious conflict, fierce patriotism, and charged debates over national identity pervade the public sphere, the scandal of Captain Dreyfus still has much to teach us. In the hands of prizewinning novelist, biographer, and narrative historian Piers Paul Read, this real-life morality tale comes alive for a new generation. Using his storytelling skills and a nuanced, deep knowledge of French history, Read rediscovers l'affaire Dreyfus as a rich, riveting tale.

Edward Dawson is sent by his widowed mother to be educated at Kirkham, a Catholic boarding school run by Benedictine monks. Conscientious and idealistic, Dawson is persuaded that he has a monastic vocation and joins the community upon leaving school. He soon feels that educating the sons of the rich is an inadequate response to suffering and injustice and so leaves Kirkham to serve as a secular priest in London. Under the eye of an indulgent archbishop, Dawson’s radical sermons and provocative articles in the Catholic press gain him many admirers, but they also persuade him that the solutions to human suffering are to be found in social work, politics and perhaps psychology but not religion.

The bestselling author of Blaze presents a heart-pounding account of the world's greatest nuclear disaster, based on sources not available before the fall of the Soviet Union. Read's enthralling account is filled with acts of courage--and also bumbling confusion, secrecy, lies, and coverups. Read spent many months in Russia interviewing hundreds of survivors and experts. Photographs. 3 maps.

It is the late 18th century and Sicilian nobleman Vitello Scarpia finds himself penniless and in disgrace on the streets of Rome. After leaving his home in pursuit of a military career, his fiery passion has seen him expelled from the Spanish royal guard and left to seek his fortune in Italy; a fortune inseparably bound to the Pope, whose rule is put in question by the French Revolution. Scarpia enrolls in the papal army and is soon taken up by a countess eager to have a handsome young officer at her side. She introduces Scarpia into Roman society, and he is both enthralled and agitated by its mix of religiosity, sophistication, decadence, and intrigue. Then, on a mission to Venice, he meets the gifted, beautiful singer Floria Tosca. And as the armies of revolutionary France advance into Italy, and war and revolution engulf the whole peninsula, these two lives become entwined. Steeped in factual detail and exploring the lives--part historical, part fictional--of figures from Puccini's famous opera, Scarpia shines a light into dusty corridors of history and dark corners of the human soul.

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the forty-five original passengers and crew, only sixteen made it off the mountain alive. For ten excruciating weeks they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, they were forced to do what would have once been unthinkable... This is their story - one of the most astonishing true adventures of the twentieth century.

A young British diplomat serving in West Berlin falls in love with Suzi a German girl whom he first sees in a café on the Kurfürstendamm. She is the niece of a German politician who the narrator, in his role as the political adviser to the commander of the British garrison in the city, has been told to investigate because of his links with prominent Nazis in the past.

Louisa Rutledge, the nineteen-year-old daughter of a Harvard professor, picks up a stranger on Boston Common and, after a crude coupling in her apartment, throws herself out of her window. She survives and returns to the home of her parents in Cambridge, Mass. – her father a rich, east-coast patrician, descended from a signatory of the Declaration of Independence; her mother the alcoholic mistress of a powerful senator.

July 20, 1894. The German Military Attache in Paris. Colonel Maximillien von Schwarzkoppen received a visit from a seedy-looking middle-aged Frenchman who would not give his name. He told Schwarzkoppen that he was a French army officer serving on the General Staff; that he was in desperate need of money; and was therefore prepared to sell military secrets to the Germans.Captain Alfred Dreyfus, then aged 35, was a high-flying career artillery officer. Shy, reserved, sometimes awkward, but intelligent and ambitious, Dreyfus had everything he might have hoped for: a wife, two enchanting children, plenty of money and a post on the General Staff. However, Dreyfus' rise in the army had not made him friends. Many of them came from the impoverished Catholic aristocracy and disliked Dreyfus because he was rich, bourgeois and, above all, a Jew.On October 13, Captain Dreyfus was summoned by the General de Boisdeffre to the Ministry of War. Despite minimal evidence against...