100 books like The Honest Spy

By Andreas Kollender, Steve Anderson (translator),

Here are 100 books that The Honest Spy fans have personally recommended if you like The Honest Spy. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

Matthew Masur Author Of Understanding and Teaching the Cold War

From my list on Cold War info that will keep you engaged.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of history who specializes in the United States and the Cold War. A large part of my job involves choosing books that are informative, but that the students will actually want to read. That means I often select novels, memoirs, and works of history that have compelling figures or an entertaining narrative. After more than twenty years of teaching, I’ve assigned many different books in my classes. These are the ones that my students enjoyed the most. 

Matthew's book list on Cold War info that will keep you engaged

Matthew Masur Why did Matthew love this book?

I was immediately drawn to the suspense of this book. The novel begins at the Berlin Wall, where British intelligence agent Alec Leamas helplessly watches as East German guards murder his colleague.

As I followed the elaborate British plan to get revenge on an East German official, I had the nagging feeling that I was missing something. When I finally got to the end, I realized that I had been duped—much like many of the characters in the novel. 

By John le Carré,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked The Spy Who Came in From the Cold as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager, now a television series starring Tom Hiddleston.

The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carre's career worldwide

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse-a desk job-Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered…


Book cover of True Grit

Sabrina Reeves Author Of Little Crosses

From my list on a fierce female protagonist.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in Boston and New York and currently live in Montreal. I have worked primarily in writing performance texts and plays. I founded the performance company Bluemouth Inc., with whom I have written and staged over a dozen works. In 2018, I completed an MFA in Creative Writing at Concordia University, where I was awarded the Dean of Arts and Sciences Award for Excellence in Creative Writing. As for my expertise in compiling this list, I am the daughter of a strong force-of-nature woman who fought for what she had and taught her kids they can get through anything as long as they have humor, music, and books.

Sabrina's book list on a fierce female protagonist

Sabrina Reeves Why did Sabrina love this book?

Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross has got grit.

This book was recommended to me by my firefighter brother, who often reads what I call “he-man” books. The titles always have words like mutiny, bullets, gangsters, firestorm, etc. So, when he suggested I read this book, I had my reservations. (In fairness, the books he recommends consistently end up on my list of all-time favorites–I guess that’s what I get for pre-judging!) In any case, over the years, I have learned the one thing we both love in a protagonist–and now I have a name for it–is grit. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

By Charles Portis,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked True Grit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

There is no knowing what lies in a man's heart. On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is killed by one of his own workers. Tom Chaney shoots him down in the street for a horse, $150 cash, and two Californian gold pieces. Ross's unusually mature and single-minded fourteen-year-old daughter Mattie travels to claim his body, and finds that the authorities are doing nothing to find Chaney. Then she hears of Rooster - a man, she's told, who has grit - and convinces him to join her in a quest into dark, dangerous Indian territory to hunt Chaney down…


Book cover of The Talented Mr. Ripley

Barbara Copperthwaite Author Of The Perfect Friend

From my list on books told by liars.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my early twenties, I worked in a maximum security, Category A men’s prison. I got to know the prisoners, who were usually polite, funny, and, for want of a better word, ‘normal,’ even if guilty of terrible crimes. It made me realize you can’t simply tell if someone is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ by looking at them. It left an indelible mark on me: a fascination with people who lie easily and fool the world. My fascination grew when I became a journalist, but writing fiction has given me the freedom to truly explore liars of all types and try to understand them.

Barbara's book list on books told by liars

Barbara Copperthwaite Why did Barbara love this book?

He’s charming, he’s intelligent, and he’s a professional conman who is out to steal his new best friend’s life. And I can’t get enough of Tom Ripley! I absolutely love an anti-hero, and I like nothing better than getting a look inside a psychopath’s mind. I’ve read this book at least five times.

The writing is tight as a drum, Italy is brought to life, and it’s understandable why Tom falls in love with it…and Dickie. He falls in love so much he wants to become Dickie. The more Tom is backed into a corner, the more clever, audacious, and vicious he becomes. It’s no surprise to me that this book is such a classic.

By Patricia Highsmith,

Why should I read it?

24 authors picked The Talented Mr. Ripley as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It's here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith's five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a "sissy." Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley's fascination with Dickie's debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie's ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game. "Sinister and strangely alluring"…


Book cover of Going After Cacciato

Henry Rozycki Author Of Walk the Earth as Brothers

From my list on novels that describe what war does to young men.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am the child of Holocaust survivors who chose not to talk about it. The effects were clear and stark – my mother crying out with nightmares, my father doing everything in his power not to be noticed by authorities – but I was not allowed to know their sources. Though my lottery number was 76, I missed going to Vietnam by a year as the draft ended; I watched so many of my peers come back either damaged or at least profoundly changed. I never wish I experienced war in all its hellaciousness, but from early adolescence, I have wondered how I would have acted.

Henry's book list on novels that describe what war does to young men

Henry Rozycki Why did Henry love this book?

How does one capture and transmit what the mixture of boredom and abject terror that is often a soldier’s life does to the psyche most effectively?

I had read a number of fictionalized reportages and Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut, which added science fiction. Still, it wasn’t until I powered through this book that I felt I could know how difficult it is for young men to try and make sense of it. The book was a puzzle with pieces that were hard to place next to each other into a coherent picture, and that felt to me like what Vietnam did to those in my generation who fought there.

By Tim O'Brien,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Going After Cacciato as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the National Book Award, 'Going After Cacciato' captures the peculiar mixture of horror and hallucination that marked the Vietnam War, this strangest of wars.

In a blend of reality and fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris.

In its memorable evocation of men both fleeing from and meeting the demands of battle, 'Going After Cacciato' stands as much more than just a great war novel. Ultimately it's about the forces of…


Book cover of France Under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise

Bertram M. Gordon Author Of Historical Dictionary of World War II France: The Occupation, Vichy, and the Resistance, 1938-1946

From my list on France in World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child in New York, I was interested in history to the point where by third grade I had memorized the list of U.S. presidents beginning with George Washington. The world was more Eurocentric than now, and I was taken by what I saw as the richness of European history. Surrounded later by Leftist academics, I became interested in the Right. Why were so many, especially among the lower middle classes, drawn to the Right and fascism during the first half of the twentieth century? This led to my interviewing and studying World War II pro-Nazi French collaborators. Later I branched into food history and the history of tourism.

Bertram's book list on France in World War II

Bertram M. Gordon Why did Bertram love this book?

Whereas historians and others in postwar France focused on French resistance to Nazi Germany during their Second World War occupation (1940-1944) relatively few in wartime France did in fact actively resist the Germans. Instead, while some in France either collaborated with the Germans after France’s defeat in 1940, many and arguably the majority chose a more passive accommodation to German supremacy. Especially in the early years of the occupation, French civilians often found the German soldiers more polite and seemingly respectful of the country they had just conquered than had been France’s British allies. Many in France, artists, intellectuals, business, and labor leaders, as well as military and clergy, were quite willing to accept German rule. Some hoped that German occupation would lead toward a more authoritarian French state, more in line with those of Germany and Italy at the time. Anti-Semitism was prevalent in France, where local people often…

By Philippe Burrin, Janet Lloyd (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked France Under the Germans as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From 1940 to 1944, the French people adapted in a variety of ways to life under the domination of Nazi Germany. France under the Germans is the definitive study of the choices made by ordinary French citizens during that turbulent historical period, exposing for the first time the degree of their complicity with the Nazis. Acclaimed Swiss historian Philippe Burrin makes use of a wide variety of newly discovered sources: the records of businesses, industrial organizations, and banks; police files; and reports on mail censorship and telephone conversations. France under the Germans is an extraordinary analysis of the ways in…


Book cover of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

Richard N. Lutjens Jr. Author Of Submerged on the Surface: The Not-So-Hidden Jews of Nazi Berlin, 1941–1945

From my list on the Holocaust and how humanity failed.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a German History professor who focuses on the Holocaust, but I’ve been educating myself on the topic since 5th grade, when a friend suggested some children’s literature on the Holocaust. So, I guess this is a topic that has interested me for some thirty years now. I can’t stop asking why, I can’t stop reading, and I can’t stop educating, especially as Holocaust denial and antisemitism are on the rise. History, in general, can teach us so much about who we are and who we have the potential to become. The Holocaust is a prime example of what happens when humanity fails to achieve its potential.  

Richard's book list on the Holocaust and how humanity failed

Richard N. Lutjens Jr. Why did Richard love this book?

Reading about the Holocaust in high school and college, it was easy for me to see WWII Europe in a binary of “Nazis vs. Everybody Else.” This book utterly destroyed that illusion, and it remains today one of the most disturbing books I have ever read about the Holocaust. In the summer of 1941, without any prompting from the Nazis, the gentile half of the Polish town of Jedwabne slaughtered the Jewish half of the town in a single day. This truly horrifying story, hidden for over half a century, is a reminder that the evils unleashed by the Nazis did not remain confined to the Germans. The Holocaust occurred on many fronts: the town of Jedwabne was one of them.   

By Jan T. Gross,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Neighbors as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A landmark book that changed the story of Poland's role in the Holocaust

On July 10, 1941, in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children-all but seven of the town's Jews. In this shocking and compelling classic of Holocaust history, Jan Gross reveals how Jedwabne's Jews were murdered not by faceless Nazis but by people who knew them well-their non-Jewish Polish neighbors. A previously untold story of the complicity of non-Germans in the extermination of the Jews, Neighbors shows how people victimized by the Nazis could at the same…


Book cover of Agent Jack: The True Story of Mi5's Secret Nazi Hunter

Helen Fry Author Of Spymaster: The Man Who Saved Mi6

From my list on spies and their greatest stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

Helen is an ambassador for the Museum of Military Intelligence, President of the Friends of the National Archives, and a trustee of the Medmenham Collection. Her history of MI9 – the first such history for over 40 years – was shortlisted for The Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History 2021. Her latest book is ‘Spymaster: The Man Who Saved MI6’ about one of the greatest spies of the 20th century.

Helen's book list on spies and their greatest stories

Helen Fry Why did Helen love this book?

When Nazi Germany posed a threat to peace in Europe in the 1930s, British intelligence became increasingly concerned about right-wing groups and subversive activities in Britain, and that included the rise of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) under Sir Oswald Mosley. Robert Hutton’s compelling narratives tell the story of agent ‘Jack King’ – real name Eric Roberts (an ex-bank clerk from Cornwall) who was tasked by Maxwell Knight (‘M’) of counter-espionage at MI5 with infiltrating the BUF in the 1930s. Hutton has been able to immerse us in the world of Agent Jack because of a chance discovery of a brief reference in declassified MI5 files. Then in 1942 Agent Jack was tasked with masquerading as a Gestapo officer in London. He met with a German female recruiting officer ‘Marita’ in a safe house near Paddington and she suspected he might have been an undercover MI5 spy, but in…

By Robert Hutton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Agent Jack as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

June 1940. Britain is Europe's final bastion of freedom - and Hitler's next target. But not everyone fears a Nazi invasion. In factories, offices and suburban homes are men and women determined to do all they can to hasten it.

Throughout the Second World War, Britain's defence against the enemy within was Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk from Epsom. Equipped with an extraordinary ability to make people trust him, he was recruited into the shadowy world of espionage by the great spymaster Maxwell Knight. Roberts penetrated first the Communist Party and then the British Union of Fascists, before playing…


Book cover of Once Upon a Time in France

Diaa Anwar Author Of The Sculptor and the Sacred River

From my list on comics with historical background.

Why am I passionate about this?

In Egypt, we did not have our own Arab comics, but different worlds came to us from translated comics, American (Disney and superheroes), and French comics. I did not like superhero comics, I loved Disney comics and French comics, and n addition to my passion for reading history, some French series combine this, such as the Alix series. I would have loved to have a historical background to the events that prompted me to read more about them and get to know the real characters, how they lived, and how they ended.

Diaa's book list on comics with historical background

Diaa Anwar Why did Diaa love this book?

This comic book is one of the best-selling books in France, and it has won several awards.

Here we will find more historical facts than fiction. The book tells about the life of Joseph Joanovici, a Jew of Romanian origin who immigrated to France, became one of the wealthy, and experienced one of the darkest periods.

French history, which is the Nazi invasion of France, and in order to survive the horrors of this period, he had to deal with everyone, friends and enemies, until people were confused in judging him, was he loyal to his people or was he a traitor.

What I liked about this book is the wonderful scenario and the cinematic style, this series consists of five parts that you will never forget after you finish reading it.

By Fabien Nury, Sylvain Vallee (illustrator), Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Once Upon a Time in France as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For some, he was a villain. For others, a hero.

Based on a true story, Once Upon a Time in France follows the life of Joseph Joanovici, a Romanian Jew who immigrated to France in the 1920s and became one of the richest men in Europe as a scrap-metal magnate. During the German occupation of France, he thought his influence could keep his family safe, but he soon finds that the only way to stay one step ahead of the Nazis is to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. Though he plays both sides of the fence as…


Book cover of The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach

Rosanna Warren Author Of Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters

From my list on France modern art, culture, and political conflict.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a poet, literary critic, translator, and biographer, and I grew up partly in France. I became obsessed with Max Jacob when I was twenty. Max Jacob—mystic, poet, painter, and suffering lover—took hold of me, and I found myself writing poems to him, in his voice, in my sketchbooks. They were among my first published poems: he redirected my life. A few years later I stumbled into writing his biography, never imagining that it would take thirty-five years: it came out from W. W. Norton in 2020, along with my most recent book of poems So Forth. I teach Comparative Literature in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Rosanna's book list on France modern art, culture, and political conflict

Rosanna Warren Why did Rosanna love this book?

An expert in French fascism, Kaplan meticulously documents the career and the fate of the anti-Semitic, collaborationist novelist and journalist, Robert Brasillach. He was one of the few prominent intellectuals executed after the Liberation in France. His trial in late 1944 and execution in February 1945 put on the public stage the drama the country had just experienced: the Occupation, collaboration with the Nazis, the Resistance. As Kaplan presents it, Brasillach’s eloquent defense lawyer, the equally eloquent prosecutor, and Brasillach himself articulated the collision of visions of what it meant to be French and what it meant to be a patriot (or a traitor), arguments that still agitate France today. 

By Alice Kaplan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Collaborator as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On February 6, 1945, a 35-year-old French writer and newspaper editor named Robert Brasillach was executed for treason by a French firing squad. He was the only writer of any distinction to be put to death by the French Liberation government during the violent days of score-settling known as the Purge. In this book, Alice Kaplan, author of the memoir "French Lessons" tells the story of Brasillach's rise and fall: his emergence as the golden boy of literary fascism during the 1930s, his wartime collaboration with the Nazis, his dramatic trial and his afterlife as a martyr for French rightists…


Book cover of European Mennonites and the Holocaust

Kevin P. Spicer and Rebecca Carter-Chand Author Of Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars

From my list on German Protestantism in Hitler’s Germany.

Why are we passionate about this?

Kevin P. Spicer is a historian of twentieth-century Germany who investigates the relationship between church and state from 1918-1945. I'm fascinated by the choices of Christian leaders as they negotiated the challenges of living and leading under National Socialism. I seek to understand the connections between Christian antisemitism and National Socialist’s racial-based exclusionary ethnonationalism and antisemitism. Rebecca Carter-Chand is a historian of twentieth-century Germany who focuses on Christianity during the Nazi period. I'm particularly interested in the smaller Christian churches on the margins of the German religious landscape, many of which maintained ties with their co-religionists abroad. I seek to understand how religious communities navigate ethical and practical challenges of political upheaval and fascism.

Kevin's book list on German Protestantism in Hitler’s Germany

Kevin P. Spicer and Rebecca Carter-Chand Why did Kevin love this book?

The collective memory of Mennonites during the Holocaust has long been mythologized or has remained unexamined. A recent renewal of interest from both the Mennonite community itself and scholars of the Holocaust has led to a number of conferences and publications. This collection of essays showcases the latest scholarship and paints a complex portrait of Mennonites in both western and eastern Europe during the Holocaust. The book highlights the many roles that Mennonites played, largely due to their proximity to the events of the Holocaust, including as neighbors, killers, enablers, witnesses, and rescuers. The contributors discuss Mennonite identity, theology, agency, and collective memory, all situating their stories in local, national, and European geopolitical contexts. 

By Mark Jantzen (editor), John D. Thiesen (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked European Mennonites and the Holocaust as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

During the Second World War, Mennonites in the Netherlands, Germany, occupied Poland, and Ukraine lived in communities with Jews and close to various Nazi camps and killing sites. As a result of this proximity, Mennonites were neighbours to and witnessed the destruction of European Jews. In some cases they were beneficiaries or even enablers of the Holocaust. Much of this history was forgotten after the war, as Mennonites sought to rebuild or find new homes as refugees. The result was a myth of Mennonite innocence and ignorance that connected their own suffering during the 1930s and 1940s with earlier centuries…


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