The Tristan Betrayal

Two wars, two secrets, one man...A brilliant global conspiracy thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling master storyteller. 1940. American Stephen Metcalfe is a minor asset in the US secret intelligence forces in Europe. Through a wild twist of fate, he must instigate a bold plan that may be the only hope for what remains of the free world. He must travel to wartime Moscow to find, and possibly betray, a former lover... 1991. The Communist empire is on the verge of oblivion, and a coup is being planned by a powerful new cabal. Stephen Metcalfe, now a retired ambassador, must return to Moscow and finally reveal a secret that has haunted him since the fall of Berlin...a secret that might just avert a global cataclysm.

On Parrish Island, a restricted island off the coast of Virginia, is a little-known and never-visited psychiatric facility. There, far from prying eyes, the government stores former intelligence employees whose psychiatric states make them a danger to their own government, people whose ramblings might endanger ongoing operations or prove dangerously inconvenient. One of these employees, former Consular Operations agent Hal Ambler, is kept heavily medicated and closely watched. But there's one difference between Hal and the other patients - Hal isn't crazy. With the help of a sympathetic nurse, Hal manages to clear his mind of the drug-induced haze and then pulls off a daring escape. Now he's out to discover who stashed him here and why - but the world he returns to isn't the one he remembers. Friends and longtime associates don't remember him, there are no official records of Hal Ambler, and, when he first sees himself in the mirror, the face that looks back at him is not the one he knows as his own.

Only one man can stop Russia's dangerous slide back into totalitarianism—and the key to success lies fifty years in his own past Moscow is a city under siege by Communists who are threatening to turn back the clock and plunge the country into darkness with a new Stalinist regime. Into the heart of the firestorm, American ambassador Stephen Metcalf has been summoned to find the one man who can stop it. He's the one who controls the levers of power in absolute secrecy—an official known as the Dirizhor. His support of the bloody coup will bring the entire world to the brink of nuclear war. Metcalf is the only man with the cunning to reach him and to convince him to resist. It's up to him to change the course of history—something he's done before. For Metcalf, returning to Russia is also a personal mission that will stretch across three continents and fifty years into his past where the loyalties of a former love—a woman both impossibly beautiful and possibly treacherous—were tested; where the shadow of a Nazi assassin still haunts; a debauched German aristocrat manipulated the destiny of everyone he touched. Now, as past and present converge, Metcalf braces himself for a new trial of trust and betrayal, one with chilling implications that could threaten what remains of the free world.

Isolde's day has come. In Ireland, her mother, the Queen, lies dying. The throne of the Emerald Isle, one of the last strongholds of the goddess, awaits her. But while Ireland is her destiny, Isolde is already Queen of Cornwall, trapped in a loveless marriage to its mean-spirited King Mark. Her true love is his nephew, Tristan of Lyonesse, who has never married, remaining faithful only to Isolde. Across the sea in France, a young princess who shares Isolde's name enters the story. King Hoel named his daughtor in honor of Isolde of Ireland, and young Isolde of France has always been determined to outdo her beautiful namesake. She is a physician, too, and is called "Blanche Mains," for her white hands and healing touch. Blanche is of an age to be married, and she has chosen her husband—Tristan of Lyonesse. Her father objects, but fate favors Blanche. King Mark has become suspicious of his wife and nephew, and when Tristan is wounded in battle, he sees a chance to separate them for good. Mark sends Tristan to France to be healed by Blanche, who makes the most of the opportunity. Tristan's letters to Isolde are intercepted, and he is told that she has given him up. Near death from his wounds, Tristan sends one last, desparate letter to Isolde by a trusted servant. He is dying, he tells her, and asks for one final sign of their love. If she can forgive him for betraying her, she must come to France in a ship set with white sails. If the ship's sails are black, however, he will know that she no longer loves him. Isolde immediately leaves for France, but when Blanche sees the white-sailed ship from the castle window, she pulls the curtains and tells Tristan that the sails are black. To her horror, he turns his face to the wall and dies. There ends the traditional medieval story of Tristan and Isolde—with betrayal, death, and grief. But the original Irish lengend ends differently, and so does this book, wth magic and drama as only Rosalind Miles could write it.

Now comes The Sigma Protocol, a new breakneck novel of intrigue, conspiracy, and terrifying deception. American investment banker Ben Hartman arrives in Zurich for a ski holiday, the first time he's been back to Switzerland since his twin brother died there in a tragic accident four years earlier. But his arrival in Zurich triggers something far more sinister than his brother's fate. When Ben chances upon Jimmy Cavanaugh, an old college friend, Cavanaugh promptly pulls out a gun and tries to kill him. In a matter of minutes, several innocent bystanders are dead - as well as Cavanaugh - and Ben has barely managed to survive. Plunged into an unspeakable nightmare, Hartman suddenly finds himself on the run. Department of Justice field agent Anna Navarro is being stalked around the world by a relentless killer, managing to survive the killer's attacks only by a combination of luck, skill and her own quick wits. These attacks are somehow related to her current assignment: investigating the sudden - and seemingly unrelated - deaths of a number of very old men throughout the world. The only thing that connects them is a file in the CIA archives, over a half-century old, marked with the same puzzling code word: SIGMA. But someone or something is always seemingly one step ahead of her, the survivors are rapidly dwindling, and her own life is in ever increasing danger. Brought together by accident, Ben and Anna soon realize that their only hope of survival lies with each other. Together they race to uncover the diabolical secrets long hidden behind the code word, Sigma. Secrets that threaten everything they think they know about themselves, everything they believed true about their friends and families, and everything they were ever taught about history itself. For behind Sigma lies a vast deception that is finally coming to fruition and the fate and future of the world is in their hands.

In the fall of 1940, Stephen Metcalfe, an asset in the U.S.'s secret intelligence forces in Europe, is part of a spy network that is left stranded without a contact, orders, or a contingency plan.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Entertainment Weekly • Kirkus Reviews • The Christian Science Monitor In the picturesque village of Guzmán, Spain, in a cave dug into a hillside on the edge of town, an ancient door leads to a cramped limestone chamber known as “the telling room.” Containing nothing but a wooden table and two benches, this is where villagers have gathered for centuries to share their stories and secrets—usually accompanied by copious amounts of wine. It was here, in the summer of 2000, that Michael Paterniti found himself listening to a larger-than-life Spanish cheesemaker named Ambrosio Molinos de las Heras as he spun an odd and compelling tale about a piece of cheese. An unusual piece of cheese. Made from an old family recipe, Ambrosio’s cheese was reputed to be among the finest in the world, and was said to hold mystical qualities. Eating it, some claimed, conjured long-lost memories. But then, Ambrosio said, things had gone horribly wrong. . . . By the time the two men exited the telling room that evening, Paterniti was hooked. Soon he was fully embroiled in village life, relocating his young family to Guzmán in order to chase the truth about this cheese and explore the fairy tale–like place where the villagers conversed with farm animals, lived by an ancient Castilian code of honor, and made their wine and food by hand, from the grapes growing on a nearby hill and the flocks of sheep floating over the Meseta. What Paterniti ultimately discovers there in the highlands of Castile is nothing like the idyllic slow-food fable he first imagined. Instead, he’s sucked into the heart of an unfolding mystery, a blood feud that includes accusations of betrayal and theft, death threats, and a murder plot. As the village begins to spill its long-held secrets, Paterniti finds himself implicated in the very story he is writing. Equal parts mystery and memoir, travelogue and history, The Telling Room is an astonishing work of literary nonfiction by one of our most accomplished storytellers. A moving exploration of happiness, friendship, and betrayal, The Telling Room introduces us to Ambrosio Molinos de las Heras, an unforgettable real-life literary hero, while also holding a mirror up to the world, fully alive to the power of stories that define and sustain us. Praise for The Telling Room “Captivating . . . Paterniti’s writing sings, whether he’s talking about how food activates memory, or the joys of watching his children grow.”—NPR

For 30 years, Robert Ludlum's novels have set the standard for the finest in international intrigue and suspense. With an unbroken string of bestsellers in almost every country in the world, Robert Ludlum's books have been enjoyed by hundreds of millions of readers, and are widely acknowledged as classics in the field. Now, after the bestselling Covert-One novels The Hades Factor and The Cassandra Compact comes the third thrilling novel in the series - The Paris Option. A fiery explosion in the dark of night shatters one of the laboratory buildings in Paris's esteemed Pasteur Institute. Among the dead is Emile Chambord, one of the leaders in the global race to create a molecular - or DNA - computer. Unfortunately, Professor Chambord kept the details of his work secret, and his notes were apparently destroyed in either the bomb blast or the raging fire that followed. The scientific community does not expect a workable DNA computer to be developed for years. But suddenly U.S. fighter jets disappear from radar screens for a full five minutes, and there's no explanation. Utilities across the Western states cease functioning, and all telecommunications abruptly stop, with devastating consequences. This is not the work of a clever hacker, although Washington, worried about a panic, assures the public it is. Only the enormous power and speed of a DNA computer could have caused such havoc. Under the cover of visiting his friend Marty Zellerbach, who was severely injured when the Pasteur lab was destroyed, Covert-One agent Jon Smith flies to Paris to search for the connection between the Pasteur explosion and the forces now wielding the computer. Following a trail that leads him across two continents, Smith uncovers a web of deception that threatens to wreck havoc and forever reshape the world.