Owen Matthews

The most formidable spy in history Ian FlemingA superb biography ... More than a hundred books have been written about him and this is undoubtedly the best Ben Macintyre Richard Sorge was a man with two homelands. Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of the First World War, Sorge became a fanatical communist and the Soviet Union s most formidable spy. Like many great spies, Sorge was an effortless seducer, combining charm with ruthless manipulation. He did not have to go undercover to find out closely guarded state secrets his victims willingly shared them. As a foreign correspondent, he infiltrated and influenced the highest echelons of German, Chinese and Japanese society in the years leading up to and including the Second World War. His intelligence regarding Operation Barbarossa and Japanese intentions not to invade Siberia in 1941 proved pivotal to the Soviet counteroffensive in the Battle of Moscow, which in turn determined the outcome of the war. Never before has Sorge s story been told from the Russian side as well as the German and Japanese. Owen Matthews takes a sweeping historical perspective and draws on a wealth of declassified Soviet archives along with testimonies from those who knew and worked with Sorge to rescue the riveting story of the man described by Ian Fleming as the most formidable spy in history.

Here a community of dedicated scientists and technicians is building the most powerful nuclear device the world will ever see - three thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima. But days before the bomb is to be tested, a young physicist is found dead. His body contains enough radioactive poison to kill thousands. The Arzamas authorities believe it is suicide - they want the corpse disposed of, the incident filed and forgotten. But Moscow is alarmed by what's going on in this strange, isolated place. And so KGB major Alexander Vasin is sent to investigate. What he finds in Arzamas is unlike anything he's experienced before. His wits will be tested against some of the most brilliant minds in the Soviet Union - eccentrics, patriots and dissidents who, because their work is considered to be of such vital national importance, have been granted the freedom to think and act, live and love as they wish. For in Arzamas, nothing can be allowed to get in the way of the project. Not even murder . . . Intricately researched, cunningly plotted and brilliantly told, Black Sun is a fast-paced and timely thriller set at the height - and in the heart - of Soviet power.

One the least known but most terrifying moments in modern history - when the fate of the world lay with a lone, nervous Soviet naval officer one hundred meters under the Caribbean sea - lies at the heart of this breathtaking new Cold War thriller from the author of the acclaimed Black Sun. The year is 1962, and KGB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin is searching for ghosts: for evidence of the long-rumoured existence of an American spy embedded at the highest echelons of Soviet power. But it's while on this wild goose chase, a high-stakes espionage race against a rival State agency, that Vasin first hears whispers of an ominous top-secret undertaking: Operation Anadyr. As tensions flare between Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy over Russian missiles hidden in Cuba, four Soviet submarines - each carrying tactical ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads - are ordered to make a covert run at the U.S. blockade in the Caribbean...

An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War – and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin apparently lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime – and Russia itself – at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience as a correspondent in Moscow, as well as his own family ties to Russia and Ukraine, journalist Owen Matthews takes us through the poisoned historical roots of the conflict, into the Covid bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of paranoia about Western threats, and finally into the inner circle around Ukrainian president and unexpected war hero Volodimir Zelensky. Using the accounts of current and former insiders from the Kremlin and its propaganda machine, the testimony of captured Russian soldiers and on-the-ground reporting from Russia and Ukraine, Overreach tells the story not only of the war’s causes but how the first six months unfolded. With its panoramic view, Overreach is an authoritative, unmissable record of a conflict that shocked Europe to its core.