Books like Shan by Eric Van Lustbader

A Soviet nuclear submarine marked for defection slips into the Atlantic, sparking a high‑stakes pursuit by the United States and the Soviet Union in this tense Cold War thriller.

A Crown Imperilled: The Last Stand of the Conclave of Shadows

Former Washington powerbroker Joel Blackman, nearly released from a 20‑year sentence, receives a pardon and is relocated to a quiet Italian town under a new identity.

John le Carré’s thriller follows a former spy who infiltrates an international arms and drug cartel, revealing the dark underbelly of global crime and the moral ambiguity that defines modern espionage.

A clock fixer discovers a doomsday device and must outwit a ruthless South Asian dictator and government agents.

Jason Bourne, a deep‑cover operative with no memory, is rescued after a beachwreck and discovers a bank account embedded in his body that leads him to Switzerland and the truth about his past.

A former agent fugitively battles a relentless clan of assassins known as The Ninja while navigating the shadows of postwar Japan and New York City.

A third adventure of this 'modern samurai' that bridges the traditional Asian samurai story with a modern European perspective, featuring the power of the computer.

In a brutal northern war, three men—Bremer dan Gorst, Prince Calder, and Curnden Craw—face bloodshed, betrayal, and the quest for honor as the fate of the North hangs in the balance.

John le Carré’s Cold‑War spy thriller follows British agent Alec Leamas as he takes one last perilous assignment to outwit East German intelligence.

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling last words left by a man who had everything to live for but took his own life. In the void that remains stands his widow, FBI agent Jane Hawk, surrounded by questions destined to go unanswered unless she does what all the grief and fury inside her demand: Find the truth, no matter what. People of talent and accomplishment, people seemingly happy and sound of mind, have recently been committing suicide in surprising numbers. A disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge. Jane is determined to give up everything to find out why. And if that means going rogue and becoming America's Most Wanted, then so be it. Those arrayed against her are legion, and devoted to protecting something profoundly important-or terrifying-enough to exterminate any and all in their way. But Jane is as clever as these enemies are cold-blooded, as relentless as they are ruthless. And she is driven by a righteous rage they can never comprehend. Because it is born of love.

In The Secret Servant, Israeli spy Gabriel Allon races against the clock to uncover a looming terrorist plot after the murder of a Dutch analyst, while a kidnapped American ambassador’s daughter forces him into a perilous hunt through international intrigue.

With this timely study, a seasoned sinologist publicly examines the infiltration of Chinese espionage agents into foreign governments and private businesses. These efforts to collect state and technological secrets, he says, have been going on mostly uninterrupted for decades while Western intelligence services focused on the Soviet Union. Now, with the end of the cold war and the collapse of the USSR, attention must turn to these invasive operations. Unstinting in his research, the author has made full use of Chinese sources and his own longtime study of China. In addition, he draws on his expertise as a counterintelligence analyst to examine the structure, objectives, and methodology of Chinese clandestine activities. The book specifically addresses the human source in intelligence operations, such as agent and double-agent recruitment, and how these tactics fit into the conduct of internal and foreign affairs in China. The author's interviews with a number of Chinese diplomats, military and civilian intelligence officers, and secret agents reveal the cloak-and-dagger activities common to Chinese operatives in the United States. These astonishing descriptions read like a gripping espionage novel. Yet the book is uncompromising in its studious documentation. The monograph from which this work sprung was honored in 1992 as the best scholarly article on the subject of intelligence by the National Intelligence Study Center - a think tank founded by former top CIA officials. Written in a style that will appeal to a broad range of readers, this book is a one-of-a-kind intelligence study. Intelligence and defense professionals congressional and foreign government staffers, industrial and business security professionals, as well as intelligence buffs will all find something of interest in this compelling and detailed book.

In the shadow of post‑Soviet Russia, a Soviet intelligence officer, trained as a seductress, confronts a CIA operative whose daring penetration threatens both men’s careers and the fragile balance of power.