The Secrets We Kept
The sensational Cold War spy thriller
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3.7 • 10 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
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'Utterly compelling... I absolutely loved it' Sarah Winman
'Tantalising' Sunday Times
'Thoroughly enjoyable' Guardian
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No one looks twice at the women in the typing pool.
No one knows that two of them are trading secrets.
The secret is a book, the size of the one in your hands, and within its pages, a love story that could change the world.
But where there is love there is pain. And where there is deception, formidable danger...
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'Mixing Mad Men and John le Carré ... addictive' i paper
'Irresistibly charged' Mail on Sunday
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The sort of book we guarantee you’ll read and instantly recommend to at least 10 friends so you’ll have people to debate it with as soon as possible. An absurdly accomplished debut novel propelled by a bewildering level of research and detail, this is a Cold War spy story unlike nothing we’ve come across before. Two typists are given an extraordinary mission: to smuggle Boris Pasternak’s potentially divisive Doctor Zhivago back into Russia from the United States. Lara Prescott writes stylishly and arms her two heroines with true emotional depth and ample opportunity to prove their espionage abilities.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Prescott's triumphant debut offers a fresh perspective on women employed by the CIA during the 1950s and their role in disseminating into the Soviet Union copies of Dr. Zhivago,Boris Pasternak's banned masterpiece. In 1956, American-born Irina Drozdova gets a job at the CIA ostensibly as a typist but is destined for fieldwork. Former OSS agent Sally Forrester trains Irina in spycraft. Meanwhile, inside the Soviet Union, Boris Pasternak's lover, Olga Vsevolodovna, is interrogated about Pasternak's work in progress, Dr. Zhivago. After three years in a prison camp, she reunites with Pasternak, who, unable to publish in the Soviet Union, entrusts his novel to an Italian publisher's representative. Back in Washington, Irina, now engaged to a male agent but in love with Sally, seeks assignment overseas. Dressed as a nun, she places copies of Dr. Zhivago, printed in the original Russian for the CIA, into the hands of Soviet citizens visiting the Vienna World's Fair. Through lucid images and vibrant storytelling, Prescott creates an edgy postfeminist vision of the Cold War, encompassing Sputnik to glasnost, typing pool to gulag, for a smart, lively page-turner. This debut shines as spy story, publication thriller, and historical romance with a twist. 200,000-copy announced first printing.
