A Rumor of Spies
Spying in Cold War Berlin is risky. But for Jillian, it’s about to become treacherous. West Berlin, 1976: Jillian, a deep-cover signals intelligence officer, wakes to find her covert mission on the brink of collapse. Her satellite feed is broken, putting both her career and valuable intelligence operations in peril.
She needs help, but her usual sources are unavailable: Her CIA boyfriend is tangled in a high-stakes mission to extract a Stasi courier and her young daughter from East Germany, and her army comrade is caught up in a case of suspected treason that reaches the top echelons of British power.
As Jillian investigates her limited options with a new partner, they uncover a secret so incredible it traps them between the walls of East and West. Now, as the stories hurtle toward a stunning convergence, Jillian and her allies must risk everything to expose truths that could endanger their lives—and tip the precarious balance of power in the Cold War.
The Wrong Kind of Spy
Jillian knows that her top secret job saves lives. Nothing is more important than maintaining her cover in West Berlin where every third person has a hidden agenda. But that's getting harder and harder to do. Her dream of staying under the radar for a while is shattered when a mystery man on a decades old quest for vengeance mistakes her for the wrong kind of spy.
Now Jillian has to figure out how to get some answers in a city where trust is hard to come by and where all her skills are for a different kind of mission. Forced to trust a Yugoslavian journalist with her own agenda, and getting unexpected help from her old boss, who's in Nicaragua hunting the Cuban who almost destroyed her months earlier, Jillian embarks on a search to uncover Nazi crimes that shouldn't be forgotten.
Nothing in the past is ever truly buried, and some people have secrets they will kill to obliterate. Jillian must protect herself as the tentacles of the past wrap around the present, as old terrors intertwine with new realities to create vulnerabilities she could never have anticipated.
Set during the Cold War, this fast paced action story will keep you engaged until the very end.
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This book is also available at many other retailers. Check your favorite if it’s not already listed here.
Alone Among Spies
Jillian likes her job as a signals intelligence officer intercepting German communications. Even though she works undercover in West Berlin at the height of the Cold War, it is safe, predictable—boring even. All that changes when her lover turns out to be a Cuban spy of interest to the CIA, and her only friend, a Canadian diplomat, shows up on the other side of the Wall with a different identity.
Jillian is alone and scared. If her cover is blown her life is in danger, but the intercept she is collecting is too important to just abandon her assignment.
So she begins two uneasy alliances. One, with a CIA officer named Quentin, in which her only currency is her relationship with the Cuban, and two, with a British military captain, James, there to report on her activities to her boss. At first concerned only with her own safety, she learns that her friend is in serious trouble, and Jillian must decide how much she is willing to risk to save both her friend and herself.
She suddenly finds herself thrust into the middle of an intricate web of cover-ups, lies, and espionage. Unable to trust anyone, and completely out of her element, Jillian must use her wits to survive playing a spy game that has no rules.
Meet Rhiannon
I’m going to be honest with you. Being a writer can be painful. It is, however, marginally better than working in espionage. I know because I’ve done both.
There are great moments in writing. When your final draft is ready to be printed. When someone tells you they really enjoyed your book and can’t wait for the next one. All the hours you get to justify lounging on the sofa and reading as research. But there are hard parts too. It never gets easier opening a new document and staring at that first blank page. When you’re 60,000 words in and you’ve written yourself into a corner and call your editor desperate for help on how to unwind the mess. When you find an obvious typo on the first page of your latest release. So there are lots of moments where you’re not quite sure why you put yourself through this gauntlet of trying to get people to read your books.
My novels Alone Among Spies and The Wrong Kind of Spy are inspired by the stories I heard and moments I lived while working at a Canadian intelligence agency. Being a spy is a tough job. Way harder than being a writer. At least with writing you get to share your stories. Spies go through some pretty crazy stuff and have to take it to their grave.
And yeah, I suppose I should mention that I also write non-fiction. I was the co-author of the amazing, will totally change your life for the better, book series The Great Mental Models (volume 1 was a Wall Street Journal bestseller).
I love writing. All kinds. Those stories in my head never stop. And neither does my desire to share what I’ve learned and maybe help people avoid the mistakes I’ve made along the way.
I’m never going to work in espionage again, which is okay as it makes it easier to travel to exotic locations. But, despite the tough parts, I will keep writing 4evah.
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