New York Times best-selling author Daniel Silva has been scheduled to be a part of our author lecture series! Silva is renowned for his thriller and espionage novels including “The Unlikely Spy,” “Moscow Rules,” “The Heist,” and his most recent release, “The Black Widow.”
Silva started his career with United Press International in 1984 before moving to CNN, where he worked as executive producer for a number of television programs including “Crossfire” and “Capital Gang.” After discovering his passion for writing, Silva left the television industry in 1997 and pursued writing full time. Silva’s fourth novel, “The Kill Artist” introduced Gabriel Allon, an Israeli art restorer, spy and assassin, who then became the main character in the next twelve novels, each hitting the best-seller list.
Below is a list of Silva’s books in order of the series with links to our catalog! Not sure how to reserve books online? Check out the video below:
The Unlikely Spy
(Daniel Silva’s first book, a WWII stand alone spy thriller.)
In wartime,” Winston Churchill wrote, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” For Britain’s counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable-a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent: Catherine Blake, a beautiful widow of a war hero, a hospital volunteer-and a Nazi spy under direct orders from Hitler to uncover the Allied plans for D-Day…
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
OverDrive eBook
The Gabriel Allon Series
1.) The Kill Artist
Gabriel Allon had a simple but brutal job: he tracked down and eliminated Israel’s terrorist enemies. But when his wife and son fell victim to the danger that accompanied him everywhere, Gabriel quit and devoted himself to the work of art restoration, an occupation that had previously been a cover for his secret assignments. Now Ari Shamron, the head of Israeli intelligence, needs Gabriel’s particular kind of experience to thwart a Palestinian plot to destroy the peace negotiations in the Middle East. The architect of this plot, a Palestinian zealot named Tariq, is a lethal part of Gabriel’s past, so as the two begin an intercontinental game of hide-and-seek, with life and death as the prizes, the motives are as personal as they are political.
The story features a vivid and fascinating supporting cast, including the magus-like Ari Shamron, a beautiful French Jewish model who is seeking retribution for her family’s death in the Holocaust, and a marvelously comic down-at-the-heels London art dealer. Set these colorful and varied characters against a brilliant background of political intrigue and vengeance at the highest levels and a manhunt that covers three continents, and the result is a smart and electrically exciting global thriller.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
OverDrive eBook
2.) The English Assassin
The Unlikely Spy, Daniel Silva’s extraordinary debut novel, was applauded by critics as it rocketed onto national bestseller lists. Now Silva has outdone himself, with a taut, lightning-paced thriller rooted assuredly in fact: Switzerland’s shameful WWII record of profiteering and collaboration with Nazi Germany.
When art restorer and occasional Israeli agent Gabriel Allon is sent to Zurich, Switzerland, to restore the painting of a reclusive millionaire banker, he arrives to find his would-be employer murdered at the foot of his Raphael. A secret collection of priceless, illicitly gained Impressionist masterpieces is missing. Gabriel’s handlers step out of the shadows to admit the truth-the collector had been silenced-and Gabriel is put back in the high-stakes spy game, battling wits with the rogue assassin he helped to train.
Tense, taut, expertly crafted, and brimming with unexpected reversals, The English Assassin is Daniel Silva at his storytelling best
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
Books on CD
OverDrive eBook
OverDrive Audiobook
3.) The Confessor
Munich: The writer Benjamin Stern entered his flat to see a man standing there, leafing through his research, and said, “Who the hell are you?” In response, the man shot him. As Stern lay dying, the gunman murmured a few words in Latin, then he gathered the writer’s papers and left.
Venice: The art restorer Gabriel Allon applied a dab of paint carefully to the Bellini, then read the message thrust into his hands. Stern was dead; could he leave right away? With a sigh, the Mossad agent began to put his brushes away.
The Vatican: The priest named Pietro paced in the garden, thinking about the things he had discovered, the enemies he would make, the journey before him. Men would surely die, and he wished another could take it for him. But he knew that was not possible.
In the weeks to come, the journeys of all three men will come together, following a trail of long-buried secrets and unthinkable deeds, leaving each one forever changed. And with them, the lives of millions . . .
Filled with rich characters, remarkable prose, and a multilayered plot of uncommon intensity, this is the finest work yet by a new master of the art.
Author Biography: Daniel Silva is the author of the bestselling novels The Unlikely Spy, The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, The Kill Artist, and The English Assassin.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
OverDrive eBook
4.) A Death in Vienna
This is the third entry in Silva’s espionage series (following The English Assassin and The Confessor) focused on the continuing repercussions of the Holocaust in the art world, the religious sphere, and the political arena. Gabriel Allon, a restorer of paintings and frescoes, is also an Israeli agent sent to Vienna to investigate a bombing at the Austrian Wartime Claims and Inquiries office. The case takes a bizarre personal twist when Allon learns that his mother, a concentration camp survivor, faced the sadistic Erich Radek, a notorious Nazi believed to be the perpetrator of the bombing. Newly fueled by vengeance, Allon sets off on his mission, as various assassins and spies seek to aid or hinder his purpose.
The characters in Death in Vienna are either covering up evils from the past or are motivated by revenge to throw themselves full force into the deadly game. In an author’s note, Silva informs us that this novel closes his cycle of books dealing with the Holocaust. We can only hope that he returns soon with more rapid-fire, high-style thrillers.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
Books on CD
OverDrive eBook
5.) Prince of Fire
Few recent thriller writers have excited the kind of critical praise that Daniel Silva has, with his novels featuring art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon.
Now Allon is back in Venice, when a terrible explosion in Rome leads to a disturbing personal revelation: the existence of a dossier in the hands of terrorists that strips away his secrets, lays bare his history. Hastily recalled home to Israel, drawn once more into the heart of a service he had once forsaken, Gabriel Allon finds himself stalking an elusive master terrorist across a landscape drenched in generations of blood, along a trail that keeps turning in upon itself, until, finally, he can no longer be certain who is stalking whom. And when at last the inevitable showdown comes, it’s not Gabriel alone who is threatened with destruction-for it is not his history alone that has been laid bare.
A knife-edged thriller of astonishing intricacy and feeling, filled with exhilarating prose, this is Daniel Silva’s finest novel yet!
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
OverDrive eBook
6.) The Messenger
Allon is recovering from a grueling showdown with a Palestinian master terrorist, when a figure from his past arrives in Jerusalem. Monsignor Luigi Donati is the private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII, and a man as ruthless as he is intelligent. Now, however, he has come to seek Allon’s help. A young Swiss guard has been found dead in St. Peter’s Basilica, and although Donati has allowed the official inquiry to determine that it is suicide, his instinct tells him that it is murder-and that his master is in grave danger. He has trusted Allon in the past, and he is the only man he trusts now.
Allon reluctantly agrees to get involved, but once he begins to investigate he concludes that Donati has every right to be concerned, as, following the trail from the heart of the Vatican to the valleys of Switzerland and beyond, he slowly unravels a conspiracy of lies and deception. An extraordinary enemy walks among them, with but one goal: the most spectacular assassination ever attempted.
Filled with remarkable characters and breathtaking double and triple turns of plot, The Messenger solidifies Silva’s reputation as his generation’s finest writer of international thrillers.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
OverDrive eBook
7.) The Secret Servant
When last we encountered Gabriel Allon, the master art restorer and sometime officer of Israeli intelligence, he had just prevailed in his blood-soaked duel with Saudi terrorist financier Zizi al-Bakari. Now Gabriel is summoned once more by his masters to undertake what appears to be a routine assignment: travel to Amsterdam to purge the archives of a murdered Dutch terrorism analyst who also happened to be an asset of Israeli intelligence. But once in Amsterdam, Gabriel soon discovers a conspiracy of terror festering in the city’s Islamic underground, a plot that is about to explode on the other side of the English Channel, in the middle of London.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
Books on CD
OverDrive eBook
8.) Moscow Rules
Now the death of a journalist leads Allon to Russia, where he finds that, in terms of spycraft, even he has something to learn. He’s playing by Moscow rules now.
It is not the grim, gray Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, awash in oil wealth and choked with bulletproof Bentleys. A Moscow where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and where critics of the ruling class are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where a new generation of Stalinists is plotting to reclaim an empire lost and to challenge the global dominance of its old enemy, the United States.
One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel who built a global investment empire on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Hidden within that empire, however, is a more lucrative and deadly business. Kharkov is an arms dealer—and he is about to deliver Russia’s most sophisticated weapons to al-Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will see the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11—and the clock is ticking fast.
Filled with rich prose and breathtaking turns of plot, Moscow Rules is at once superior entertainment and a searing cautionary tale about the new threats rising to the East—and Silva’s finest novel yet.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
9.) The Defector
Over the course of a brilliant career, Daniel Silva has established himself as the “gold standard” of thriller writers (Dallas Morning News), a “master writer of espionage and intrigue” The Cincinnati Enquirer, and the creator of “some of the most exciting spy fiction since Ian Fleming put down his martini and invented James Bond” Rocky Mountain News. Now Silva takes that fiction—and his hero, the enigmatic art restorer and assassin Gabriel Allon—to a whole new level, delivering a riveting tale of vengeance that entertains as well as enlightens.
Six months after the dramatic conclusion of Moscow Rules, Gabriel has returned to the tan hills of Umbria to resume his honeymoon with his new wife, Chiara, and restore a seventeenth-century altarpiece for the Vatican. But his idyllic world is once again thrown into turmoil with shocking news from London. The defector and former Russian intelligence officer Grigori Bulganov, who saved Gabriel’s life in Moscow, has vanished without a trace. British intelligence is sure he was a double agent all along, but Gabriel knows better. He also knows he made a promise.
Do you know what we do with traitors, Gabriel? Many things have changed in Russia since the fall of Communism. But the punishment for betrayal remains the same. Promise me one thing, Gabriel. Promise me I won’t end up in an unmarked grave.
In the days to come, Gabriel and his team of operatives will find themselves in a deadly duel of nerve and wits with one of the world’s most ruthless men: the murderous Russian oligarch and arms dealer Ivan Kharkov. It will take him from a quiet mews in London, to the shores of Lake Como, to the glittering streets of Geneva and Zurich, and, finally, to a heart-stopping climax in the snowbound birch forests of Russia. Faced with the prospect of losing the one thing he holds most dear, Gabriel will be tested in ways he never imagined possible. And his life will never be the same.
Filled with breathtaking turns of plot and sophisticated prose, and populated by a remarkable cast of characters, The Defector is more than the most explosive thriller of the year. It is a searing tale of love, vengeance and courage created by the writer whom the critics call “the perfect guide to the dangerous forces shaping our world” (Orlando Sentinel). And it is Daniel Silva’s finest novel yet.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Books on CD
OverDrive eBook
10.) The Rembrandt Affair
Determined to sever his ties with the Office, Gabriel Allon has retreated to the windswept cliffs of Cornwall with his beautiful Venetian-born wife Chiara. But once again his seclusion is interrupted by a visitor from his tangled past: the endearingly eccentric London art dealer, Julian Isherwood. As usual, Isherwood has a problem. And it is one only Gabriel can solve.
In the ancient English city of Glastonbury, an art restorer has been brutally murdered and a long-lost portrait by Rembrandt mysteriously stolen. Despite his reluctance, Gabriel is persuaded to use his unique skills to search for the painting and those responsible for the crime. But as he painstakingly follows a trail of clues leading from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires and, finally, to a villa on the graceful shores of Lake Geneva, Gabriel discovers there are deadly secrets connected to the painting. And evil men behind them.
Before he is done, Gabriel will once again be drawn into a world he thought he had left behind forever, and will come face to face with a remarkable cast of characters: a glamorous London journalist who is determined to undo the worst mistake of her career, an elusive master art thief who is burdened by a conscience, and a powerful Swiss billionaire who is known for his good deeds but may just be behind one of the greatest threats facing the world.
Filled with remarkable twists and turns of plot, and told with seductive prose, The Rembrandt Affair is more than just summer entertainment of the highest order. It is a timely reminder that there are men in the world who will do anything for money.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
Books on CD
Playaway Audiobook
OverDrive eBook
11.) Portrait of a Spy
A man with a deep appreciation for all that is beautiful, Gabriel is also an angel of vengeance, an international operative who will stop at nothing to see justice done. Sometimes he must journey far in search of evil. And sometimes evil comes to him.
“In a dangerous world, one extraordinary woman can mean the difference between life and death. . . .”
For Gabriel and his wife, Chiara, it was supposed to be the start of a pleasant weekend in London–a visit to a gallery in St. James’s to authenticate a newly discovered painting by Titian, followed by a quiet lunch. But a pair of deadly bombings in Paris and Copenhagen has already marred this autumn day. And while walking toward Covent Garden, Gabriel notices a man he believes is about to carry out a third attack. Before Gabriel can draw his weapon, he is knocked to the pavement and can only watch as the nightmare unfolds.
Haunted by his failure to stop the massacre of innocents, Gabriel returns to his isolated cottage on the cliffs of Cornwall, until a summons brings him to Washington and he is drawn into a confrontation with the new face of global terror. At the center of the threat is an American-born cleric in Yemen to whom Allah has granted “a beautiful and seductive tongue.” A gifted deceiver, who was once a paid CIA asset, the mastermind is plotting a new wave of attacks.
Gabriel and his team devise a daring plan to destroy the network of death from the inside, a gambit fraught with risk, both personal and professional. To succeed, Gabriel must reach into his violent past. A woman waits there–a reclusive heiress and art collector who can traverse the murky divide between Islam and the West. She is the daughter of an old enemy, a woman joined to Gabriel by a trail of blood. . . .
Set against the disparate worlds of art and intelligence, Portrait of a Spy moves swiftly from the corridors of power in Washington to the glamorous auction houses of New York and London to the unforgiving landscape of the Saudi desert. Featuring a climax that will leave readers haunted long after they turn the final page, this deeply entertaining story is also a breathtaking portrait of courage in the face of unspeakable evil–and Daniel Silva’s most extraordinary novel to date.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
Books on CD
Playaway Audiobook
OverDrive Audiobook
12.) The Fallen Angel
When last we encountered Gabriel Allon in Portrait of a Spy, he was pitted in a blood-soaked duel with a deadly network of jihadist terrorists. Now, exposed and war-weary, he has returned to his beloved Rome to restore a Caravaggio masterpiece for the Vatican.
But while working early one morning in the conservation laboratory, Gabriel is summoned to Saint Peter’s Basilica by his friend and occasional ally Monsignor Luigi Donati, the all-powerful private secretary to his Holiness Pope Paul VII. The body of a beautiful woman lies smashed and broken beneath Michelangelo’s magnificent dome. The Vatican police rule the death a suicidal fall, though Gabriel, with his restorer’s eye and flawless memory, suspects otherwise. So, it seems, does the monsignor. Concerned about a potential scandal, Donati fears a public inquiry will inflict more wounds on an already-damaged Church; he calls upon Gabriel to use his matchless talents and experience to quietly pursue the truth—with one important caveat.
“Rule number one at the Vatican,” Donati said. “Don’t ask too many questions.”
Gabriel soon discovers that the dead woman had uncovered a dangerous secret—a secret that threatens powers beyond the Vatican. To solve the mystery, Gabriel joins forces with a master art thief to penetrate a criminal smuggling network that is looting timeless treasures of antiquity and selling them to the highest bidder. But there is more to this network than just greed. An old enemy is plotting revenge, an unthinkable act of sabotage that will plunge the world into a conflict of apocalyptic proportions. Once again Gabriel must return to the ranks of his old intelligence service—and place himself, and those he holds dear, on the razor’s edge of danger.
An intoxicating blend of art and intrigue, The Fallen Angel moves swiftly from the private chambers of the Vatican, to a glamorous art gallery in St Moritz, to the hidden alleyways of Istanbul—and finally, to a pulse-pounding climax in the ancient city of Jerusalem, the world’s most sacred and contested parcel of land. Each setting is rendered with the care of an Old Master, as are the spies, lovers, priests, and thieves who inhabit its pages. It is a story of faith and of the destructive power of secrets. And it is an all-too-timely reminder that those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
OverDrive Audiobook
13.) The English Girl
When a beautiful young British woman vanishes on the island of Corsica, a prime minister’s career is threatened with destruction. Allon, the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, is thrust into a game of shadows where nothing is what it seems…and where the only thing more dangerous than his enemies might be the truth.
Silva’s work has captured the imagination of millions worldwide. His #1 New York Times bestselling series, which chronicles the adventures of art-restorer and master spy Gabriel Allon, has earned the praise of readers and reviewers everywhere. This captivating new page-turner from the undisputed master of spy fiction is sure to thrill new and old fans alike.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
Books on CD
OverDrive eBook
14.) The Heist
Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon is in Venice repairing an altarpiece by Veronese when he receives an urgent summons from the Italian police. The eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood has stumbled upon a chilling murder scene in Lake Como, and is being held as a suspect. To save his friend, Gabriel must track down the real killers and then perform one simple task: find the most famous missing painting in the world.
Sometimes the best way to find a stolen masterpiece is to steal another one. . . .
The dead man is a fallen British spy with a secret: he has been trafficking in stolen artworks and selling them to a mysterious collector. Among those paintings is the world’s most iconic missing masterpiece: Caravaggio’s glorious Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence.
Gabriel embarks on a daring gambit to recover the Caravaggio and learn the identity of the collector. His search will take him on an exhilarating hunt–from the shimmering boulevards of Paris and London to the gritty criminal underworlds of Marseilles and Corsica, and finally to a small private bank in Austria where a dangerous man stands guard over the ill-gotten wealth of a brutal dictator. At his side is a brave young woman who survived one of the worst massacres of the twentieth century. Now, with Gabriel’s help, she will be given a chance to strike a blow against a dynasty that destroyed her family.
Elegant, sophisticated, and entertaining, The Heist is a must-read thriller–a page-turning tale of intrigue that demonstrates once again why Daniel Silva is called a “world-class practitioner of spy fiction” (Washington Post).
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
Playaway Audiobook
OverDrive eBook
OverDrive Audiobook
15.) The English Spy
THE TARGET IS ROYAL
THE GAME IS REVENGE
Gabriel Allon returns in this summer’s hottest thriller, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva
She is an iconic member of the British Royal Family, beloved for her beauty and charitable works, resented by her former husband and his mother, the Queen of England. When a bomb explodes aboard her holiday yacht, British intelligence turns to one man to track down herkiller: legendary spy and assassin Gabriel Allon.
Gabriel’s target is Eamon Quinn, a master bomb maker and mercenary of death who sells his services to the highest bidder. Fortunately Gabriel does not pursue him alone; at his side is Christopher Keller, a British commando turned professional assassin who knows Quinn’s murderous handiwork all too well.
And though Gabriel does not realize it, he is stalking an old enemy—a cabal of evil that wants nothing more than to see him dead. Gabriel will find it necessary to oblige them, for when a man is out for vengeance, death has its distinct advantages….
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
Books on CD
Playaway Audiobook
OverDrive eBook
OverDrive Audiobook
16.) The Black Widow
Gabriel Allon, the art restorer, spy, and assassin, is poised to become the chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service. But on the eve of his promotion, events conspire to lure him into the field for one final operation. ISIS has detonated a massive bomb in the Marais district of Paris, and a desperate French government wants Gabriel to eliminate the man responsible before he can strike again.
They call him Saladin, a terrorist mastermind whose ambition is as grandiose as his nom de guerre, a man so elusive that even his nationality is not known. Shielded by sophisticated encryption software, his network communicates in total secrecy, leaving the West blind to his planning — and leaving Gabriel no choice but to insert an agent into the most dangerous terror group the world has ever known. She is an extraordinary young doctor, as brave as she is beautiful. At Gabriel’s behest, she will pose as an ISIS recruit in waiting, a ticking time bomb — a black widow out for blood.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Large Print Book
Books on CD
Playaway Audiobook
OverDrive eBook
OverDrive Audiobook
17.) House of Spies (New book — On Sale July 11, 2017)
Daniel Silva delivers another spellbinding thriller—the seventeenth novel in his acclaimed Gabriel Allon series.
“One of fiction’s greatest spies,” (Kirkus Reviews), Gabriel Allon returns for his seventeenth adventure in the new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva. The Black Widow, the last book in the series, was a prescient and timely thriller—called “a sobering, insightful, and multifaceted look at the overwhelming complexities of the seemingly interminable war in the Middle East” (Booklist, starred review). It drew rave reviews from critics and readers. It also introduced a compelling new female spy, destined to make a return in the series.
Fans and new readers alike will be drawn in once again by this masterful storyteller at the height of his writerly powers—”Silva is a true genius with his portrait of the Israeli assassin-art restorer facing new, real world complexities” (Politico).
Description provided by Goodreads
The Michael Osbourne Novels
1.) The Mark of the Assassin
When Michael Osbourne of the CIA is called in to investigate the terrorist bombing of an airliner off the coast of Long Island, there is one relevant clue that drives him: a body found in the water near the crash site with three bullet holes in its face. Osbourne recognizes the deadly markings as the work of a world-class assassin, a man whose very existence has never been proven because the only people ever to have seen him became his victims. And among those victims was a young woman Osbourne loved years before.
As Osbourne gets closer and closer to the assassin’s trail, his personal obsessions threaten to consume not only the investigation, but his marriage and family life as well. When the frightening identity of the assassin’s employers becomes clear, Osbourne puts himself and his loved ones in the sights of the most fearsome man on earth.
With breathtaking plot twists, complex characters, and a villain who is among the most ruthless, diabolical creations in modern thriller fiction, The Mark of the Assassin is a razor-sharp suspense masterpiece from one of the most exciting new authors at work today.
Description provided by Goodreads
Available Formats
Print Book
Books on CD
OverDrive eBook
2.) The Marching Season
When the Good Friday peace accords are shattered by three savage acts of terrorism, Northern Ireland is blown back into the depths of conflict. And after his father-in-law is nominated to become the new American ambassador to London, retired CIA agent Michael Osbourne is drawn back into the game.
He soon discovers that his father-in-law is marked for execution. And that he himself is once again in the crosshairs of a killer known as October, one of the most merciless assassins the world has ever known…
Description provided by Goodreads
We love to come to our house each summer and enjoy the wonderful library! You are the best and offer many terrific author studies, classes, books, and movies to take home! Thank you for offering the community such a marvelous library!