Best Selling Books by Robert Harris

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY EDWARD BERGER AND STARRING RALPH FIENNES, STANLEY TUCCI, JOHN LITHGOW, AND ISABELLA ROSSELLINI • The page-turning thriller set in the Vatican''s secretive halls of power by the best-selling author of Enigma and Fatherland "Pulsates with intrigue. . . . Ambition, sex scandals, financial corruption and terrorism all rear their ugly heads. And Harris saves one whopper of a surprise for the final pages." —USA Today The pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will gather to cast their votes in the world''s most secretive election. They are holy men. But they are not immune to the human temptations of power and glory. And they are not above the tribalism and factionalism that consumes humanity. When all is said and done, one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on Earth.

What would have happened if Hitler had won World War II?

The long-awaited final volume of the Cicero Trilogy, from a beloved bestselling author “incapable of writing an unenjoyable book” (The Wall Street Journal). At the age of forty-eight, Cicero—the greatest orator of his time—is in exile, his power sacrificed on the altar of his principles. The only way to return to Rome is to pledge his support to a charismatic and dangerous enemy: Julius Caesar. Harnessing his political cunning, unrivalled intellect, and the sheer brilliance of his words, Cicero fights his way back to prominence. Yet no public figure is completely safeguarded against the unscrupulous ambition of others. Riveting and tumultuous, Dictator encompasses the most epic events in ancient history, including the collapse of the Roman Republic, the murder of Pompey, and the assassination of Caesar. But its central question is a timeless one: how to keep political freedom unsullied by personal gain, vested interests, and the corrosive effects of ceaseless foreign wars. In Robert Harris’s indelible portrait, Cicero is a deeply fascinating hero for his own time and for ours.

Recently placed in charge of the Aqua Augusta, the aqueduct that brings fresh water to thousands of people around the bay of Naples, Roman engineer Marius Primus struggles to discover why the aqueduct has ceased delivering water and heads to the slopes of Mount Vesuvius to find the problem, only to come face to face with an impending catastrophe of mammoth proportions. Reprint.

Retired British prime minister Adam Lang sets out to write a tell-all memoir of his life and political career, an effort for which he hires a ghostwriter who uncovers dangerous secrets about the former leader''s term.

The secret story of chemical and biological warfare. A Higher Form of Killing was first published to great acclaim in 1982. The authors have written a new Introduction and a new Epilogue to take account of the events that have happened since the early 1980s - including the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the black market that appeared in chemical and biological weapons, the acquisition of these weapons by various Third World states, the attempts of various countries like Iraq to build up arsenals of these weapons and, most recently, the use of these weapons in terrorist attacks. As the authors point out, the two generations since the Second World War lived with the threat of nuclear annihilation. Now a new generation must learn to live with weapons that are more insidious and potentially more devastating.

Conspirata is “a portrait of ancient politics as a blood sport,” raves The New York Times. As he did with Imperium, Robert Harris again turns Roman history into a gripping thriller as Cicero faces a new power struggle in a world filled with treachery, violence, and vengeance. On the eve of Cicero’s inauguration as consul of Rome, a grisly discovery sends fear rippling through a city already racked by unrest. A young slave boy has been felled by a hammer, his throat slit and his organs removed, apparently as a human sacrifice. For Cicero, the ill omens of this hideous murder only increase his dangerous situation: elected leader by the people but despised by the heads of the two rival political camps. Caught in a shell game that leaves him forever putting out fires only to have them ignite elsewhere, Cicero plays for the future of the republic…and his life. There is a plot to assassinate him, abetted by a rising young star of the Roman senate named Gaius Julius Caesar—and it will take all the embattled consul’s wit, strength, and force of will to stop the plot and keep Rome from becoming a dictatorship.

From the internationally best-selling author of Fatherland and the Cicero Trilogy--a chilling and dark new thriller unlike anything Robert Harris has done before. 1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artefacts--coins, fragments of glass, human bones--which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death? Fairfax becomes determined to discover the truth. Over the course of the next six days, everything he believes--about himself, his faith, and the history of his world--will be tested to destruction.

A WORLD ON THE BRINK OF WAR. AN AFFAIR ON THE EDGE OF SCANDAL. A spellbinding novel of passion, intrigue and betrayal set in England in the weeks leading to the Great War. From the bestselling author of Conclave, Act of Oblivion, Fatherland and Munich. Summer 1914. In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley – aristocratic, intelligent, bored, reckless – is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state. As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. Suddenly what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that could topple the British government – and will alter the course of political history. Seamlessly weaving fact and fiction in a way that no writer does better, Precipice is the thrilling new novel from Robert Harris.

From the bestselling author of Fatherland and Pompeii, comes the first novel of a trilogy about the struggle for power in ancient Rome. In his “most accomplished work to date” (Los Angeles Times), master of historical fiction Robert Harris lures readers back in time to the compelling life of Roman Senator Marcus Cicero. The re-creation of a vanished biography written by his household slave and righthand man, Tiro, Imperium follows Cicero’s extraordinary struggle to attain supreme power in Rome. On a cold November morning, Tiro opens the door to find a terrified, bedraggled stranger begging for help. Once a Sicilian aristocrat, the man was robbed by the corrupt Roman governor, Verres, who is now trying to convict him under false pretenses and sentence him to a violent death. The man claims that only the great senator Marcus Cicero, one of Rome’s most ambitious lawyers and spellbinding orators, can bring him justice in a crooked society manipulated by the villainous governor. But for Cicero, it is a chance to prove himself worthy of absolute power. What follows is one of the most gripping courtroom dramas in history, and the beginning of a quest for political glory by a man who fought his way to the top using only his voice—defeating the most daunting figures in Roman history.

"LITERATE AND SAVVY . . . BRIMS WITH WARTIME INTRIGUE." --The Washington Post Book World England 1943. Much of the infamous Nazi Enigma code has been cracked. But Shark, the impenetrable operational cipher used by Nazi U-boats, has masked the Germans'' movements, allowing them to destroy a record number of Allied vessels. Feeling that the blood of Allied sailors is on their hands, a top-secret team of British cryptographers works feverishly around the clock to break Shark. And when brilliant mathematician Tom Jericho succeeds, it is the stuff of legend. . . . "A TENSE AND THOUGHTFUL THRILLER." --San Francisco Chronicle Until the unthinkable happens: the Germans have somehow learned that Shark has been cracked. And they''ve changed the code. . . . "SUSPENSEFUL AND FASCINATING." --The Orlando Sentinel As an Allied convoy crosses the U-boat infested North Atlantic . . . as Jericho''s ex-lover Claire disappears amid accusations that she is a Nazi collaborator . . . as Jericho strains his last resources to break Shark again, he cannot escape the ultimate truth: There is a traitor among them. . . . "GRIPPING . . . CAPTIVATING ." --New York Daily News "ELEGANTLY RESEARCHED . . . Readers will find themselves perfectly placed to experience one of Britain''s finest hours." --People "SATISFYING . . . Harris does a crackerjack job here, playing his characters'' lives off historical events in surprising ways." --Entertainment Weekly "SUSPENSEFUL . . . FIENDISHLY CLEVER." --Detroit Free Press

From Simon & Schuster, What to Listen for in Mozart is Robert Harris'' essential introduction to the world''s most popular composer. An introduction to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart explores the essentials of his work, examining his place in the aristocratic society of the late eighteenth century, and discusses his life and death.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A whistle-blower. A witch hunt. A cover-up. Secret tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, and government corruption. Welcome to 1890s Paris. Alfred Dreyfus has been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment on a far-off island, and publicly stripped of his rank. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, an ambitious military officer who believes in Dreyfus''s guilt as staunchly as any member of the public. But when he is promoted to head of the French counter-espionage agency, Picquart finds evidence that a spy still remains at large in the military—indicating that Dreyfus is innocent. As evidence of the most malignant deceit mounts and spirals inexorably toward the uppermost levels of government, Picquart is compelled to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country, and about himself. Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction Winner of the American Library in Paris Book Award

Fluke Kelso was once a scholar of promise, but like so many in the highly competitive world of academia, he''s never delivered. But one night, at a symposium in Moscow concerning the release of secret Soviet archives, he is approached by Papu Rapava, a former Kremlin bodyguard with a story to tell. No one but the desperate Kelso would believe the tale, for what Rapava describes is a sort of Holy Grail among researchers: an actual diary left by Joseph Stalin himself. Such an artifact, if it''s genuine -- and if Kelso can survive the fascist Vladimir Mamantov, who wants it for his own agenda -- would be the coup of a lifetime for the discredited researcher. Before Kelso can learn the location of the diary, Rapava disappears, and Kelso''s search for the former bodyguard leads him to the man''s daughter, a whore selling herself in the new Moscow of drugs, corruption, and the Russian mafia. With an unscrupulous American journalist hot on their heels, a major of the new KGB close behind, and the shadowy Mamantov following them all, the two follow a trail that leads from Moscow''s seedy underbelly to the industrial city of Archangel, where Russia once built her fleets of submarines, to a remote camp on the edge of the Siberian nothingness, and finally to a shocking conclusion that bites like the wind blowing off the tundra. What Kelso sees as the coup of his career might turn out to be the catalyst for an actual coup in Russia. There is a legacy behind the diary, a legacy of evil and death, and Fluke Kelso is unwittingly about to unleash it on the world.

''The moment I heard how McAra died I should have walked away. I can see that now...'' The narrator of Robert Harris''s gripping new novel is a professional ghostwriter - cynical, mercenary, and with a nice line in deadpan humour. Accustomed to working with fading rock stars and minor celebrities, he jumps at the chance to ghost the memoirs of Britain''s former prime minister, especially as it means flying to the American resort of Martha''s Vineyard in the middle of winter and finishing the book in the seclusion of a luxurious house. But it doesn''t take him long to realise he has made a terrible mistake. His predecessor on the project died in circumstances that were distinctly suspicious, and the ex-prime minister turns out to be a man with secrets in his past that are returning to haunt him - secrets with the power to kill. The Times has called Robert Harris ''the leading current exponent of the intelligent literary thriller''. The Ghost is his most compelling novel yet.

1660. Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. Having been found guilty of high treason for the murder of Charles the I, they are wanted and on the run. A reward hangs over their heads - for their capture, dead or alive. In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives. He''ll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice. Act of Oblivion is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other.[Bokinfo].

At the nexus of high finance and sophisticated computer programming, a terrifying future may be unfolding even now. Dr. Alex Hoffmann’s name is carefully guarded from the general public, but within the secretive inner circles of the ultrarich he is a legend. He has developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that predicts movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy. His hedge fund, based in Geneva, makes billions. But one morning before dawn, a sinister intruder breaches the elaborate security of his lakeside mansion, and so begins a waking nightmare of paranoia and violence as Hoffmann attempts, with increasing desperation, to discover who is trying to destroy him. Fiendishly smart and suspenseful, The Fear Index gives us a searing glimpse into an all-too-recognizable world of greed and panic. It is a novel that forces us to confront the question of what it means to be human—and it is Robert Harris’s most spellbinding and audacious novel to date.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A gripping thriller from the bestselling author of Munich and Fatherland. "The first rocket will hit London in five minutes. You have six minutes to stop the second." Rudi Graf has dreamt since childhood of sending a rocket to the moon. Instead, along with his friend Werner von Braun, he has helped create the world''s most sophisticated weapon—the V2 ballistic missile, capable of delivering a one-ton warhead at three times the speed of sound. In a desperate gamble to avoid defeat, Hitler orders 10,000 to be built. Now, in the winter of 1944, Graf finds himself in a bleak seaside town in Occupied Holland. Haunted and disillusioned, he''s tasked with firing the V2s at London. Nobody understands the volatile, deadly machine better than he does. Kay Caton-Walsh is an officer in the WAAF. She has experienced first-hand the horror of a V2 strike. As the rockets rain down, she joins a unit of WAAFs on a mission to newly-liberated Belgium. Armed with little more than a slide rule and a few equations, the hope is that Kay and her colleagues can locate and destroy the launch sites. But at this stage in the war it''s hard to know who, if anyone, you can trust. For every action on one side, there is an equal and opposite reaction on the other. As the death toll soars, the separate stories of Graf and Kay ricochet off one another, until in a final explosion of violence their destinies are forced together.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of V2 and Fatherland—a WWII-era spy thriller set against the backdrop of the fateful Munich Conference of September 1938. Now a Netflix film starring Jeremy Irons. With this electrifying novel about treason and conscience, loyalty and betrayal, "Harris has brought history to life with exceptional skill" (The Washington Post). Hugh Legat is a rising star of the British diplomatic service, serving at 10 Downing Street as a private secretary to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Paul von Hartmann is on the staff of the German Foreign Office--and secretly a member of the anti-Hitler resistance. The two men were friends at Oxford in the 1920s, but have not been in contact since. Now, when Hugh flies with Chamberlain from London to Munich, and Hartmann travels on Hitler''s train overnight from Berlin, their paths are set on a disastrous collision course. And once again, Robert Harris gives us actual events of historical importance--here are Hitler, Chamberlain, Mussolini, Daladier--at the heart of an electrifying, unputdownable novel.

______________________________ ''One of the great triumphs of contemporary historical literature.'' The Times ______________________________ WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR ''Laws are silent in times of war.'' Cicero One of the great epics of political and historical fiction, The Cicero Trilogy charts the career of the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero from his mid-twenties as an ambitious young lawyer to his dramatic death more than thirty years later, pursued by an assassination squad on a cliff-top path. The extraordinary life that unfolds between these two episodes is recounted by Cicero''s private secretary, Tiro: the law cases and the speeches that made his master''s name; the elections and conspiracies he fought; the rivals who contended for power around him - Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Clodius, Catalina, and, most menacingly, Caesar; and, at the heart of it all, the complex personality of Cicero himself - brilliant, cunning, duplicitous, anxious, brave, and always intensely humane. More than ten years in the writing, and now published in a single volume for the first time, The Cicero Trilogy brings the world of the Roman republic vividly to life. Here is its grandeur, ambition and corruption; and here is its tumultuous collapse into dictatorship and anarchy - a story of the fragility of democratic institutions that holds a warning for our own time.

Robert Harris tracked the fiasco following the sudden appearance in 1983 of the so called Hitler diaries. Now this brilliantly researched book is available in paperback.

First published in 1992, Crime, Criminal Justice and the Probation Service is a thought-provoking analysis of the role of the probation service in developing an integrated system of criminal justice. Robert Harris provides readable information about our knowledge of such areas as criminal statistics, victims, fear of crime and crime prevention. He also explores the treatment of women and ethnic minorities by the criminal justice system, the question of a sentencing council and the future of community corrections. A central theme is that all the professionals involved in the criminal justice system must work more closely together so that the mistakes of the past can be avoided in the future. The book therefore has a wide appeal not only to probation officers and social workers, but also to criminal justice professionals and administrators, including the police and the legal profession.