An Affair of Spies, Ronald H. Balson
An Affair of Spies, Ronald H. Balson
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An Affair of Spies
A Novel

Author: Ronald H. Balson

Narrator: Fred Berman

Unabridged: 10 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/13/2022


Synopsis

From the winner of the National Jewish Book Award—Ronald H. Balson's An Affair of Spies tells of a spy mission to rescue a defector from Germany and prevent the Nazis from creating an atomic bomb.

Nathan Silverman grew up in Berlin in the 1920s, the son of a homemaker and a theoretical physicist. His idyllic childhood was soon marred by increasing levels of bigotry against his family and the rest of the Jewish community, and after his uncle is arrested on Kristallnacht, he leaves Germany for New York City with only his mother’s wedding ring to sell for survival.

While attending an evening course at Columbia in 1941, Nathan notices a recruitment poster on a university wall and decides to enlist in the military and help fight the Nazi regime. To his surprise, he is quickly selected for a special assignment; he is trained as a spy, and ordered to report to the Manhattan Project. There he learns that the Allies are racing to develop a nuclear weapon before the Nazis, and a German theoretical physicist is hoping to defect. The physicist was a friend of his father's, and Nathan's mission is to return to Berlin via France and smuggle him out of Europe.

Nathan will be accompanied by Dr. Allison Fisher, a brilliant young scientist who can speak French; he travels to her lab at the University of Chicago for a crash course in nuclear physics, then they embark on their adventure. Nathan and Allison soon develop feelings for one another, but as their relationship deepens they move ever closer to their dangerous goal. Will they be able to escape Europe with the defector and start a new life together, or will they fail their mission and become two more casualties of war?

An Affair of Spies is an action-packed tale of heroism and love in the face of unspeakable evil. Author Ronald H. Balson has applied his unmatched talent for evocative and painstakingly authentic storytelling to the high-stakes world of espionage and created his most thrilling novel yet.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

About Ronald H. Balson

RONALD H. BALSON is an attorney, professor, and writer. His novel The Girl From Berlin won the National Jewish Book Award and was the Illinois Reading Council's adult fiction selection for their Illinois Reads program. He is also the author of The Righteous, An Affair of Spies, Defending Britta Stein, Eli’s Promise, Karolina's Twins, The Trust, Saving Sophie, and the international bestseller Once We Were Brothers. He has appeared on many television and radio programs and has lectured nationally and internationally on his writing. He lives in Chicago.

About Fred Berman

Fred Berman is a five-time winner of the AudioFile Earphone Award for Audiobook Narration and the recipient of the 2013 Audie Award for narration in Spy the Lie. He has read a number of audiobooks for young listeners, including Judy Blume’s Soupy Saturdays with The Pain & The Great One and Andrew Clements’s The Last Holiday Concert. He has also narrated the audiobooks for Robert Kirkman’s popular series, The Walking Dead.Berman is an accomplished actor of both the stage and screen as well, performing on Broadway as Timon in The Lion King and off-Broadway in Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and King Lear. On television, Berman has had roles on NBC’s hit series Smash as well as All My Children and Law and Order. He lives in New York City.


Reviews

An Affair of Spies by Ronald H. Balson was a fast paced historical fiction thriller. This was my eighth book that I have read by Ronald H. Balson. Although I enjoyed reading it, it was not one of my all time favorite books by him. I appreciated the impeccable research that went into writing this boo......more

Goodreads review by Karen

The author shared that while researching a project, he came across a typewritten letter that led him on a road to write this book. The letter discovered was typed by none other than A. Einstein who wrote to F. D. Roosevelt in 1939 about the consequences of recent scientific research. This letter inf......more

Goodreads review by Amy

I have read all of Ron Balson's canon of works, so I was looking forward to this one. I liked it, although perhaps not so much as the others. I did hear some harsh reviews of it when I was at about 15%, but I am giving it a solid three. Some detracting voices felt it was too heavy on the science and......more