Meet Rachel Proulx, an FBI agent with a tough mission in a thrilling short story from Olen Steinhauer, leading up to his new novel, The Middleman coming in August 2018. Rachel has been researching underground leftwing movements on the West Coast, but she knows she won't get any real info unless she goes undercover. So she heads out to San Franisco, moving into a tiny studio, and puts her ear to the ground. But what happens when she joins a group of them for a night party in Sonoma gets her more than she bargained for - and may even get her killed.

In a thrilling e-original story, New York Times bestselling espionage master Olen Steinhauer introduces the enigmatic John Calhoun, an international security contractor who plays a prominent role in Steinhauer's upcoming novel The Cairo Affair. Before his assignment to the CIA's Cairo office, John worked in Lisbon, Portugal, where he took part in an extraordinary rendition—the apprehension of a wanted individual for interrogation. But from the beginning of the operation nothing goes as planned, and for John, it soon becomes much more than a career-defining moment; how he handles this crisis will define who he is as a person.

Olen Steinhauer's first two novels, The Bridge of Sighs and The Confession, launched an acclaimed literary crime series set in post--World War II Eastern Europe. Now he takes his dynamic cast of characters into the shadowy political climate of the 1960s.State Security Officer Brano Sev's job is to do what his superiors ask, no matter what. Even if that means leaving his post to work the assembly line in a factory, fitting electrical wires into gauges. So when he gets a directive from his old bosses---the intimidating men above him at the Ministry of State Security, collectively known for the address of their headquarters on Yalta Boulevard, a windowless building consisting of blind offices and dark cells---he follows orders. This time he is to resume his job in State Security and travel to the village of his birth in order to interrogate a potential defector. But when a villager turns up dead shortly after he arrives, Brano is framed for the murder. Again trusting his superiors, he assumes this is part of their plan and allows it to run its course, a decision that leads him into exile in Vienna, where he finally begins to ask questions.The answers in 36 Yalta Boulevard, Olen Steinhauer's tour-de-force political thriller, teach Comrade Brano Sev that loyalty to the cause might be the biggest crime of all.