Books by Adam Brookes

'The kind of history deserving of a cinematic blockbuster' Julia Lovell, Literary Review'[A] gripping and meticulously researched account of an epic effort to transport delicate scrolls, paintings and carvings thousands of miles under the threat of bombing and invasion' Rana Mitter, Times Literary Supplement'Brilliant and thrilling... A tale of daring and adventure... A desperate race against time' Paul French, South China Morning Post_____The gripping true story of the intrepid curators who saved China's finest art from the ravages of the Sino-Japanese War and World War II.Spring 1933. The silent courtyards and palaces of Peking's Forbidden City are tense with fear and expectation. Japan's aircraft drone overhead; its troops and tanks are only hours away. All-out war between China and Japan is coming, and the curators of the Forbidden City are faced with an impossible question: how will they protect the vast imperial art collections in their charge?The magnificent collections contain a million pieces of art - objects that carry China's deepest and most ancient memories. Among them are irreplaceable artefacts: exquisite paintings on silk, vanishingly rare Ming porcelain and the extraordinary Stone Drums of Qin, which are adorned with 2,500-year-old inscriptions of crucial cultural significance.For sixteen terrifying years, under the quiet leadership of museum director Ma Heng, the curators would go on to transport the imperial art collections thousands of miles across China - up rivers of white water, across mountain ranges and through burning cities. In their search for safety the curators and their fragile, invaluable cargo journeyed through the maelstrom of violence, chaos and starvation that was China's Second World War.Told for the first time in English and playing out across a vast historical canvas, this is the exhilarating story of a small group of men and women who, when faced with war's onslaught on civilisation, chose to resist.'Fascinating... Brookes marries a reporter's grasp of detail with a novelist's narrative flair to bring clarity and readability to a complicated period of China's troubled history' Mail on Sunday

In the third and final novel in the multi-award-nominated Philip Mangan thriller series, perfect for fans of John le Carre's The Night Manager, journalist turned MI6 agent Philip Mangan finds that in protecting a talented young woman, he becomes a target of more than one secret service

'Authentic, taut and compelling. Brookes is the real deal'Charles CummingFearing for his life, journalist Philip Mangan has gone into hiding from the Chinese agents who have identified him as a British spy. His reputation and life are in tatters. But when he is caught in a terrorist attack in East Africa and a shadowy Chinese figure approaches him in the dead of night with information on the origins of the atrocity, Mangan is suddenly back in the eye of the storm.Meanwhile, thousands of miles away on a humid Hong Kong night, a key MI6 source is murdered minutes after meeting spy Trish Patterson. From Washington, D.C. to the hallowed halls of Oxford University and dusty African streets, a sinister power is stirring that will use Mangan and Patterson as its pawns - if they survive.Deeply steeped in tension and paranoia, Spy Games is Adam Brookes' follow-up to his award-nominated debut Night Heron and a remarkable, groundbreaking spy thriller.

Tell them, the Night Heron is hunting . . . A lone man escapes a labour camp in the dead of night, fleeing across the winter desert of north-west China.Two decades earlier, he was a spy for the British. Now he finds Beijing transformed and crawling with danger - the fugitive must quickly disappear on its surveillance-blanketed streets or face death. Desperate and ruthless, he reaches out to his one-time MI6 paymasters via journalist Philip Mangan, offering secrets in return for his life.Mangan is dragged into a deeper and deeper whirlpool of lies, as the secrets prove more valuable than either of them could ever have known... and not only to the British.