Union Station

In the eighth installment of David Downing’s bestselling Station Series, English journalist John Russell is adrift in a McCarthy-era Los Angeles, having left a life of international spying behind him—until his research into a wartime conspiracy brings him face-to-face with the perilous instability of a post-Stalin Berlin.

Los Angeles, 1953. It has been five years since British journalist John Russell struck a deal with a high-ranking Soviet official, relieving Russell of his duty as double-agent for Soviet and American intelligence. Now Russell lives a life of relative comfort in Los Angeles alongside his wife, Effi, a star on an American sitcom, and their adopted daughter, Rosa, a young artist on the cusp of adulthood. He has just begun work on a book investigating American firms that did business with Germany during Nazi occupation when he notices someone is tailing him—and his wife—all around Los Angeles. Has someone not taken kindly to his research? Is it a McCarthyist freelancer, trying to dig up dirt on Effi and her family? Or, could it be that in the leadership struggle following Stalin’s death, the deal Russell struck all those years ago has put him at risk yet again?

When Effi is invited to the Third Annual Berlin Film Festival as a guest of honor, the two make the decision to attend—thrusting them into the political disorder of a city that was once their home and which they now struggle to recognize. It is here that Russell will come face to face with the forces that have followed him, from Hollywood to Berlin and back again.