Stella Rimington Books in Order
Browse all Stella Rimington books in order, with summaries of the Liz Carlyle and Manon Tyler spy series, standalone novels, biography details, and where to start reading.
Last updated: December 17, 2025
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Publication Order
13 books
The Hidden Hand
by Stella Rimington
2025
Chinese student Li Min is abruptly forced to leave Harvard for Oxford and join an elite research centre linked to her government. As the centre’s real mission – stealing cutting‑edge science – becomes clear, she and another student are drawn into a dangerous operation that only Manon Tyler may be able to disrupt.
The Devil's Bargain
by Stella Rimington
2022
Decades after entering Britain as an illegal Soviet agent, Peter Robinson has reinvented himself as a rising Member of Parliament. When the one man who knows his secret reappears, CIA analyst Manon Tyler arrives in London and uncovers a deadly game involving Russian illegals and political power.
The Moscow Sleepers
by Stella Rimington
2018
A stranger’s visit to a dying professor in Vermont triggers alarms in Washington and London. Liz Carlyle follows the threads to a suspected Russian cyber network operating through 'sleeper' agents in Europe and a suspicious boarding school in rural England with unsettling new students.
Breaking Cover
by Stella Rimington
2016
Recovering from a gruelling terrorist investigation, Liz Carlyle is moved to MI5’s counter‑espionage branch and told to take things easier. Instead she is pulled into the hunt for a Russian spy on British soil just as public debate over privacy and surveillance reaches a fever pitch.
Close Call
by Stella Rimington
2014
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Liz Carlyle’s counter‑terrorism unit is ordered to monitor the illicit arms trade feeding conflict in Yemen. Evidence points to a European source, drawing her into a manhunt through Paris and Berlin – and into secrets from her own past.
The Geneva Trap
by Stella Rimington
2012
When a military communications satellite suddenly fails and a drone falls from the sky, British and American agencies fear a new kind of attack. A Russian officer insists on warning only Liz Carlyle, sending her on a hunt for a mole inside the defence establishment.
Rip Tide
by Stella Rimington
2011
When pirates hijack a ship off the coast of Somalia and one gunman turns out to be a British‑born student, alarm bells ring in London. Liz Carlyle tracks the trail from a Birmingham family to aid shipments and covert funding, uncovering a wider plot that reaches across continents.
Present Danger
by Stella Rimington
2009
Posted to Belfast, Liz Carlyle finds that the peace process is far more fragile than the briefings suggested. A shadowy group known as the Fraternity may be using former IRA men to plan an attack on the security forces, and one of her team is soon in grave danger.
Dead Line
by Stella Rimington
2008
As world leaders gather for a Middle East peace conference in Scotland, MI5 hears of a plot by two unknown figures to sabotage the event and blame Syria. Liz Carlyle must sift unreliable intelligence and dead ends to prevent catastrophe on live television.
Illegal Action
by Stella Rimington
2007
Moved from counter‑terrorism to counter‑espionage, Liz Carlyle is assigned to protect a wealthy Russian exile living in London. Evidence suggests he has been targeted for assassination, but as the case unfolds Liz realises she herself may be the real quarry.
Secret Asset
by Stella Rimington
2006
When an agent reports suspicious meetings at an Islamic bookshop, Liz Carlyle suspects a terrorist cell. At the same time, rumours surface of a mole inside MI5, forcing her to hunt the 'secret asset' while colleagues race to stop an attack.
At Risk
by Stella Rimington
2004
MI5 intelligence officer Liz Carlyle hunts an 'invisible' terrorist, a British passport‑holder planning an attack in the UK. As scattered clues surface – a murdered driver, smuggling routes, strange signals – she must connect them before it is too late.
Open Secret
by Stella Rimington
2001
In this autobiography, Stella Rimington traces her path from wartime childhood and archivist jobs to becoming Director General of MI5 in the 1990s. She describes the Service’s battles with espionage and terrorism, and the push to make a secret organisation more accountable.
Where should I start?
If you want to follow Liz Carlyle from the beginning: At Risk → Secret Asset → Illegal Action → Dead Line.
If you prefer her later Liz Carlyle cases: Present Danger → Rip Tide → The Geneva Trap → Close Call.
If you like stories about Russia and modern espionage: Breaking Cover → The Moscow Sleepers.
If you'd rather start with her real-life experience: Open Secret.
If you want a newer CIA-led series: The Devil's Bargain → The Hidden Hand.
Author bio
Stella Rimington was born in South London in 1935 and grew up during the upheaval of the Second World War. Her family moved out of the city to Essex and then to the industrial town of Barrow-in-Furness to escape the bombing. Those early years, with air-raid sirens, cramped shelters and a sense that danger might arrive without warning, stayed with her for the rest of her life.
As a teenager she went to school in Nottingham and spent one summer working as an au pair in Paris, an experience that gave her a taste for travel and for seeing how other countries lived.
At the University of Edinburgh she studied English, graduating in the late 1950s before training in archive administration at the University of Liverpool. She began her career as an archivist in Worcester, learning how institutions record their histories and how carefully guarded files can shape the story that is told. In 1963 she married John Rimington, moved to London, and took a post at the India Office Library.
Two years later her husband was posted to New Delhi with the British High Commission. There, almost by accident, she was asked to help one of the diplomats with his paperwork and discovered that he was in fact the local representative of the Security Service, MI5. Once she had the necessary clearances she joined his small office, handling intelligence work that was very different from life in the reading rooms of an archive. When the couple returned to Britain in 1969 she applied to MI5 and joined the service full time.
Over the next two decades Rimington worked across all of MI5’s main responsibilities: counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. She rose steadily through the organisation as the Cold War shifted and domestic terrorism dominated the agenda. In 1992 she became Director General of MI5, the first woman to lead the service and the first chief whose name was made public on appointment. During her four years in charge she pushed for greater openness and helped steer the service from purely Cold War priorities towards new kinds of threats.
After retiring from MI5 in 1996 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath and went on to serve as a non‑executive director for several major companies and public bodies. She also kept a hand in the world of archives and culture, and became a familiar public speaker on security, secrecy and civil liberties. In 2011 she chaired the judging panel for the Man Booker Prize, never entirely avoiding controversy when she spoke her mind.
Her first book, the memoir Open Secret, appeared in 2001 and offered an insider’s view of how the Security Service changed between the late 1960s and the end of the century. A few years later she turned to fiction with At Risk, which introduced MI5 officer Liz Carlyle and began a long run of spy novels. The Liz Carlyle books, including Secret Asset, Dead Line and The Moscow Sleepers, follow an intelligent, driven case officer through terrorist scares, Russian plots and the everyday grind of intelligence work.
Readers often say they value the way these novels mix office politics, procedure and quiet human detail with the big headlines of national security.
In her later career Rimington created a new protagonist, CIA analyst Manon Tyler, in the thrillers The Devil's Bargain and The Hidden Hand. These books move the action onto a more overtly transatlantic stage, from Russian illegals burrowing into British politics to battles over artificial intelligence research on university campuses.
Away from the desk she and John Rimington separated in the 1980s but remained linked through their two daughters and later reconciled, spending time together again in her final years. She divided her time between London and Norfolk, was known for a dry sense of humour and a straightforward manner, and continued to write and speak well into her eighties. Rimington died on 3 August 2025, aged ninety; her memoir and novels still offer a rare, grounded glimpse into the hidden world she once helped to run.
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