AGENT GARBO

World War II is replete with countless stories of brave heroes, military fortitude and the numerous battles in which the smallest tactic could mean life or death for countless soldiers. But intrinsic to ultimate victory in this massive war was the power of information who had it, who didn't, and who made the right bets based on the intelligence in hand.

The story of the ultimate spy, "Agent Garbo," or Juan Pujol, an Allied double agent whose uncanny deceptions saved D-day. NY TIMES bestselling author Stephan Talty has spent the last year in Spain researching this story and with exclusive access to Pujol's letters, never-before-published revelations from MI5 files, and extensive interviews with Pujol's surviving family has created a fascinating new look at the secret maneuverings behind one of the most important events in the 20th Century. Pujol was a man congenitally disposed to embroidering the truth and his gift for imagining characters and maintaining scrupulous control over their identities would lead Hitler's Abwehr on a wild goose chase over several years, culminating in a deception that distracted powerful divisions of the German military from aiding the defenses of the Normandy beaches, ensuring the success of the mission and saving thousands of lives in the process. How he accomplished this historic charade - at the cost of his own marriage and with the constant danger of being kidnapped by the Gestapo - is nothing less than startling and is a story any reader of historical narrative non-fiction and a taste for spies and war will devour. In the tradition of AGENT ZIGZAG, OPERATION MINCEMEAT, HUNTING EICHMANN.