About the Series
In the years after the Civil War, the United States had no real intelligence service — and Commander Nathan Tower built one anyway.
Operating out of a modest post at the Office of Naval Intelligence, Tower assembles a network of operatives who work in the shadows of Gilded Age Washington, Europe, and the Americas: gathering secrets, running operations no one will officially acknowledge, and defending American interests against rivals who have been playing this game far longer. Tower himself rarely takes the field. He orchestrates — recruiting, training, and deploying operatives whose skills he understands better than they do themselves.
The Nathan Tower Espionage Series is historical spy fiction grounded in real events, real institutions, and real historical figures of the 1860s–1880s. Each book stands on its own — new readers can start anywhere — but longtime readers will find a network of characters, relationships, and consequences that deepens across the series.
The series can be read in any order, but for readers who want the full arc, the suggested order is below: the prequel novellas first, then the main sequence of novels, with the short story collection filling in the gaps between them.
The Novels
The Death of the Admiral (1884) The novel that opens the main series. Tower's network is tested when the suspicious death of a naval officer threatens to expose secrets Washington cannot afford to have made public.
Raid on the Atlanta (novella, 1884) Picking up in the immediate aftermath of The Death of the Admiral, this novella follows the operation set in motion by that book's final scene.
The Frederick Alliance (1884) Sophie Baumann goes undercover for the first time, in an operation that tests both her nerve and the network's reach.
The Freedman Legacy (1885) Set in the world of Washington's African American community and the Freedman's Savings and Trust, this novel finds Lucinda running a cultivation operation and Sophie leading the analytical work that breaks the case.
The Deptford Confession (1887) On the eve of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, Sophie Baumann runs an operation in London that reaches back into a centuries-old mystery — the death of Christopher Marlowe — while international naval rivalries threaten to boil over.
The Prequel Novellas
Collected together as Nathan Tower: The Early Years
The Road to Nashville (1862) Before he was a spymaster, Nathan Tower was a green Union naval officer whose first intelligence mission nearly gets him hanged — until an innkeeper's daughter teaches him the art of the lie.
The Krupp Gambit (1875, Berlin) A prequel set in Bismarck's Germany, revealing the formative — and painful — lesson in professional espionage that shaped the operative Tower would become.
London Fog (1878) Tower's education in European intelligence work continues in London, in a novella that closes out his early years abroad before he returns home to build his network.
Short Stories
Constant War: Six Stories in the Nathan Tower Espionage Series
A collection of six complete, standalone stories spanning twenty-four years of the series world — from the gunboats of the Tennessee River in 1862 to the canals of Amsterdam in 1886.
The Monkey's Fist (Tennessee River, 1862) — the origin of the Tower–Burley partnership
The Pétroleuse Ledger (Paris, 1871) — Tower's first European intelligence operation
The Scheldt Deception (Antwerp, 1878) — a confidence operation run by Tower and Watkins
A Woman of Means (Washington, 1884) — Lucinda Meadows faces off against Maria Brandt
White Gold (Washington, 1885) — Meade and Lucinda run parallel operations
The Amsterdam Margins (Amsterdam, 1886) — Sophie Baumann assesses a dangerous rival
Available individually on Kindle, or together in the full collection, Constant War, in ebook and paperback.
Coming Soon
The Naples Doctrine (1885) Set at the Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans, this novel flips the series' usual roles — Sophie runs the operation from Washington while Tower works the ground as her field asset.
The Havana Revenge (1886) Lucinda and Meade go undercover in Cuba in what's intended as the final major confrontation with the Parrish family.
The Mouth of the Lion (Venice, 1888) A covert Austro-Hungarian intelligence operation, an American business conspiracy, and a planned assassination collide during Venice's Festa del Redentore.
The Nathan Tower Espionage Series is written by Jim Stovall and published by First Inning Press. Books are available on Amazon and through Kindle Unlimited.
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