In this week's podcast, we travel into worlds that are darker and more outlandish than any conspiracy thriller. Misha Glenny explains what he learned about the cutting edge of criminal behaviour while researching his latest book, about international cybercrime, and Luke Harding describes the dirty tricks that were played on him and his family by Russia's secret security service while he was working as a reporter in Moscow.

In case anyone is tempted to doubt the story Harding tells in his new book, we listen in to tape recordings of the interrogation that led to his expulsion from Russia, and he takes us to London's Millennium Hotel where Alexander Litvinenko is believed to have been poisoned by Russian secret agents in 2006.

We also interview Anna Funder about treading the boundary between fiction and non-fiction in her new novel about refugees fleeing Germany in the run-up to the second world war.

Reading list
Dark Market: Cyber Thieves, Cyber Cops and You by Misha Glenny (Bodley Head)
Mafia State by Luke Harding (Guardian Books)
All That I Am by Anna Funder (Penguin)

• The first Russian motherboard based on ARM-processor Baikal-M