Published posthumously in 1966, Octopussy and The Living Daylights is Ian Fleming’s final collection of James Bond stories. In Octopussy, Bond confronts a retired British officer whose comfortable life conceals a wartime crime. The Living Daylights sends Bond to Berlin, where he must protect a British agent crossing from the East while facing an enemy sniper.

Later editions expanded the collection with The Property of a Lady, in which Bond attends a Sotheby’s auction as part of an operation to identify a Soviet intelligence officer, and 007 in New York, a brief account of Bond travelling to Manhattan to warn a former agent about her partner. Together, the stories combine conventional espionage with questions of judgement, loyalty, guilt and professional duty, while presenting Bond in missions that range from tense confrontation to intelligence observation.