Secondhand Military Fiction & History Bargain Book Box SP2857

Secondhand Military Fiction & History Bargain Book Box SP2857

Twenty books of wartime action and military history — naval battles, the Dunkirk evacuation, the Blitz, the Battle of Britain, Colditz, Narvik, Taranto — told through gripping fiction from Alistair MacLean, C.S. Forester, Len Deighton, and J.E. Macdonnell alongside Richard Hillary's classic memoir and vivid non-fiction accounts. A box that puts you in the thick of it.

1. Battle Line — J.E. Macdonnell — One of Macdonnell's classic naval war novels, following the crew of a fighting ship through the brutal realities of sea warfare in the Pacific theatre.
2. Surface Raider — F.L. Farrell — A naval thriller tracking the cat-and-mouse pursuit of a German surface raider preying on Allied shipping — tense action from the shadow war of the Atlantic.
3. The Sands of Dunkirk — Richard Collier — Collier's storm-raising account of the evacuation, drawing on survivor testimonies to lay bare the chaos, courage, and near-catastrophe of Operation Dynamo.
4. Coventry Code — R. Page Jones and Evonne Old — A wartime thriller in which Britain's spymasters race to capture a Nazi pilot who holds a secret that could win the war for Germany — fast-paced and richly atmospheric.
5. Come Die with Me — J.E. Macdonnell — Another entry in Macdonnell's prolific naval war series, delivering the blend of seafaring action and character that made him one of Australia's most read popular novelists.
6. The Guns of Navarone — Alistair MacLean — MacLean's most celebrated thriller, in which a small Allied commando team must destroy an impregnable German gun emplacement threatening the Royal Navy — one of the definitive wartime adventure novels.
7. Storm Force to Narvik — Alexander Fullerton — A naval thriller set during the 1940 Norwegian campaign, following a destroyer crew through the ferocious fighting in the fjords around Narvik.
8. The Big Pick-Up — Elleston Trevor — Trevor's classic Dunkirk novel, following soldiers and civilians caught up in the chaos of the evacuation — one of the finest fictional treatments of the event.
9. Colditz: The Latter Days — P.R. Reid, M.B.E., M.C. — Reid's account of the closing months of the famous prisoner-of-war castle, completing the dramatic final chapter of the war's most celebrated escape narrative.
10. Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk — Len Deighton — Deighton's masterly account of the German military machine's early triumphs, tracing the decisions that led to the fall of France in just six weeks.
11. Vietnam: Ground Zero — The Iron Triangle — Eric Helm — A Vietnam War thriller following a US Special Forces unit into the Viet Cong stronghold northwest of Saigon — intense, ground-level combat fiction from one of the most popular series in the genre.
12. War Story — Derek Robinson — A First World War RFC novel in which a pilot's survival owes more to luck than skill — darkly comic and unsparing about the waste of young men in aerial warfare.
13. The Good Shepherd — C.S. Forester — Forester's taut, psychologically intense novel following a destroyer escort commander through a desperate Atlantic crossing, hunting U-boats while fighting exhaustion — among the finest naval fiction ever written.
14. Operation Chariot — Duncan Harding — A novel based on the audacious 1942 St Nazaire Raid, in which a lone destroyer was sent to destroy the only dry dock capable of servicing the Tirpitz — one of the war's most daring operations.
15. Grey Gladiator — George Johnston — Part of the Australia at War series from the author of My Brother Jack, drawing on Johnston's war correspondent experience to tell the story of Australian military service through dramatic personal narratives.
16. The Last Enemy — Richard Hillary — The classic memoir of a Spitfire pilot shot down and burned over the Channel during the Battle of Britain — one of the most powerful and beautifully written books to come out of the Second World War.
17. Battle of Britain — Leonard Mosley — The companion to Harry Saltzman's epic film, combining the dramatic story of the 1940 air campaign with sixteen pages of full-colour photographs — a vivid account of the summer that saved Britain.
18. Hell Will Not Wait — John Crawford — A wartime novel written with the authority of direct experience, exploring the limits of courage and endurance under fire.
19. Goshawk Squadron — Derek Robinson — Robinson's controversial and celebrated First World War novel, following an RFC squadron commander who trains his pilots for survival rather than chivalry — a bracingly unsentimental account of aerial combat and a classic of the genre.
20. Taranto — Don Newton and A. Cecil Hampshire — The story of the Fleet Air Arm's night attack on the Italian fleet in November 1940, in which a handful of Swordfish biplanes changed the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean in a single raid.