Secondhand Vintage War Fiction & History Bargain Book Box SP4062

Secondhand Vintage War Fiction & History Bargain Book Box SP4062

Seventeen vintage paperbacks from across a century of conflict, mostly in their original Pan and New English Library editions. Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day and Ladislas Farago's Patton biography anchor the non-fiction; Eric Lambert's The Twenty Thousand Thieves — one of the finest Australian war novels — and Edward Young's submarine memoir are the standouts. These are secondhand books and may show signs of previous ownership.

1. North from Thursday — Jon Cleary — A tense early novel from the creator of Scobie Malone, set in the highlands of New Guinea; a government patrol officer is caught between tribal loyalties and his own conscience in a story that shows Cleary at his most atmospheric.
2. The Three Daughters of Madame Liang — Pearl S. Buck — A late novel from the Nobel laureate, following three sisters navigating love, tradition, and revolution in modern China. Characteristically compassionate and carefully observed.
3. War As I Knew It — George S. Patton Jr. — The battle memoirs of General Patton, compiled from his diaries and notes, covering his campaigns in North Africa and Europe. Frank, colourful, and controversial — this is Patton in his own voice.
4. A Killing for the Hawks — Frederick E. Smith — War fiction from the author of the much-loved 633 Squadron, following RAF fighter pilots over occupied Europe. This novel delivers the technical accuracy and moral weight that distinguishes Smith's work from lighter wartime adventure.
5. They Shall Not Pass Unseen — Ivan Southall — Drawn from Southall's own wartime experience, this account follows flying boats hunting submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic. An underread title in Australian war literature, notable for its understated authority.
6. Buller's Dreadnought — Richard Hough — Naval adventure fiction following a young officer in the age of the great battleships; Hough was one of the most prolific British writers in this genre and brought genuine historical knowledge to the form.
7. Great Battles of World War I: On the Land — A Signet anthology drawing on eyewitness accounts and official records of the major land campaigns of the First World War.
8. The Twenty Thousand Thieves — Eric Lambert — One of the finest Australian war novels, set at El Alamein and written with the gritty authority of Lambert's own AIF service. This novel belongs in the company of the best writing to come out of the Australian wartime experience.
9. The Naked Country — Morris West — An early West novel, before the Vatican thrillers; a remote Australian cattle station becomes the scene of violent confrontation between a jackaroo and an Aboriginal tribe. Direct and unsparing in a way his later work sometimes isn't.
10. Dawn over Kitty Hawk — Walter J. Boyne — A novelisation of the Wright Brothers' race to achieve powered flight, from the American aviation historian; particularly strong on the technical detail of the brothers' methodical approach to the problem.
11. One of Our Submarines — Edward Young — The classic firsthand memoir of a Royal Navy submarine commander in World War II, written with the authority of someone who was genuinely there. This account stands alongside Nicholas Monsarrat's work as essential reading on the undersea war.
12. The Longest Day — Cornelius Ryan — The definitive account of D-Day, 6 June 1944, built from hundreds of eyewitness testimonies gathered from both sides. This book essentially invented the modern popular history of military operations and remains unsurpassed in its genre.
13. The Master of Ballantrae — Robert Louis Stevenson — Stevenson's darkly compelling tale of two brothers on opposite sides of the Jacobite rebellion, following their enmity across continents and decades. Often considered his most mature fiction — darker and formally more adventurous than Treasure Island.
14. They Fought for the Sky — Quentin Reynolds — A popular illustrated history of air combat in the First World War, covering the development of aerial warfare from reconnaissance missions to organised fighter squadrons. Reynolds writes for the general reader and brings considerable narrative energy to the material.
15. Gunner Asch Goes to War — H.H. Kirst — The second in Kirst's beloved series following the irreverent Gunner Asch through the chaos of the Second World War; this novel is Kirst at his most caustic, with the military bureaucracy serving as the real enemy.
16. Patton: Ordeal and Triumph — Ladislas Farago — The definitive biography of General Patton, drawing on diaries, letters, and classified documents; the basis for the Oscar-winning film. Exhaustive without being exhausting, giving Patton's contradictions their full weight.
17. Something of Value — Robert Ruark — A powerful novel set against the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, tracing the friendship between a white settler's son and a Kikuyu boy as colonial violence tears them apart. An important document of its moment that scandalized and fascinated in equal measure on publication in 1955.