True War

In July 2009 Geraint (Gez) Jones was sitting in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, with the rest of The Firm - Danny, Jay, Toby and Jake, his four closest friends, all junior NCOs and combat-hardened infantrymen. Thanks to the mangled remains of a Jackal vehicle left tactlessly outside their tent, IEDs were never far from their mind. Within days they’d be on the ground in Musa Qala with the rest of 3 Platoon - a mixed bunch of men Gez would die for.

Following the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in 2003, the SAS launched one of the most intense and secretive operations in its history: Task Force Black. BBC journalist Mark Urban uncovers the sensational story of this operation and the extraordinary men who carried it out.

This book is Harry McCallion's blistering account of the history of Britain's war against the IRA between 1970 and 1998. From new insights into high-profile killings and riveting accounts of enemy contact, to revelations about clandestine missions and the strategies used in combating a merciless enemy, Undercover War is the definitive inside story of the battle against the IRA, one of the most dangerous and effective terrorist organisations in recent history.

For decades there has been argument in the media and amongst politicians about the possible existence and extent of a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland. MRF Shadow Troop confirms there was such an agenda in the early, chaotic days of British military intervention across the Irish Sea. But amongst the mountain of speculation there is little of any accuracy or authority relating to this period.

April 7, 1944 - This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak prisoners from one of the most heavily-guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over 100 miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the early 1960s, I Escaped from Auschwitz is the striking autobiography of none other than Rudolf Vrba himself. Vrba details his life leading up to, during, and after his escape from his 21-month internment in Auschwitz.

One April morning in 1943, a sardine fisherman spotted the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and set in train a course of events that would change the course of the Second World War. Ben Macintyre, bestselling author of Agent Zigzag, weaves together private documents, memories, letters and diaries, as well as newly released material from the intelligence files of MI5 and Naval Intelligence, to tell for the first time the full story of Operation Mincemeat.

Killing Thatcher is the gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher and to wiping out the British Cabinet – an extraordinary assassination attempt linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles and the most daring conspiracy against the Crown since the Gunpowder Plot.

Freddie Scappaticci was born in 1946 and raised in a deeply nationalist area of Belfast. When the Troubles broke out in 1969, he joined the Provisional IRA, where he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming commander of Belfast in 1984. From the outside, Scappaticci appeared to be a dedicated volunteer, but inwardly, he had become disenchanted with the IRA and, in 1977, he started working for British intelligence.

On the night of March 24, 1944, Bram Vanderstok was number 18 of 76 men who crawled beyond the barbed wire fence of Stalag Luft III in Zagan, Poland. His memoir sets down his wartime adventures before being incarcerated in Stalag Luft III and then, in extraordinary detail, describes various escape attempts which culminated with the famous March breakout.

Following his brutal quest for revenge, former Navy SEAL James Reece has fled the United States, emerging deep in the wilds of Mozambique. But he can’t stay hidden for long – when a string of horrific terrorist attacks plagues the Western world, the CIA tracks him down and recruits him.

In the summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground operative called Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interred at a new concentration camp on the border of the Reich. His mission was to report on Nazi crimes and raise a secret army to stage an uprising. The name of the detention centre - Auschwitz. It was only after arriving at the camp that he started to discover the Nazis' terrifying designs.

Between dusk and dawn on the night of March 24-25, 1944, a small army of Allied soldiers crawled through tunnels in Germany in a covert operation the likes of which the Third Reich had never seen. The prison break from Stalag Luft III in Eastern Germany was the largest of its kind in the Second World War. Seventy-nine Allied soldiers and airmen made it outside the wire - but only three made it outside Nazi Germany. Fifty were executed by the Gestapo.

Of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the US military, only a tiny fraction are selected as “operators.” Shannon Kent was one of the first women to serve at this level and was widely recognized as one of the best. Shannon served as a Navy cryptologic technician, responsible for signals intelligence and electronic warfare, but her proficiency with language set her apart. She was assigned to a unit so secretive that its name can’t even be printed here, where she worked clandestinely to hunt the most wanted terrorists in the world.

During World War II, Canada trained tens of thousands of airmen under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Those selected for Bomber Command operations went on to rain devastation upon the Third Reich in the great air battles over Europe, but their losses were high. German fighters and anti-aircraft guns took a terrifying toll. The chances of surviving a tour of duty as a bomber crew were almost nil.

A rousing tale of espionage and unsung valor, this is the captivating true story of Vera Atkins, Great Britain's spymistress from the age of 25. With her fierce intelligence, blunt manner, personal courage, and exceptional informants, Vera ran countless missions throughout the 1930s. After rising to the leadership echelon in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a covert intelligence agency formed by Winston Churchill, she became head of a clandestine army in World War II.

The author describes the experience of being in bombed-out, dangerous, post-war Nuremberg, where she lived for two years while working on the trial. This landmark trial resulted in the establishment of the Nuremberg Code, which sets the guidelines for medical research involving human beings. Doctors from Hell is a significant addition to the literature on World War II and the Holocaust, medical ethics, human rights, and the barbaric depths to which human beings can descend.

Before the internet became widely known as a global tool for terrorists, one perceptive US citizen recognized its ominous potential. Armed with clear evidence of computer espionage, he began a highly personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatened national security. But would the authorities back him up? Cliff Stoll's dramatic firsthand account is "a computer-age detective story, instantly fascinating [and] astonishingly gripping" - Smithsonian.

For more than 20 years, the most intense and prolonged gang war in British history raged on the streets of Manchester. Warring factions left at least 40 dead and made headlines across the world. This best-selling account tells how vicious battles for control of drugs, turf, and protection rackets blighted the reputation of one of Europe's most dynamic cities and saw the coining of the sinister epithet "Gunchester".

Stalking the Red Bear, for the first time ever, describes the action principally from the perspective of a commanding officer of a nuclear submarine during the Cold War - the one man aboard a sub who makes the critical decisions - taking us closer to the Soviet target than any work on submarine espionage has ever done before. This is the untold story of a covert submarine espionage operation against the Soviet Union during the Cold War as experienced by the commanding officer of an active submarine.

In this disturbing exposé, journalist Paul L. Williams describes a secret alliance forged at the close of World War II by the CIA, the Sicilian and US mafias, and the Vatican to thwart the possibility of a Communist invasion of Europe. Williams presents evidence suggesting the existence, in many European countries, of "stay-behind" units consisting of 5,000 to 15,000 military operatives.