Military & War

A SAS soldier's journey from trainee to elite warrior fighting Islamic militants in Afghanistan, only to be betrayed by his own senior leaders at home. 'I've had more than my share of close calls. Truth is, it's fucking thrilling. But the fear can hit just as hard, especially when you see mates...

In Forging the Will to Fight, retired Special Forces Major Heston Russell delivers a raw and deeply personal memoir that cuts through the mythology of war to reveal the real human cost — and courage — of leadership in combat and beyond. From commanding elite Australian commandos in...

Bloomsbury presents The Last Viking by Don Hollway, read by Mark Meadows. ‘The Last Viking is a masterful and pulse-pounding narrative that transports the reader into the middle of the action.’ Carl Gnam, Military Heritage Harald Sigurdsson burst into history as a teenaged youth in a Viking...

The extraordinary story of the heroic doctor whose courage and leadership were a lifeline for thousands of Australian prisoners-of-war on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway of World War II - brilliantly told by Australia's favourite storyteller, Peter FitzSimons In September 1939, young Australian...

Forged in Fire takes us inside the secretive world of the Australian commandos. Garry made a report on the radio: 'I see around 200 women and children heading north up the valley.' Less than 400 metres below us, a steady stream of women and kids were hurrying away in single file. 'Where are all...

In the early days of April 1941, the 14,000 Australian forces garrisoned in the Libyan town of Tobruk were told to expect reinforcements and supplies within eight weeks...

The shocking story of the case against Australia's most highly decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG, and the defamation trial of the century. With a Victoria Cross and Medal for Gallantry, Ben Roberts-Smith was the most highly decorated Australian soldier, the best of the best. When he...

LT Dick Thompson, codename Dynamite, describes in detail that takes your breath away, brutal firefights and hand-to-hand combat against overwhelming odds. Follow Dynamite as he transitions from a Airborne Ranger Special Forces warrior into one of the most elite, tier-one special operators.

On a dark night in the Mekong Delta, young platoon sergeant Edgar Eaton's courage and self-sacrifice would mean the difference between life and death for his wounded comrades....

The Battle of Le Hamel on 4 July 1918 was an Allied triumph, and strategically very important in the closing stages of WWI. A largely Australian force, commanded by the brilliant Sir John Monash, fought what has been described as the first modern battle - where infantry, tanks, artillery and...

NOW A BLOCKBUSTER MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY CLINT EASTWOOD—NOMINATED FOR SIX ACADEMY AWARDS, INCLUDING BEST PICTURE From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly...

One soldier’s fight didn’t end on the battlefield — it began there. This is the raw, haunting memoir of war, shame, survival, and the search for redemption. At just seventeen, Jason Gibney enlisted in the Australian Defence Force, full of vigour and a thirst for adventure. Over the next...

A ballad of love, war, betrayal, mystery, patriotism and heroism; a ballad of a champion whose story still has the power to move the stoniest heart....

'A powerful, honest story of courage, redemption and finding purpose' - Bear Grylls Forging resilience Finding purpose Mastering transformation How do you rebuild your life when you've hit rock bottom? Mark Wales thought his life would end in a cornfield in Afghanistan. Mark and his SAS troops...

‘Stop screaming, I’m scared too!’ is not what you’d expect to see on the back of a loadmaster’s helmet in a Chinook helicopter flying over southern Afghanistan, but for Rod Henderson it sums up his 22 years of service as a soldier in the Australian Army. During the busiest period in...

Cecil Lewis was an illustrious and passionate fighter pilot of the First World War, described by Bernard Shaw in 1935 as 'a thinker, a master of words, and a bit of a poet'. In this account the author sets his love of the skies and flying against his bitter experience of the horrors of war.

A lot of confusion, a lot of humor, a lot of broken dreams and broken promises, an occasional triumph. 1978 - a chance meeting on a remote military airbase between two Green Berets involved in the same operation leads to a partnership that will last over 40 years. Four years after that meeting...

On 22 June 2013, Corporal Cameron Baird was a 2nd Commando Regiment Special Forces soldier when he led his platoon into a known Taliban stronghold to back-up another Australian unit under heavy fire. In the pronged firefight, Cameron was mortally wounded. In 2014, Cameron's bravery and courage...

Stirringly evocative, thought provoking, and often jaw dropping, The Operator ranges across SEAL Team Operator Robert O'Neill's awe-inspiring 400-mission career that included his involvement in attempts to rescue "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell and abducted-by-Somali-pirates Captain Richard...

Warrant Officer Terry Crump was a Cobra gunship pilot who earned a near-unprecedented seven Distinguished Flying Crosses in his one-year tour in Vietnam.

The many lives and tragic death of Harry Freame, the Anzac hero betrayed by his nation. Harry Freame was the first Australian to win the Distinguished Conduct Medal at Gallipoli. Raised as a samurai, he risked his life again and again to scout the beaches and hills of the battlefield, reporting...

I received a target indication from one of the rear team members and observed movement coming from the left of the area of engagement. I then saw them, two enemy fighters moving to a new position. I must have let rip about twenty rounds and not one of the rounds hit them. I had missed completely!...

FULLY UPDATED CENTENARY EDITION ‘An important book’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times ‘An intriguing history of covert surveillance … thoroughly engaging’ Daily Telegraph GCHQ is the largest and most secretive intelligence organisation in the UK, and has existed for 100 years – but we still...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ‘A terrific book … It really is one of the most enjoyable histories I’ve read in many a year’ JAMES HOLLAND ‘Riveting … A brilliant account’ DAILY MAIL THE FIRST AUTHORISED HISTORY OF THE SBS. Britain’s SBS – or Special Boat Service – was the...

The Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller! From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Make Your Bed—a short, inspirational book of advice and leadership lessons that Admiral McRaven collected over his four decades as a Navy SEAL. The title “Bullfrog” is given to the Navy SEAL who has served...

Incredible stories of combat and survival from over twenty years in the Army and Special Forces For more than two decades, Bram Connolly's life was a relentless march through some of the world's most volatile landscapes, brutal conflicts and extreme training. Serving in the Australian Army and...

The thrilling and moving classic memoir of a spitfire pilot in World War Two. This is the true story of Richard Hillary, immortalised in Sebastian Faulks' bestselling triple biography, The Fatal Englishman. In The Last Enemy, Richard Hillary tells his extraordinary story in his own words. Shot...

In the shadowed cells of Nuremberg Prison, twenty-two men awaited judgement for history's greatest crimes. Stripped of their uniforms, power, and myth, the architects of the Third Reich faced something more intimate than the tribunal: the searching gaze of American psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley, M.D. What he discovered was not the comforting legend of pure madness or demonic uniqueness.

A tense, powerful, grand account of one of the most daring exploits of World War II. On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected troops from the elite U.S. Army 6th Ranger Battalion slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty miles in an attempt to rescue 513 American...

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Marine Corps' ground campaign up the Tigris and Euphrates was notable for speed and aggressiveness unparalleled in military history. Little has been written, however, of the air support that guaranteed the drive's success. Paving the way for the rush to Baghdad...

Robert Harris has brought Agrippa back to life in fiction. Now meet the real man. Marcus Agrippa was the man Augustus could not do without. General. Admiral. Statesman. Diplomat. Builder. Best friend, trusted lieutenant and son-in-law of Rome's first emperor. For more than three decades, Agrippa fought Rome's enemies, defeated rival fleets, negotiated with kings, pacified provinces, and transformed the city of Rome. His military victories helped make Augustus's empire possible.

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. How did a solitary, taciturn young man of humble origins transform into the military strategist who rewrote the history of Europe? Immerse yourself in the life of the man who forged an epic destiny through this revealing audiobook. From the wild...

In Twenty Times I Almost Died: Life Lessons from the Edge of Survival, John Spencer, a soldier, father, and one of the world’s leading experts on urban warfare, shares gripping true stories drawn from a lifetime spent on the cusp of danger. Transporting the reader through combat tours in Iraq and research trips through modern war zones to childhood struggles, freak accidents, and near disasters, each chapter recounts a close call that could have been his last.

In this captivating memoir, Bob J. Garcia, a door gunner from the 117th Assault Helicopter Company plunges listeners into a combat helicopter during the height of the Vietnam War and his lifelong struggles with PTSD. “We were God’s young lunatics. We were reckless as we faced death every day in Vietnam. We acted fearlessly, even when we were at times scared as we flew our thinly built Army helicopters into combat, the wind sometimes threatening to crash us into mountains and rice paddies.

What can a lifetime of hard work and discipline make possible? Mike Stevens rose from humble beginnings in Montana to become the 13th Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, the highest enlisted position in the United States Navy. Following more than three decades of military service, he went on to serve twice as a CEO in the private sector, carrying the leadership principles forged throughout his Navy career into the business world. Across more than four decades of leadership, Stevens learned firsthand that success rarely comes from talent alone.

We are outside Ramadi, clearing a route none of us has driven before, and that alone is enough to put everyone on edge. The usual roads are paved; you learn how to read them over time, learn the language of fresh asphalt and disturbed dirt, the subtle signs that something has been opened and closed again. But this road offers no such cues. It's unpaved, a supply line cutting through open terrain, stripped of landmarks or patterns, giving us nothing familiar to anchor to.

From Pearl Harbor to VE Day is the personal World War II memoir of Francis Gerrit Veldman, a young man from Muskegon, Michigan, whose Army service carried him from training camps in the United States to North Africa, Italy, France, and finally home just before Victory in Europe Day. Written in his own plainspoken voice, Veldman recalls enlistment, troop trains, searchlight duty, wartime travel, military friendships, danger, humor, homesickness, and the strange turns that carried him from the Coast Artillery to infantry service near the end of the war.

This collection of sharp, irreverent anecdotes offers a brutally honest and often hilarious glimpse into life inside the British Parachute Regiment. Told through a mix of personal experience and well-worn barrack-room legend, the book captures the chaos, camaraderie, and outright madness that define the airborne brotherhood. From punishing training exercises and absurd military logic to pranks that teeter on the edge of disaster, each story reveals the mindset of men pushed to their physical and mental limits.

In 1939, the world was dragged into the most devastating conflict in human history. Empires collapsed. Entire cities burned. Tens of millions of people would never return home. World War 2: A Complete History of WWII and Its Enduring Legacy takes you on a sweeping journey through the conflict that reshaped the modern world. From the lightning strikes of Blitzkrieg in Europe to the brutal island battles of the Pacific, this audiobook explores the war through strategy, politics, and the lives of the people who endured it.

A penniless Corsican outsider crowned himself Emperor of France—then set the entire continent ablaze to keep that crown. How does an obscure artillery officer with no fortune, no royal blood, and a thick foreign accent claw his way to the most powerful throne in Europe? And what does it cost a man to burn Moscow to the ground, march half a million soldiers to their deaths in the snow, and still believe himself the chosen instrument of destiny?

Once proud citadels of virtue, the US military academies have lost their way and are running on fumes. They need to be fixed before it’s too late. Saving Our Service Academies covers one man’s unrelenting thirty-year fight with the military bureaucracy to instill qualities of force and...

From the perspective of a five-time combat veteran and US Army Special Forces officer, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Roth, comes an in-depth account of the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq during the Global War on Terrorism. The author's career, spanning over thirty-five years in the US military, provides the listener with a unique and exciting direct experience from one of the most combat-experienced Green Beret commanders of the current age.

What a Navy SEAL Learned About Survival Off the Battlefield. "I was twenty-three, sitting on top of a water tower with a steak in one hand, a Corona in the other, and cops at the base yelling for me to come down. I thought I was unstoppable. I was already lost."

Bugger It is the unfiltered, deeply human memoir of Stephen J Scott — RAF Regiment veteran, widower, single father, and a man who has lived through conflict, loss, love, and the long road back to himself. From Cold War Germany to the Falklands, from the chaos of service life to the quiet devastation of grief, Stephen tells his story with honesty, humour, and a refusal to let anything — even the darkest moments — stay buried.

Admiral Dennis Blair, USN: "The Vietnam War literature and cinema are dominated by the angry and the anguished. Bud Cole's book speaks for those who did their duty with dedication and courage, but without illusion. It also should remind leaders who send to war their young men, and now their young women, of its human cost, even for those who are willing to pay it."General John Allen, USMC: "About the time you think there's no space remaining for another work on the VietNam war, along comes Goin' to Nam a rich and thoroughly engaging historical novel by Captain Bernard "Bud" Cole.

In Everyone Has a Story: The Inheritance, this powerful and deeply personal memoir takes listeners on an unforgettable journey through identity, resilience, and truth. From the discipline and structure of military life to the devastating reality of medical trauma, this story reveals what happens when trust is shattered and how strength is rebuilt in the aftermath. Through moments of pain, reflection, and courage, the author confronts not only personal battles but larger truths that affect countless others. This is more than a memoir. It’s a voice for the unheard. A stand against injustice.

"No engines!" His student's scream cuts through the eerie silence as their supersonic T-38 plunges toward a Mississippi forest at over 6,000 feet per minute. Seconds tick away. One chance to save them both. In this gripping memoir, former U.S. Air Force instructor pilot Ken Mellott drops you into the cockpit of a supersonic T-38 silently plummeting toward a Mississippi forest. When every restart fails, Mellott makes the only call left—and ejects into chaos. He survives the crash.

Experience the epic military history of an impoverished outsider who harnessed revolution to forge a sprawling empire. Follow this meteoric rise from a turbulent Corsican childhood to the pinnacle of absolute power, and ultimately to a lonely death in exile. Discover the brilliant strategist...

A longtime Afghan combat interpreter recounts his life from early childhood in a mountain village through battlefield service to a perilous escape to America amid looming threats. “Abdul Atah’s service and sacrifice for America makes a moving and meaningful story. His dedication to our...

Survive brutal betrayals on the Mongol steppe and witness an outcast transform into a ruthless military genius. This immersive historical biography plunges you into the dramatic rise of Temujin as he unites nomadic tribes through sheer will and political strategy. Perfect for a gripping commute...