Peter Maxwell didn't want to attend the GNVQ course. He didn't want to get mixed up in murder either - but perhaps it was all part of death's rich tapestry. And while a disparate gathering of teachers was breaking ice upstairs at the Carnforth Centre, someone else was in the basement - breaking skulls. But what the killer couldn't have foreseen was that one of the victims was an old flame of Maxwell's. So now it was personal. And when 'Mad Max' takes something personally, he doesn't get madder - he gets results.

France, May 1940. Seated in the cockpit of his Hurricane, Sergeant George Yeoman - young, eager, and innocent in the ways of war - is on his way to join his first operational squadron. Meanwhile, the German Panzers advance unchecked through the Ardennes, and as the Allied bombers plead to strike at them, the Luftwaffe is already set to launch a decisive blow. Disaster beckons, and Yeoman and No. 505 Squadron soon find themselves courting death in a series of increasingly desperate sorties as the Allied army begins its retreat towards Dunkirk. 

Jen Garner tries her best to be ‘wife and mother of the year’. She helps organise school plays and accompanies her husband to company dinners, all with a big smile on her face. But Jen has started to receive strange gifts in the post...first flowers, then a sympathy card. It could just be a joke; that’s what she tells herself. But then the final ‘gift’ arrives, and Jen has to question why somebody is so intent on shattering her life into pieces....

Detective Sam Helsdown hasn’t seen his daughter Zoe in two years and he’s excited and more than a little nervous to be at the airport picking her up for a visit. She’s 10 years old and has flown on her own for the first time. Flight BA631 from Athens has already landed and soon a trickle of people begins entering Arrivals. Among them is a little girl who runs towards him, head down, and throws herself into his arms saying ‘Daddy!’. But then he looks at her properly. This is not Zoe. This is not his daughter.

From the first landings at Casablanca straight through to the crossing of the Elbe River and V-E Day, this book tells the gripping story of the European theater of operations battles of World War II that American soldiers, sailors, and airmen took part in and of the strategy behind them. The book's core is its account of such famous and dramatic episodes as the landings in North Africa, Kasserine Pass, Salerno and Anzio; D-day; the liberation of Paris; the Battle of the Bulge; the crossing of the Rhine; and the race across Germany.