Book picks similar to
The Serpent's Egg by J.J. Toner


world-war-ii
espionage
historical-fiction
historical-suspense

Lion of God: The Complete Trilogy


Stephen England - 2018
    . .we do not forget." It is the year 2000, and with the new millennium has come the fresh promise of peace in the Middle East.But when a pair of IDF reservists are brutally lynched in the West Bank town of Ramallah--the graphic imagery of their final moments broadcast around the Western world. . .all hopes of peace are shattered.As Israel mourns her dead and America attempts to salvage the peace process, the Mossad is tasked with finding and bringing to justice those responsible for the butchery, activating a Kidon team led by a young assassin known only as Ariel. . .The "Lion of God."But as the hunt narrows, it quickly becomes apparent that nothing is as it seems. And vengeance far from the only agenda in play. . .The Lion of God Trilogy represents an expansion of Stephen England's best-selling Shadow Warriors universe, and this volume includes all three previously-published individual episodes now compiled into a single volume.

Escort: The Battle of the Atlantic


D.A. Rayner - 1955
     This highly acclaimed firsthand account of convoy escort operations in the North Atlantic from 1939 to 1945 is based on Rayner's astonishing war record. About the author: Denys Arthur Rayner was a Royal Navy officer who fought throughout the Battle of the Atlantic. After intensive war service at sea, Rayner became a writer, a farmer, and a successful designer and builder of small sailing craft.

Operation Arrowhead


Jack Badelaire - 2012
    A year later, as a member of Britain's elite No. 3 Commando, Lynch wants nothing more than to go back over the Channel and kick open Hitler's Fortress Europe, guns blazing. Introduced by his commanding officer to the enigmatic Lord Pembroke, Lynch is offered a chance to be part of a special team of hand-picked Commandos. Their assignment: sneak into occupied France and ally with the French partisans to fight back against the Nazis. Lynch readily accepts the challenge, but when the mission goes awry from the very beginning, and the motives of the partisan leader become suspect, the Commandos begin to wonder about their role in the mission: trusted allies with the partisans, or worms dangling as bait for a hungry fish?COMMANDO: Operation Arrowhead is a military action - adventure novel written in the spirit of classic war movies and wartime pulp adventure fiction.

Still Waters


Judith Saxton - 1996
     As she grows up, Tess slowly starts to put together the pieces herself. But the outbreak of war brings tragedy and upheaval, changing Tess's priorities. Mal Chandler has travelled the length and breadth of Australia with his feckless father and weary mother. Now, the war brings Mal to England as a pilot for the RAF - and into Tess's world.

Fencing With Death


Elizabeth Pewsey - 2014
     Londoner Larry Dunne divides his time between writing bad avant-garde poetry, working in a Bloomsbury bookshop, arguing with his upper-class girlfriend Pamela and putting the world to rights in a dive off the Strand named Joe’s Club in honour of Stalin. Until one day he applies for a job in Hungary, where he imagines he will at last breathe the purer air of an ideal Socialist State and enjoy universal fellowship and equality. Off he goes to Budapest, to find that the State runs on envy, paranoia and two-stroke. And soon, despite the attractions of an elegant Hungarian ballerina, Larry wants nothing more than to get back to cosy Bohemian London. Not so easy, when a neighbour is stabbed to death with a fencing sabre. On the run from ultra-clever investigator Major Nagy, Larry realises he might be in Budapest for a very, very long time. Unless the murderer is caught. A man in a long grey coat stood there. At the sight of Larry he clicked his heels together, extended a hand, announced that he was Major Nagy and strode past Larry into his apartment. Larry was rooted to the spot. ‘What is it? Has something happened?’ ‘Indeed you may say it has, Mr Dunne. A body has been found in an apartment in this block, and it is necessary to ask you some questions.’ ‘A body? What kind of body?’ ‘A dead body, Mr Dunne. This is the only kind I am interested in.’ ‘No, I mean, whose body? And how, has someone had a heart attack?’ ‘Not at all, Mr Dunne. Please sit down. This is a case of murder.’ Originally published as LOSING LARRY by Elizabeth Pewsey

617 Squadron: The Dambusters at War (Memoirs from World War Two)


Tom Bennett - 1986
    

A Kind of Woman


Helen Burko - 2017
    Barder does not return alone: with him is his new wife, Rachel, a beautiful blonde woman whom he met in Warsaw shortly after the war - a Jewish survivor who lost her entire family and remained alone in the world. Jacob fell in love with her and brought her to the states. Now he will defend her in the biggest battle of her life. A Jewish lawyer’s wife is accused of committing Nazi war crimes One evening, in a Broadway theater, Rachel is attacked by a woman who accuses her of being Matilda Krause - a German SS officer who served at the Nazi concentration camps. Rachel’s arrest and police investigation open the way to a sensational trial that will be written in the pages of history. With no one willing to protect a Nazi officer, Barder decides to defend his wife himself. Why would a Jewish survivor speak for a Nazi in the court of law? Barder is called to make an impossible case in the name of his beloved wife, and that of humanity altogether. The jury, the judge, and the readers will be astounded by what he has to say.

After the Roundup: Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France


Joseph Weismann - 2017
    After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated: all the adults and most of the children were transported on to Auschwitz and certain death, but 1,000 children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children left behind that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt. After eluding the guards and crawling under razor-sharp barbed wire, Joseph found freedom. But how would he survive the rest of the war in Nazi-occupied France and build a life for himself? His problems had just begun.Until he was 80, Joseph Weismann kept his story to himself, giving only the slightest hints of it to his wife and three children. Simone Veil, lawyer, politician, President of the European Parliament, and member of the Constitutional Council of France—herself a survivor of Auschwitz—urged him to tell his story. In the original French version of this book and in Roselyne Bosch’s 2010 film La Rafle, Joseph shares his compelling and terrifying story of the Roundup of the Vél’ d’Hiv and his escape. Now, for the first time in English, Joseph tells the rest of his dramatic story in After the Roundup.

Weaponsmith


Mike Crawshaw - 2013
    Seven years of the worst war in history – so far – have turned the region into a wasteland where only the sword rules, and only the rats and the bankers grow fat. Roger Hawken, seventeen-year-old Englishman, black sheep of a family of minor landed gentry, leaves his Wiltshire home to take service with a free company of mercenary soldiers based in the Netherlands. Roger’s indiscretions have resulted in his being apprenticed as blacksmith in place of a more gentlemanly occupation, and as a smith he joins the company. Pitchforked into the bloody conflict of the siege of Breda, he finds there is more to his job than shoeing horses and forging short-swords, and starts to make his name as a fighting soldier…

Hey Doc!: The Battle of Okinawa As Remembered by a Marine Corpsman


Ed Wells - 2017
    This is the wartime memories of a Marine Corpsman who served in Company B, of the 6th Battalion of the 4th Regiment. He saw 100 days of continuous combat during the Battle of Okinawa, including the Battle for Sugar Loaf, and was part of the landing force that was headed to Japan when the atomic bomb dropped. These were recorded after 60 years of reflection, and are presented to honor all veterans.

Bare Knuckle


Cindy Brandner - 2018
    And yet, here Brian Riordan was doing exactly that. So begins this prequel to the Exit Unicorns series, as we join the Riordan boys in the rough and tumble world of Belfast, Northern Ireland, during a summer of change and promise. Casey Riordan is on the cusp on manhood, and is learning just how high the price of that transition can be. Tagging along on this adventure is his brother, Pat, who is both shadow and conscience to Casey. Their father, Brian, is simply trying to keep his sons safe—a tall order in the gritty streets of this particular city. Bare Knuckle spans the events of one summer, giving a glimpse into the lives of the Riordans—the boys as they embark on the path to the men they are destined to be, and their father as he guides them along the way. The road is not smooth and contains hard lessons, both those of betrayal and treachery, all stemming from the events of one warm July night, when the match of hatred is set to the fuel of violence. After that night, life as they know it spirals out of control for the Riordans, until one man is forced to rejoin a world he thought he’d left behind forever, to ensure the safety of those he loves.

Daniel


Keith Yocum - 2009
    17, 1972, during some of the darkest days of the Vietnam War, an American soldier walked out of the jungle and onto an isolated US Army firebase in the Central Highlands. The stranger had no identification, was in good health and otherwise seemed normal. But there was a problem. While the stranger said his name was Daniel Carson, he could remember almost nothing else. Quiet and reserved, he could not explain where he came from or why he had mysteriously shown up on Firebase Martha. Attempts by the base commander to confirm Daniel’s identity turned up even more odd details. Battalion reported that a soldier named Daniel Carson and fitting the description provided by the commander had been Killed In Action the week before. Who was Daniel? Was he a deserter? A faker? A lunatic? Or was he something altogether different? Was he a lucky charm or a savior sent to rescue the unfortunate soldiers on Firebase Martha? The answers to these questions are not revealed until 1976 when three survivors from the firebase meet after the war in a bar in Washington, D.C. and agree spontaneously to visit Daniel’s parents in nearby suburban Virginia. What they find shakes them to the core.

Turning Point


Marion Kummerow - 2018
     Destined for deportation to a labor camp, she has nowhere to hide. When a bomb hits her building, she emerges from the rubble unscathed. But there's only one way to stay alive. She needs to switch identities with a dead Nazi girl. Will Margarete betray everything she ever believed in to survive? Attention: this short story has previously been part of the anthology Pearl Harbor and more. If you own the anthology, do not buy this book.

Those In Peril


Margaret Mayhew - 2003
    His aim is not to flee from the enemy, but to join the Resistance to fight for his beloved France. He arrives in Dartmouth and finds his way to the boarding house run by the delightful young widow Barbara Hillyard, who is trying to make a living for herself and her young evacuee Esme. Lieutenant-Commander Alan Powell, unfit for active service after being wounded in action, is overseeing undercover operations in that part of the West Country, and he and Duval find themselves in dangerous circumstances. Alan, lonely and frustrated in his work, is drawn towards the lovely Mrs Hillyard, but she seems to have eyes only for the attractive Frenchman...

The Crossing


Ted Allbeury - 1987
    The identities of several Russian agents become known to the West.The chase is on to gather the evidence needed to incriminate them.One of the leaders of the hunt is the brilliant British spycatcher Joe Shapiro, who persuades the Americans into exchanging a notorious and high-ranking KGB spy for the seemingly unimportant American spy-pilot Gary Powers.Joe Shapiro has more than a professional interest in the case, and the intricate web of lies and deception behind the exchange of spies hides secrets that must never be revealed.Inspired by historical events surrounding the infamous 1960 U-2 incident, THE CROSSING is a tense and compelling thriller by one of the genre's master storytellers.