Book picks similar to
Opening Moves by Colin Gee
alternate-history
fiction
alt-history
military-fiction
A History of What Comes Next
Sylvain Neuvel - 2021
Preserve the knowledge.Survive at all costs.Take them to the stars.Over 99 identical generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race. But Mia’s family is not the only group pushing the levers of history: an even more ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes.A darkly satirical first contact thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them...
The Third World War: August 1985
John W. Hackett - 1978
A sensational international bestseller, it is a vivid, detailed, and often blood-curdling on-the-spot report from the battle fronts of a "real war", from tank assaults to air clashes to ICBM launchings, based on an insider's knowledge of weaponry and actual NATO and Soviet battle strategies. In the light of changes in Eastern Europe the question now is: Could it ever have happened? Could it ever happen again?
Villa Normandie
Kevin Doherty
The Normandy coastal village of Caillons is under German occupation, its villagers struggling to survive. With her husband forced into compulsory service for the German Reich, Jeanne Dupré, mother of two adolescent daughters, risks everything to lead the local Resistance cell.Life becomes even more dangerous with the arrival of British agent Daniel Benedict. He needs Jeanne's help to complete his mission, vital to Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings. But Jeanne is suspicious that they are not fighting for the same outcome. Their joint foe is Jürgen Graf, a Nazi oberleutnant set on wiping out the local Resistance. Aware that a spy is at large, Graf is on a ruthless mission to hunt Benedict down. With the help of a network of Catholic priests, Benedict penetrates the heart of the Nazis’ defences against Allied invasion, the Atlantic Wall. As the lives of Jeanne and Benedict become increasingly intertwined can they stay true to themselves? Will they have to sacrifice all in their fight for freedom..? ‘Villa Normandie’ is a moving historical novel, presenting an accurate picture of life under Nazi occupation. It is thoroughly detailed, meticulously researched and vividly authentic - depicting the turbulent world of the French resistance and the struggle of the French people for freedom.
Tin Soldiers
Michael Farmer - 2003
To prevent a total conquest of the region, a U.S. Army Heavy Brigade must stand against Iraq's greater numbers and updated technology-while the locals are bent on grinding the small American force into the ancient desert sand.
The Grasslands
Kenneth Tam - 2010
After returning from a campaign in the Third Afghan War, Major Thomas Waller and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment are assigned to escort two mysterious ladies into the unknown lands of the new world. With the help of an American drifter named Smith, Waller and his men must face daunting hordes of 'savages' that roam the steppes of the alien planet, and help to uncover the ladies' secrets - and the secrets of the new world itself. A dangerous mission awaits on the Grasslands...
Panzers: Push for Victory Book 1: Battle of Kursk
Tom Zola - 2014
Adolf Hitler, the "Führer" of the German Reich, unexpectedly dies in a plane crash in Hungary. The German High Command takes over the regime, disempowers the Nazi Party and reorganizes the military forces. Germany swiftly has to overcome recent setbacks in North Africa and on the Eastern Front. Furthermore, an allied invasion already casts its long shadow. The German generals understand that it is not about the ultimate victory anymore but merely about achieving a stalemate to save the Reich on the negotiating table. First, they have to stabilize Germany's positions on the Eastern Front. Therefore the High Command gathers its panzer forces and throws them into a daring all or nothing gamble for the city Kursk. Tom Zola, a former sergeant in the German Army, is a military fiction writer, famous for his intense battle descriptions and realistic action scenes. In 2014 the first book of his PANZERS series was released in German language, setting up an alternate history scenario in which a different German Reich tries to turn around the fortunes of war at the pinnacle of the Second World War. Zola doesn’t beat around the bush; his stories involve brutal fighting, inhuman ideologies and a military machine that overruns Europe and the whole world without mercy. He has developed a breathtaking yet shocking alternate timeline that has finally been translated into English.
Ghost Sniper
David Healey - 2014
On the dawn of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, two snipers find themselves fighting a battle all their own. One is a backwoods hunter from the Appalachian Mountains in the American South, while the other is the dreaded German “Ghost Sniper” who earned his nickname on the Eastern Front. Locked in a deadly duel across the hedgerow country of France, the hunter matches wits and tactics against the marksman, both of them one bullet away from victory—or defeat—as Allied forces struggle to gain a foothold in Europe.
V-S Day
Allen M. Steele - 2014
Heinlein proud” (Entertainment Weekly) three-time Hugo Award-winning author Allen Steele now imagines an alternate history rooted in an actual historical possibility: what if the race to space had occurred in the early days of WWII? It's 1941, and Wernher von Braun is ordered by his Fuehrer to abandon the V2 rocket and turn German resources in a daring new direction: construction of a manned orbital spacecraft capable of attacking the U.S. Work on the rocket—called Silbervogel—begins at Peenemunde. Though it is top secret, British intelligence discovers the plan, and brings word to Franklin Roosevelt. The American President determines that there is only one logical response: the U.S. must build a spacecraft capable of intercepting Silbervogel and destroying it. Robert Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuel rocket, agrees to head the classified project.So begins a race against time—between two secret military programs and two brilliant scientists whose high-stakes competition will spiral into a deadly game of political intrigue and unforeseen catastrophes played to the death in the brutal skies above America.
Hamfist Over Hanoi
G.E. Nolly - 2012
He is based at Yokota Air Base, in Japan, and becomes comfortable flying generals and other VIPs around Asia in his Sabreliner executive jet. He is adjusting to his new marriage, and aside from the stress of TDY assignments, life is placid.But the war returns with a vengeance when Hamfist suffers a personal loss at the hands of the North Vietnamese. Hamfist knows that the only way he can find inner peace is to go back for another combat tour, to try to bring the horrific war to a speedy end. And this time, he will fly a fighter, the top-of-the-line F-4 Phantom II.Hamfist checks out in the F-4 and arrives at his base in Thailand just in time for the start of Operation Linebacker, the bombing offensive over Hanoi. He soon finds himself flying over the most heavily defended area in the world, dodging Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) and dueling with enemy aircraft, the vaunted MiG-series fighters. And along the way he has picked up two new goals: completing 100 missions over North Vietnam and defeating a MiG in aerial combat.Only time will tell if Hamfist will achieve his 100 missions, score a victory over a MiG and, most important, help end the war.
Rigged
James Rosone - 2019
A cabal of wealthy puppet masters has created a plan to divide America from within.
Cloaked in secrecy and blind loyalty to their leader, these masters of manipulation will embark upon a journey that will change the future of humanity.As the next US presidential election begins, will it be free and fair, or will it be rigged? Maybe it doesn’t even matter who wins, as long as the country fractures apart.
A house divided cannot stand.
If you like political intrigue coupled with hair-raising action, geopolitical chess, and cutting-edge technology, you’ll love Rosone and Watson’s opening installment of the Second American Civil War.
Will our heroes be able to uncover the plot before it is too late? Have too many dominoes fallen to stop this devious trap? Grab your copy of Rigged and find out today!
The Second American Civil War Series is best read in order, as each book builds upon the previous work. The reading order is as listed:Book One: RiggedBook Two: PeacekeepersBook Three: InvasionBook Four: Vengeance
*When you buy a book written by Rosone and Watson, they have chosen to donate a portion of the proceeds to help support the following organizations: Tunnel to Towers Foundation, Operation Underground Railroad, and Charity: Water.
1632
Eric Flint - 2000
Famine. Disease. Religous war laying waste the cities. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy. 2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia, and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time. THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED.... When the dust settles, Mike leads a group of armed miners to find out what happened and finds the road into town is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell: a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter attacked by men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot. At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of the Thirty Years' War.
Fatherland
Robert Harris - 1991
It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb. As March discovers the identity of the body, he uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with an American journalist, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth - a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history.
The Two Gates
Ken Davenport - 2017
January 1964. Political intrigue and infighting roils Washington in the wake of the assassination attempt in Dallas, and a wounded President John F. Kennedy returns to the White House to face a growing crisis in Vietnam that threatens America’s Cold War strategy. The president doesn’t trust the information he is getting from Saigon, where the military is engaged in a shadow operation to make things seem better than they really are. So he turns to the one man he does trust: Lt. Colonel Patrick O’Shea. A decorated combat veteran of Korea, O’Shea has been plucked from obscurity to be Kennedy’s military advisor, and is tasked by the president to figure out what is really going on in Vietnam. The knives come out as O’Shea grapples with myriad threats to himself and the president he serves. The Pentagon, the CIA, the Corsican Mafia and the Chicago Mob are all conspiring against him. The debut novel by Ken Davenport, The Two Gates is an exciting new addition to the military, presidential and alternative history tradition of W.E.B. Griffin, David Baldacci, Harry Turtledove and Philip Roth.
Hurricane Squadron
Robert Jackson - 1978
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. There are only a handful of them against the might of Hitler’s war machine, and with each sortie the ranks of the Squadron grow ever more depleted. The odds stacked against them are hopeless… A vivid tale of a fighter squadron at war, Hurricane Squadron is told with painstaking accuracy, charting a young man’s rise to maturity in the face of combat and sudden death. Praise for Robert Jackson 'Takes you to the heart of the action.' - Tom Kasey, best-selling author of Cold Kill Robert Jackson (b. 1941) is a prolific author of military and aviation history, having become a fulltime writer in 1969. As an active serviceman in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve he flew a wide range of aircraft, ranging from jets to gliders. Hurricane Squadron is the first book in the Sergeant George Yeoman series.
Operation Devil's Fire (Sgt. Dunn Novels Book 1)
Ronn Munsterman - 2011
Dunn Novel series. When Allied intelligence agencies discover the Nazis will complete construction of their atomic bomb before the summer of '44 is out, the race is on to destroy the German facility before the course of the war takes a terrifying turn. Operation Devil's Fire begins two weeks before D-Day with two seemingly unrelated events: a British spy, working in Berlin, steals a top-secret memorandum and is terrified by its contents. Two days, later a P-51 Mustang pilot spots a new German jet bomber while on B-17 escort duty over Germany. When American and British intelligence link the events, there is one inescapable conclusion: Germany will finish the atomic bomb first and, furthermore, possesses a new transatlantic jet bomber. U.S. Army Ranger Sergeant Thomas Dunn and his British Commando rival, Sergeant Malcolm Saunders, receive top secret orders from President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. Their teams of rugged, lethal soldiers will fly into Germany. Their missions: destroy the German atomic bomb facility and the new jet bomber. Failure means the invasion of Europe was all for nothing. If Hitler drops the atomic weapon on the United States, Roosevelt and Churchill will have no choice but to concede the European continent to the dictator. While the President and Prime Minister wait and worry, the two elite teams fight against enormous odds to complete the missions and return safely home.