Book picks similar to
Stand Your Ground by William W. Johnstone


thriller
william-w-johnstone
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Black Squadron


Michael Stephen Fuchs - 2021
    engagement from the invasion of Sicily to Black Hawk Down. The Rangers are upright, loyal, and never leave their brothers behind.But now the Rangers may be the only ones who can stop a rogue Black Squadron from leaving everyone bleeding out in the street – and also kicking off a shooting war between two nuclear powers.It’s Black Hawk Down meets Training Day in this explosive collision of two legendary special-operations units battling to survive and prevail in the most dangerous city on the planet.

The Blades: SAS Special Operations Force


Josef Black - 2014
     1998, Danny ‘Feathers’ Archer has just passed the notoriously gruelling British SAS Selection. Having undergone 9 months of Tier One Special Forces' training he is assigned to an elite SAS Sabre Squadron - Bravo Seven Troop. The Blades: SAS Special Operations Force follows Archer & Seven Troop through 4 years of operations across multiple global theatres from Sarajevo to Colombia, Sierra Leone to London, Paris to Las Vegas. Archer’s journey takes him on SAS operations against Serbian War Criminals, the IRA & Colombian FARC, Sierra Leone's Rebels, The West Side Boys, and Al Qaeda. Written in a terse and gritty contemporary style with a blend of technically authentic SAS action based on historical real-world operations, British forces humour and camaraderie, THE BLADES: SAS Special Operations Force is a thrilling and realistic blend of espionage & Special Forces action as The Blades live up to the Regiment’s motto: WHO DARES WINS.

Delta Force Vampire: Insurgency


Alex Shaw - 2012
    Tasked to recon a tunnel network in use by the Taliban it is just another day in the sandpit for the Delta Boys until something attacks them in the darkness.Presumed Killed in Action, Black is abducted by a shadowy figure before being forced to cross the inhospitable Afghan wilderness to be reunited with what is left of his team.Meanwhile a General from Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) arrives at Firebase Python brining news of a Cold War weapons experiment so shocking that its existence has until now remained top secret.Horrific secrets buried in the Afghan mountains for a quarter of a century are about to be unleashed.

Vendetta


Bradley Wright - 2017
    One kidnapping, one shoot-out, and several deceptions later, he is caught in the middle of a battle he was never supposed to be in. So he thought. With innocent lives at stake, including his own, Xander and his team will have to solve the puzzle before someone’s sinister plan is executed. Will the enemy pull the wool over this combat legend’s eyes? Or will Xander teach those that involved him that revenge isn’t always so sweet?

Warrior in the Shadows


Marcus Wynne - 2002
    The skills he learned in the Australian Special Air Service have carried over to his new life as an Aboriginal spiritual leader and contract killer for drug lord Jay Burrell. Alfie knows how to stalk and kill a victim, then disappear without a trace. But it's the ritualistic murders and the devouring of his victims during the Aboriginal ceremony that send a clear message to Burrell's enemies.Charley Payne was losing it. He had spent his life as a door kicker for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the world's hot spots. When his friend, Police Detective Sergeant Bobby Lee Martaine realized that Charley was becoming a danger to himself and his missions, Bobby Lee offered him a job. Trading in his guns for a camera, Charley finds his new life as a forensic photographer in the Twin Cities uneventful and peaceful—just what he needed, until Charley is called in to photograph a gruesome murder scene.There are no fingerprints and only one clue, a bizarre Aboriginal painting. Most in the police department begin to suspect a serial killer is on the loose. Bobby Lee is closing in on Alfie, but Alfie learned in the SAS that a mission is not complete if you've left a trail behind. When Bobby Lee and his family turn up dead, Charley returns to the way of the gun. But he will be fighting a war on the spiritual leader's turf in the Australian outback. A fight to the death that took place in the Aboriginal dream world five centuries before.

The Loner


J.A. Johnstone - 2009
    And that's one secret he plans to keep--until his beautiful wife, Rebel, was kidnapped by a group of deadly bandits.Like Father--DeadlyLike Son--DeadlierWhen Conrad Browning's wife disappears in the untamed frontier, Conrad finds himself assuming the identity of his famous gunslinging father, Frank Morgan, to find her. But his hopes of rescuing Rebel are swiftly shattered--and now he's burning for vengeance, the old-fashioned way. So he fakes his own death and starts calling himself The Loner, becoming the deadliest gunfighter this side of his own father--ready to settle the score in blood and bullets. . .

Lodestone


Stephen England - 2014
    The MT1-XX parachute billowed open in the night sky above him, snapping his shoulders back against the harness and pulling him out of freefall. Over six years at this game. . .and he still didn’t like the idea of jumping out of a fully-functional aircraft.” The year is 2006. As the Israeli Defense Force storms across the border into southern Lebanon, preparing to surround the stronghold of Bint Jbeil, three men wearing the yellow headbands of Hezbollah parachute off the ramp of a USAF C-130 Hercules, falling into the Lebanese night. Their mission: rescue a compromised CIA asset from Bint Jbeil with only hours remaining before the IDF completes their envelopment of the town. For Harry Nichols, it isn't his first time dropping into a combat zone. But getting to the ground is only the beginning. . .for the woman they have come to save is the wife of a Hezbollah commander. Her husband has vowed to kill her. The CIA has promised to keep her alive. But as the mission descends into chaos—as the night explodes in fire—some promises will prove impossible to keep.

Breathless


Dean Koontz - 2009
    That night, through the trees, under the moon, a pair of singular animals will watch Grady's isolated home, waiting to make their approach.  A few miles away, Camillia Rivers, a local veterinarian, begins to unravel the threads of a puzzle that will bring all the forces of a government in peril to her door. At a nearby farm, long-estranged identical twins come together to begin a descent into darkness…In Las Vegas, a specialist in chaos theory probes the boundaries of the unknowable…On a Seattle golf course, two men make matter-of-fact arrangements for murder…Along a highway by the sea, a vagrant scarred by the past begins a trek toward his destiny… In a novel that is at once wholly of our time and timeless, fearless and funny, Dean Koontz takes readers into the moment between one turn of the world and the next, across the border between knowing and mystery. It is a journey that will leave all who take it Breathless.

The Pilot


Michael R. Cole - 2019
    But upon arrival, they discover ravaged military equipment, a mass grave, and a platoon of hostile forces already in retreat. As the team investigates, they uncover the secret that the island has contained for centuries. For the first time, modern man will come face-to-face with a being from beyond the stars. A member of a deadly intergalactic invasive species, the beast is ravenous, cunning, lacking emotion or empathy. With his team dwindling, Seymour must fight to keep the beast from leaving the island, and to save humanity from the terrifying extraterrestrial known as The Pilot.

Blood Brothers


Charles W. Sasser - 2017
    Richard “Rip” Taggart used to lead this unit, until after seeing and experiencing too much on the battlefield he snaps and executes an American in cold blood in Afghanistan. Now, two years later, he has been exiled from his brothers in Six and works for a private security group in Nigeria until he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and is captured by Boko Haram along with a group of Nigerian school girls.But the brotherhood of the SEALS runs deep. Once Rip’s unit finds out that he has been taken, they demand to be the ones to bring him back home. But as they mount their rescue operations, they find themselves squaring off against an enigmatic lieutenant of a rising terrorist group, someone who seems to have a particular interest in getting to Rip first.Based off the gripping new series from creators David Broyles, Special Operations veteran, and William Broyles, and inspired by the true stories and events involving SEAL Team Six, Six: Blood Brothers will give readers a visceral taste of what it means to be part of this squad, balancing their own personal demons and complications of family life with the need to serve their country and be there for their brothers-in-arms.

The Strain


Guillermo del Toro - 2009
    All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Ephraim "Eph" Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold.In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing.So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city - a city that includes his wife and son - before it is too late.

Pressure Point


Dick Couch - 1992
    Griffin), Dick Couch's explosive novel poses the chilling and timely question: How safe are America's waterways from terrorist threat?Riding quietly at her moorings on Puget Sound, the U.S. Navy's deadly weapon -- the Trident submarine -- waits for her return to the sea. But an Arab terrorist known as the Shadow has targeted the USS "Michigan," with nearly three hundred nuclear warheads nestled in its missile silos. He intends to take the deadliest weapon of the Cold War and turn it into the deadliest dirty bomb conceivable -- by hijacking the "Spokane," flagship of the nation's largest ferry fleet. The nation, caught by surprise, sends a select team of Navy SEALs to stop the Shadow. They are aided by a savvy FBI agent and the ferry's captain, Ross Peck. Unless the U.S. wields its political might to support his terrorist brothers in the Middle East, the Shadow will unleash a radiological holocaust, and a nightmare beyond imagining. . . .

One Rough Man


Brad Taylor - 2011
    Their existence is as essential as it is illegal. Commissioned at the highest level of the U.S. government. Protected from the prying eyes of Congress and the media. Built around the top operators from across the clandestine, intelligence, and special forces landscape. Designed to operate outside the bounds of U.S. law. Trained to exist on the ragged edge of human capability.Pike Logan was the most successful operator on the Taskforce, his instincts and talents unrivaled-until personal tragedy permanently altered his outlook on the world. Pike knows what the rest of the country might not want to admit: The real threat isn't from any nation, any government, any terrorist group. The real threat is one or two men, controlled by ideology, operating independently, in possession of a powerful weapon. Buried in a stack of intercepted chatter is evidence of two such men. The transcripts are scheduled for analysis in three months. The attack is mere days away. It is their bad luck that they're about to cross paths with Pike Logan. And Pike Logan has nothing left to lose.

Game of Drones


Rick Jones - 2014
    military base, no one has to wonder for long what they'll be used for. As America's own top military technology is turned against its homeland, it looks as though, for the first time in history, the president will have no choice but to give in to terrorist demands. Enter O.U.T.C.A.S.T. (Operational Undertaking To Counteract Active Stateside Threats)--six ex-operatives from six of America’s most powerful organizations. Each has been unceremoniously released by their respective former employer for alleged misdoings that leave their pride wounded but their essential skill-sets untouched. After uniting over their shared bond of dismissal from the nation’s most elite outfits, the disgruntled spooks realize that they can work together like never before to take down threats to their beloved country, a country that branded them as outcasts but needs them now more than ever. As a nauseating wave of drone strikes brings the eastern seaboard to its knees, O.U.T.C.A.S.T. is hell-bent on showing America that their way isn't the best way--it's the only way.

Me & Emma


Elizabeth Flock - 2005
    The girls live in a terrible situation: they depend on an unstable mother that has never recovered from her husband's murder, their stepfather beats them regularly, and they must forage on their own for food. Stop here and you have a story told many times before, as fiction and nonfiction in tales like Ellen Foster, or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings --stories in which a young girl reveals the horrors of her childhood. Me & Emma differentiates itself with a spectacular finish, shocking the reader and turning the entire story on its head. Through several twists and turns the reader learns that things are not quite the way our narrator led us to believe and everything crescendos in a way that (like all good thrillers) immediately makes you want to go back and read the whole book again from the start.