True War

In this heartwarming and inspiring memoir, Bradford Beyer takes listeners on an unlikely journey from reluctant Army recruit to seasoned FBI agent, with an unexpected feline companion guiding him along the way.

Through the firsthand experiences of pilots and ground crew, the author of Javelin Boys chronicles the history of the RAF’s first jet-engine aircraft. As Britain’s first jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor has had a remarkably varied and lengthy life. But while many books have focused on its development and service history, the time has come to hear the personal experiences of its air and ground crews.

'Dad walked determinedly down the path, joined by two neighbours with five children between them. As we reached the corner of Kent Avenue, I looked back for one last wave. But Mum had buried her head in her pinny and it was a year before I saw her again.' In June 1940, 10-year-old Pam Hobbs and...

American horse trainer Adia Kensington is living her dream of working at the famous Janów Podlaski stables in Poland, where the best Arabian horses in the world are bred. But her plans to bring a priceless stallion to the US are derailed when the German army storms into her adopted country in 1939. Little does she know this is just the beginning of six long years of occupation that will threaten her beloved horses at every turn.

In the inspiring tradition of Black Hawk Down, this is the riveting real-life story of how an Australian SAS signalman's courage under fire saved more than 80 lives. It is an enthralling eyewitness account of the war on terror. Jock Wallace was pumped. It was the start of Operation Anaconda, the US-led military offensive to flush out al Qaeda and Taliban from their last stronghold in the Shahi Kot Valley in Afghanistan.

Kim Philby, the so-called Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring, was the Cold War's most infamous traitor, a Soviet spy at the heart of British intelligence. Philby joined Britain's secret service MI6 during the war and went on to head the section tasked with rooting out Russian spies before becoming the service's chief liaison officer with the CIA. He betrayed hundreds of British and US agents to the Russians and compromised numerous operations inside the Soviet Union.

This is the story of John Searancke's parents, told mostly from the side of his father, Eddie Searancke, from the time of his calling up in early 1940 to his release from a prisoner of war camp in Germany in 1945, thence his return to England to try to pick up the pieces of his old life. Nothing could ever be quite the same afterwards.

True Faith and Allegiance is the highly-anticipated personal history from Alberto R. Gonzales, former Attorney General of the United States and former Counsel to the President—the only lawyer and only Hispanic to hold both these positions—an ultimate insider in the most tumultuous events in...

A moving story, wrapped in humor, about love, loss, and hope in one of history’s darkest hours. 1933. Hitler’s rise to power in Germany marks the beginning of the end for the Jews of Europe. For little newborn Yaakov, this is only the beginning. Hungary, 1944. 11-year-old Yaakov and his parents and younger sister are forced out of their home into the unknown. They find themselves in the ghetto, living under impossible conditions, until they are banished by the Nazis to Bergen Belsen concentration camp through Austria, what might be their final destination.

In this dramatic account of the 1944-45 winter of war in Bastogne, historian Peter Schrijvers offers the first full story of the German assault on the strategically located town. From the December stampede of American and Panzer divisions racing to reach Bastogne first, through the bloody eight-day siege from land and air, and through three more weeks of unrelenting fighting even after the siege was broken, events at Bastogne hastened the long-awaited end of WWII.

Alexander Rosenberg was a smart and curious teenager who spoke many languages, and lived a pampered life with his parents in a tranquil Czechoslovakian town. The rise of fascism and Nazi Germany causes his protected existence to collapse, alongside the illusion of secular Jewish assimilation in 1930s Europe. Using their last reserves of wealth and influence to escape extermination, the Rosenbergs go underground to avoid the Gestapo. Eventually exposed, captured, and taken to Buchenwald, the largest concentration camp in Germany, Alexander and his father collaborate to survive one day at a time

With the Battle of Britain won, Winston Churchill and his military chiefs faced an even more fearsome challenge in the Battle of the Atlantic. Thwarted in his plans to invade, Hitler decided he would starve Britain into submission instead. Operating in conjunction with U-Boats, long-range Condor aircraft manned by élite German airmen attacked Allied ships far beyond the range of any land-based RAF fighters, with devastating results.

Boris Morros was a major figure in the 1930s and 1940s. The head of music at Paramount, nominated for Academy Awards, he then went on to produce his own films with Laurel and Hardy, Fred Astaire, Henry Fonda, and others. But as J. Edgar Hoover would discover, these successes were a cover for one of the most incredible espionage tales in the history of the Cold War-Boris Morros also worked for Russian intelligence. Morros's assignments took him to the White House, the Vatican, and deep behind the Iron Curtain.

The Yalu River Boys is the true story of the forgotten men from the forgotten war. Follow a B-29 bomber crew as it battles Russian MiG-15 fighters in the heart of MiG Alley during the Korean War. Learn the heartbreaking truth of the communist prison camp gulags, the cruelty of the North Korean enemy, and the propaganda attacks from friend and foe. Marvin King joined the US Air Force in peacetime but soon found himself in the midst of jet-age aerial combat, captured and taken into China, and later subjected to the abject horror of a place in North Korea known only as The Caves.

Lost for 13 months in the wilds of Afghanistan, this is the dramatic, heart-warming and truly amazing story of Sarbi, the Army's most famous explosives detection dog - the miracle dog of Tarin Kot. Powerful, dramatic, heartwarming, this is the true story of Sarbi, the scruffy black Labrador-cross trained by the Australian Army as an explosives detection dog for the most dangerous combat mission imaginable. Thirteen months after Australia's most famous canine warrior went missing in action in 2008, she was found by an American Special Forces officer patrolling a village....

On May 19, 1942, a U-boat in the Gulf of Mexico stalked its prey 50 miles away from New Orleans. Captained by 29-year-old Iron Cross recipient Erich Würdemann, the submarine set its sights on the freighter Heredia with 59 souls onboard. Most of the crew were merchant seamen, but there were also a handful of civilians, including the Downs family, consisting of the parents, Ray Sr. and Ina; along with their two children, eight-year-old Ray Jr., nicknamed "Sonny", and 11-year-old Lucille.

After an elderly man jumped from New York's Pulitzer Building, in 1911, his death made the front page of the New York Times: "WorldDome Suicide a Famous War Spy". By then Pryce Lewis had slipped entirely offstage; but, as Gavin Mortimer reveals, the headline did him justice, speaking to the dramatic, vitally important, and until now untold role he had played in the Civil War.

Frank Luke, Jr., was an unlikely pilot. In the Great War, when fliers were still "knights of the air", Luke was an ungallant loner, a kid from Arizona who collected tarantulas, shot buzzards, and boxed miners. But during two torrid weeks in September 1918, he was the deadliest man on the Western Front. In only 10 missions, he destroyed 14 heavily defended German balloons and four airplanes, a rampage unequalled even by the dreaded von Richtofen, and the second highest American tally of the entire war.

Their names were Bob Palmer, Gordy Cox, Tim McCoy, and Chuck Vervalin, and in 1941, when they joined the Navy, they were not trying to prove their patriotism - they were just looking for a job that would provide "three hots and a cot". But on April 22, 1943, the war took a terrible turn for them. Their submarine, the USS Grenadier, was torpedoed. Listed as lost in action and given up for dead, all four had in fact miraculously escaped, only to be captured by the Japanese.

Tom Chandler arrived in Bogotá at the height of the cocaine boom. Pablo Escobar lay dead, the Cali Cartel had taken over much of the global supply and an avalanche of coke was poised to hit Europe. Now the British government wanted Chandler and his team to do the impossible: infiltrate the most powerful crime syndicates on earth and stop their drug shipments. It was a perilous assignment. The cartel bosses operated like a lethal multinational, with armies of hit men and myriad spies in ports, airports, police stations and government offices.