War Short Stories

The Next Competitor: To win gold, figure skater Alex Grady must train harder than the competition. As for a boyfriend, forget it. The Olympics are only every four years—everything else can wait. So it's ridiculous when Alex finds himself checking out his new training mate Matt Savelli. Cold War: American figure skater Dev despises his Russian rival. Arrogant, aloof Mikhail is like a machine on the ice—barely ever making a mistake. He's also sexy as hell, which makes him even more infuriating.

Lieutenant Bill Mahone of Naval Intelligence is on a mission to find The Green God ... and it’s life or death. Along the way, he’s tortured with knives, threatened with a slow, painful death and buried alive. And then things get really nasty. The entire Chinese city of Tientsin is under siege from within - the streets filled with rioting, arson, mass looting, and murder. And all because the city's sacred idol, the Green God, has gone missing.

Before he became an archmage to topple an empire, before he met the legendary Eradicator Xal, Saghir was born a free ratkin, living on the streets of Gateway, a perilous desert city at the edge of the Blasted Lands. Each month, the free laborers must pay their tithe in coin, or blood. Every ratkin in Saghir's tribe searches for something of value, lest their whole people be enslaved. Ruthless Corax, carnivorous scarabs, and worse infest the city. There are countless ways for a rat to die, and all it takes is one mistake. There are no second chances.

Ambrose Bierce brings to life the heart rendering stories of divided loyalties, splitting families, states, countries, and individuals. He writes of the glory in beginning and savagery in the doing. Here is a moving anti-war series of stories if ever there was one. A must read by all students of American History and Literature, though perhaps best understood by older adults.

Moving effortlessly through a range of styles, from contemporary realist fiction and episodic adventures to three-act plays and polyvocal narratives, Boyko’s chameleon talents reveal the thread that binds his disparate characters and plots: the hunger to hold power and all the ways we are consumed by it. Clear-eyed but not cynical, satirical without being sarcastic, The Children’s War is as entertaining as it is insightful.

Mister Tidwell is a scholarly Oxford professor snatched out of his bookish world and pressed into service aboard Lord Nelson’s legendary British fleet - in the position of schoolmaster. Such is the life of the land-loving, seafaring Mister Tidwell, Gunner. Thrust into service at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Tidwell soon finds himself directly in the line of fire and way out of his depth. Fate has cast him into a terrible and terrifying spot - alone on deck to face the fearsome approach of a French man-o’-war.

As war rumbled through the heavens, the seas also boiled with battle. Poseidon was one of the first to succumb. Now, the alliance of evil gods turn their sights on the Inuit pantheon. Barely surviving the initial strike, the goddess Sedna seeks the sanctuary of the oceans and her old friend Jormungandr. She knows the Norse world serpent isn’t the evil people believe him to be.

This gripping novel is not only one of the best books written about Vietnam; it is also one of the most powerful anti-war novels in American literature. Walter James has no face. Braiden Chaney has no arms or legs. They lost them 22 years ago, in Vietnam. Now, in the course of one long night in a V.A. hospital, these two soldiers, one black, the other white, reveal how they came to be where they are and what they can only hope to become.

It is one of the greatest conflicts - and a pivotal turning point - in history...the Chinese civil war. On one side stands Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists. On the other, Mao Zedong and the Communists. And their forces are about to meet in a decisive battle...the outcome of which is in the hands of one American pilot, John Hampton, a man who couldn’t care less....

The Chinese city of Shunkien is under siege, the Japanese military laying it to waste. In the middle of the city sits the American consulate, a fragile sanctuary packed with refugees, threatened not only by artillery, but by the ravages of starvation and cholera. 200 miles away, on the USS Miami, stands their only hope - Marine Gunnery Sergeant James Mitchell. As tough as Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan - and just as stubborn - if anybody can negotiate a crucial supply of gold and medicine through 200 miles of bullets, bombs and butchery, it’s Sergeant Mitchell.

Pilot Terry Lee has taught Bill Trevillian everything he knows about flying, enough that Bill's know considered the ace of American test pilots just as war breaks out in World War II Europe. Unknown to Bill, Terry's also taught his own kid sister, Kip, who's now almost as good a pilot as Bill and quite the looker to boot.

In the last days of pre-World War II China and the rise of Communism, Jim Dahlgren, representative of the Amalgamated Aeronautical Company, has had enough of the fatalistic brand of diplomacy from other nations that claim to want a united China, one that can resist invasion from without and treason within - but which refuses to intervene and prevent it's demise. When Dahlgren disappears - purportedly to find a mysterious aviator, the man called "Wind-Gone-Mad" - he ignites a series of actions which just may spell disaster.

Meet Lieutenant Flint: hard-edged and muscle-bound, radiating machismo - a bull of a soldier. In the opposite corner stands Captain Turner: with his pencil mustache and tailored shirts, he’s a Trick Soldier - smart, crisply-dressed, and always at attention. They’re fire and ice, oil and water. Ten years ago and a thousand miles away, they attended boot camp together. They didn’t get along then...and they don’t get along now. Reunited in the Haitian jungles, in the midst of a fierce rebel uprising, they confront the most dangerous enemy of all - each other.

Josh and Tony aren’t any great shakes on the basketball court—but with the fate of the planet on the line, they’re going to have to step up. A short story from Guys Read: Other Worlds, edited by Jon Scieszka...

American pilot Mike Malloy has learned his lesson: when you join the French Foreign Legion, it’s best not to wipe the floor with two French officers...no matter how richly they deserve it. And it appears he has all the time in the world to think about it. He’s been sentenced to five years in a Moroccan penal battalion - which is French for death sentence. But Malloy is about to get a reprieve...if he’s willing to fly into the heart of the Sahara and into the teeth of a Berber rebellion.

He’s a handsome American Lieutenant in the French Foreign Legion. She’s a beautiful woman who’s as fiery as the North African sun...and as mysterious as the far side of the moon. And she’s all his - bought and paid for in the village square. Put them together, and you’re sure to get fireworks.

Embittered by past failures and broken dreams, American fighter pilot David Duane believes in but one cause - his own. Europe is at war, and he’ll fight it for a price, selling his deadly flying skills to the highest bidder. Duane has come to the icy white wastes of Scandinavia to wage a private war in the skies. But he’s about to take off on a flight and undertake an unforgettable journey - On Blazing Wings - to a place beyond the imagination...leading to a revelation that will open his eyes and his heart.

The Japanese military has turned the once-thriving Chinese city of Nencheng into a reeking pile of blood and ash. And now the Japanese Rising Sun threatens to scorch the ancient - and oil-rich - Kingdom of the Silver Lake. Can the Chinese survive the onslaught? Do they have a prayer? The answer is about to fall out of the sky. He is The Falcon Killer.

American Ann Halliday is as fiery as the Sahara sun. And now she’s feeling some real heat, as the prize captive of the Berber leader Abd el Malek also known as “The Killer”. But Abd el Malek wants Ann alive - and in chains - subject to his every whim and fantasy. Dusty Colton, however, an American deserter from the French Foreign Legion, has a different idea, and he’s determined to give “The Killer” a taste of his own bloody medicine. The only problem is Dusty himself is wanted for murder.

Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Johnny Trescott is as smart, tough, and fearless as they come. But he’s about to lose everything - his boat, his freedom, and his identity. Johnny’s mission is to track down drug runners in the Gulf of Mexico, and he’s got his eye on the biggest fish of all - Georges Coquelin. But an SOS from a downed plane that’s sinking fast leads him straight to disaster. Coquelin springs a trap. Stranding Johnny and the plane’s passengers on a deserted island, the drug smuggler commandeers Johnny’s boat and his name.