Showing results by publisher "Oakhill Publishing" in War & Military

John Holderness, known to the women in his life as ‘Wilderness’, comes of age during World War II in Stepney, breaking in to houses with his grandfather. After the war, Wilderness is recruited as MI5’s resident ‘cat burglar’ and finds himself in Berlin, involved with schemes in the booming black market that put both him and his relationships in danger.

Born into hardship in a Northumbrian mining village, Annie Manon needs all her strength to survive the bleak years following the First World War. As her family fractures around her, she longs to make something of her life. Through hard work and determination Annie eventually leaves the poverty and despair of her childhood behind her. But then war breaks out once more, taking her further away from her dreams and those she loves most. And it is all Annie can do to keep hope alive....

In April 1956, at the height of the cold war, Khrushchev and Bulganin leaders of the Soviet Union are in Britain on an official visit. Chief Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard is assigned to be the official bodyguard and to spy on the Soviets. Soon after, a Royal Navy diver is found dead in a mutilated state in Portsmouth Harbour. Troy embarks on an investigation that takes him to the rotten heart of MI6, to the distant days of his childhood and into the dangerous arms of an old flame.

The summer of 1939 broke the Maudsley family. Cecily was only 13 years old and desperate to grow up, desperate to be as desired and reckless as her older sister, Rose. Now in her 40s, the family resemblance is uncanny, but Cecily is a shadow of her former self. A part of her died that fateful summer. Returning to the deserted family farm, Cecily recalls the light before the storm, before the war came and before the terrible family tragedy. She remembers how everyone was guarding a secret.

It is 1958. Newly promoted Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard is on a Continental trip with his older brother, Rod, who is taking the entire family on 'the Grand Tour' for his 51st birthday. After a concert in Vienna, Frederick Troy is approached by an old friend - Soviet spy Guy Burgess, who says something extraordinary: 'I want to come home.' MI5 send an agent to debrief Burgess - but the man is gunned down yards from the embassy, and Troy finds himself a suspect. As he fights to prove his innocence, Troy finds that Burgess is not the only ghost who returns to haunt him.

June 1914. The beginning of another long, prosperous summer for Britain. But beneath the clear skies, the chill wind of social discontent swirls around this sceptred isle. Shots ring out in a distant European land - the assassination of a foreign aristocrat. From that moment the entire world is propelled into a conflict unlike any seen before. This is the story of five British communities, their circumstances very different, but who will all share in the tragedy that is to come.

Spring 1915. Secret service spy Jack McColl is in India, defending the empire against Bengali terrorists and their German allies. In England, meanwhile, journalist Caitlin Hanley is rebuilding her life after the execution of her brother - an IRA sympathiser whose terrorist plot was foiled by Caitlin's ex-lover, the very same Jack McColl. The First World War is giving fresh impulse to those causes - feminism, socialism and Irish independence - which she has long supported. But the threat of a rising in Dublin alarms McColl's bosses as much as it dazzles Caitlin. If another Irish plot brings them back together, will it be as enemies or lovers?

Meret Voytek, pupil of professor Viktor Rosen, a Jew in exile from Germany, watches as Vienna comes under Nazi rule and the repercussions for the Jews. Across Europe, Dr Karel Szabo, a Hungarian physicist, has been interned on the Isle of Man. Rescued by the Americans, they recruit him in building an atomic bomb. Moving from Vienna and Auschwitz to the deserts of New Mexico to London, fate carries the enemy alien, Szabo and gentile Voytek, across the battlefields of the destructive war.

When Bertie's owner passes away, he has to learn the ways of a stray dog on the streets of war-torn London. Luckily he has the help of new friends both on two legs and four, but Bertie doesn't expect to find love again in the arms of one special little boy. When a second chance of happiness is threatened, Bertie knows he needs to do whatever he can to protect it, no matter what dangers lie in his path!

Having shot someone in the chaos of 1963 Berlin, Joe Wilderness finds himself locked up, with little chance of escape. But an official pardon through his father-in-law, Burne-Jones, a senior agent at MI6, means he is free to go. His newest operation will take him back to Berlin, now the dividing line between the West and the Soviets. When the Russians started building the Berlin Wall in 1961, two 'Unfortunate Englishmen' were trapped on opposite sides. In 1965 there is a plan to exchange the prisoners on Berlin’s bridge of spies.

Jack McColl is a globe-trotting salesman for a luxury car firm. He is also a part-time spy for the fledgling Secret Service on the eve of the First World War. As 1913 ends he is in China, checking out the German naval base at Tsingtao between automobile demonstrations in Peking and Shanghai. Caitlin Hanley is a young Irish American journalist with the sort of views that most British men would find dangerously advanced.

It's 1952. More than a decade since humiliation at Dunkirk brought an end to Britain's war and the beginning of an uneasy peace with Hitler.

In Africa, the swastika flies from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. The brutal presence of the SS is visible everywhere. Now, however, the demonic plans of Walter Hochburg - architect of Nazi Africa - threaten Britain's ailing colonies.

In England, ex-mercenary Burton Cole is offered one last contract. He jumps at the chance to settle an old score with Hochburg.

Summer 1914: Europe is on the brink. As Britain’s enemies grow stronger, the Comptroller- General must confront the man with whom he has struggled for a generation - a man he knows only as the Spider. In a desperate gamble, he sends four agents out across the continent, on a mission they do not understand ... The future of British intelligence - of the British Empire.

Spring 1941: After 10 years spying for the Americans, Wolfgang Stahl disappears during a Berlin air raid. The Germans think he's dead. The British know he's not. But where is he? MI6 convince US Intelligence that Stahl will head for London, and so Captain Cal Cormack, a shy American 'aristocrat', is teamed with Chief Inspector Stilton, fat, 50, and convivial, and between them they scour London.

Turner Raines is Mr Heartbreak. Everybody leaves him. They walk out, they run away...they die. When his oldest friend, Mel Kissing, dies with an ice pick through his skull, Raines picks up the thread and sets out to ask 'who?' and 'why?' But this is America in 1969, and one death is just a drop in the ocean. The Vietnam War is ripping the country to pieces, the Woodstock Festival is in full swing and Norman Mailer is standing as candidate for mayor of New York.

The Western Front is a wasteland of barbed wire, shell craters and mud-filled trenches. Winston Churchill, searching for a solution to the stalemate, commits the Allies to a disastrous Gallipoli campaign. As men on both sides die in droves, miners and mill-workers work tirelessly for the war effort while families confront the broken bodies of returning soldiers. Nurses, soldiers, politicians, factory-workers and children - all are torn apart by war, and for husbands and sons, mothers and wives, the old way of life is vanishing.

It is 1914, and while battles rage across Europe, three empires fight for dominance in the Middle East. In the midst of the chaos is Kingdom Lock. Working for the British Intelligence Service, Lock is sent to Persia by the Australian Infantry Force. His mission: to prevent a German spy from inciting rebellion among the Muslim tribes and from seizing control of the oilfields. But before then, having recently rescued Amy Townshend, the daughter of a British officer, he now finds that he must save her from the clutches of death once more.

May 1915. Kingdom Lock and his faithful sidekick, Siddhartha Singh are gunned down on the streets of Basra and suspicion falls on German spy, Wilhelm Wassmuss. Major Ross believes Wassmuss is behind the assassination of a Turkish officer, the death of whom has been blamed on Lock. Meanwhile, Lock has discovered that Amy Townshend is pregnant and that the child is his. But the general's daughter stubbornly refuses to break off her engagement.

January, 1981. Jim Dowd and Maureen O'Brien, special forces soldiers, enter a bitterly divided Belfast on an undercover mission to infiltrate one of the city's most dangerous Catholic neighbourhoods and help change the course of a war that nobody is winning. The Ardoyne is a perilous world, where a hint of their true identities would prove fatal. But it is also full of courage and loyalty. Jim admires this community - and feels guilt at their deception.

Ifor is the gardener at Nanagalan, a manor house on the Welsh borders. When he falls in love with Ella, the daughter of the house, Ifor must stifle his passion for the lines between social classes are rigidly drawn. He marries local librarian Jenny, but his love for Ella casts a shadow over the relationship. When war breaks out, Ifor enlists and is one of the small number of soldiers left in France after the evacuation at Dunkirk. The Lancastria is sent to recover them but is bombed by the Germans.