July 1989, South Armagh: the cheering mobs stood over the body of a British soldier. He was the ninth to have been killed by the so-called Border Fox, an IRA sniper whose activities had helped to make this area of the United Kingdom the most feared killing ground in Western Europe. The British government was determined to break the tightly-knit South Armagh Brigade of the IRA before more lives were lost. This task would demand unique skills skills possessed only by the men of the Special Air Service. The SAS men of Ulster Troop are the best in the world at surveillance, unsurpassed in counter-insurgency techniques. And now, once again, they were going to have to prove it. Soldier U SAS: Bandit Country tells the story of their hunt for the Border Fox and the terrorists of South Armagh a murderous, little-publicised war in which every encounter, whether in or out of uniform, was potentially a battle to the death.

Terrorist bombs in town and city streets, an ever-rising tide of crime and a teenage drug problem that was rapidly escalating out of control this was the ugly face of Great Britain in 1995. The conventional police forces were already stretched beyond their limit and now a new threat was looming. A fanatical right-wing movement that in recent months had wreaked murder and chaos in mainland Europe was spreading its evil tentacles into the UK. Using terrorism and crime to fund its undercover activities, and a frightening new drug to spur on its growing army of bullyboys to unprecedented extremes of violence, it threatened to turn the streets of Britain's towns and inner cities into battlegrounds of anarchic brutality. In desperation, the civil authorities turned to the only group of men who might be able to confront and beat these fanatics on their own terms: the legendary Special Air Service the SAS! Guided by a maverick undercover drug cop, the SAS team were pitted against an enemy as ruthless and deadly as any the regiment had faced in its chequered and splendid history. The SAS were at war, and that war was just outside the window a war on the streets.

Guillermo Macias disappeared in 1976, in Argentina's 'Dirty War'. Twenty years later, in 1996, his terminally-ill father was determined that someone should find out what had happened to him and why. He had the names of two men he wanted questioned one in Mexico City, the other in a prison on the Colombian island of Providencia but no one to ask the questions. A friend of the family suggested retired SAS hero Jamie Docherty, now living with his Argentine wife in neighbouring Chile. Marysa Salcedo had disappeared on a picnic the previous year, along with four other young women. Her family had given her up for dead when her older sister Carmen stumbled upon a Miami newspaper story that mentioned two of the friends. One had just died of a drug overdose; the other, half-deranged, told a garbled story of sexual slavery on a Caribbean island which sounded suspiciously like Providencia. MI6 and the British Government were also more than a little interested in the island. They were certain that a huge drug-trafficking empire was run from the prison, and knew that at least some of the profits were being funnelled by its Argentine 'guest' into the financing of a mercenary invasion of the Falklands. Ignored by the Colombian authorities and mysteriously obstructed by their American allies, the British had no choice but to send their own elite force the SAS.

In 1975, the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, recently deposed in a Communist revolution, was declared dead. In the hands of the brutal army officer Mengistu Haile Mariam, the country descended into chaos and bloodshed. Then an astonishing truth emerged. The Emperor was not dead. He had been kept alive in prison by Lieutenant-Colonel Mengistu, whose objective was to wring from him his massive fortune bullion, jewels, cash and shares amounting to £2.5 billion lodged in Swiss, British and New York banks. In London, bankers and diplomats were appalled. The banks could not contemplate the loss of such a huge sum. The British and American governments would not tolerate a ruthless Communist regime's acquisition of wealth: it would destabilise the Middle East and all East Africa. There was only one answer: kidnap the Emperor. And there was only one organisation capable of mounting the operation: the legendary Special Air Service the SAS! Three men Peter Halloran, Michael Rourke and Richard Collins were selected for this hazardous mission, which was like nothing the regiment had ever tackled before: to penetrate a remote desert fortress and then to escape through arid highlands with a frail old man in tow. Only extraordinary duplicity would get them in. Only acute tactical expertise and merciless improvisation would get them out. And if anything went wrong, it would be as if they had never existed.

In May 1987, a successful SAS ambush resulted in the deaths of eight IRA terrorists in Loughgall. Aware that retaliation was certain, British intelligence went on the alert, and eventually established that the IRA had selected Gibraltar as being a 'soft' target and one identified with British imperialism. In November, the terrorism experts of Madrid's Servicios de Información informed British intelligence that two male members of the IRA had arrived in Southern Spain under false names. British intelligence assumed immediately that the two men were intending wither to murder some of the British residents on the Costa del Sol or to attack a British Army target on Gibraltar. The changing guard outside the Governor of Gibraltar's residence was judged to provide the most likely opportunity for such an attack. The most likely date was 8 March 1988, when the band parade ceremony of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment was due to take place. For the next few months, British and Spanish intelligence services kept the two men under surveillance, waiting for them to travel from Spain to Gibraltar. In February, MI5 reported that an Irishwoman travelling under a false identity had repeatedly visited the rock and attended the guard ceremony. Now that there appeared to be little doubt about the target, the British government decided to send a hit team to Gibraltar to prevent the planned bombing, if necessary by killing the terrorists. The only men even considered for this dangerous operation were the legendary Special Air Service the SAS! Soldier R SAS: Death on Gibraltar tells the story of what was to become the most controversial of all SAS campaigns: a deadly cat-and-mouse game that called into play all the expertise and tenacity at the SAS team's disposal.

In the aftermath of the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, Roger 'Jumbo' Pountney is ordered to form and train a small group of canoeists. Taking as his paddler and second-in-command Lieutenant Philip Ayton of the Royal Marines, they command a body of men, known as No.1 Special Boat Section, who are as ruthless and independent as any that fought in World War II. They employ Folbot kayaks to get ashore from submarines to attack vital enemy targets in the Mediterranean and in these hazardous clandestine operations, skill and stealth count just as much as bravery. It is in the midst of these battles that the reputation of the legendary SBS would be forged. Based on early SBS missions undertaken during World War II, this is classic military fiction at its best.

A NEW EDITION OF ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED BOOKS ON THE TROUBLES Branded as 'Bandit Country' by the British government, South Armagh was the heartland of the Provisional IRA. It was the rebel Irish stronghold where Thomas 'Slab' Murphy reigned supreme, bomb attacks on England were planned and the SAS tracked the IRA snipers who hunted British soldiers. In this acclaimed and remarkable book – originally published in 1999 – Toby Harnden, winner of the Orwell Prize, brings to bear his skills as a fearless journalist, inspired investigator and gifted historian, threatened with imprisonment for protecting his sources in Northern Ireland but undeterred. He draws on secret documents and unsparing interviews with key protagonists on both sides to produce perhaps the most compelling and essential account of the IRA and the Troubles.