When Germany occupied the originally 'demilitarised' Channel Islands in 1940, Hitler ordered the area to be staunchly fortified with colossal permanent structures like Battery Moltke on Jersey. As it was the only piece of the British Isles in Nazi control, he was determined that the islands should remain German forever. Churchill was equally obsessed, urging numerous commando raids and harebrained schemes for the invasion and liberation of the islands. But when France was freed in 1944, the Channel Islands were completely bypassed. German troops were cut off from their supplies and the island population began to starve. Occupied for almost the entire war, these quintessentially English islands serve as a fascinating microcosm of what Britain might have been like under Nazi rule. With one German soldier to every three islanders, resistance had to remain at a low level: possession of a radio merited a prison sentence. The Last Raid is an atmospheric account of life under German occupation, as well as the political manoeuvring behind the scenes. With the first detailed account in English of the Granville Raid, a unique German commando operation, Will Fowler combines the social experience of war with the military to form a fascinating chronicle of the fight for the Channel Islands during the Second World War.

In March 1945, against the advice of his top subordinates, Gen. George Patton created a special task force to venture more than fifty miles behind enemy lines and liberate a POW camp near Hammelburg, Germany. The camp held some 1,500 American prisoners, including Patton’s son-in-law. Hampered by ambushes and a lack of fuel and even maps, the raid was a disaster, one of the worst mistakes of Patton’s legendary career. Out of some 300 men, only three dozen returned. Based on memoirs, diaries, combat reports, and interviews with survivors, Patton’s Last Gamble vividly recounts a mission Gen. Omar Bradley later said “began as a wild goose chase and ended in tragedy.”

In the late summer of 1864, Confederate General Sterling Price led a last ditch attempt to liberate Missouri from Union occupation and brutal guerrilla warfare. Price’s invading army was like few others seen during the Civil War. It was an army of cavalry that lacked men, horses, weapons, and discipline. Its success depended entirely upon a native uprising of pro-Confederate Missourians. When that uprising never occurred, Price’s rag-tag army marched through the state seeking revenge, supplies and conscripts. It was a march that took too long and ultimately allowed Union forces to converge on Price and badly defeat him in a series of battles that ran from Kansas City to the Arkansas border. Three months and 1,400 miles after it had started, the longest sustained cavalry operation of the war had ended in disaster. The Last Hurrah is the story of Price’s invasion from its politically charged planning to its starving retreat. The Last Hurrah is also the story of what happened after the shooting stopped. Even as hundreds of Missourians followed Price out of the state and tried desperately to join his army, elements of the Union army visited retribution upon Confederate sympathizers while still others showed little regard for the lives of the prisoners they had captured. Many more would have to suffer and die long after Sterling Price had fled Missouri.

It’s been a State secret for more than 70 years: The official line in the UK has always been that it never happened – but this new work challenges the assertion that no German force set foot on British soil during World War Two (the Channel Islands excepted), on active military service. Churchill’s Last Wartime Secret reveals the remarkable story of a mid-war seaborne enemy raid on an Isle of Wight radar station. It describes the purpose and scope of the attack, the composition of the raiding German force and how it was immediately, and understandably, ‘hushed-up’ by Winston Churchill’s wartime administration, in order to safeguard public morale. Circumventing the almost complete lack of official British archival documentation, the author relies on compelling and previously undisclosed firsthand evidence from Germany to underpin the book’s narrative and claims; thus distinguishing it from other tales of rumored seaborne enemy assaults on British soil during the 1939-45 conflict. After examining the outcome and repercussions of this astonishing incident, what emerges is an event of major symbolic significance in the annals of wartime history.

July 1945. Eighteen young British, Australian and New Zealand special forces from a top-secret underwater warfare unit prepare to undertake three audacious missions against the Japanese. Using XE-craft midget submarines, the raiders will creep deep behind Japanese lines to sink two huge warships off Singapore and sever two vitally important undersea communications cables. Success will hasten ultimate victory over Japan; but if any of the men are captured they can expect a gruesome execution. Can the Sea Devils overcome Japanese defences, mechanical failures, oxygen poisoning and submarine disasters to fulfil their missions? Mark Felton tells the true story of a band of young men living on raw courage, nerves and adrenalin as they attempt to pull off what could be the last great raid of World War Two.

It was the beginning of the end for the James gang. In the past ten years Frank and Jesse James had gone from unknown ex-Confederate guerrillas to the most famous outlaws in the world. A string of daring robberies of banks, trains, and stagecoaches had brought them fame, admiration, hatred, and a surprisingly small amount of wealth. In 1876 they planned their most daring raid yet-to ride hundreds of miles from their home state of Missouri to rob the First National Bank at Northfield, Minnesota. This book will tell the story of one of the most daring bank jobs in American history. With most of the gang being former bushwhackers, they used many guerrilla tactics in the planning and execution of the raid, yet failed because of poor discipline and their own fame, which meant that every town in the Midwest had their guns loaded waiting to fight off bandits.