Thomas Kirby is an officer serving with Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in the shadow of Vimy Ridge.  When a dangerous prisoner escapes from a nearby camp, Kirby must hunt him down before the man escapes to German territory with vital information on an upcoming Canadian assault.  From the mud and chaos of the Western front comes a tale of murder, betrayal and bravery, and from the ashes of battle, a nation shall be born.  A share of all proceeds fr...

The number 1 non-fiction bestseller.More than 100,000 copies sold!'What we have, we hold'MOttO OF AUStRALIA'S 2/17tH BAttALIONIn the tradition of his bestselling Kokoda, Peter FitzSimons, Australia's most beloved popular historian, focuses on one of the seminal moments in Australian history: the Battle of tobruk in 1941, in which more than 15 000 Australian troops - backed by British artillery - fought in excruciating desert heat through eight long months, against Adolf Hitler's for...

December 20, 1943. Two Canadian infantry battalions and a tank regiment stand poised on the outskirts of a small Italian port town. They expect to take Ortona quickly. But the German 1st Parachute Division has other ideas. For reasons unknown, Hitler has ordered Ortona held to the last man. Houses, churches and other buildings are dynamited, clogging the streets with rubble. Germans with machine guns lie in ambush. Snipers slip from one rooftop to another. The Canadians seem to have walked...

The bestselling, award-winning author of The American Invasion of Canada "has given great drama and immediacy to that turning point in Canadian history" ( Maclean's).On Easter Monday 1917 with a blizzard blowing in their faces, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps in France seized and held the best-defended German bastion on the Western Front—the muddy scarp of Vimy Ridge. The British had failed to take the Ridge, and so had the French who had...

The Germans could not believe their eyes. The English infantry were advancing at walking pace in four upright ranks, a yard or so apart from each other. They were sitting ducks. As the German machine guns rattled into life, the English died in their hundreds. On the first day of the battle, those parade-ground advances caused the greatest number of casualties of any single day in the history of the British Army.Read about the first Battle of the Somme, a battle that went on to beco...

How the miracle on the beaches saved a nation. A gripping account of one of the most famous episodes of the Second World WarIn May 1940 British and Allied troops on mainland Europe were in a perilous situation: cut off and surrounded, at the conclusion of the bloody Battle of France they faced complete annihilation. It would be a devastating blow, handing Europe to the Nazis.But over a few frantic days, the greatest evacuation in history managed to salvage hope, saving the ...

The third battle of Ypres, culminating in a desperate struggle for the ridge and little village of Passchendaele, was one of the most appalling campaigns in the First World War. In this masterly piece of oral history, Lyn Macdonald lets over 600 participants speak for themselves. A million Tommies, Canadians and Anzacs assembled at the Ypres Salient in the summer of 1917, mostly raw young troops keen to do their bit for King and Country. This book tells their tale of mounting disillusion a...

In 1942 radar expert Jack Nissenthall volunteered for a suicidal mission to join a combat team who were making a surprise landing at Dieppe in occupied France. His assignment was to penetrate a German radar station on a cliff above “Green Beach”. Because Nissenthall knew the secrets of British and US radar technology, he was awarded a personal bodyguard of sharpshooters. Their orders were to protect him, but in the event of possible capture lo kill him. .His choice was to succeed or die. T...

As a 19-year old Black Watch conscript Tom Renouf's war began with some of the most vicious fighting of the conflict - against Himmler's fanatical 'Hitler Youth' SS Division. It ended with the capture of Himmler himself and Tom taking a trophy he still treasures - the Gestapo commander's watch.Seriously wounded and later decorated with a Military Medal for gallantry, Tom Renouf witnessed the death and maiming of countless of his teenage comrades and saw the survivors transformed in...

The story of an astonishing band of Canadian soldiers and their part in the Allied victory in Italy.The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (the Hasty Ps) was Canada’s most decorated regiment in the Second World War, winning thirty-one battle honours. Famed for their role in the Allied invasion of Sicily and the conquest of Italy, for six years the members of the regiment suffered brutal conditions, fighting bravely in the face of fierce opposition from the enemy, ...

Flashman In The Great War" is an adventure story about Willie Flashman, the grandson of General Sir Harry Flashman. Like his grandfather Willie is a charming scoundrel and coward; he first designs and then unwillingly fights in British and German tanks in WWI.

Brave Battalion presents the story of four Canadian Highland regiments that were banded together as the 16th Battalion. Ninety years after the end of WWI, this work honours those soldiers and makes their stories a vivid reality. Focusing on the Canadian Scottish (Princess Mary’s) Battalion, Mark Zuehlke presents the harrowing experiences that bonded the men and which came to represent the uniting and rising of a nation beginning to realize its potential.Complemented by map...