The Modern Naval Fiction Library Series

WWll action and drama from the master storyteller of the sea, Douglas Reeman, alias Alexander Kent of the Bolitho adventures. Memories are short of HMS Royston - they have to be. As mother ship to a battered, war-torn bunch of MTBs she must carry out her vital role whatever the conditions, whatever the risks. Sub-Lieutenant Royce's predecessor has only been dead forty-eight hours, and already the crew has forgotten him. Now with only three months' sea-experience behind him, Royce must learn the job the hard way - in the tough school of combat.

For Valour

by Douglas Reeman

Published 14 September 2000

As captain of the crack Tribal Class destroyer, HMS Hakka, Graham Martineau must call from ordinary seamen the ultimate in courage, and prepare to defend to the death vital convoys to Russia. There is no hiding place in these bitter Arctic seas where a pitiless enemy awaits a fatal rendezvous.

The Pride and the Anguish

by Douglas Reeman

Published 2 April 1973

NOVEMBER 1941. Lieutenant Ralph Trewin, D.S.C., arrives at Singapore as second-in-command of the shallow-draught gunboat, H.M.S. Porcupine. To Trewin, still shocked from wounds received during the evacuation of Crete, the gunboat and her five elderly consorts seem to symbolise the ignorance and blind optimism he finds in Singapore. And the captain of the Porcupine is as unwilling as the rest to take heed of Trewin's alarm, for to him the gunboat represents his last chance. The following month, the Japanese invade Malaya. In three months Singapore, the impregnable fortress, knows the humiliation of surrender. Through the misery and despair of this bloody campaign Trewin and his captain are forced to draw on each other's beliefs and weaknesses, and together they weld the little gunboat into a symbol of bravery and pride.

Killing Ground

by Douglas Reeman

Published 10 June 1991

The Western Ocean 1942.

From the bridge of HMS Gladiator, Lieutenant-Commander David Howard's orders were chillingly clear. There could be no mercy.

To the men who fought to protect the vital, threatened Merchat Navy convoys in the Western Approaches, the Battle of the Atlantic was a full-scale war.

A relentless, savage war against an ever-present enemy and a violent sea - in an arena known only to its embittered survivors as the killing ground.

HMS Gladiator was part of that war. An ordinary, hard-worked destroyer and her company of men. Fighting for survival in a war with no rules...

Battlecruiser

by Douglas Reeman

Published 30 June 1997

It's 1943, and the seas are haunted by Hitler's deadly U-boats and cruisers. After the mysterious death of the Reliant's last captain, Guy Sherbrooke is given command of the legendary battlecruiser. A symbol of everything the Royal Navy stands for, the battlecruiser boasts the speed of a destroyer and the firepower of a battleship.

Twelve Seconds to Live

by Douglas Reeman

Published 1 August 2002

The mine is an impartial killer and a lethal challenge to any volunteer in the Special Countermeasures of the Royal Navy. They are brave, lonely men with something to prove - or nothing left to lose - as the gentle whirr of the activated fuse marks possibly the last twelve seconds of their lives.

Send a Gunboat

by Douglas Reeman

Published 18 February 1980

HMS Wagtail is a river gunboat, a ship seemingly at the end of her useful life, lying in a Hong Kong dockyard awaiting her last summons to the breakers' yard. Commander Justin Rolfe is also seemingly at the end of his useful naval life, an embittered man, brooding and angry from a court-martial verdict. Then the offshore island of Santu is threatened with invasion from the Chinese mainland. The small British community must be brought out and Commander Rolfe and the Wagtail are ordered to the island. The job is regarded with sullen resentment by his crew, but to Rolfe, and even the ship, it is a job that offers the chance of a reprieve and a restoration of self respect.

The White Guns

by Douglas Reeman

Published 17 April 1989

It's Spring 1945 and the war has ended in Europe, but the hate and devastation linger on. Lieutenant Vere Marriott of the Royal Navy, and the men of Motor Gunboat 801 are moored in Kiel harbor, witness to the disintegration of the mighty German navy. Where once they fought just to stay alive, Marriott and his men must now learn how to accept peace.

Winged Escort

by Douglas Reeman

Published 1 January 1976

As the grim years of the Second World War go by, the destruction of Allied shipping mounts. Out of the terrible loss of men and ships, the escort carrier is born. At twenty-six, fighter pilot Tim Rowan, RNVR, is already a veteran of many campaigns. Now he joins the escort carrier, GROWLER, a posting which takes him first to the bitter waters of the Arctic and all the misery of convoy duty to Murmansk, and then south to the Indian Ocean and the strange new terror of the Japanese Kamikaze. . .

A Dawn Like Thunder

by Douglas Reeman

Published 13 May 1996

After four years, the tide of war is turning in North Africa and Europe. The conflict in Southeast Asia, however, has reached new heights of savagery, and Operation Monsun poses a sinister threat to the hope of allied victory.

The Special Operations mission off the Burmese coast requires volunteers. Men with nothing to live for, or men with everything to lose. Men like Lieutenant James Ross, awarded the Victoria Cross for his work in underwater sabotage, or the desperate amateur Charles villiers, heir to a fortune now controlled by the Japanese.

The two-man torpedo - the chariot - is the ultimate weapon in a high-risk war. Cast loose into the shadows before an eastern dawn, the heroes or madmen who guide it will strike terror into the heart of an invaluable enemy, or pay the ultimate price for failure...