War & military book series in reading order

by Douglas Reeman / Alexander Kent

by John R. Monteith

by W.E.B. Griffin

by David Poyer

by D.J. Molles

by John Wilcox

by Donald Jack

by Alexander Fullerton

by John J. Gobbell

by Taylor Anderson

by Jason Anspach

by R.W. Peake

by Peter Watt

by Tim Ellis

Douglas Reeman wrote naval fiction under his own name and as Alexander Kent. Richard Bolitho heads one series and the Blackwood Family books form a second. The catalogue lists 69 titles published between 1958 and 2011, from A Prayer for the Ship (1958) to In the King's Name (2011). Sea stories, the Royal Navy, the Second World War and the Napoleonic wars run through the subjects. The books are long, at a median 320 pages, and output peaked in the 1970s.

Leo Kessler wrote war fiction set in World War II, with Germany, Russia, Africa and military campaigns among the catalogued subjects. The 81 books begin in 1974 with SS Panzer Battalion, Claws of Steel and Death's Head. Kessler's series include SS Wotan, Stormtroop Edelweiss, Otto Stahl, Black Cossacks, Submarine and Rommel. From Tyranny to Freedom (2008) is the last listed title, and Eric Taylor is co-credited on 1 book.

Charles Whiting (18 December 1926 to 24 July 2007) was a British writer and military historian credited with some 350 fiction and non-fiction books. Besides the Whiting name, the pseudonyms used include Duncan Harding, Ian Harding, John Kerrigan, Leo Kessler, Klaus Konrad, K.N. Kostov and Duncan Stirling. Subjects include the Second World War, the Battle of the Ardennes, military campaigns, biography and the secret service. The catalogue holds 152 books under the Whiting name, starting with The Frat Wagon (1954), and includes Decision at St. Vith, Patton, Bradley and Skorzeny. Series include T-Force, Assault Troop, Stuka Squadron, Special Boat Squadron and Spymaster.

W.E.B. Griffin was the best-known pen name of William Edmund Butterworth III (November 10, 1929 to February 12, 2019), an American author of military and detective fiction. Under the Griffin name Butterworth published 59 novels across seven series, 21 of them written with Butterworth's son, William E. Butterworth IV. The catalogue files 194 titles here, including 1960s books issued as W.E. Butterworth, Webb Beech and Walker E. Blake. Series include Brotherhood of War, Presidential Agent and M*A*S*H, and World War II and the U.S. Marine Corps recur in the subjects.

William H. Keith writes military fiction and science fiction. Naval warfare supplies much of the subject matter, from Navy SEALs and aircraft carriers to submarines, naval battles and the Vietnam War, with men's adventure and espionage alongside. The catalogue runs to 116 titles dated between 1985 and 2021, and the 1990s are its busiest decade. SEAL Team Seven, Carrier, Warstrider, Silent Service, Freedom's Rangers, Cybernarc and Renegade Legion are among the series. The listing also carries tabletop game material, sourcebooks and CD-ROM game guides under Keith's name, including Twilight: 2000 titles. No book is listed after 2021.

Jeff Shaara writes historical war fiction, and the 21 catalogued books cover the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War II and the Korean War. Gods and Generals (1996) opens the list, followed by The Last Full Measure (1998) and Gone for Soldiers (2000). Series lines group the novels by conflict, among them World War II: 1939-1945 and Civil War: 1861-1865, Western Theater. The Unfinished Work of Abraham Lincoln (2026) is the newest title. Born Jeffrey M. Shaara on February 21, 1952, Shaara is the son of the Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Shaara.

Military aviation drives Dale Brown's technological thrillers. Patrick McLanahan and Brad McLanahan are the recurring characters across a catalogue of 52 books that opens with Flight of the Old Dog (1987) and reaches Devil's Fortress (2024). Dreamland, Puppet Master, Nick Flynn and the Jason Richter books are the named series. The United States Air Force, weapons systems, espionage and terrorism fill the subject tags.

Thrillers of war and military action define John R. Monteith's work. The Rogue Submarine series includes Rogue Avenger (2005), Rogue Crusader, Rogue Goliath and Rogue Invader. Monteith also writes the Wraith Hunter Chronicles and Archangels Wrath, and visionary and metaphysical fiction appears among the subjects. The 24-book list reaches Rogue Raiders in 2024.

Sven Hassel was the pen name of Borge Willy Redsted Pedersen, a Danish writer who lived from 1917 to 2012 and published in Denmark as Sven Hazel. The novels follow German soldiers through the Second World War, across the Soviet Union, Italy, Poland and Germany. Legion of the Damned (1953) opens a run of 16 catalogued books, among them Wheels of Terror (1958), Assignment Gestapo (1963), Monte Cassino (1963), Liquidate Paris (1967), SS General (1969) and Reign of Hell (1973), with a comic book adaptation following in 2019. Hassel presented himself as a Wehrmacht veteran who fought at the Battle of Berlin in 1945, but post-war investigations established those claims as fabrications. Hassel ranks among the bestselling Danish authors.

Harry Turtledove

141 books• 28 series

Harry Turtledove, born June 14, 1949, is an American historian and novelist of alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction and mystery, based in Southern California. The catalogue counts 142 books, starting with Wereblood and Werenight (1979), published as Eric G. Iverson, and listing The Succulent Succubus for 2027. Other pen names are H. N. Turteltaub, Dan Chernenko and Mark Gordian. The Videssos Cycle, Southern Victory / Timeline-191, Worldwar, Colonization, Crosstime Traffic, The War That Came Early and Gerin the Fox are among the series. World War II and the American Civil War are frequent subjects.

Matthew Hervey, an officer of the fictional British 6th Light Dragoons, carries Allan Mallinson's fiction from the late Napoleonic Wars into colonial campaigns in India, North America and South Africa. A Close Run Thing (1999) opens the sequence, followed by The Nizam's Daughters (2000), A Regimental Affair (2001), A Call to Arms (2002), The Sabre's Edge (2003) and Company of Spears (2006). Mallinson, born in 1949, is an English author and a retired British Army brigadier, and also writes military history, reaching the First World War. The catalogue holds 19 books through 2020, at a median 448 pages.

Submarines and the Royal Navy supply Alexander Fullerton's subject. Fullerton lived from 1924 to 2008, grew up in France after a Suffolk birth, and entered the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth aged thirteen in 1938. He served in the Mediterranean aboard the battleship Queen Elizabeth, then spent the rest of the Second World War underwater, and as gunnery and torpedo officer of HM Submarine Seadog in the Far East he was mentioned in dispatches. The Nicholas Everard Saga, Rosie Ewing, the SBS Trilogy, Russian Battles and the Andy Holt naval thrillers make up his series, across 50 catalogued titles dated 1953 to 2020.

Bernard Cornwell

67 books• 10 series

Bernard Cornwell is an English historical novelist, born on 23 February 1944, who has also written a history of the Waterloo campaign. The Richard Sharpe novels, about a rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars, are Cornwell's best-known work. The Saxon Stories run to thirteen novels about how England was unified. Cornwell's historical fiction draws mainly on English history across five series, alongside one series of contemporary thrillers, and the historical novels carry an end note comparing the story to the historical record. The catalogue lists 67 books from 1981, when Sharpe's Gold appeared, to Sharpe's Storm (2025).

Peter Telep is an American author, screenwriter and teacher, born in 1965, who has written more than 50 books and collaborated with Tom Clancy. Military fiction is the main strand: the United States Marine Corps, terrorism, search and rescue, and men's adventure recur as subjects, and Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell appear among the character entries. This catalogue holds 34 titles published between 1995 and 2017, from Space: Above and Beyond (1995) to Doc Harrison and the Prophecy of Halsparr (2017). Force 5 Recon, Armored Corps, the Squire Trilogy, Scott St. Andrew, Night Angel 9, Special Forces Afghanistan, Secret Corps and Doc Harrison are the listed series. Telep teaches at the University of Central Florida.

Ralph Peters writes military fiction and history, and publishes his American Civil War fiction as Owen Parry. The Abel Jones series belongs to the Owen Parry name and begins with Faded Coat of Blue (1999). Under Peters, the catalogue holds military thrillers such as Bravo Romeo (1981), Red Army (1989) and The War in 2020 (1991), and later Civil War novels including the Battle Hymn Cycle and Darkness at Chancellorsville (2020), the newest of 33 books. Soldiers, military policy and the war on terrorism supply the nonfiction subjects.

Bodie & Brock Thoene write Christian historical fiction, with catalogue subjects covering the Bible, Jesus Christ, Jewish history, the Holocaust, the Second World War and the Israel-Arab War of 1948-1949. The joint catalogue holds 80 books listed between 1979 and 2026, and includes the Zion Chronicles, Zion Covenant, Zion Legacy, A.D. Chronicles, Elijah Chronicles, Galway Chronicles, Shiloh Legacy and Legends of the West sequences, plus non-fiction. Chuck Roberson shares the credit on the 1979 title The Fall Guy: 30 Years as the Duke's Double.

G.A. Henty wrote historical adventure stories for young readers. The catalogue holds 109 Henty titles, opening with A Search for a Secret (1867) and closing at The Plague Ship (2002). War, military history and the conduct of life are the recurring subjects, and much of the work sits in England and the wider British past. Early titles include The March to Magdala (1868), Out on the Pampas (1870) and The Young Franc Tireurs (1872).

James Rosone writes military thrillers and speculative war fiction. Modern and near-future conflict supplies the material: World War III, Red Storm, Soviet Endgame, Battlefield Korea, Battlefield Ukraine and Battlefield China sit alongside the Monroe Doctrine, Rise of the Republic and Falling Empires series. Fifty-eight books span 2010 to 2026, from Dinner with a Terrorist to Baltic Breach.

Donald Eugene Pendleton (December 12, 1927 to October 23, 1995) was an American author of fiction and non-fiction who created Mack Bolan, a character with hundreds of millions of copies sold since a 1969 debut. From 1980, other authors wrote the Bolan books under the Pendleton name, at first with Pendleton's editorial guidance. Pendleton also wrote six Joe Copp, Private Eye novels and six Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective novels. Early titles include The Insatiables (1967), War Against the Mafia (1969) and Miami Massacre (1970).

David Lee Corley has 97 catalogued books published between 2017 and 2026. War, military action and world history are the subjects the catalogue records. Monsoon Rising (2017) opens the run and Sandy Down (2026) is the newest title. Corley's series include the Airmen, Black Mountain, Frank Kane, Iron Angels, Billy Gamble, River Hawks Thriller, Glades, Deep Recon, Frozen Edge, Black Water Salvage, Daniel Hyde and Samurai Wars sequences. Nearly all of the run falls inside the 2020s.

Jerry Pournelle

60 books• 12 series

Jerry Eugene Pournelle (1933-2017) was an American scientist in operations research and human factors research, a science fiction writer, a journalist and one of the first bloggers. Pournelle worked in the aerospace industry through the 1960s and early 1970s before turning to writing, took multiple awards for hard science fiction, and served a term as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The catalogue holds 60 titles from King David's Spaceship (1973) to a 2020 edition of Step Further Out. Listings include CoDominium Universe, Falkenberg's Legion, Janissaries, Laurie Jo Hansen, Paul Crane, There Will Be War, Far Frontiers, Imperial Stars and Endless Frontier. John F. Carr, Don Hawthorne, Roland J. Green, Larry Niven and Charles Sheffield are among the writers credited beside Pournelle.

Military history and men's adventure fiction fill Charles W. Sasser's catalogue of 47 books, published between 1984 and 2017. World War II, the Vietnam War, terrorism and the careers of military officers supply most of the subject matter, in titles such as One Shot - One Kill (1990) and Smoke Jumpers (1996). Sasser's fiction series are Detachment Delta, Six and OSS Commando. The list opens with No Gentle Streets (1984) and ends with Crushing the Collective (2017).

Robert N. Macomber is the author of 18 catalogued books published from 2002 to 2023, with naval history, sea stories and war & military among the subjects. Peter Wake is the fictitious character named in those subjects, and the settings listed include Cuba and Civil War Florida. At the Edge of Honor (2002) is the earliest title, followed by Point of Honor (2003), Honorable Mention (2004) and A Dishonorable Few (2005). Honor Bound (2011) and Honorable Lies (2012) come later. Full Naval Honors (2023) is the newest book.

Military and technological thrillers make up Larry Bond's work - submarines, intelligence officers and terrorism. Battles of the Third World War (1987) opens the catalogue, and Red Phoenix (1989), Vortex (1991) and Cauldron (1993) follow. Jerry Mitchell heads one series; Larry Bond's First Team and Red Dragon Rising head others. Twenty-five titles are catalogued, the last of them Arctic Gambit in 2018.