The Final Mission of Extortion 17

In Helmand province in July 2006, Major Adam Jowett was given command of Easy Company, a hastily assembled and understrength unit of Paras and Royal Irish rangers. Their mission was to hold the District Centre of Musa Qala at any cost. Easy Company found themselves in a ramshackle compound, cut off and heavily outnumbered by the Taliban in the town.

The story of one of the Afghanistan war's most decorated units and their 15-month ordeal, culminating in the Battle of Wanat, the deadliest battle of the war. A single company of US paratroopers - calling themselves the "Chosen Few" - arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next 15 months in a desperate struggle, living under almost continuous attack, forced into a slow withdrawal, and always outnumbered by Taliban fighters.

Jason Fox served with the SBS for over a decade, thriving on the close bonds of the Special Forces brotherhood and the ‘death or glory’ nature of their missions. Battle Scars tells the story of his career as an elite operator, from the gunfights, hostage rescues, daring escapes and heroic endeavours that defined his service to a battle of a very different kind: the psychological devastation of combat that ultimately forced him to leave the military and the hard reality of what takes place in the mind of a man once a career of imagined invincibility has come to an end. 

Kim Hughes is the most highly decorated bomb disposal operator serving in the British Army. He was awarded the George Cross in 2009 following a gruelling six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, during which he defused 119 improvised explosive devices, survived numerous Taliban ambushes and endured a close encounter with the Secretary of State for Defence.

What makes an ordinary but highly educated Englishman, with no previous military training, decide to travel and fight in one of the most brutal conflicts on the planet? Desert Sniper is an extraordinary true account of one man's journey from well-meaning volunteer to battle-scarred combat sniper, placing himself daily in the line of fire to fight one of the greatest evils of this new century.

The No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling modern classic: A Bravo Two Zero for the Second Gulf War. They were branded as cowards and accused of being the British Special Forces Squadron that ran away from the Iraqis. But nothing could be further from the truth. Ten years on, the story of these sixty men can finally be told. In March 2003 M Squadron - an SBS unit with SAS embeds - was sent 1,000 kilometres behind enemy lines on a true mission impossible, to take the surrender of the 100,000-strong Iraqi Army 5th Corps.

Michael Asher served in Northern Ireland with the Paras at the height of the IRA campaigns of the 1970s. He witnessed the result of using highly motivated assault troops in 'peacekeeping operations'. His depiction of the strengths and weaknesses of the British Army's elite airborne forces comes from his personal experience of what it was like for ordinary soldiers. From the Paras to the SAS and then service with the Special Patrol Group in Northern Ireland, Michael Asher's military odyssey eventually led him to leave the forces for a new life in the Sudanese desert. 

For the U.S. Navy's elite team of SEALs, the mission seemed straightforward enough: to take control of a towering, 10,240-foot mountain peak called Takur Ghar, a key post in their plan to smash Taliban al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan.

12 Strong is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban. Outnumbered 40 to one, they pursued the enemy army across the mountainous Afghanistan terrain and, after a series of intense battles, captured the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The bone-weary American soldiers were welcomed as liberators as they rode into the city. Then the action took a wholly unexpected turn.

Stirringly evocative, thought provoking, and often jaw dropping, The Operator ranges across SEAL Team Operator Robert O'Neill's awe-inspiring 400-mission career that included his involvement in attempts to rescue "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell and abducted-by-Somali-pirates Captain Richard Phillips and culminated in those famous three shots that dispatched the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

Matt Logan is an MI5 agent for the British government. Working on the front line of counterterrorism in the UK, he's trained to protect its citizens against all threats. When two brothers known operationally as 'Iron Sword' and 'Stone Fist' are suspected of plotting a major terrorist event, Logan and his team work undercover to track them down. If they fail, an attack will be unleashed that will rock the country to its very core.

The unforgiving Afghan winter settled upon the 22 men of Marine Special Operations Team 8222, call sign Dagger 22, in the remote and hostile river valley of Bala Murghab, Afghanistan. The Taliban fighters in the region would have liked nothing more than to once again go dormant and rest until the new spring fighting season began. No chance of that - this winter would be different.

A captain in 29 Commando, Johnny Mercer served in the army for 12 years. On his third tour of Afghanistan, he was a joint fires controller, with the pressurized job of bringing down artillery and air strikes in close proximity to his own troops. Based in an area of Northern Helmand that was riddled with Taliban leaders, he walked into danger with every patrol, determined to protect them. Then, one morning, in brutal close-quarter combat, everything changed....

This is one of the great untold stories of the 20th century. It is a firsthand account of a mission by an SAS soldier sent behind the Iron Curtain by MI6 to find someone who didn't necessarily want to be found and how, on a follow-up mission, he found himself manoeuvring against a mysterious KGB officer and a murder plot by Kremlin hardliners. If the plot had succeeded, it would have given the Russians the excuse they were looking for to roll out the tanks across East Germany, the Berlin Wall would not have fallen - and the map of Europe would look very different today.

SAS Ghost Patrol is the explosive true story of the day in 1942 when the SAS donned Nazi uniforms to perpetrate the most audacious and daring mission of the war. Beyond top secret, deniable in the extreme (and of course enjoying Churchill's enthusiastic blessing), this is one of the most remarkable stories of wartime lawlessness, eccentricity and raw courage in the face of impossible odds - a thoroughly British undertaking.