Douglas Reeman's American publisher is McBooks Press, the leading publisher in nautical fiction titles on both sides of the Atlantic. The following novels, written under his own name, are presently available in fine American bookshops and directly from McBooks Press online.

Modern Naval Fiction Library

A Prayer for the Ship
McBooks Press 2005
North Sea, 1940s ... Memories are short on 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.

The White Guns
McBooks Press, 2004
Kiel Harbour, 1945 ... The war in Europe is at an end.  But for Lieutenant Vere Marriott and the men of MGB 801, moored amid a nightmare of devastation, it is an uneasy, unsettled peace. New assignments ashore and afloat mean fresh tensions and conflicting emotions. For some, glory now takes second place to profit. For others, revenge at last seems within their grasp. No one is shooting at Marriott now. But dangers come thick and fast - from confrontation with the Russians to his feelings for Fräulein Geghin. There is more to victory than survival.

Battlecruiser
McBooks Press, 2003
January 1943 ... Of all her class, HMS Reliant and one other have survived. Reliant has the reputation of a lucky ship but when Captain Guy Sherbrooke joins her he knows he could be her last captain. As Britain prepares to invade occupied Europe, Reliant will be thrown head first into the conflagration. All those who sail in her know that there can be no half measures: only death or glory awaits HMS Reliant.

For Valour
McBooks Press, 2005
North Atlantic ... Commander Graham Martineau has been awarded the Victoria Cross for pressing home an attack against impossible odds. Few survived the action, and the crimson ribbon remains a haunting symbol of the sacrifice of ship and men. Now, as captain of the crack tribal class destroyer HMS Hakka, Martineau must once again call from ordinary seamen the ultimate in courage, and prepare to defend to the death the vital convoys in the North Atlantic carrying sustenance for survival to Russia. There is no hiding place in these bitter Arctic seas, where a pitiless enemy awaits a final rendezvous.

Twelve Seconds to Live
McBooks Press, 2003
Second World War ... The mine is an impartial killer and a lethal challenge to any volunteer in the Special Counter- measures of the Royal Navy. They are brave, lonely men with something to prove or nothing left to lose. Lieutenant-Commander David Masters, haunted by a split-second glimpse of the mine that destroyed his first and only command, His Majesty's Submarine Tornado, now defuses 'the beast' on land and teaches the same deadly science to others who too often die in the attempt. Lieutenant Chris Foley, minelaying off an enemy coast in ML366, rolls on an ineasy sea with a release bracket sheared and a lie mine jammed, and hears the menacing growl of approaching E-boats. And Sub-Lieutenant Michael Lincoln, hailed as a hero, dreads exposure as a coward even more than the unexpected booby-trap, or the gentle whirr of the activated fuse marking the last twelve seconds of his life.

The Royal Marines Saga

Badge of Glory
McBooks Press, 2002
Africa, 1850 ... This is the first book in the Blackwood saga. It has been more than forty years after slaveholding and slave trading became illegal for British subjects. With slavery still flourishing, Captain Philip Blackwood and his Royal Marines have received orders to sail to West Africa on a dangerous mission - against incredible odds, he and his charges must eliminate the strongholds of slavery in this treacherous territory.  When Captain Blackwood rejoins his ship, HMS Audacious, it is peacetime, and although sometimes engaged in small overseas campaigns, the world's mightiest navy has settled into a routine of tradition and ceremonial. With the coming of the steam age many younger officers are pressing for change and modernisation, whereas their superiors for the most part see coal-fired ships as a challenge to their own power. Captain Blackwood soon discovers there is more to leading his men than holding firm in the line of battle. Love, hate, ambition, and envy are forces with which he must contend. In the heat of Africa, and later in the bitter Crimean War, these obstacles become an even greater threat than the enemy to the success of the campaigns.

The First to Land
McBooks Press, 2002
China, 1900 ... This is the second book in the Blackwood saga. Captain David Blackwood, at twenty-seven, is already a hero of the Royal Marines Light Infantry and holds England's highest award for valour, the Victoria Cross. Nevertheless, he has yet to discover the ultimate in passion, courage, or fear. These he will experience in the bloody battles of the Boxer Rebellion. Blackwood's detachment is among the first to meet the fanatically cruel Chinese, roused to a frenzy of hatred for the "foreign devils" by their Empress Dowager. During one of the initial clashes between the British and the Chinese, the Marines rescue a German countess from whom Blackwood will learn some of life's less violent lessons. The detachment is ordered to escort her on a treacherous journey up the narrow Hoshun River under heavy fire. Blackwood arrives at his destination only to find that it has been burned and looted, and he is forced to turn back. Even the harrowing return trip pales, however, beside the task he faces on reaching Tientsin - to command a handful of men against wave after wave of suicidal attacks.

The Horizon
McBooks Press, 2002
1914-1918 ... This is the third book in the Blackwood saga. For three generations, members of the Blackwood family served the Royal Marines with distinction. With the outbreak of World War I, at last comes Jonathan Blackwood's turn to carry the family name into battle.  But as the young marines embark for the Dardanelles, and a new kind of warfare, it dawns on them that the days of scarlet coats and an unchanging tradition of honour and glory have gone forever. First in Gallipoli, and two years later at Flanders, comes their horrifying initiation into a wholesale slaughter for which no training could ever have prepared them. Caught up in the savagery of a conflict beyond any officer's control, Blackwood's future rests on the 'horizon' - the dark lip of the trench which was the last fateful sight for so many.

Dust on the Sea
McBooks Press, 2002
1943 ... This is the fourth book in the Blackwood saga. Captain Mike Blackwood, Royal Marine Commando, is a survivor.  Young, toughened, and tried in the hellish crucible of Burma, he labours, sometimes faltering, beneath the weight of tradition, the glorious heritage of his family, and the burden of his own self-doubt. For him, the horizon is not the lip of the trench seen by men of the Corps in the previous war, but the ramp of a landing craft smashing down into the sea, and the fire of the enemy on a Sicilian beach. Here, tradition is not enough, and Mike Blackwood must find within himself qualities of leadership which will inspire those Royal Marines who are once again the first to land, and among the first to die.

Knife Edge
McBooks Press, 2005

January 1970, and the final chapter in the Blackwood history appears to have closed with the murder in Cyprus of Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Blackwood, and the subsequent sale of the ancestral home. Disillusioned and grieving for his distinguished father, Lieutenant Ross Blackwood believes there is no future for him in the Corps. The Royal Marines have been reduced in strength, and their role in a modern world, after so splendid a tradition, diminished to policing and paperwork.
    But Ross remains a Blackwood and a Royal Marine, and the loyalty and dedication of a Blackwood to the Corps sustain him from vicious guerrilla warfare in Malaysia through the moral and political minefields of Northern Ireland, where one man's terrorist is another's patriot, to the South Atlantic, and a conflict as bloody as it is unpredictable.
    And he learns, as every Blackwood has before him, that jungle or moor, insurrection or invasion, mere courage is not enough. Survival and victory balance on the knife edge of destiny.

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