After nearly a decade of working on a whole lot of rule and book projects I am pleased to see that many of them are being or are near completion. Today I can announce that the following two books are now out in the marketplace.

This is a novel about a small section of soldiers as they weave their way through their many adventures. The first book is one of a planned series of six books. The back page blurb describes it best:

From the training camps of Australia to the dust and fire of North Africa, Hennessy of the A.I.F. follows one ordinary section of Australian soldiers as they are drawn into the first great campaigns of the Second World War.

Corporal Jack Hennessy is not a hero in search of glory. He is a fitter by trade, a quiet leader by necessity, and a man who understands that survival depends less on courage than on reliability. Around him gathers a section of volunteers—larrikins, labourers, boys barely grown, and veterans already marked by war. Together they are carried from the familiar rhythms of home to the uncertainty of desert warfare, where heat, exhaustion, and fear test them long before the enemy does.

As the campaign unfolds, the men of the section learn that war is rarely the clean, decisive struggle imagined from afar. It is confusion, endurance, and the steady dependence on those beside you. Through humour, hardship, and the unspoken bonds of mateship, they move from eager volunteers to seasoned soldiers confronting the reality of combat and the cost it demands.

Blending historical context with vivid storytelling, Hennessy of the A.I.F. is a tribute to the ordinary Australians who crossed the world to fight in unfamiliar lands—and to the quiet professionalism, resilience, and loyalty that carried them forward when certainty disappeared.

The novel, although totally fictional is bedded deeply in the real-life historical events. The events the characters are involved did happen, although without the embellishment of the genre.

The second book is part of a planned series on Australian small and lesser known actions of World War 2, One of these Operation whiting is already in print.

In April 1945, as the Pacific War staggered toward its end, a small group of Australian soldiers slipped into Japanese-held territory in the Netherlands East Indies. Their mission was not to seize ground or destroy an enemy force, but to prevent a catastrophe that had not yet occurred: the execution or coercion of the Sultan of Ternate, a figure whose survival could shape the fragile transition from occupation to post-war order.

Operation Opossum tells the story of that mission—and explains why it mattered.

Drawing on Australian War Memorial archives, contemporary reporting, and post-war operational reconstructions, this book reveals how late-war Australian strategy increasingly prioritised legitimacy, restraint, and political effect over battlefield dominance. It shows how a raid involving only a handful of men, conducted far from the main theatres of decision, carried consequences that extended well beyond a single island.

More than a narrative of a daring extraction, this is a study of how wars end. It explores the collapse of Japanese authority, the uncertainties of decolonisation, and the emergence of stabilisation operations designed to prevent violence rather than unleash it. In doing so, it challenges conventional measures of military success and highlights the strategic importance of actions whose greatest achievement was that nothing happened.

Both of these are available on Amazon. Seem my Publications Page.