Oxford Publishing Ventures Ltd: 25 books

The Turks, who had remained hidden in their trenches up to this point, opened fire. Men were killed where they sat in their barges. “One fellow`s brains were shot into my mouth as I was shouting for them to jump for it,” said Sergeant J. McColgan, who was shot in the leg. “I dived...

In the bunker, the Führer still believed he could win the war. The Russian Red Army was ruthlessly rolling from the east towards the gates of Berlin. Overhead, British and American bombers were attacking in force. While outside, the corpses of dead German deserters were hanging from the lamp-posts....

It was easy for the German machine-gunners to concentrate their fire on the ramp of a landing craft as it hit the shore. Inside the landing craft, the assault troops would hear the bullets bouncing like flung pebbles off the metal ramp, knowing that the moment they hit the beach that protection...

In the heat and dust of the North African desert, British and Australian troops led by General Montgomery were waiting for an attack by Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The defences they had prepared required the Germans to run the gauntlet between six pounder anti-tank guns and dug-in tanks. Montgomery...

Just sixteen minutes into D-Day and their glider had already crash-landed onto the field. Scrambling out to storm the bridge, the young British soldiers began the fight of their lives. Five miles inside enemy territory, they ran headlong into the day that shaped the twentieth century, paving the...

Three days later a Japanese force landed at night. They ambushed a 26-man patrol, cutting the Marines down with hidden machine guns. The three survivors who made it back told their fellow Marines that the wounded had been hacked to death with sabres. From then on, the Marines decided they would...

Under cover of the bombardment, the Germans blew gaps in the wire and cleared paths through the minefield. By the following morning, they had established a hole through the outer defences a mile and a half wide and taken more than 100 prisoners. Their charismatic leader, the dynamic Erwin Rommel,...

In the ruined houses, streets and sewers of Stalingrad there raged a ferocious hand-to-hand battle. The advancing Panzers proved vulnerable in the close quarter combat.  Resistance was to the death as Stalin ordered that the city that bore his name must be held at all costs. For the Germans,...

One bomb hit the Japanese carrier Akagi amidships, ripping through the hangar deck and exploding amidst the stored torpedoes, carelessly stowed bombs and refuelling tanks, setting off secondary explosions. A second set the planes on the flight deck ablaze. The stern was shattered, the rudder useless...

A decapitated, disembowelled human carcass was strung up like a dead animal, and nine severed vulvae were found in a box with a belt made from female nipples. He admitted that not all fifteen bodies were his own kills; some were corpses that he had dug up from the local graveyard. Ed Gein just liked...

The night after the double murder, his thirst for blood became unquenchable and when she said she'd rather die than have sex his chilling reply was instant: "Die then!" Soon rumours arose that the killer was drinking the blood of his victims; newspapers were quick to brand him the...