Best Fictional Novels on War
Read through the action and find your hero!
War novels are the ultimate battleground for action, adventure, and high-stakes heroism. From the smoke-filled trenches of the Civil War to the futuristic landscapes of wars yet to come, these books throw readers into the chaos of combat, the intensity of strategy, and the unbreakable bonds of brotherhood. Whether you're looking for pulse-pounding battles, daring missions, or the grit and determination of soldiers on the front lines, this list is packed with adrenaline-fueled reads.
Perfect for Bookfinity’s Stunt Doubles Reader Type – the readers who live for danger, action, and edge-of-your-seat storytelling – these war and military novels deliver nonstop thrills across every era of conflict.
2054
by Elliot Ackerman - James Stavridis
From the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller 2034 comes another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America's violent partisan divide to create an existential threat to the country, and the world
It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, one that's held power for over a decade. Efforts to cement its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he'll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war.
The Long March Home: A World War II Novel of the Pacific
by Marcus Brotherton - Tosca Lee
"A must-read literary triumph."--Booklist starred review
Jimmy Propfield joined the army for two reasons: to get out of Mobile, Alabama, with his best friends Hank and Billy and to forget his high school sweetheart, Claire.
Life in the Philippines seems like paradise--until the morning of December 8, 1941, when news comes from Manila: Imperial Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor. Within hours, the teenage friends are plunged into war as enemy warplanes attack Luzon, beginning a battle for control of the Pacific Theater that will culminate with a last stand on the Bataan Peninsula and end with the largest surrender of American troops in history.
The Second Sun
by P T Deutermann
A taut, suspenseful historical thriller set in the months of WWII: Did Japan also have an atomic weapon, and did America bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to pre-empt an attack on its fleet?
A masterful historical thriller set during the waning months of World War II, The Second Sun poses a provocative question: Did Japan test an atomic weapon, and did America know about it in advance of its own decision to drop two nuclear bombs?
March 1945: After a career of commanding destroyers in the Pacific theater of WWII, Captain Wolfe Bowen is based in Washington, DC, working for the Chief of Naval Operations. Bowen receives an urgent call from the commander of the naval shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: A German U-boat has been captured and brought to port. But what grabs Bowen's attention is the presence of two Japanese civilians on board, along with the massive size of the U-boat itself. What these civilians know about the cargo of the U-boat, as well as its destination, begins a race against time that will change the course of history.
The People Immortal
by Vasily Grossman - Robert Chandler - Robert Chandler - Elizabeth Chandler - Julia Volohova
The first war novel by the author of Life and Fate and a stunningly accurate portrayal of soldierly life written at the beginning of World War II.
Vasily Grossman wrote three novels about the Second World War, each offering a distinct take on what a war novel can be, and each extraordinary. A common set of characters links Stalingrad and Life and Fate, but Stalingrad is not only a moving and exciting story of desperate defense and the turning tide of war, but also a monumental memorial for the countless war dead. Life and Fate, by contrast, is a work of moral and political philosophy as well as a novel, and the deep question it explores is whether or not it is possible to behave ethically in the face of overwhelming violence. The People Immortal is something else entirely. Set during the catastrophic first months of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, this is the tale of an army battalion dispatched to slow the advancing enemy at any cost, with encirclement and annihilation its promised end. A rousing story of resistance, The People Immortal is the novel as weapon in hand.
Seasons of Purgatory
by Shahriar Mandanipour - Sara Khalili
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST
The first English-language story collection from "one of Iran's most important living fiction writers" (Guardian), "a playful, whip-smart literary conjuror: a Kundera or Rushdie of post-Khomeini Iran" (Wall Street Journal)
In Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions. Mandanipour, banned from publication in his native Iran, vividly renders the individual consciousness in extremis from a variety of perspectives: young and old, man and woman, conscript and prisoner. While delivering a ferocious social critique, these stories are steeped in the poetry and stark beauty of an ancient land and culture.
The Militia House
by John Milas
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
Nominated for the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award
Stephen King meets Tim O'Brien in John Milas's The Militia House, a spine-tingling and boldly original gothic horror novel.
It's 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforward--loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters--and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits they're replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don't need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.
It's a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right.
The Ghosts of Rome
by Joseph O'Connor
In the final months of World War II, a clandestine group known as The Choir successfully smuggles thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Escape Line. When an unidentified airman falls wounded from the sky, The Choir is plunged into danger and the survival of the Escape Line itself is threatened.
The Escape Line's collapse would leave thousands stranded. Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, its architect and the acknowledged leader of The Choir, broods inside the Vatican, paralyzed by the perils of keeping his Roman underground railroad functioning. Meanwhile, SS Commander Paul Hauptmann has been tasked with destroying the entire operation, and the price of failure is high--his wife and children are under Gestapo lock-and-key in Berlin. Into this deliriously thrilling melee steps Contessa Giovanna Landini, a reckless, audacious, and magnetic member of the Italian Resistance who has the nerve to challenge Hauptmann's authority.
The Road to the Country
by Chigozie Obioma
"Chigozie Obioma is that rare thing: an original. His world is a mix of the real and the folkloric, and his writing sounds like no one else's."--The Wall Street Journal
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the New American Voices Award - Named a Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe, The Economist, and Kirkus Reviews
The first images of the vision are grainy--like something seen through wet glass. But slowly it clears, and there appears the figure of a man.
Set in Nigeria in the late 1960s, The Road to the Country is the epic story of a shy, bookish student haunted by long-held guilt who must go to war to free himself. When his younger brother disappears as the country explodes in civil war, Kunle must set out on an impossible rescue mission. Kunle's search for his brother becomes a journey of atonement that will see him conscripted into the breakaway Biafran army and forced to fight a war he hardly understands, all while navigating the prophecies of a local Seer, he who marks Kunle as an abami eda--one who will die and return to life.
A Man at Arms
by Steven Pressfield
Jerusalem and the Sinai desert, first century AD. In the turbulent aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus, officers of the Roman Empire acquire intelligence of a pilgrim bearing an incendiary letter from a religious fanatic to insurrectionists in Corinth. The content of this letter could bring down the empire.
The Romans hire a former legionary, the solitary man-at-arms, Telamon of Arcadia, to intercept the letter and capture its courier. Telamon operates by a dark code all his own, with no room for noble causes or lofty beliefs. But once he overtakes the courier, something happens that neither he nor the empire could have predicted.
M: Son of the Century
by Antonio Scurati - Anne Milano Appel
The massive international bestseller--an epic historical novel that chronicles the birth and rise of fascism in Italy, witnessed through the eyes of its founder, the terrifyingly charismatic figure who would become one of the most notorious dictators of the twentieth century, Benito Mussolini.
It is 1919, and the Great War that has ravaged Europe is over. In Italy, the people are exhausted. Tired of the political class. Tired of vague promises, inept moderates, and the agonizing machinations of a democracy that has failed ordinary citizens.
While elite leaders have sat idly by, achieving nothing, one outsider--the director of a small opposition newspaper and a tireless political agitator--is electrifying the masses, promising hope for a demoralized nation hungry for change.
The Restless Wave: A Novel of the United States Navy
by James Stavridis
"The Restless Wave is not only a stirring and gripping story of the sea, but also of love and war and leadership. Admiral Stavridis's sweeping knowledge of history and life in the Navy shines on every page, imbuing this work with authenticity and power."
--David Grann, #1 NYT bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon
From the New York Times bestselling former NATO commander comes a riveting historical novel that charts the coming-of-age of a gifted but immature young naval officer as he is tested in the crucible of World War II in the Pacific
Scott Bradley James arrives in Annapolis, Maryland, as a plebe in the class of 1941 without a terribly good idea why he wants to be a naval officer, other than that his father was a sailor, and he wants to see the world, whatever that means. Scott and his roommate become fast friends, and, after surviving scrapes of their own making, the two fetch up at Pearl Harbor. War is brewing, and their class has graduated early. They have been sent to battle stations.
End of Active Service
by Matt Young
A raw and rampaging debut novel from the author of the "inventive, unsparing, irreverent and consistently entertaining" (NYTBR) memoir Eat the Apple--the last phase of war for US veterans: returning home.
What was it like? It's the only thing anyone wants to know about war--and the last thing Corporal Dean Pusey wants to talk about, at least not with one of these fat and happy civilians crowding the bar. Dean is two months free from the Marine Corps, and life back in his Indiana hometown is anything but peaceful.
That's when the woman next to him offers to buy him a drink. Max is nice--gorgeous, funny, easy to talk to. Dean doesn't dare tell her about the sheep he took care of on his first deployment, only to watch it get torn to shreds by a pack of wild dogs; or the naked, shivering Iraqi teenager his platoon detained after an IED blast. He needs to leave all that behind and become a new person-the kind who sticks around when Max gets pregnant. He's white-knuckling it, trying to keep calm, and it's not easy. Harder still when his friend and comrade Ruiz starts showing up all over the place like he's been invited--like he didn't die a year ago.