AustLit

'The Contractor returns.

'Mike is a big unit. He builds houses and drives a ute. But he isn't your typical tradie.

'When a client calls he downs tools and flies into the hot zone in his other guise - that of an elite private intelligence contractor.

'In four high-octane adventures, The Contractor takes on a counter-surveillance gig in Singapore, a jungle ambush on a bomb-maker in South-East Asia, a cannonball run against the Taliban in Kabul and a gun deal on a floating armoury in the Indian Ocean.

'Will Mike make it back to his BBQ and building site? Or will fate deliver The Contractor At Hell's Gate.' (Publication summary)

'I fix things. I can build you a house or remodel your bathroom. I can also make bad situations - and bad people - disappear.'

'Meet Mike. Runs a building site, drives a ute, likes a beer, loves his nail-gun.

'But Mike is hiding in plain sight. When the Pentagon call him in as 'Big Unit', he's another kind of contractor - one as handy with a Colt M4 as he is with a Skilsaw, a man as accustomed to danger, death, and pain as he is to a hammer and nails.

'In six action-packed true stories we follow a man who left foreign intelligence for a life 'on the tools', only to discover there's too many dangerous scenarios and terrible people still out there. The good guys need a James Bond in Blundstones. They need The Contractor.

'Tradie. Spy. Big Unit.

'Follow Big Unit as he goes undercover to save a family trapped by an ISIS-run drug cartel in the seedy back streets of Northern Pakistan to terrorist-besieged Paris to a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with Australia's most wanted murderer.' (Publication Summary)

'As a farm boy in western Victoria, John Oddie would watch RAAF jets pass overhead as he ploughed hay fields, wondering what it would be like to fly such a machine. Thirty-five years later - having flown Hueys, Chinooks, Hercules, jets and C-17s in a range of operations - John had risen to the rank of Air Commodore.

'John's appointment as deputy commander of Aussie forces in the Middle East capped a remarkable career of service to Australia. Sadly, this honour also involved the heartbreaking duty of informing families of the deaths of their husbands and sons in Afghanistan and overseeing departure ceremonies for the fallen soldiers.

'As well as covering the war in Afghanistan, Flight Command provides an insider's account of being a combat pilot in the first Gulf War, a commander supporting peace in Bougainville and security in Cambodia and the often harrowing experience of being a first-response commander dealing with the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia.

'By turns heart-warming and poignant, Flight Command is the story of a farm boy who managed to carve an international career in the military that included service in two wars.' (Publication summary)

'His war is over and former special forces captain Gerry Gallen is enjoying the relative peace of running a cattle ranch in Wyoming. But when he's asked to lead a team to Jordan to retrieve his war-time sergeant, he agrees.

'Landing in Amman, Gallen re-enters a world of Arab gangsters, American mercenaries and the constantly shifting loyalties of the CIA. And watching over his every step is the lethal presence of Hamas - a daily reminder that Gallen is working under the constant threat of death.

'Nothing about the gig is what it seems and as Gallen realises that his former boss has stolen $3 million dollars from some powerful locals, the spectre of Iraqi aggression rears its head. But why are neo-Baathists chasing Gallen? And what do they want with the cargo he is carrying?

'Hunted, beaten and trapped, Gerry Gallen is a man running two races... Can he break clear before lightning strikes?' (Publisher's blurb)

'Australia's super-spy, Alan McQueen, has been lured out of retirement. Any dreams Mac has of a cosy office job are shattered when he's dispatched to Singapore to oversee a covert mission. And when things go disastrously wrong, he not only has to defend his reputation in Australia but also stay out of jail in Vietnam.

'From the leafy suburbs of Singapore to the mean streets of Saigon, from the political infighting of Canberra to the old killing fields of Northern Cambodia, Mac has to use all his cunning - and a few unusual alliances - to get to the bottom of a conspiracy that could throw the world into a thermo-nuclear showdown.

'When nothing is what it seems, and death is only one mistake away, Mac finds himself both hunter and hunted as he pursues a truth that could save millions of lives.' (From the publisher's website.)

'In September 2009 Sydney businessman Michael McGurk was executed in a professional hit on the driveway of his North Shore house. With a single shot to the head the property developer, doting father and generous Catholic parishioner was revealed as a violent loan shark, stand over merchant and extortionist who didn't care who he cheated. His murder may have gone unnoticed had it not lifted the lid on some of the darker ways of doing business Sydney-style. And those caught up in his web included high profile Labor identities, hell-bent property developers, a merchant bank and even the Sultan of Brunei. Fuelled by drugs and alcohol, McGurk tried to scam them all.

'As compelling and fast-paced as any thriller, this is the true story of a man who thought he could do anything and get away with it. It is also the story of a very public murder. Sometimes life really is stranger than fiction...' (From the publisher's website.)

'Alan McQueen (aka Mac) - the intrepid hero of Golden Serpent and Second Strike - is a tough, true-blue, resourceful Aussie. An intelligence agent, Mac spends a lot of his time doing undercover work in south east Asia.

Double Back sees Mac putting his life on the line fighting dangerous forces who will stop at nothing to sink the independence movement in East Timor. Fighting the good fight, Mac discovers a plot to use a deadly ethno-bomb which kills only native East Timorese - who don't share the ethnicity of most Indonesians . . .

Can Mac secure the ethno-bomb before it's too late?' (From the publisher's website.)

'In the early hours of October 13, 2002, Australian spy Alan McQueen is jolted awake and told to immediately head to Bali, where more than two hundred people have been killed in a series of bomb blasts.

'Descending into Denpasar, Mac finds tensions running high between MI6, ASIS and the CIA, not to mention the Indonesian national police and Indonesian intel. Assigned to keep watch on the Australian forensic scientists working the bomb site - where the official line being peddled is that all the bombs were home-made - Mac learns that in fact one of the bombs was a military-grade mini-nuke.

'Trying to glean the motives for misleading the public, Mac pursues a shady group of businessmen-terrorists through the wilds of west Java and into Sumatra. But the trail goes dead when the terrorists fly out of Sumatra in an unmarked plane.

'Five years later, Mac is a freelance investigator living in Surfers Paradise, with his wife, Jenny, and baby daughter. During an apparently routine assignment looking into the people behind an Indonesian bio-engineering facility, Mac's partner is shot and MI6 turn up rather too quickly. Before too long Mac finds himself embroiled in the dangerous world of a new nuclear arms race.

'Forced on the run, with no Commonwealth back up, Mac suspects a connection between what's going on and the 2002 Bali bombings. Remembering back to a puzzling note he found back then with M4' written on it, he suddenly realises it referred to Mantiqui Four, the legendary Fourth Brigade of Jemaah Islamyiah, who are dedicated to an attack on Australian soil.

'The race is on as Mac discovers that the Fourth Brigade still have one remaining mini-nuke device. With ever-increasing tension, he trails his quarry from Indonesia to the Australian outback. In a thrilling denouement, involving three SAS troopers, several Israelis, the Indonesian police, and a Pakistani, Mac finds faced with more questions than answers. (Publisher's blurb)

'Alan McQueen, aka Mac, was once a star of the global intelligence community, renowned for being the Aussie spook who shot and killed Abu Sabaya, the world's most dangerous terrorist.

'But that was 2002.

'Now, during a routine assignment in Indonesia, McQueen discovers that Sabaya is not in fact dead. Instead he's teamed up with rogue CIA veteran Peter Garrison and is armed with a cache of stolen VX nerve agent he's threatening to deploy in a dramatic and deadly manner.

'Battling to stay one step ahead of Sabaya's hit-men, CIA double-agents and deep corruption within Australian intelligence, Mac must find the stolen VX before it's too late. His mission will take him on a chase through South-East Asia and test all of his considerable courage and ingenuity.' (Publisher's blurb)