Vietnam War Fiction

Vietnam, 1970. A US Navy aircraft narrowly avoids being shot down by a cloud of missiles launched from a remote patch of jungle, south of Haiphong, North Vietnam. In South Vietnam, the Vietcong kidnaps Nguyen Huy Quan, the nephew of the President of South Vietnam. Two unrelated events. Except they are not unrelated. A bored and disinterested intelligence officer has filed away the note about the strange missile launch, marked ‘no further action.’ It remains unread, until President Thieu’s wife, nicknamed ‘The Dragon Lady,’ demands action to get her nephew back from the North. At ...

Corporal Rick Heller is near the end of his tour and looking forward to going home to pick up the threads of his life. To be reunited with his fiancée and get married. To get his life back on course, but somehow, Vietnam casts a dark shadow over the lives of those who served. Heller is fated to be no exception. Ditched by his girl, he suddenly realized he has nothing left. His life, his plans, and his ambitions are in tatters. MACV is desperate to retain good men, experienced jungle fighters. Offers promotion and the chance to join a new unit, the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. Known as...

Vietnam, 1975. The war is over, but for some the fight never ends. Benjamin Franklin Smith, a former soldier turned investigator, is trying to rebuild his life in Communist Saigon. When an offer from the Ministry of Public Security forces him into a dangerous deal, recover the remains of a fallen soldier deep in Cambodia—he has no choice but to accept. The mission takes him and his companion, Jean-Claude Bernard, a former French paratrooper turned priest, into the heart of a brutal conflict between the Khmer Rouge and the People’s Army of Vietnam. What begins as a grim assignment ...

Frank Evans is a Navy sailor willing to do whatever is necessary to become a Marine. He's tough enough - and he has a general interested in his success. But success is measured in many ways. Frank finds out combat and the Marine Corps' definition of success change a man.

American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.

Rich Allan, an Army Veteran, spins a funny coming-of-age story (DRAFTED) about nineteen-year-old college student Eli J. Jones, who is illegally drafted in1966, during the life-threatening era of Vietnam. Eli tries to prove his innocence but finds himself plucked out of his carefree life and plunged into the U.S. Army. Despite his mantra of “I’m not supposed to be here,” Eli adapts, making many new friends, such as Harry, Tex, Steve, the Professor, Sam and lovely Nurse Sara. They help Eli cope with Colonel Clark, the insane Battalion Commander (and Sara’s dad), as well as overcome ...

Chief Warrant Officer Gary O'Neal is no ordinary soldier. For nearly 40 years, he has fought America's enemies, becoming one of the greatest Warriors this nation has ever known. Part Native American, O'Neal was trained in both military combat and the ways of his Native people, combining his commitment to freedom with his respect for the enemy, his technical fighting skills with his fierce warrior spirit.

A dedicated U. S. Army assault helicopter pilot in Vietnam just wants to do his job and return home to his wife and family. But to do so, he has to survive harrowing combat missions, bad weather, mechanical problems, human error, and a commander who is more interested in personal glory and promotion than his men’s well-being. Along the way, he participated in the last major American combat operation of the war—Lam Son 719, a major incursion into Laos, which lasted sixty days and was the costliest period of the war for helicopter pilots and crew members.

All the stories in this collection from Stephen King are related to the Vietnam War. King fans will recognize echoes of The Dark Tower series in the collection's first story, "Low Men in Yellow Coats." As the characters develop over the next four stories, King's version of the Vietnam War becomes one of his most frightening tales ever.

It’s called the “Black Widow”, a CIA gunship with three high-speed Gatling guns tasked with interdicting North Vietnamese weapon and supply convoys on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It has no insignias or markings. Painted black it is invisible in the night’s sky… until it strikes. The communist troops call it a “dragon” because of its red tongues of fire that reach down from the heavens and consume whatever they touch. Officially the Black Widow doesn’t exist and neither does Tom Coyle its pilot. Coyle and his crew fly the world’s most dangerous combat missions in the steep ...

Haunted by guilt, a soldier-turned-priest is drawn back into war, forced to confront evil with ruthless violence. Sean Nolan had his life mapped out, working toward a commission in the US Army. Until he blames himself for a friend’s death. Desperate to make amends, he abandons his military dreams for a career that could not be more different. He becomes a priest. His vocation ends suddenly when an inner drive for justice compels him to kill a man guilty of rape and murder. Driven again by guilt, Nolan enlists in the US Army as penance, serving two tours in Vietnam. Though he proves ...

With the introduction of Conscription in the 1960s, it was realised that Australia’s defence forces would now have access to a wider pool of talented men, other than those that normally volunteer for service. Major Jack Roberts was tasked by the defence department to form a small group from the National Servicemen to take on some unique tasks. He chose three young men that had shown signs of being able to work with anyone from different backgrounds or ethnic groups. These three men were a Christian, a Jew and a Moslem. After being whisked away from their regiment, as it sailed for Vietnam...

JFK is losing the war before it even starts. Something has to be done…The South Vietnamese are turning against their own government. Protests are daily events. Even the military is questioning its orders to put down the civilian demonstrations. With the ever-increasing rise of violent factions, it seems Diem is the only leader that can hold South Vietnam together. But even he goes too far when he attacks the temples and imprisons the Buddhist monks and their followers. Saigon is about to explode. The Viet Cong take advantage of the chaos seizing more territory and villages. Their ranks ...

"Echoes of Angkor," the gripping 22nd installment in David Lee Corley's Best Selling Airmen Series, plunges readers into the heart of Cambodia as the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot seek to brutally purify the country and its people. Retired CIA operative Rene Granier, Indigenous warrior Spitting Woman, and young Cambodian Vithu navigate a treacherous landscape, documenting atrocities while evading ruthless Khmer Rouge patrols. Meanwhile, intrepid photojournalist Karen Dickson risks everything to capture images that will shock a world that has turned a blind eye to Pol Pot’s carnage....

‘Women can be heroes, too’. When twenty-year-old nursing student, Frances “Frankie” McGrath, hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on California’s idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path.

When it first appeared, A Rumor of War brought home to American readers, with terrifying vividness and honesty, the devastating effects of the Vietnam War on the soldiers who fought there. And while it is a memoir of one young man's experiences and therefore deeply personal, it is also a book that speaks powerfully to today's students about the larger themes of human conscience, good and evil, and the desperate extremes men are forced to confront in any war.

Robert Peterson arrived in Vietnam in the fall of 1966, a young American ready to serve his country and seize his destiny. What happened in that jungle war would change his life forever. Peterson vividly relives the tense patrols in the Viet Cong-infested Central Highlands, the fierce firefights along the Cambodian border, the ambushes and enemy charges.

Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last minute.

Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War. Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things (don’t even try to imagine the love story) and you’ll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins’s eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel--a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat.

Can Saigon survive the communist onslaught? Helicopters swarm as sporadic explosions and gunfire reverberate throughout the capital. Panic engulfs the streets filled with civilians. A desperate dash to flee before the fall. The South Vietnamese military hanging on by a thread, buying time for the people. Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops wash over the city in unstoppable waves. Communist soldiers advance toward the presidential palace, their faces canvases of the hardships and sacrifices they endured for a war they fought so long. Their final goal within reach – the unification of ...