Roads to War

The first installment in Donachie's sweeping Roads to War series set in the pre-WWII European powder keg 1935: Cal Jardine is a soldier of fortune. Forced to leave Hamburg where he has been helping Jews flee the Nazis, he is recruited by a secretive British committee to smuggle guns to Abyssinia, a country threatened by Italian invasion. But first Jardine must procure the weapons from Rumania, a country full of treacherous locals as well as German agents seeking his arrest. By sleight of hand, he contrives to steal the weapons he wanted to buy before escaping the country, leaving both the Rumanians and Germans floundering. Taken to the Horn of Africa, the arms are then transported over a harsh landscape, along an old slave trader's route full of danger, and into the hands of the Ethiopian Army. On his travels, Jardine acquires more baggage than he anticipated-including a beautiful but difficult American woman in search of her archaeologist mother, a determined reporter, and a daredevil French flyer-and avoids a painful death by sheer good fortune. But the Ethiopians are ill-equipped to face a modern Italian army using tanks, bombers, and poison gas. Trained for war, can Jardine simply walk away, or will he be drawn into a bloody conflict against massive odds? And can he manage to save those who now depend on him?

The second installment in Donachie's sweeping Roads to War series set in the pre-WWII European powder keg 1936: Soldier of fortune Cal Jardine travels to Barcelona to help with the athletic games rivalling the Berlin Olympics. But as the first shots of civil war ring out, friendship, love, and political conviction converge to persuade Jardine to once again embroil himself in a foreign war. Discovering that the British athletes attending the games are keen to enlist for the fight, Jardine agrees to train them into a professional force. With old army comrade Vince Castellano and his beautiful interpreter Florencia Gardiola by his side, Jardine leads the athletes through the street battles of Barcelona and on to the fighting in the Catalan countryside. But when murderous betrayal blights his previous fortune, Jardine will go to any lengths to seek suitable revenge . . .