{"title":"Books by Elliot Ackerman","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780241772546","title":"Sheepdogs","description":"TWO MISFITS.   ONE MISSION.   ZERO BACK-UP.   WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?‘You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . glorious . . . hilarious' SUNDAY TIMES'A rollicking military-adjacent adventure . . . replete with jet-setting paramilitary types, secret meetings at the highest level of government and firefights, with some rough sex and women in peril added for good measure' WASHINGTON POSTSkwerl and Cheese are down on their luck after being screwed over by the US military. Skwerl used to work for the CIA’s elite paramilitary wing until he was unceremoniously fired after a raid went bad in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a legendary Afghan pilot also formerly employed by the CIA, is stuck working the graveyard shift at the local gas station.   Armed with a ton of unique and not obviously useful skills for peacetime living, both are recruited into a shadowy network of so-called ‘sheepdogs’ working jobs for an anonymous dispatcher.   Their first mission? To repossess a luxury private jet stranded on a remote Ugandan airfield. Their fee: a cut of the jet’s $5 million value. But nothing about the job adds up. Their contact vanishes. Their handler’s motives are suspect. And when the women in their lives get involved – one pregnant wife and one dominatrix – the stakes skyrocket overnight.   From the jungles of Kampala to the glitz of Marseille, Sheepdogs is a sly, hilarious, action-packed thriller introducing an instantly iconic spy duo. Operating in the moral grey zone between predator and prey, this is a wild ride through the absurd underworld of war and intelligence.   ‘Skwerl, Cheese, Dickhead Mike, the White Russian – these characters are totally addictive. I couldn’t put Sheepdogs down. A thriller and comedy in one, it’s a wild ride’ HARLAN COBEN‘Sheepdogs is the best thriller I’ve read in a long, long time. With a perfect blend of action and humor, I was hooked from the first page and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished . . . an absolute gem of a novel’ KEVIN POWERS","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57685979201909,"sku":"9781405980357","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":55897709674869,"sku":"9780241772546","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781405980357.jpg?v=1792599253"},{"product_id":"9780008532710","title":"The Fifth Act","description":"\u003cp\u003eA Times Political Book of the Year 2022A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war’s echoing legacy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eElliot Ackerman left the American military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and, later, as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August of 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. The official evacuation process was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe. Ackerman was drawn into an impromptu effort to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America’s longest war, but the success they achieved afforded a degree of redemption: and, for Ackerman, a chance to reconcile his past with his present.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week at its bitter end. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves in a personal history of the war's long progress, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9\/11. It is a play in five acts with a tragic denouement.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAny reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war’s trajectory will find a trenchant accounting here. And yet The Fifth Act is not an exercise in finger-pointing: it brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, who fought the war with courage and dedication, in good faith and at great personal cost. Understanding combatants’ experiences and sacrifices demands reservoirs of wisdom and the gifts of an extraordinary storyteller. In Elliot Ackerman, this story has found that author. The Fifth Act is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56221752263029,"sku":"9780008532710","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780008532710_bfead4f5-5850-4718-aa0d-710807da02f0.jpg?v=1785658869"},{"product_id":"9780141988863","title":"Places and Names","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ARMY MILITARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2020 \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A superb, unique, and unforgettable story of war and death, fear and cruelty, above all the horrors and allure of combat' Simon Sebag Montefiore\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e'One of the most profound books I have ever read about the real nature of war and the abstract allure of the ideas and the bloodshed that fuels it' Jon Lee Anderson, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Fall of Baghdad\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn astonishing account of the nature of war from acclaimed novelist and decorated former US marine Elliot Ackerman\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a refugee camp in southern Turkey, Elliot Ackerman sits across the table from Abu Hassar, who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq and has murky connections to the Islamic State. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after he establishes a rapport with Abu Hassar, he reveals that in fact he was a Marine. The two men then compare their fighting experiences in the Middle East, discovering they had shadowed each other for some time: a realisation that brings them to a strange kind of intimacy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eElliot Ackerman's extraordinary memoir explores the events that led him to come to this refugee camp and what, unable to forget his time in battle, he hoped to find there. Moving between his recent time on the ground as a journalist in Syria and his Marine deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of astonishing atmospheric pressure, one which blends the American experience with the perspectives and stories of the Arab world, and draws a line between them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt once an intensely personal book about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the meaning of the past two decades of strife for the region and the world, \u003ci\u003ePlaces and Names\u003c\/i\u003e bids to take its place among our greatest books about modern war.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224886653301,"sku":"9780141988863","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141988863_ed256b42-d075-409b-be98-15e92dfaec3b.jpg?v=1786011213"},{"product_id":"9781405966429","title":"2034","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA chilling geopolitical thriller and real-world cautionary tale presenting a dark yet very possible future of war between the US and China – from two former military officers and award-winning authors \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTHE \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e BESTSELLER \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘A rippingly good read’ \u003ci\u003eWired\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e12 March 2034.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the South China Sea, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is conducting routine freedom of navigation patrol while US Marine aviator Major Chris ‘Wedge’ Mitchell tests a new stealth technology near Iranian airspace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy the end of the day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Hunt’s destroyer will lie at the bottom of the ocean.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd a new, terrifying era will be at hand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo begins a disturbingly plausible novel, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEverything in \u003ci\u003e2034\u003c\/i\u003e is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground, informed by the authors’ years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. 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