Oliver North Books in Order
Browse Oliver North books in order, with quick summaries, Peter Newman and Jake Kruse series guides, and help choosing where to start, all in one place.
Last updated: June 9, 2026
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Publication Order
19 books
Taking the Stand
by Oliver North
1987
This volume prints North's full Iran-Contra testimony before the joint House and Senate committees in July 1987. It reads as a primary record of the hearings and of how he defended his actions under intense scrutiny.
Under Fire
by Oliver North
1991
North's memoir covers his upbringing, Vietnam service, White House years, and the Iran-Contra scandal that made him a national figure. It is both a personal story and his account of how power, loyalty, and public judgment collided.
One More Mission
by Oliver North
1993
Decades after Vietnam, North returns to the country where he fought as a young Marine. Part memoir and part travel narrative, the book revisits battlefields, memory, and the question of whether healing can follow war.
Mission Compromised
by Oliver North
2002
Marine major Peter Newman is pulled from the field to take a secret White House national security post. When a covert mission to eliminate terrorist leaders is betrayed, he becomes the only survivor and sets out to uncover who sold it out.
The Jericho Sanction
by Oliver North
2003
Peter Newman heads into a covert search for Iraqi nuclear weapons, then finds the mission becoming painfully personal when his wife is kidnapped in Jerusalem. He must try to save Rachel and stop a wider war at the same time.
War Stories
by Oliver North
2003
Embedded with American forces during the Iraq invasion, North recounts Operation Iraqi Freedom from the ground. The book combines battlefield reporting, military context, and firsthand moments from the push toward Baghdad.
True Freedom
by Oliver North
2004
This short Christian book argues that prayer is not a duty to endure but a source of real freedom. North blends scripture and personal stories to explore guilt, anxiety, purpose, and a closer relationship with God.
War Stories II
by Oliver North
2004
North turns to the Pacific theater of World War II, covering Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Midway, Guadalcanal, Leyte, and more. Using veterans' recollections, he shows both the scale of the war and the cost paid by ordinary Americans.
The Assassins
by Oliver North
2005
After jihadists cripple Saudi oil facilities and wipe out much of the royal family, Peter Newman is chosen to lead a new unit built to hunt terrorists. The mission turns into a race to stop another strike before it reaches Washington.
War Stories III
by Oliver North
2005
This volume looks at the war against Hitler through firsthand memories from the people who lived it. North moves from Britain and North Africa to Italy, Germany, and the home front, keeping the focus on individual courage.
In the Fight Against Radical Islam
by Oliver North
2008
Drawing on reporting and military experience, North tells the stories of American service members and families fighting the war on terror. The book mixes frontline episodes, profiles, and photographs with his larger view of the conflict.
After Jihad
by Oliver North
2009
Set in 2032, this thriller sends Peter Newman and his son James after a missing scientist whose fuel cell invention could change everything. Their search uncovers surveillance, political rot, and terror in a battered future America.
In Special Operations
by Oliver North
2010
North profiles Navy SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets, and other special operators fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Built from firsthand accounts, it focuses on dangerous missions, hidden work, and the men who carry it out.
Heroes Proved
by Oliver North
2012
In a near-future America, physicist Martin Cohen is kidnapped from a Houston energy conference as terror and politics collide. Peter Newman races to rescue him while a repressive White House tries to bury the truth.
On the Homefront
by Oliver North
2013
North and Bob Hamer follow wounded service members and military families through deployment, injury, rehab, and return. The book shifts the focus from the battlefield to the long, difficult work of recovery and life at home.
Counterfeit Lies
by Oliver North
2014
Undercover FBI agent Jake Kruse is working a Southern California smuggling case when he is asked to kill a mobster's daughter. The job pulls him into a far bigger web of espionage, terror, and corruption reaching deep into Washington.
The Rifleman
by Oliver North
2019
Set during the Revolutionary War, this historical thriller follows Nathaniel Newman, a volunteer in Morgan's Riflemen. Through his wartime journal, North traces grit, marksmanship, and betrayal as the fight for independence hangs in the balance.
The Giant Awakes
by Oliver North
2022
Back in Los Angeles, undercover FBI agent Jake Kruse poses as an office supply salesman to probe a Chinese intelligence network. What looks routine soon opens into public corruption, human trafficking, and a rescue that could cost him everything.
Tragic Consequences
by Oliver North
2022
North argues that America's moral and civic decline comes from turning away from God. He pairs a hard-edged critique of modern culture with a call for Christians and churches to answer it through prayer, witness, and public action.
Where should I start?
If you want the core political thrillers: Mission Compromised → The Jericho Sanction → The Assassins → After Jihad → Heroes Proved
If you prefer undercover FBI suspense: Counterfeit Lies → The Giant Awakes
If you want memoir and public controversy first: Taking the Stand → Under Fire → One More Mission
If you want military reporting and real-world profiles: War Stories → In the Fight Against Radical Islam → In Special Operations → On the Homefront
If you want historical fiction: The Rifleman
Author bio
Oliver North was born in San Antonio, Texas, on October 7, 1943, and grew up in Philmont, a small village in upstate New York. He finished high school there, spent two years at SUNY Brockport, and then won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. He graduated from Annapolis in 1968, which set the course for the next two decades of his life.
He went into the Marine Corps and served for twenty-two years. Vietnam came early, and it stayed with him. He was wounded in combat and received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for valor, and two Purple Hearts.
The military stayed at the center of almost everything he wrote later.
After Vietnam, North served in a series of Marine assignments and later moved into national security work in Washington. From 1983 to 1986 he was the U.S. government's counterterrorism coordinator on the National Security Council staff. Then came the Iran-Contra affair, the hearings, and the kind of sudden public exposure that can split a life into a before and an after.
Writing became one way he answered that moment.
His 1987 testimony appeared in Taking the Stand, a book that preserved the hearings in print. A few years later he published Under Fire, a fuller memoir about his childhood, Vietnam, the White House years, and the political storm that followed. He later returned to Vietnam in One More Mission, which revisits old battlefields and asks what memory, grief, and healing can look like after the war is over.
North did not stay in one lane. He spent years as a syndicated columnist and television host, and his reporting work with U.S. forces fed directly into books such as War Stories, American Heroes in the Fight Against Radical Islam, American Heroes in Special Operations, and On the Homefront. Those books show what readers kept coming to him for, not abstract strategy, but men and women in uniform, the families around them, and the cost of service.
Not all of his writing stays on the battlefield. True Freedom turns toward Christian prayer and personal faith, and later books like Tragic Consequences move more openly into cultural and religious argument. Memoir, military history, thriller, and devotional or political writing all sit side by side in his bibliography.
His fiction grew out of the same interests. The Peter Newman novels, beginning with Mission Compromised, follow a Marine officer pulled into covert operations, Washington power struggles, and Middle East crises. Later books such as Counterfeit Lies and The Giant Awakes, written with former FBI agent Bob Hamer, shift toward undercover law enforcement and modern espionage, while The Rifleman reaches back to the Revolutionary War. Different settings, same concerns.
Readers usually know what they are getting with an Oliver North book. He writes about duty, patriotism, betrayal, faith, and the long aftereffects of war. Even when the politics are loud, the stories keep returning to people under pressure and the choices they make when the rules stop being simple.
North also helped found Freedom Alliance, a veterans organization that supports service members and military families. He lives in Virginia with his wife, Betsy, whom he married in 1967. Decades after Vietnam and decades after the hearings that made him famous, he has kept writing about conflict, history, and the people he believes carry the country on their backs.
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