Steve Doherty Books in Order

If you want the Jonathan Preston story from the beginning: Operation King Cobra → Call For Blood → Gold Dominion → Imminent Threat
If you want the later, postwar missions first: Gold Dominion → Imminent Threat
If you're choosing for young readers: Little Tiger -- Respect → Little Tiger-Guardian of Peace → Little Tiger- Discipline

Steve Doherty grew up in Muldoon, Texas, a small community southeast of Austin. Long before he published novels, he had two clear ambitions: he wanted to fly, and he wanted to write. Those two threads, military life and storytelling, eventually came together in a body of work that moves between war thrillers and children's books.

He studied biology at Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State University, then went on to earn a master's degree from Chapman University and complete postgraduate work in adult education at The Ohio State University. In 1973 he joined the U.S. Air Force and trained as a navigator. During his service he flew aircraft including the T-29C, KC-135A, and T-43A.

He spent about twenty years in uniform before retiring in 1993.

Retirement did not mean slowing down. After the Air Force, Doherty worked in telecommunications and business, but the idea of writing stayed with him. The big turn came in September 1995, when a World War II veteran from Columbus contacted him and said he finally had declassified stories he could share. Doherty listened, got curious, and started meeting with him twice a week.

Those conversations went on for six months. Doherty taped the veteran's memories, heard about covert missions behind Japanese lines in Asia, and promised he would someday turn that material into a book. It was a long road from promise to publication, but that early act of listening seems to have set the course for everything that followed.

That promise became Operation King Cobra in 2013. It introduced Jonathan Preston, a covert U.S. Army operative working through the China, Burma, and India theater during World War II. Doherty returned to the character in Call For Blood, Gold Dominion, and Imminent Threat, building a run of fast-moving historical thrillers full of intelligence work, dangerous terrain, prison camp raids, and unfinished wartime business.

What readers often respond to in those books is the mix of action and research. Doherty writes about secret missions, biological warfare programs, looted treasure, and the uneasy mess left behind after the shooting is supposed to be over. The stories move quickly, but they are rooted in his long interest in military history and in the firsthand account that first pushed him toward fiction.

Then he changed lanes completely.

Doherty also writes the Little Tiger books, a children's picture-book series that uses taekwondo to teach life lessons. Early titles like Little Tiger -- Respect, Little Tiger-Guardian of Peace, and Little Tiger- Discipline focus on values such as kindness, peace, and self-control. He developed that side of his work with help from his granddaughter Olivia Dybik, who helped reshape the stories for younger readers after telling him, in essence, that children do not want to be talked to like college students.

That second strand of his writing life makes sense once you know a little more about him. Doherty lives in New Albany, Ohio, and has taught taekwondo there. The same ideas that matter in a dojo, discipline, respect, courage, and calm under pressure, show up in both sides of his work. One set of books sends agents behind enemy lines. The other helps children think about how to carry themselves in everyday life.