William F Brown Books in Order
Explore William F Brown books in order, from Bob Burke thrillers to Our Vietnam Wars, with quick summaries, series guides, and easy where-to-start tips.
Last updated: July 9, 2026
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Publication Order
20 books
Burke's Gamble
by William F Brown
2016
When one of Bob Burke's old soldiers gets trapped in a mob-run Atlantic City casino and the debt turns vicious, Burke steps in. What follows is part rescue mission, part revenge story, with gamblers, loan sharks, and hard payback.
Burke's War
by William F Brown
2016
Coming home to Chicago, Bob Burke sees a woman murdered from his plane window, and nobody believes him. The former Delta Force commander starts his own hunt, colliding with mob figures, crooked cops, and trouble on every side.
Burke's Revenge
by William F Brown
2017
A homegrown ISIS cell starts hitting the Special Operations leadership around Fort Bragg, right in Bob Burke's backyard. When the agencies around him struggle to stop it, Burke and his crew go on the attack.
Our Vietnam Wars
by William F Brown
2018
The first volume gathers personal accounts from 100 veterans who served in Vietnam. Men and women across branches and roles describe what they did, what they saw, and how the war stayed with them afterward.
Our Vietnam Wars, Vol 2
by William F Brown
2018
Volume 2 expands the project with more first-person stories from Vietnam veterans. The result is a broader, more varied picture of service, survival, memory, and life after the war.
Our Vietnam Wars, Vol 3
by William F Brown
2019
The third volume adds still more veteran voices, showing again how many different wars Vietnam contained. Combat troops, support personnel, and others reflect on duty, danger, and what came after homecoming.
Aim True, My Brothers
by William F Brown
2020
A veteran Hamas terrorist plots a strike aimed at the President and the core of the U.S. government. FBI agent Eddie Barnett and an uneasy international team race to stop him before the plan turns catastrophic.
Amongst My Enemies
by William F Brown
2020
American airman Mike Randall survives a crash in East Prussia and becomes the only man who knows the truth about a sunken German U-boat. Years later, the secret draws in the KGB, the CIA, and killers who want him dead.
Burke’s Samovar
by William F Brown
2020
The Russian mob steals Bob Burke's military software contract, bombs his office, and attacks his home. That sends Burke from Chicago to Brooklyn and on toward Moscow for a very personal round of payback.
Our Vietnam Wars, Vol 4
by William F Brown
2020
The fourth volume continues Brown's oral history with more stories from American and allied veterans. Its range of roles and experiences gives the series an even wider, more personal sense of the war.
The Undertaker
by William F Brown
2020
Pete Talbott and Sandy Kasmarek stumble into a nightmare of fake obituaries and bodies buried under other people's names. Their search pulls them through organized crime, corruption, and a murder scheme that keeps getting darker.
Thursday at Noon
by William F Brown
2020
In 1962 Cairo, burned-out CIA man Richard Thomson finds a brutal murder tied to desert photos, missing forces, and a looming Arab-Israeli crisis. If he cannot solve the mystery, a regional war may begin at noon on Thursday.
Winner Lose All
by William F Brown
2020
As World War II collapses, OSS officer Ed Scanlon and resistance leader Hanni Steiner are caught in a deadly race for Nazi jet plans and scientists. Espionage, divided loyalties, and an impossible romance drive this tense historical thriller.
Burke's Mandarin
by William F Brown
2021
Chinese espionage reaches deep into Washington and Fort Bragg, and Bob Burke gets pulled in when a young Army captain's family is used as leverage. What follows is a sharp, high-stakes clash over secrets, loyalty, and survival.
Burke's Machete
by William F Brown
2023
Bob Burke takes on a Mexican fentanyl cartel after they kidnap his wife in retaliation for earlier losses. It becomes a brutal cross-border payback mission, with Burke and his crew heading straight into cartel territory.
Burke's Rescue
by William F Brown
2023
When Bob Burke's old friend Colonel Volodya Rostov is kidnapped in Armenia, the case quickly grows beyond a simple rescue. Bombings, Russian intrigue, and a trail through Moscow and the Caucasus turn it into a dangerous reckoning.
Burke's Double Down
by William F Brown
2024
A Las Vegas casino mogul's kidnapped daughter draws Bob Burke into a rescue mission with mob ties and federal pressure. From the Strip to the Mojave, Burke hunts the people holding her and plans a hard answer.
Burke's Hit Man
by William F Brown
2024
Russia's deadliest assassin is sent to steal a top-secret American laser weapon and eliminate the people in his way, including Bob Burke. The result is a tense cat-and-mouse thriller driven by espionage and precision violence.
Burke's Justice
by William F Brown
2025
When Chinese spymaster Wei Jun is kidnapped, Bob Burke heads into a murky struggle involving revenge, electronic warfare, and a looming power grab in Beijing. What begins as a rescue quickly turns into a much larger crisis.
Burke's Trap
by William F Brown
2026
Attackers come for Bob Burke on an ordinary morning and make a fatal mistake. With his crew beside him and danger stretching far beyond home, Burke turns the ambush into a carefully planned hunt.
Where should I start?
If you want military action first: Burke's War → Burke's Gamble → Burke's Revenge
If you want WWII and Cold War espionage: Amongst My Enemies → Winner Lose All → Thursday at Noon
If you want modern counter-terror suspense: Aim True, My Brothers
If you want a murder mystery with bite: The Undertaker
If you want true veteran voices: Our Vietnam Wars → Our Vietnam Wars, Vol 2 → Our Vietnam Wars, Vol 3 → Our Vietnam Wars, Vol 4
Author bio
William F. Brown grew up in Chicago, and that mix of big-city politics, history, and street-level realism still runs through his work. He studied History and Russian Area Studies at the University of Illinois, then stayed there to earn a master's degree in urban planning. It is an unusually practical foundation for a thriller writer, and it shows.
Before fiction, Brown spent time in the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam as a company commander and drug counselor. He was also active in politics and civic organizations. Those experiences seem to have given him a lasting interest in institutions, command, pressure, and the way ordinary people can get caught inside much larger systems.
He also had a long business career. As a vice president of the real estate subsidiary of a Fortune 500 corporation, Brown traveled widely in the United States and overseas, including Europe, Russia, China, and the Middle East. Many of those places later found their way into his novels, not as wallpaper, but as working settings with their own politics, habits, and dangers.
He has seen enough of the world to know that trouble rarely stays in one place.
Brown's fiction covers a few different lanes, but they all share a taste for momentum. Readers who like military action usually start with Burke's War, the first Bob Burke novel, and keep going through the rest of the series for more missions, mob wars, kidnappings, and international standoffs. Bob Burke may be a former Army Ranger and Delta Force commander, but he is also a businessman, a husband, a father, and the kind of man who gets underestimated right up until the shooting starts.
His historical spy thrillers reach even farther back. Amongst My Enemies, Winner Lose All, and Thursday at Noon move through the last stretch of World War II and the uneasy years that followed, with intelligence officers, survivors, and burned-out operatives trying to stay alive while governments play bigger games around them. Brown likes competent people under pressure, and he especially likes putting them in places where alliances shift fast.
He also moves easily into modern suspense. Aim True, My Brothers is a counter-terror thriller built around a plot to strike at the heart of the U.S. government, while The Undertaker blends murder mystery, action, and dark humor through the unlikely team of Pete Talbott and Sandy Kasmarek. The settings change, but the pull is familiar: fast plots, high stakes, and characters who keep pushing long after common sense would suggest otherwise.
He likes capable people under pressure.
Brown also stepped outside fiction to create the Our Vietnam Wars books, a four-volume oral history series built from veterans' own stories. That project fits naturally beside the novels. It draws on his military background, but even more on his interest in what people remember, what they carry, and what comes after the headlines stop.
In later life, Brown has said he lives in Florida with his wife. He has also mentioned bad golf, 5K running, and painting landscapes in oil or acrylic, which feels about right for a writer whose books are full of motion, but whose eye is clearly tuned to places too. Alongside the novels, he has written award-winning screenplays, and one was optioned for film.
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