The Greater German Reich: Volume 1 — Shaun Stafford

It began in 1995, with die Stunde X, an alternative history novel set in a Great Britain overthrown by the Nazi regime in 1941. This opening novel, from a writer in his early twenties, was brutal and shocking.It was twenty years before a follow-up novel, nach Schema F, was written, set a couple of years after the first, and providing us with an unlikely heroine in ex-Gestapo officer Ellen Brauchitsch. A third novel, Jetzt schlägt's aber 13, followed in 2017, and concluded what was to be the first trilogy in the Greater German Reich trilogy.Now, gathered together in one volume, this first trilogy is presented as both a Kindle version and a limited edition (100 copies) paperback version. Shaun Stafford writes:About this omnibusThis omnibus compiles the first three novels in my Greater German Reich series. I wrote die Stunde X in 1994, when I was 24/25, and I never envisaged writing a sequel, let alone three more books. I have to be honest and say that it was difficult to write the first sequel, nach Schema F, which was published twenty years after die Stunde X. Difficult, because my writing style has altered over those intervening twenty years. Difficult also because I had made a couple of mistakes in that first book (Gestapo officers were known by civilian police ranks rather than SS ranks, for example). Die Stunde X was very episodic, and most chapters ended on a cliff-hanger, more so as the pages turned. For the sequel, I tried to develop the characters, but obviously they're nowhere near as fully developed as they would be for my other novels, which are more character led. For the books in the Greater German Reich series, the focus is on the scenario - the Nazis being the overlords in an occupied Great Britain - and on the plot. These first three novels, die Stunde X, nach Schema F and Jetzt schlägt's aber 13 are primarily centred around the German occupation of Great Britain. The fourth book in the series is focused on a conflict between Germany and the US, so it's a definite shift in location, even though the overall scenario remains the same. It seemed right to issue this omnibus now, a couple of years after Jetzt schlägt's aber 13 was published, perhaps as a Kindle introduction to the series now that the next few books will be based on the American continent, but more than that, it seems right to issue this limited edition paperback omnibus so that people who enjoyed these first three books, undoubtedly on their Kindles, can have a thick volume on their bookshelves to demonstrate their literary taste to visitors.