About
S.W. O'Connell is a retired US Army intelligence officer who has served in a wide variety of counterintelligence assignments around the world. Upon retirement, he combined his love and study of history with his military experiences to craft historical novels.
His Revolutionary War military action and espionage series, Yankee Doodle Spies, is his first foray into historical fiction. The series' first four novels are The Patriot Spy, The Cavalier Spy, The Winter Spy, and The North Spy. Each novel mixes historical and fictional characters and inserts fictional plots into actual historical events.
The Lafayette Circle is his first foray into international intrigue! This exciting and fast-paced novel celebrates the 200th anniversary of the epic journey across America by the Marquis de Lafayette in 1824. A glimpse at America approaching its 50th birthday, as teams of foreign assassins try to track down and kill the man celebrated in two nations and across the world.
Lovers of sci-fi via historic time travel will enjoy his pulse-racing Cold War espionage time travel novel, Envoy of the Lord. A Cold War effort to race the Soviets in time stumbles into old and new conspiracies against the West.
S.W. O'Connell is also the author of the Yankee Doodle Spies Blog, a series of non-fiction essays on the American Revolution and things connected to his writing, and authors a Facebook Page of the same name. You can also follow his X posts at @SWOConnell.
Featured Work
The Lafayette Circle
When Lafayette, at the invitation of President James Monroe, visited the United States in 1824 through 1825, the reaction of widespread adulation for the Guest of The Nation, the Hero of Two Worlds, was amazing and virtually unanimous in the United States. However, some of the crowned heads of Europe were less than enthusiastic about the popularity of this advocate for democracy and human rights. Did they have the resources to stage a highly public assassination? And who was there to prevent it? And why does history not record the attempt?
“In the spirit of Day of The Jackal and The Eagle Has Landed, S.W. O’Connell follows the plotters and, more importantly, The Lafayette Circle, a motley assortment of old clerics, shipless sailors, and come-as-you-are spooks who must save the man who was one of the icons of his age. This gripping story is a very timely snapshot of America in 1824 as we prepare to celebrate the bicentennial of Lafayette’s Farewell Tour.”
