Fiction Women World War

Set between 1918 and 1931, Jessie comes of age on the heels of the Spanish flu epidemic, in a time where skirt hems rose, marriageable men were in short supply, and compliance with temperance laws fell. As modern medical, dental, and training programs strove to restore the lives of the war’s injured, Jessie is a student at the University of Toronto, a mourner in the fields of France, a tourist in European capitals, a love struck guide in the hills of Caledon, and a devoted family member in her home town of Brampton.

American Amelia Montague defied her family five years ago to marry the man she loved, but that decision cost her everything. Disowned by her family, and left a penniless widow after her husband’s death, Amelia becomes her cousin Wallis Simpson’s private secretary in France. With no other prospects available, Amelia has no choice but to succeed, and under their Aunt Bessie’s direction, hopes to have a positive influence on Wallis and the Duke of Windsor. During the next two years, Amelia realizes that not everything with the Windsors is glittering happiness.

Twenty-year-old Michel Bonnet lives on the edge of the law, finding work where he can breaking in horses on the outskirts of Paris. But when the Nazis invade, Michel takes refuge as a stowaway on a rickety train bound for the rural South of France. It’s a journey that will change his life forever. The train is property of Le Cirque Neumann - a travelling circus owned by the troubled and irritable showman Werner Neumann. Neumann offers Michel a job caring for the company’s horses - a lucky break, but with an unusual condition attached.

In 1939, Hitler's tyranny approaches western Poland. A prosperous Jewish family - Julius and Josefina Kohn and their two teenage children Peter and Suzanna - flee their homeland, embarking on an unexpected odyssey of 6,000 arduous miles. They evade Nazi capture, only to be arrested by the Soviets, who have invaded Poland from the east. Deported to northern Russia, they endure savage conditions during 18 months of forced labor in a prison camp, where death lurks around every corner.

January 1940: After a devastating tragedy, young Australian woman Lucie and her mother Yvonne are forced to leave home and flee to France. There they seek help from the only family they have left, Lucie’s uncle, Gérard. As the Second World War engulfs Europe, the two women find themselves trapped in German-occupied Paris, sharing a cramped apartment with the authoritarian Gérard and his extremist views. Drawing upon her artistic talents, Lucie risks her own safety to engage in small acts of defiance against the occupying Nazi forces and the collaborationist French regime.

1942, New York. As war rages in Europe, Lily Rose is grateful for her perfect life: a wealthy family who love her and a dream job working uptown as a restaurant chef. Times are changing for women, and Lily is determined to run her own kitchen one day. She hopes handsome Tom Morelli, son of Sicilian immigrants, will be at her side. Together they work late, dreaming up delicious meals for New Yorkers struggling with wartime rationing and the threat of sons and sweethearts being called up. Then Tom receives a devastating telegram that changes everything: He is drafted to fight in Italy.

When conflict photographer Jackson Swann dies, he leaves behind a conflict of his own making when his three daughters, each born to a different mother, discover that they’re now responsible for the family’s Oregon vineyard - and for a family they didn’t ask for.

In the final months of World War II, San Francisco newspaper secretary Ellie Morgan should be planning her wedding and subsequent exit from the newsroom into domestic life. Instead, Ellie, who harbors dreams of having her own column, is using all the skills she's learned as a would-be reporter to try to uncover any scrap of evidence that her missing pilot father is still alive. But when she discovers a stack of love letters from a woman who is not her mother in his possessions, she vows to find out the truth about the father she loves - and the woman who loved him back.

Set in Vienna from 1910 to 1946, All of You Every Single One is an atmospheric, original, and deeply moving novel about family, freedom, and how true love might survive impossible odds. Julia Lindqvist, a woman unhappily married to a famous Swedish playwright, leaves her husband to begin a passionate affair with a female tailor named Eve. The pair run away together and settle in the more liberal haven of Vienna, where they fall in love, navigate the challenges of their newfound independence, and find community in the city’s Jewish quarter.

Meet Nancy Youngblood, a blithe and vivid heroine of an investigating disposition. When Nancy inherits a minor interest in a factory soon to become vital to the winning of World War II, she sees it as a chance to get closer to Robert Dalhart, who has taken over the factory on his father's death. Nancy has always loved him but because they grew up together on the same block Robert thinks of her as a kid sister. But soon sabotage, murder, and strikes threaten the plant and Robert - who evidence suggests may be the culprit, perhaps as an agent of the German government.

In Secrets at Bletchley Park by Margaret Dickinson, two young women from very different backgrounds meet in the Second World War and are plunged into a life where security and discretion are paramount. But both have secrets of their own to hide.

1938: Magda has led a sheltered life in her small village until the day she is forced from her home by the invading Nazi army. Torn away from her family and the only place she has ever known, she is offered refuge in an alpine villa owned by brilliant Dr, Tauber and his talented, beautiful wife. But despite having friends in high places, the Jewish Taubers are living on borrowed time. When the Gestapo come to arrest them, Magda is asked to protect something more precious than the silver and jewels they leave behind. Their newborn son Samuel.

Devon, 1940: When 15-year-old Daisy is evacuated from her home in London, she knows she must look after her younger sister, Peggy. She is the only one who can reassure Peggy that life will go back to normal, reading to her from their one battered children’s book, ensuring she takes the cough medicine their mother tucked in the pocket of her gas mask bag.

As a young girl growing up in Vienna in the 1930s, Orly has an idyllic childhood filled with music. Her father plays the viola in the Philharmonic, her mother is a well-regarded opera singer, her beloved and charismatic older brother holds the neighborhood in his thrall, and most of her eccentric and wonderful extended family live nearby. Only vaguely aware of Hitler's rise or how her Jewish heritage will define her family's identity, Orly spends her days immersed in play with her best friend and upstairs neighbor, Anneliese.

The most ambitious of three sisters, Lorraine ‘Raine’ Linfoot always dreamed of becoming a pilot. As a spirited 17-year-old, she persuades her hero Doug Williams to teach her to fly. When war breaks out in 1939, Raine is determined to put her skills to good use. She enlists in the Air Transport Auxiliary, becoming one of a handful of brave female pilots flying fighter planes to the men on the front line.

Two estranged sisters, raised in Brooklyn and each burdened with her own shocking secret, are reunited at the Springfield Armory in the early days of WWII. While one sister lives in relative ease on the bucolic armory campus as an officer’s wife, the other arrives as a war widow and takes a position in the armory factories as a “soldier of production”. Resentment festers between the two, and secrets are shattered when a mysterious figure from the past reemerges in their lives.

1940: When the island of Guernsey is invaded by the Nazis, two sisters are determined to rebel in any way they can. But when forced to take in a German soldier, they are shocked to find a familiar face on their doorstep. 2016: Two generations later, Lucy returns to Guernsey after the death of a distant cousin. As she prepares the old family house for sale, Lucy discovers a box of handwritten notes, one word standing out: resistance. Lucy’s search for the author will uncover the story of a forgotten sister who vanished from the island one night, never to be seen again.

In 1943, movie producer Henrik Zoltan approaches Amelie Blake under the guise of offering the Hollywood star a leading part in his upcoming film, but he has a more meaningful role in mind. Amelie’s homeland of Sweden declared neutrality in the war, but Stockholm has become the “Casablanca of the North.” When top-secret atomic research goes missing in Sweden, the Allied forces scramble to recover the files before they fall into Nazi hands.

"Quelli che riecheggiano lassù, fra le cime, non sono tuoni. Il fragore delle bombe austriache scuote anche i villaggi, mille metri più giù. Restiamo soltanto noi donne, ed è a noi che il comando militare italiano chiede aiuto: alle nostre schiene, alle nostre gambe, alla nostra conoscenza di quelle vette e dei segreti per risalirle. Dobbiamo andare, altrimenti quei poveri ragazzi moriranno anche di fame. Questa guerra mi ha tolto tutto, lasciandomi solo la paura. Mi ha tolto il tempo di prendermi cura di mio padre malato, il tempo di leggere i libri che riem­piono la mia casa.

Angelina Green never knew her mother, who left her in a cardboard box by the East London docks on a freezing November night when she was a tiny baby. Saved by a local orphanage, she knows she owes her life to the kindness of others. And she’s determined to repay her debt by working as a nurse. Strong, kind and patient, Angelina is a natural on the ward. But when war breaks out in 1914 and she is sent to The Front, her courage is tested like never before....