Fiction Women World War

After World War II, Mathilde leaves France for Morocco to be with her husband, whom she met while he was fighting for the French army. A spirited young woman, she now finds herself a farmer’s wife, her vitality sapped by the isolation, the harsh climate, and the mistrust she inspires as a foreigner. But she refuses to be subjugated or confined to her role as mother of a growing family.

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.

Cliffehaven, June 1944. As the planes continue to circle over Cliffehaven, Peggy Reilly’s sister, Doris, must seek refuge after a V-1 blast destroys her home. Rita, Sarah and the other residents at Beach View Boarding House quickly find their peace disturbed, and it’s not long before even Peggy loses her patience. But with more bad news to come, will Doris finally be forced to swallow her pride? Meanwhile Peggy’s father-in-law, Ron Reilly, is delighted when his sweetheart, Rosie, returns home. Until a heartbreaking confession suggests things may never be the same between them.

November, 1941. She’s never even seen the ocean before, but Eva Cassidy has her reasons for making the crossing to Hawaii, and they run a lot deeper than escaping a harsh Michigan winter. Newly enlisted as an Army Corps nurse, Eva is stunned by the splendor she experiences aboard the steamship SS Lurline; even more so by Lt. Clark Spencer, a man she is drawn to but who clearly has secrets of his own. But Eva’s past - and the future she’s trying to create - means that she’s not free to follow her heart.

There was rarely a time when Phoenix Yuan-Whyller’s mother, Rain, didn’t live with her. Even when Phoenix got married, Rain, who followed her from China to Toronto, came to share Phoenix’s life. Now at the age of eighty-three, Rain’s unexpected death ushers in a heartrending separation.

2010, San Francisco. Anna Young is content with her life, running a bustling deli and taking care of her adored grandfather Max, who raised her. Max has never spoken of his past until he hands over an old map, the plans to a grand house just north of Berlin. With a shaking finger, he points to it and says, “I left something behind under the floorboards. Please bring it home before I die.”

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.

When the Nazis march onto the cobbled streets of Colmar on November 1st 1940, Josef, a Jewish violin maker, gathers his wife and daughters closely to him and tells them everything will be alright. But one year later, three sharp knocks on the door at midnight turn his 17-year-old daughter Sarah’s world upside down. As the oldest child, Sarah must be the first to leave her family, to make her escape in a perilous journey across France via Paris to Poitiers. In the mountains she finds herself in terrible danger and meets Ralf, a German deserter, who risks his own life to save her.

It's the spring of 1917, and change is in the air. American women have done something remarkable: They've banded together to create military-style training camps for women who want to serve. These so-called National Service Schools prove irresistible to the Kopp sisters, who leave their farm in New Jersey to join up.

Berlin, 1938. Samuel Weiss and Max von Hofmannsthal were best friends until the cruel antisemitism of Nazi Germany seeped into Berlin and tore their friendship apart. As Max rises in the ranks of the Nazi SS, Sam and his Jewish family find themselves simply struggling to survive.

When a Quaker Kindertransport chaperone is murdered in the East End of London, Britain’s counterintelligence spymaster tasks Olivia Denis to join the group rescuing children from Nazi Germany. Olivia must find not only a killer, but a traitor relaying sensitive material to the enemy. Once they reach Berlin, Olivia discovers she must rescue the family of an imprisoned British spy before she leaves the next day.

Desperate to be reunited with her husband, Daniel, Elica walks into the dreaded den of the ruthless Gestapo. She's ready to sacrifice anything for their love. Anna and her family find themselves at the mercy of Anna's heart-throb, Ulf. Ulf's obsession with Anna puts him in a quandary—between his loyalty to the Fuhrer and his burning desire for the forbidden fruit.

In Allison Montclair's The Lady from Burma, murder once again stalks the proprietors of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau in the surprisingly dangerous landscape of post-World War II London.

1944, New York City. Judy Washington is tired of having to work at the Bronx Slave Market, cleaning white women’s houses for next to nothing. She dreams of a bigger life, but with her husband fighting overseas, it’s up to her and her mother to earn enough for food and rent. When she’s recruited to join the Women’s Army Corps—offering a steady paycheck and the chance to see the world—Judy jumps at the opportunity.

At the close of World War II, a shell-shocked solider, Jan Jovic, was forced to inflict a game of life and death on a peaceful Bosnian community. In a few short hours, this young man was confronted by more love - and hate - than most experience in a lifetime. Years later, Jan has become a world-renowned writer with widespread influence in the United States, his past buried deep in his memory. Until at the most inopportune time, the game Jan witnessed comes back to haunt him...and unwittingly leads him to a beautiful but broken woman caught in an underworld of crime.

In April 1943 a young woman washes ashore on a deserted beach in Cornwall, England. With shorn hair and a number stitched on her tattered chemise, Alice is the survivor of a ship torpedoed by a German U-boat. She's found by the mysterious Viscount Jack Trewella, who suspects that she's a prisoner of war or a spy. But the secret Alice asks Jack to keep is one he could never have guessed, and it creates an intimate bond he never expected.

The Colley family is made of modest farmers in the Missouri Ozarks. Although Southerners, the Colleys try to remain neutral, a fact ignored by the Union militia who confiscate their livestock, burn their farm, and arrest their daughter, Adair, on charges of “enemy collaboration”. Yet as this innocent young woman soon discovers, fate can have a double edge. While imprisoned, she falls in love with her interrogator, a Union major who helps her escape.

What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known that the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured commonplace book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age.

Vibrant and scrappy Maggie McCleod tried not to get fired from her wartime orchestra, but her sharp tongue landed her in trouble, so an overseas adventure with the USO’s camp show promises a chance at a fresh start. Wealthy and elegant Catherine Duquette signs with the USO to leave behind her restrictive life of privilege and to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of the handsome pilot whose letters mysteriously stopped arriving. The two women are joined by an eclectic group of performers.

JANUARY 1942. THE AVALLON HOTEL AND SPA offers elegance and sophistication in an increasingly ugly world. Run with precision by June Hudson, the hotel’s West Virginia born-and-bred general manager, the Avallon is where high society goes to see and be seen, and where the mountain sweetwater in the fountains and spas can wash away all your troubles. June was trained by the Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, and she has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war.