First World War Fiction

Nineteen gut-wrenching reports from the front lines of the War of the Worlds, as logged by Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, H.P. Lovecraft, Winston Churchill, Jules Verne, and many of the other most famous writers of the time. The most popular and acclaimed science fiction writers of today relive the Martian invasion through the eyes of their famous predecessors.

1912. Fifteen-year-old Kate Truscott leaves her small Hampshire village to become a nursemaid to five children she's never met. She's looking forward to a new adventure. Life in town with the wealthy Winton family is different to anything Kate has known before. But she enjoys looking after her charges, becoming firm friends with Clara, the eldest daughter, and noticing that 18-year-old Philip, the eldest son, is so very handsome. But Kate knows that she would be considered an unacceptable match for a wealthy banker's son.

On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna. At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, 17 years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames.

In 1913, before there is a rumor of war in Europe, Matthias Wrenn and Con Hatchel, lifelong friends from Ballyrannel in the Irish midlands, decide to see the world at the expense of the king of England and join the British army. A year later, while en route to India, their troop ship is recalled and they soon find themselves in the European slaughterhouse that was World War I.

Everyone in Denmark knew that Yousef Ahmed, a refugee from Iraq, brutally murdered the right-wing politician Sanne Melgaard. So, when part-time blues musician, frustrated home renovator, and full-time private detective Gabriel Præst agrees to investigate the matter because his ex—the one who got away—asked him to, he knew it was a no-win case. But as Gabriel starts to ask questions, his face meets with the fists of Russian gangsters; the Danish prime minister asks him for a favor; and he starts to realize that something may be rotten in the state of Denmark.

A born storyteller, Charlie May's vivid eye for detail and warm good humour brings his experience in the trenches to life for a 21st-century audience. A journalist before the war and a born storyteller, May's diaries give a vivid picture of battalion life in and behind the trenches during the build-up to the greatest battle fought by a British army and are filled with the friendships and tensions, the home-sickness, frustrations, the fog of ignorance, the combination of boredom and terror to which every man that has ever fought could testify.

London, the late 19th century, the pinnacle of civilization’s achievements. Little did the people know that a vastly technologically superior race of Martians was about to descend upon earth to wreak havoc on mankind. H.G. Wells revolutionized the science fiction genre—menacing aliens, a population in total panic and disarray, and fascinating yet deadly weaponry. How will the pitiable humans survive this extraterrestrial calamity? Find out in H.G. Wells’ classic novel The War of the Worlds.

It is spring 1916, and a stalemate on Europe's western front has descended into horror. France and Great Britain are on one side of the barbed wire, a fierce German army is on the other. Jeff Shaara opens a window onto the otherworldly tableau of trench warfare, as seen through the eyes of a typical British soldier who experiences the bizarre and the horrible - a "Tommy" whose innocent youth is cast into the hell of a terrifying war.

The year is 1938 and Austria has been annexed by Nazi Germany. Klaus Lehner plays first violin for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and when the concertmaster is amongst other Jews expelled from Philharmonic, he sees the opportunity for a position he covets He is bitterly disappointed when he is passed over. In the wake of his disappointment, Klaus’s lover Eva, a virtuoso cellist, urges him to become a soloist.

It's 1918, and the Great War is entering its final phase. In Northern France, young Aimee has just found out that her mother is part of a spy network working with the British. After reluctantly befriending Marius, a German boy who has been left behind by his countrymen, she must try to help him get back behind German lines while evading traitor she has helped to discover.

Primera Guerra Mundial, marzo de 1916, Joseph Reavley, gravemente herido en el intento de rescatar a un compañero durante el combate, es enviado a casa, en Cambridgeshire, para recuperarse al lado de su hermana Hannah. La inesperada visita de un amigo común los involucra en un invento que podría neutralizar el efecto devastador de los submarinos alemanes, así como el asesinato de uno de los científicos implicados en el mismo.

Abril de 1915. La Primera Guerra Mundial sigue su implacable marcha. Entre las tropas británicas enviadas al frente, se hallan los hermanos Reavley. Joseph, el mayot de los tres, ejerce de capellán en las trincheras, mientras que Judith es conductora y traductora del general que está al mando del ejército británico.

A love story set against the backdrop of the First World War, the events in Lethbridge unfold in disparate locales, from London to Boston, from Maine to Niagara Falls, from the trenches of wartime France to the military hospitals of England. Yet the lives of its three protagonists come together in one place: the frontier western Canadian city of Lethbridge, Alberta. Inspired by a true story, Lethbridge author Terry McConnell tells the tale of an English lad abandoned by his family, and a young American escaping the tyranny of his own father.

Thousands of short stories were published during the First World War, which coincided with the heyday of the fiction magazine in Britain. Much of this material has never been republished since the end of the war and is virtually lost to the modern audience. This new collection is an important work of recovery, introducing little-known magazine short fiction - which was primarily written for a civilian readership - by major writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle as well as more neglected authors.

H.G. Wells set the standard for futuristic literature that teemed with both social commentary and a prescient view of the world to come. Here, we present The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds, two of the most popular and thrilling science fiction novels ever created. First, travel with a scientist named Griffin who develops an ingenious serum that can render people completely invisible. Then follow the narrator as he describes the unthinkable: a deadly and terrifying invasion of Earth by the inhabitants of Mars. Can mankind survive?

Hampshire, 1913. Amidst the glitz and glamour of England’s High Society, Sarah Trenwith is more of a wallflower living in the shadow of her beautiful sister Marianne. But as the war approaches Sarah will have to step out of the place society and her family have assigned her if she’s to do her part and claim the love she always dreamed of from afar.

H.G. Wells set the standard for futuristic literature that teemed with both social commentary and a prescient view of the world to come. Here, we present The Island of Doctor Moreau and The War of the Worlds, two of the most popular and thrilling science fiction novels ever created. First, meet Edward Prendick as he tries to navigate the island where he has been stranded, where the enigmatic Doctor Moreau conducts his unnatural experiments. Then follow the narrator as he describes the unthinkable: an invasion of Earth by the inhabitants of Mars. Can mankind survive?

Four years ago, when France fell to the Nazis, Juliette made the ultimate sacrifice, leaving behind her two precious children to join the Resistance and defend her country. Now a spy in Paris, she must work with Captain Daniel Diaz–an American agent she’s taken an instant dislike to–on a dangerous mission to uncover a deadly Nazi plot.

A fascinating collection of short stories by great writers that examine aspects of the first world war, from action in the trenches, to the psychological impact of war on individuals and their relationships, to heroic adventure stories, to ghosts and war graves. A wonderful collection!

While collecting driftwood on their local beach in Dorset, Ben and Sidney find a message in a bottle washed up on the shore. The message is written in rhyme - is it just a poem? Through a series of adventures, the boys, along with Sidney's twin sister, Vera, discover that there is much more to the message than meets the eye....