Historical Fiction War Ii

Paris, 1944. “Traitor!” yells the crowd as they push me down onto a stool. “Nazi collaborator.” Tears blur my vision as the razor grazes my scalp, waves of blonde hair falling to the ground. As men paint a swastika across my face, I hold onto one small glimmer of hope. They have no idea who I am.

The German occupation is over. The Channel Islands, the only captured territory within the British Isles, are finally liberated. But the people of Jersey are left as scarred as the landscape. No longer a “summerland” holiday paradise, the island now boils with tension as locals seek revenge on anyone suspected of collaborating with the enemy during the war. Nineteen-year-old Jean Parris, still adjusting to this fractious peace, is shocked to learn that Hazel, a teacher who lives over her dad’s shop, may be responsible for her father’s wartime arrest.

BERLIN, 1939. The dreams that Amanda Sternberg and her husband, Julius, had for their daughters are shattered when the Nazis descend on Berlin, burning down their beloved family bookshop and sending Julius to a concentration camp. Desperate to save her children, Amanda flees toward the south of France, where the widow of an old friend of her husband’s has agreed to take her in. Along the way, a refugee ship headed for Cuba offers another chance at escape and there, at the dock, Amanda is forced to make an impossible choice that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

May 1941: German bombs drop on Dublin taking Sarah Gillespie’s family and home. Days later, the man she loves leaves Ireland to enlist. With nothing to keep her in Ireland and a burning desire to help the war effort, Sarah seeks refuge with relatives in England. But before long, her father’s dark past threatens to catch up with her. Sarah is asked to prove her loyalty to Britain through a special mission. Her courage could save lives. But it could also come at the cost of her own.

June 1940. France has fallen to the Nazis, and Britain may be next—but to many Americans, the war is something happening “over there.” Veronica Grace has just graduated from college; she and her mother, Violet, are looking for a fresh start in sunny Los Angeles. After a blunder cost her a prestigious career opportunity in New York, Veronica is relieved to take a typing job in L.A.—only to realize that she’s working for one of the area’s most vicious propagandists. Overnight, Veronica is exposed to the dark underbelly of her new home, where Nazis are recruiting Americans.

In the frigid winter of 1944, amidst the chaos of the Battle of the Bulge, US sniper Caje Cole fights for survival in the encircled town of Bastogne. With Panzer tanks and a deadly enemy sniper on his heels, Cole and his squad are given a high-stakes mission: escorting a captured German officer to headquarters for interrogation. But this is no ordinary prisoner—he's wanted for war crimes by the Americans and considered a traitor by his own countrymen.

At Heim Hochland, a Nazi breeding home in Bavaria, three women’s fates are irrevocably intertwined. Gundi is a pregnant university student from Berlin. An Aryan beauty, she’s secretly a member of a resistance group. Hilde, only eighteen, is a true believer in the cause and is thrilled to carry a Nazi official’s child. And Irma, a forty-four-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after personal devastation. All three have everything to lose.

The attack on Pearl Harbor swept America into the raging heart of the war. The stormy South Pacific presented a daring new challenge, and the men of the Corps were ready to fight. An elite fraternity united by a glorious tradition of courage and honor, the Marine Raiders were bound to a triumphant destiny.

September 1939. London is in blackout; war has been declared, but Dulcie Treadwell can think only of her heartbreak over American broadcaster, Glenn Reeves, who didn’t say goodbye before leaving for Berlin. Posted to Bletchley Park, Dulcie must concentrate on helping the war effort by cracking the German Enigma codes. The hours are long and the conditions tough, with little recognition from above. Until she breaks her first code. Dulcie finally settles into something she was born to do. But just as she’s proving her worth, a shocking betrayal leads to Dulcie’s brutal dismissal.

1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape.

London, 1944/45. Kate Henderson is an energetic and spirited young woman. As a trained paramedic and ambulance driver she does her work courageously and with determination, even though underneath she is still wrestling with grief after witnessing the shooting death of her diplomat father seven years earlier. Her father’s murder was never properly investigated and it remains unsolved. Kate’s life is interrupted once more when she wakes up one night to the sound of the air raid alarm and the terror whistles of a bomb’s stabilizers screaming toward the roof of her house.

France, 1944. Deep in the river valley of the Dordogne, in an old stone cottage on the edge of a beautiful village, three sisters long for the end of the war. Hélène, the eldest, is trying her hardest to steer her family to safety, even as the Nazi occupation becomes more threatening. Elise, the rebel, is determined to help the Resistance, whatever the cost. And Florence, the dreamer, just yearns for a world where France is free. Then, one dark night, the Allies come knocking for help.

In the 21st century, Germany's Third Reich continues to thrive after its victory in World War II - keeping most of Europe and North America under its heel. But within the heart of the Nazi regime, a secret lives. Under a perfect Aryan facade, Jews survive - living their lives, raising their families, and fearing discovery....

On a clear December morning in 1937, at the famous gold clock in Grand Central Terminal, Joe Reynolds, a hardworking railroad man from Queens, meets a vibrant young woman who seems mysteriously out of place. Nora Lansing is a Manhattan socialite and an aspiring artist whose flapper clothing, pearl earrings, and talk of the Roaring Twenties don’t seem to match the bleak mood of Depression-era New York. Captivated by Nora from her first electric touch, Joe despairs when he tries to walk her home and she disappears. Finding her again will become the focus of his love and his life.

On an April day in 1937, the sky opens and fire rains down upon the small Spanish town of Guernica. Seventeen-year-old Sibi and her family are caught up in the horror. Griff, an American military attaché, pulls Sibi from the wreckage, and it’s only the first time he saves her life in a span of hours. When Germany claims no involvement in the attack, insisting the Spanish Republic was responsible, Griff guides Sibi to lie to Nazi officials. If she or her sisters reveal that they saw planes bearing swastikas, the gestapo will silence them—by any means necessary.

While Art Turner and the men of USS Bull Shark struggle in the Pacific against the Japanese and against their own inner demons, Captain Pat Jarvis and the men of USs Megalodon have a German tiger by the tail in the Caribbean… and it’s only a matter of time before he rips them to pieces.

The Nazis have taken control of Austria, and wealthy widower Leopold Lang faces a difficult decision: Join the ranks of the foreign power that has taken over his homeland or flee with his children to safety. Leopold makes his choice — but too late. His family is ripped apart, never to be reunited. But decades later, fate brings together the descendants of this broken dynasty in the place where it all began—Falcon Point.

Two orphaned girls become found family amidst the horrors of WWII in a gripping and heart-wrenching tale of friendship, loss and survival against the odds which sweeps the listener across wartime Europe to Budapest from the mountains of Scotland.

Calliope Adham—young, strong-willed, and recently widowed—is schoolmistress in the village of Molyvos when Hitler's army invades Greece in 1941. Well-read and linguistically gifted, she is recruited by the Germans to act as their liaison officer. It is the beginning of a personal and national saga that will last for several decades. Calliope's wartime duties bring her into close contact with Lieutenant Lorenz Umbreit, the Wehrmacht commander. The schoolmistress is an active member of the Greek Resistance, yet her friendship with the German blossoms against all odds.

From the author of The School for German Brides, this captivating historical novel set in nineteenth-century and post-World War II Paris follows two fierce women of the same family, generations apart, who find that their futures lie in the four walls of a simple bakery in a tiny corner of Montmartre.