Historical Fiction War Ii

An Affair of Spies is an action-packed tale of heroism and love in the face of unspeakable evil. Author Ronald H. Balson has applied his unmatched talent for evocative and painstakingly authentic storytelling to the high-stakes world of espionage and created his most thrilling novel yet.

The year is 1939 and Europe is hurtling toward war. Paul Muller is an intelligence agent trying to fend off threats from Germany, but also from Britain and France. Secret agreements reveal unexpected danger and new menacing entanglements as Switzerland becomes a target in the impending conflict. Muller uncovers plots and schemes to gain advantage by ruse and ploy—and violence.

1941, Poland. Though war rages around her and occupying German forces march steadily onward, 16-year-old Aleksandra has lived her life sheltered from danger. Until one day, she goes to school—never to return. Pushed roughly into a truck with other schoolgirls like her, a single ominous word tells her all she needs to know about her fate: Lebensborn.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt watches uneasily as the world heads rapidly down a dangerous path. The Japanese have waged an aggressive campaign against China, and they now begin to expand their ambitions to other parts of Asia. As their expansion efforts grow bolder, their enemies know that Japan's ultimate goal is total conquest over the region, especially when the Japanese align themselves with Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, who wage their own war of conquest across Europe.

As the Nazis march toward Paris in 1940, American ballerina Lucie Girard buys her favorite English-language bookstore to allow the Jewish owners to escape. Lucie struggles to run Green Leaf Books due to oppressive German laws and harsh conditions, but she finds a way to aid the resistance by passing secret messages between the pages of her books.

Through years of war and devastation, Tatiana and Alexander suffered the worst the twentieth century had to offer. Miraculously reunited in America, they now have a beautiful son, Anthony, the gift of a love strong enough to survive the most terrible upheavals. Though they are still young, the ordeals they endured have changed them-and after living apart in a world laid waste, they must now find a way to live together in postwar America.

Though her name is synonymous with elegance and chic, the iconic Coco Chanel had a complicated dark side, and in late August 1944, as World War II drew to a close, she was arrested and interrogated on charges of treason to France.

Olivia Dunne, a studious minister's daughter who dreams of being an archaeologist, never thought that the drama of World War II would affect her quiet life in Denver. An exhilarating flirtation reshapes her life, though, and she finds herself banished to a rural Colorado outpost, married to a man she hardly knows. Overwhelmed by loneliness, Olivia tentatively tries to establish a new life, finding much-needed friendship and solace in two Japanese American sisters who are living at a nearby internment camp.

After the success of the Normandy invasion, the Allied commanders are buoyantly confident that the war in Europe will be over in a matter of weeks, that Hitler and his battered army have no other option than surrender. But despite the advice of his best military minds, Hitler will hear no talk of defeat. In mid-December 1944, the Germans launch a desperate and ruthless counteroffensive in the Ardennes forest, utterly surprising the unprepared Americans who stand in their way.

Nineteen-year-old Libby moves to Berlin to escape her suffocating family - but instead of offering freedom, the city is under siege by the Nazis. Jewish books are burned, storefronts smashed and every day innocent people vanish into thin air. Libby cannot - will not - turn a blind eye. When Libby meets Harro, she knows there’s more to him than his dazzling smile and cornflower-blue eyes. The whip marks on his back, scars from the SS, tell his true story: He is a resistance fighter.

Venice, 1943: The world is at war, and Stella Jilani is leading a double life. By day, she works in the lion’s den as a typist for the Reich; by night, she risks her life as a messenger for the Italian resistance. Against all odds, Stella must impart Nazi secrets, smuggle essential supplies and produce an underground newspaper on her beloved typewriter. But when German commander General Breugal becomes suspicious, it seems he will stop at nothing to find the mole, and Stella knows her future could be in jeopardy.

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.

Matelda, the Cabrelli family’s matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother’s great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew....

Germany, 1941: “We live together, or we die together.” A novel that will stay with you forever, The Girl Who Survived tells the inspiring true story of Ilse Stein, a German Jew who was imprisoned in a ghetto - and who fell in love with the man she was supposed to loathe.

From the author of the award-winning Fugitive Colors and The Unbreakables, a gripping tale of a young, ambitious journalist embroiled in an international art scandal centered around a Nazi-looted masterpiece—forcing the ultimate showdown between passion and possession, lovers and liars, history and truth.

A war-weary Navy pilot confronts the deadly skies of the South Pacific, training Marine pilots and battling Soviets MiGs in the wake of the Vietnam WarFighter pilot Jake Grafton is adrift following combat in Vietnam. With no place in the States to call home, Grafton sticks to what he knows best: taking on the world’s most treacherous skies from the cockpit of a Grumman A-6 Intruder.

Promoted within the British intelligence service, Paul is sent to Algiers during a ceasefire announced by French General Darlan. But when a deadly new assignment pushes his skills to the limit, will he step up to the challenge of his new role? At Bletchley Park, Claire and her team of analysts discern from decoded messages that the Germans have employed a new type of radar that is decimating RAF bombers. And the messages she decodes grow more troubling by the hour.

"La carte postale est arrivée dans notre boîte aux lettres au milieu des traditionnelles cartes de vœux. Elle n'était pas signée, l'auteur avait voulu rester anonyme. Il y avait l'opéra Garnier d'un côté, et de l'autre, les prénoms des grands-parents de ma mère, de sa tante et son oncle, morts à Auschwitz en 1942. Vingt ans plus tard, j'ai décidé de savoir qui nous avait envoyé cette carte postale, en explorant toutes les hypothèses qui s'ouvraient à moi.

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller. This is the story of four Londoners, three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy.

Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While war ravages the city above her, Clara has risked everything she holds dear to turn the Bethnal Green tube station into the country’s only underground library. Down here, a secret community thrives with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a café, and a theater—offering shelter, solace, and escape from the bombs that fall upon their city. Along with her glamorous best friend and assistant Ruby Munroe, Clara ensures the library is the beating heart of life underground. As the war drags on, the women's determination is tested to the limits.