Historical Fiction War Ii

For Stella Bled Lawrence, being wealthy and stylish in 1938 is exactly what it's cracked up to be. She's blissfully unaware of the rising tensions in Europe even as she travels to Vienna on the eve of the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Stella and her husband, Nicky, witness the night's atrocities firsthand. Even as they watch the horror, they never imagine it will touch them personally, a pair of wealthy Americans on their honeymoon, but touch them it does.

Sophie was born to be a rebel, raised by parents who challenged the brutal Nazi regime. Determined to follow in their footsteps, she leaves for university, defying Hitler’s command for women to stay at home. She knows instantly that she isn’t alone, that there are more courageous souls like her who will fight against evil. But it is only a matter of time before the Gestapo closes in.... And when Sophie is imprisoned in an interrogation room, staring a Nazi officer in the eye, will she take their secrets to her grave?

As Nazi troops occupy the City of Lights, American journalist Florence is determined to do everything she can to save her adopted home and the man she loves. Florence had arrived in Paris in 1937 and on a beautiful summer’s day met and fell in love with Otto, a Jewish artist from Austria, who had fled persecution in his homeland. But as swastikas are draped along the city’s wide boulevards, everything Otto was running from seems to have caught up with him. Both Florence and Otto begin lending their talents to the Resistance, working to sabotage the Germans right under their noses.

Based on the harrowing life of Eleonore Hodys, The Mistress of Auschwitz follows the true story of a political prisoner detained in the notorious concentration camp. While experiencing all the horrors of the holocaust, Eleonore turns to friendship for survival. Through companionship with another female prisoner, Eleonore must decide if she has the courage to join the resistance movement which is planning the overthrow of their wicked oppressors.

In a remote Newfoundland outpost at the onset of the Second World War, the young Catholic Wish Furey meets the passionate, independent 16-year-old Protestant Sadie Parsons. They begin an intense affair that is cut short as prejudice and mistrust drive Wish away, into the British Army and the war. At home in Newfoundland, Sadie turns her back on her family and moves to St. John's to wait for Wish - until she receives word that he is dead. Fifty years later, Sadie returns to Newfoundland to scatter her American husband's ashes and to face her past.

Sara Blum lives an idyllic life with her adoring parents in Vichy France. But her world comes crashing down when the Nazi occupation separates the family and forces the young Jewish girl into hiding. Her classmate Julien and his family will risk everything to ensure her survival, and, together, Sara and Julien manage to find beauty in a secret world of their creation.

In A Presumption of Death, Jill Paton Walsh tells how World War II changed the lives of Peter, Harriet and their growing family. The story opens in 1940. Harriet Vane - now Lady Peter Wimsey - has taken her children to safety in the country. But the war has followed them: glamorous RAF pilots and even more glamorous land-girls scandalise the villagers; the blackout makes the nighttime lanes as sinister as the back alleys of London.

September, 1940. Three women of the Checquy, the secret organization tasked with protecting Britain from supernatural threats, stand in the sky above London and see German aircraft approach. Forbidden by law to interfere, all they can do is watch as their city is bombed. Until Pamela breaks all the rules and brings down a Nazi bomber with her bare hands. The three resolve to tell no one about it, but they soon learn that a crew member is missing from the downed bomber. Charred corpses are discovered in nearby houses and it becomes apparent that the women have unwittingly unleashed a monster.

Sergeant Richard Sharpe witnesses a murderous act of treachery and, with Sir Arthur Wellesley, faces the Mahratta Horde. The paths of treachery all lead to the small village of Assaye. Outnumbered and outgunned, Wellesley, with a diminished British army, plunges his men into the white heat of battle. A battle that will make his reputation, and perhaps Sharpe's too.

France, 1916: Artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his young wife, Sophie, to fight at the front. When their small town falls to the Germans in the midst of World War I, Edouard’s portrait of Sophie draws the eye of the new Kommandant. As the officer’s dangerous obsession deepens, Sophie will risk everything - her family, her reputation, and her life - to see her husband again.

England, 1939: The Penrose sisters couldn't be more different. Skye is a daring and brash pilot, and Liberty is the one to defy her at every turn. Even if women aren't allowed in the Royal Air Force, Skye is determined to help the war effort. She's thrilled when it reunites her with her childhood soul mate, Nicholas. She's less thrilled to learn Nicholas is now engaged to an enigmatic Frenchwoman named Margaux Jourdan.

In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former soldier famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and met many times, talking and unraveling the story of Onoda’s long war.

Sixteen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give up her baby. She lives above a small rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep. When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the child that was taken from her. And in a moment that will change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into the snowy night.

In Auschwitz, every day is a fight for survival. Alma is inmate 50381, the number tattooed on her skin in pale blue ink. She is cooped up with thousands of others, torn from loved ones, trapped in a maze of barbed wire. Every day people disappear, never to be seen again. This tragic reality couldn’t be further from Alma’s previous life. An esteemed violinist, her performances left her audiences spellbound. But when the Nazis descend on Europe, none of that can save her....

1940, England: Evelyne Redfern, known as “The Parisian Orphan” as a child, is working on the line at a munitions factory in wartime London. When Mr. Fletcher, one of her father’s old friends, spots Evelyne on a night out, Evelyne finds herself plunged into the world of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s cabinet war rooms. However, shortly after she settles into her new role as a secretary, one of the girls at work is murdered, and Evelyne must use all of her amateur sleuthing expertise to find the killer.

Every so often a love story so captures our hearts that it becomes more than a story - it becomes an experience to remember forever. The Notebook is such a book. It is a celebration of how passion can be ageless and timeless, a tale that moves us to laughter and tears and makes us believe in true love all over again.... At 31, Noah Calhoun, back in coastal North Carolina after World War II, is haunted by images of the girl he lost more than a decade earlier.

March 19, 1945: The war in the Pacific approaches its apocalyptic climax. The largest wartime armada ever assembled, Task Force 58, is closing in on Okinawa; once taken, it will finally put American B-29 bombers in range of the home islands of Japan - and victory. Trial by Fire is the gripping novelization of how, against all odds, the sailors of the Franklin were able to save their ship, after three agonizing days of battling the flames that ultimately claimed the lives of 832 men and injured 300 more.

On an otherwise ordinary morning in 1943, Helene Hannemann is preparing her five children for the day when the German police arrive at her home. Helene's worst fears come true when the police, under strict orders from the SS, demand that her children and husband, all of Romani heritage, be taken into custody. Though Helene is German and safe from the forces invading her home, she refuses to leave her family - sealing her fate in a way she never could have imagined.

The story of the restorative power of art in one man’s life, set against the sweep of the twentieth century—from Toronto in the ’20s and ’30s, through the killing fields of World War II, to 1960s Sicily.

Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, are simple, ordinary people until 1939, when the Nazis invade their homeland. Providing shelter to Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland is a death sentence, but Franciszka and Helena do exactly that. In their tiny home in Sokal, they hide a Jewish family in a loft above their pigsty, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a makeshift cellar under the kitchen, and a defecting German soldier in the attic - each party completely unknown to the others.