Historical Fiction War Ii

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.

Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest - and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives.

Paullina Simons's internationally bestselling blockbuster The Bronze Horseman told the heart-soaring tale of a young Russian woman's transcendent love affair with a Red Army soldier during the siege of Leningrad in the dark days of World War Two. The epic story continues in Tatiana and Alexander—a novel of the enduring power of love and commitment against the devastating forces of war and the equally dangerous forces of keeping the peace. A sweeping, intensely compelling romantic historical saga, Tatiana and Alexander is a Russian Thorn Birds and a truly unforgettable listening experience.

The second novel in Wilbur Smith's The Courtneys series, The Sound of Thunder is a powerful story of family tragedy set against the backdrop of the ravages of the Second Boer War. 'Only once in his life had Sean met a man whose strength matched his own - and now, again, they were pitted against each other....' Sean Courtney, impulsive adventurer of When the Lion Feeds, returns from the wildnerness a rich man - until he is robbed by the Boers of his wagons, his gold and the girl he loves.

At her assisted living center in Wedding Tree, Louisiana, 93-year-old Amelie O'Connor is in the habit of leaving her door open for friends. One day she receives an unexpected visitor - Kat Thompson, the ex-fiancée of her late husband, Jack. Kat and Jack were high school sweethearts who planned to marry when Jack returned from France after World War II. But in a cruel twist of fate, their plans were irrevocably derailed when a desperate French girl overheard an American officer's confession in a Parisian church...

Germany, 1944. Gazing through the barbed wire, Antonia makes a vow: She will not let her family die in this camp. She will find a way for them to escape, even if it costs her own life. The Nazis have taken everything from her, but they can never take away her courage.... Would you go into a prison camp if there was a chance to save your family? When resistance fighter Antonia’s beloved sister and her children are taken by the Nazis, she knows what she must do. Only she is strong enough to save the family who have been her whole world since she was separated from her true love, Viktor

It's 1942. America have just joined the war. Greyhound, an international convoy of 37 allied ships, is in operation. As Captain Ernest Krause leads his first command of a US destroyer, the convoy ploughs through icy, submarine-infested North Atlantic seas. All the while hotly pursued by wolf packs of Nazi U-boats. Grappling with his newfound superiority and haunting self-doubt in 48 hours of desperate peril, Captain Krause's hopeless mission is doomed to fail. But armed with extraordinary courage and grit, hope may just be on the horizon.

Teddy’s job is to process visa applications, and by 1939, refugees from Nazi-conquered Poland, Austria, and other countries are desperate to secure safe passage to America. As Hitler sweeps through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Holland, the screws tighten and law after virulent law is passed to threaten the lives, indeed the very existence of the Jewish people. When Teddy and his girlfriend Sara are introduced to an orphaned young girl named Katy, who has been abandoned on the grounds of a nursery school, they agree to adopt her.

The only survivor of a brutal battle, driven by a desperate need to see his family again.... Rome, 107 BC. Quintus Sertorius fought while the enemy slaughtered 90,000 of his brethren in the city’s bloodiest defeat. Battling night terrors and survivor’s guilt, he vows to preserve his beloved Rome and embarks on a covert mission deep into enemy territory. Sertorius grows his beard and disguises himself in the garb of a Gaul, all the while his stomach churns with fear of discovery. But in order to gain vital information about the invaders, he must sink deeper into their ranks.

Martin Amis first tackled the Holocaust in 1991 with his bestselling novel Time's Arrow. He returns again to the Shoah with this astonishing portrayal of life in "the zone of interest," or "kat zet"—the Nazis' euphemism for Auschwitz. The narrative rotates among three main characters: Paul Doll, the crass, drunken camp commandant; Thomsen, nephew of Hitler's private secretary, in love with Doll's wife; and Szmul, one of the Jewish prisoners charged with disposing of the bodies.

As the tulips bloom and the Nazis tighten their grip across the city, the last signs of Dutch resistance are being swept away. Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labor camp or join the camp brothel. On the other side of the barbed wire, SS officer Karl Müller arrives at the camp hoping to live up to his father’s expectations of wartime glory. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, this meeting changes their lives forever.

In the 1950s, Oscar Hammerstein is asked to write the lyrics to a musical based on the life of a woman named Maria von Trapp. He’s intrigued to learn that she was once a novice who hoped to live quietly as an Austrian nun before her abbey sent her away to teach a widowed baron’s sickly child. What should have been a ten-month assignment, however, unexpectedly turned into a marriage proposal. And when the family was forced to flee their home to escape the Nazis, it was Maria who instructed them on how to survive using nothing but the power of their voices.

Inspired by a little-known chapter of World War II history, a young Protestant girl and her Jewish neighbor are caught up in the terrible wave of hate sweeping the globe on the eve of war in this powerful love story that’s perfect for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

1943. SOE agent Larry Hadley leaves Cairo for German- and Italian-occupied Greece. His mission is to liaise with the Poseidon network under the leadership of the White Rose. It’s not long before he finds himself involved with a beautiful and intriguing woman whose past is shrouded in mystery. In a country where hardship, destruction, and political instability threaten to split the Resistance, and terror and moral ambiguity live side by side, Larry’s instincts tell him something is wrong.

Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.

Germany, 1939: Annaliese is a doctor’s wife, living in an elegant grey stone house with ivy creeping over the balcony. But when her husband is ordered to work at the Dachau labor camp, her ordinary life is turned upside down by the horrors of war. And Annaliese finds herself in grave danger when she dares to fight for love and freedom. America, 1989: Turning the pages of the newspaper, Annaliese gasps when she recognizes the face of a man she thought she’d never see again....

Gracianna is inspired by true events in the life of Trini Amador’s great-grandmother, Gracianna Lasaga. As an adult, Amador was haunted by the vivid memory of finding a loaded German Luger tucked away in a nightstand while wandering his great-grandmother’s home in Southern California. He was only four years old at the time. Decades later, Amador would delve into the remarkable odyssey of his Gracianna’s past, a road that led him to an incredible surprise. In Gracianna, Amador weaves fact and fiction to tell his great-grandmother’s story.

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.

A gripping and authentic World War II naval adventure by a master storyteller.

London, 1940. Bombs fall and Josie Banks’ world crumbles around her. Her overbearing husband, Stan, is unreachable, called to service. Her home, a ruin of rubble and ash. Josie’s beloved tearoom boss has been killed, and Josie herself is injured, with nothing left and nowhere to go. Evacuated to the English countryside, Josie ends up at the estate of the aristocratic Miss Harcourt, a reluctant host to the survivors of the Blitz. Now a threat looms larger than anyone imagined. And a dangerous secret is about to upend Josie’s life again.