Historical Fiction War Ii

The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France—a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence. Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It’s a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them.

September, 1939. The six Zaks siblings watch in silent horror as the Wehrmacht marches into their quiet hometown in southern Poland. Concerned for their survival, Yisrael Zaks leads his wife Haiya and his brothers Volf and Avraham toward the Russian border. But their escape does not go unhindered; and as they are captured by the invading German forces, they can hear their father’s last commandment still echoing behind them: “Never break the family apart. And whatever you do: never, ever leave any one of your siblings behind.”

1945, Auschwitz: I stumble out of the gates, tightly grasping the hands of two smaller children. Hunger swirls in my stomach and the barren landscape swims before my eyes. I can barely believe it. We’re free. We survived. But what happens now… Sixteen-year-old Tasha Ancel turns to take one last look at the imposing place that stole her freedom and her childhood. She has no idea how she continued to live when so many others did not. For the first time in months, her heart beats with hope for her future and that of the smaller children who cling to her now.

August 1939: London is dismal under the weight of impending war with Germany as Hitler’s forces continue to sweep across Europe. Into this uncertain maelstrom steps Grace Bennett, young and ready for a fresh start in the bustling city streets she’s always dreamed of - and miles away from her troubled past in the countryside. With aspirations of working at a department store, Grace never imagined she’d wind up employed at Primrose Hill, an offbeat bookshop nestled in the heart of the city - after all, she’s never been much of a reader.

As the war begins, Hanna Rombauer, a young German woman, is sent to live with her aunt and uncle after her mother’s death. Thrown into a life of luxury she never expected, Hanna soon finds herself unwillingly matched with an SS officer twenty years her senior. The independence that her mother lovingly fostered in her is considered highly inappropriate as the future wife of an up-and-coming officer and she is sent to a “bride school.” There, in a posh villa on the outskirts of town, Hanna is taught how to be a “proper” German wife.

A riveting story of World War II and the courage of one young woman as she is drafted into Churchill's overseas spy network, aiding the French Resistance behind enemy lines and working to liberate Nazi-occupied Paris.

Poland 1938. Eve of the World War II. Rivka sends her husband and three beloved children to the United States, where they will find safe shelter from the war. She tells everyone that she is staying behind in order to care for her aging parents but her real reason is completely different. Beyond her work as librarian, Rivka serves as a spy for the Jewish underground, a critical role in the changing reality in Europe.

For fans of best-selling WWII fiction comes a powerful novel from Lynn Austin about three women whose lives are instantly changed when the Nazis invade the neutral Netherlands, forcing each into a complicated dance of choice and consequence.

New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.

The Palazzo Colombina is home to the Uccello family: three generations of men, trapped together in the dusty palace on Venice's Grand Canal. Awkward 15-year-old Nico. His distant, business-focused father. And his beloved grandfather, Paolo. Paolo is dying. But before he passes, he has secrets he's waited his whole life to share.

1943. Alice Fafard, vingt ans, étudie à l’École normale pour devenir enseignante. Elle suit avec un mélange de résignation et de désenchantement une voie déjà toute tracée. Son Brevet obtenu, elle cherche un poste dans une école de la région, en attendant de trouver un prétendant en cette époque où les hommes de son âge se font rares. Pourtant, derrière ses airs tranquilles se cache une grande passionnée de mathématiques, un domaine dans lequel elle excelle. Plus que tout, Alice veut vivre pleinement, goûter à la liberté au-delà des limites imposées aux femmes.

With the end of the Second World War in sight, the Allies begin to divide up the spoils and it proves to be a dangerous game. The British have become aware that, contrary to what's been agreed, the Soviet Union is intent on controlling Austria once the Second World War ends. And Major Edgar is given the job of establishing an espionage unit in Vienna. He sends in a married Swiss couple - Rolf Eder and Katharina Hoch - who, in fact, have only met each other a week before their journey. Their job is to track down Austria's most respected politician and bring him over to the British cause.

The battle at Stalingrad during World War II has been called the bloodiest campaign in the history of war. Success was measured in meters, and corpses piled high amid the charred wreckage of the Russian city. In this grisly setting, David L. Robbins stages an unforgettable contest. On the Russian side is Zaitsev, the Hare, who has been trained since childhood in hunting and tracking. As a sniper, he kills a German with each bullet. Berlin has sent its best marksman, the Headmaster, to find and kill the Hare. The Headmaster's accuracy is phenomenal, and his cunning is legendary.

Nobody leaves Auschwitz alive. Mala, inmate 19880, understood that the moment she stepped off the cattle train into the depths of hell. Edward, inmate 531, is a camp veteran and a political prisoner. They are locked up for no other sin than simply existing. But when they meet, the dark shadow of Auschwitz is lit by a glimmer of hope. Edward makes Mala believe in the impossible. That despite being surrounded by electric wire, machine guns topping endless watchtowers and searchlights roaming the ground, they will leave this death camp.

So if your child, nephew, family-friend or anyone you know can't get enough of WWII, this audiobook is perfect for them to not only discover some brand new history; but they'll also learn important morals of kindness, friendship, bravery, and doing the right thing.

Emily Emerson is used to being alone; her dad ran out on the family when she was just a kid, her mom died when she was 17, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she's laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely at sea until the day she receives a beautiful, haunting painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. That woman is recognizable as her grandmother - and the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, "He always loved her."

Rudi Graf is an engineer who always dreamed of sending rockets to the moon. But instead, he finds himself working alongside Wernher von Braun, launching V2 rockets at London for the Nazis from a bleak seaside town in occupied Holland. As the SS increases its scrutiny of the project, Graf, an engineer more than a soldier, has to muster all of his willpower to toe the party line. And when rumors of a defector circulate through the German ranks, Graf becomes a prime suspect.

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.

Rome, 1943. With the fall of Italy's Fascist government and the Nazi regime occupying the streets of Rome, British ballerina Julia Bradbury is stranded and forced to take refuge at a hospital on Tiber Island. But when she learns of a deadly sickness sweeping through the quarantine wards--a fake disease known only as Syndrome K--she is drawn into one of the greatest cons in history. Alongside hospital staff, friars of the adjoining church, and two Allied medics, Julia risks everything to rescue Jewish Italians from the deadly clutches of the Holocaust.