Literary Fiction War

The first in a gripping new series of detective novels set at the birth of Stalin’s Russia. It is the time of the Great Terror. Inspector Pekkala – known as the Emerald Eye – was the most famous detective in all Russia. He was the favourite of the Tsar. Now he is the prisoner of the men he once hunted. Like millions of others, he has been sent to the gulags in Siberia and, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, he is as good as dead....

Bangladesh, 1971: the war of independence from Pakistan has torn through peaceful villages and turned life upside down. In the midst of war, one young girl holds on as she discovers the world’s unpredictability. During her father’s prolonged absence, she reminisces about the essence of her abbu, an esteemed professor, loving community leader, and now unexpected warrior. She is moved by his quiet determination to preserve Bengali language and culture in a struggle for autonomy.

In the final months of World War II, a clandestine group known as The Choir smuggles thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Rome Escape Line. When an unidentified airman falls from the sky, The Choir is plunged into lethal danger, and the survival of the Escape Line itself is threatened.

Written at the turn of the 19th century, before "science fiction" existed as a genre, H.G. Wells' creation was a new departure in literature. The author's deep devotion to social reform led him to use the idea of an extraterrestrial invasion to theorize about a possible violent upheaval in society - instead of "Martians" think "Bolsheviks."

Fleeing the chaos of World War I and the terror of the Soviet Revolution, practical, sensible Pearl Kahn and her lovestruck, impulsive younger sibling Frieda sail for America to join their sister in New York. But discriminatory new immigration laws bar their entry, and the young women are turned back at Ellis Island. With few options, Pearl and Frieda head for Havana, Cuba, convinced they will find a way to overcome this setback.

The Trojan War is over, and Odysseus, the cunning King of Ithaca, sets out for home, his wife Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. It proves a long, 10-year journey, fraught with dangers.

On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna. At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, 17 years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames.

Eastern Europe, August 1942. The Khazar kaganate, an isolated nation of Turkic warrior Jews, lies between the Pontus Euxinus (the Black Sea) and the Khazar Sea (the Caspian). It also happens to lie between a belligerent nation to the west that the Khazars call Germania - and a city the rest of the world calls Stalingrad. After years of Jewish refugees streaming across the border from Europa, fleeing the war, Germania launches its siege of Khazaria. Only Esther, the daughter of the nation's chief policy adviser, sees the ominous implications of Germania's disregard for Jewish lives.

"Masterful...a classic parable of the human condition," said Publishers Weekly about Ethan Canin's For Kings and Planets, and the same can be said about Canin's brilliant new novel. Breathtaking in its suspense and beauty, Carry Me Across the Water tells the story of a complex man's extraordinary life, lived against the backdrop of the central years of the twentieth century.

Mallory, Miller and Andrea are united into a lethally effective team. Their mission: to silence the impregnable guns set in the tall cliffs of Navarone. On their success or failure rests one of the most critical offensives of the Second World War.

This unforgettable, very short fictional memoir relates the incredible suffering of Gershon and his Jewish family in Europe. The inspirational short, historical fiction story about a survivor, tells the remarkable courage and determination during his struggle to survive. With the onset of World War II, Gershon’s life changes completely. His loving family understands that their happiness has come to a brutal end when forced out of their home and into a ghetto. They have no idea what awaits them, but they know that doing nothing is not an option.

Renowned author Yoel Blum reluctantly agrees to visit his birthplace of Amsterdam to promote his books, despite promising his late mother that he would never return to that city. While touring the Jewish Historical Museum with his wife, Yoel stumbles upon footage portraying prewar Dutch Jewry and is astonished to see the youthful face of his beloved mother staring back at him, posing with his father, his older sister…and an infant he doesn’t recognize.

In his workbook, a New York City novelist records the contents of his teeming brain - sketches for stories, accounts of his love affairs, riffs on the meanings of popular songs.... He is a virtual repository of the predominant ideas and historical disasters of the age. But now he has found a story he thinks may become his next novel: The large brass cross that hung behind the altar of St. Timothy's, a run-down Episcopal church in lower Manhattan, has disappeared...and even more mysteriously reappeared on the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism, on the Upper West Side.

Germany, 1943. Rosa Sauer’s parents are gone, and her husband, Gregor, is far away, fighting on the front lines of WWII. Alone, she has little choice but to leave war-torn Berlin behind and live with her in-laws in a village near the Wolfschanze, the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s hidden headquarters. Convinced the enemy wants to poison him, Hitler conscripts 10 women, including Rosa, to be his food tasters. Even though food is a luxury, eating the decadent feasts Hitler will soon be served is an act of torture - after each meal, the women must wait an hour to see if they will die.

The Iberian Peninsula, 1809. French troops led by one of Napoleon's best generals are amassing on the border. Wellington's outnumbered force and his unreliable Spanish allies need to pick off the smaller French units if they are to stand their ground. For that they need information: accurate intelligence on numbers, arms, and whereabouts. That's where Captain Keane and his company of reformed scouting officers are invaluable tools--despite being unpopular with the regular soldiers.

It's the summer of 1959, and something magical can be witnessed at the end of the pier in beach town Brighton, England. Jack Robbins, Ronnie Deane, and Evie White are performing in a seaside variety show, starring as Jack Robinson, the compere comedian, and The Great Pablo and Eve, a magic act. By the end of the summer, Evie's glinting engagement ring will be flung to the bottom of the ocean, and one of the trifecta will vanish forever.

A captivating and thought-provoking listen, War and Peace chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the lasting impact it had on five aristocratic families. It will take you on a soul-stirring journey as we follow several interconnected characters of the Tsarist society during the early 19th century as they navigate through love, fears, and personal struggles against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.

In the tradition of Paullina Simons comes an unforgettable story of a mother and daughter from a remarkable new writer. Beginning in a small village under Japanese occupation on the Chinese-Russian border in the final days of World War II, White Gardenia tells the story of a Russian mother and daughter separated by war.

From the green countryside of England and the gray canyons of Wall Street come two unlikely heroes: one a pigeon and the other a soldier. Answering the call to serve in the war to end all wars, neither Cher Ami, the messenger bird, nor Charles Whittlesey, the army officer, can anticipate how their lives will briefly intersect in a chaotic battle in the forests of France, where their wills will be tested, their fates will be shaped, and their lives will emerge forever altered.

Set in Vienna from 1910 to 1946, All of You Every Single One is an atmospheric, original, and deeply moving novel about family, freedom, and how true love might survive impossible odds. Julia Lindqvist, a woman unhappily married to a famous Swedish playwright, leaves her husband to begin a passionate affair with a female tailor named Eve. The pair run away together and settle in the more liberal haven of Vienna, where they fall in love, navigate the challenges of their newfound independence, and find community in the city’s Jewish quarter.