War Military Women

Liverpool, 1940. When her childhood sweetheart, Johnny, is killed in action, Maxine Grey loses more than her husband - she loses her best friend. Desperate to make a difference in this awful war, Maxine takes a nursing job at London’s St Thomas’ hospital. She takes comfort in the attentions of a handsome surgeon, but Edwin Blake isn’t all he seems. And as the Blitz descends on the capital, Maxine faces more heartache. When she returns to Liverpool, she harbours a secret.

Daring Mathilde Carré has always dreamed of glory. When the handsome Armand invites her to become his second-in-command of Interallié, one of the founding circuits of the Resistance, she jumps at the chance. But when Armand falls for another woman, how far is Mathilde willing to go to exact her revenge?

Dans des archives de famille, Emmanuel Rougier découvre une petite enveloppe écrite au crayon provenant de la prison allemande d'Orléans. Elle est datée du 8 mars 1943 et signée d'une grand-tante : Madeleine Fauconneau du Fresne. Lettre dramatique d'une femme emprisonnée, isolée dans sa cellule, et qui parvenait malgré tout à rendre grâce à Dieu. D'investigations en découvertes, l'auteur tombe sur l'histoire extraordinaire de cette femme qui a refusé la défaite de 1940 puis sauvé de la déportation son amie Yvonne Netter, avocate juive et féministe, en organisant son évasion du camp de Pithiviers.

Kati and her younger sister, Ilonka, arrive in Canada with painful memories from the Holocaust, which has taken both of their parents. Their harrowing time alone in the Budapest ghetto is fresh in their minds, as are their fragile hopes to be adopted. But their lives in Toronto are far from what they expected, and full of broken promises. As the sisters navigate their new surroundings, they each grow fiercely strong and independent, while holding onto the comfort that they will be Never Far Apart.

The "absorbing and powerful" (Wall Street Journal) story of two pioneering suffragette doctors who shattered social expectations and transformed modern medicine during World War I. In No Man's Land, Wendy Moore illuminates this turbulent moment of global war and pandemic when women were, for the first time, allowed to operate on men. Their fortitude and brilliance serve as powerful reminders of what women can achieve against all odds.

In 1999, 30-year-old Nada Bakos moved from her lifelong home in Montana to Washington, DC, to join the CIA. Quickly realizing her affinity for intelligence work, Nada was determined to rise through the ranks of the agency first as an analyst and then as a Targeting Officer, eventually finding herself on the frontline of America's War against Islamic extremists. In this role, Nada was charged with determining if Iraq had a relationship with 9/11 and Al-Qaida, and finding the mastermind behind this terrorist activity: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The incredible account of Sister Betty Jeffrey OAM and the Australian war nurses who survived the bombing of evacuation ship SS Vyner Brooke in February 1942, and subsequently spent three years in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra. During those perilous years surviving in squalid conditions, Sister Jeffrey kept a secret diary of day-to-day events which, after the war, was turned into a hugely successful book and radio serial: White Coolies. Sisters in Captivity builds on those diaries.

Glamour, danger, liberation: in a Mad Men–era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up. Required to have a college education, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5′3" and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under 26 years of age at the time of hire.

Cuando Frankie McGrath, estudiante de enfermería de veinte años, oye por primera vez estas inesperadas palabras, siente una revelación. Criada en el idílico y soleado sur de California y protegida por sus conservadores padres, siempre se ha enorgullecido de hacer lo que se espera de ella, de ser una buena chica. Pero en 1966 el mundo está cambiando y, de repente, su vida parece abrirse a nuevas posibilidades. Cuando su hermano parte para combatir en Vietnam, ella se une de manera impulsiva al Cuerpo de Enfermeras del Ejército para seguirle.

In the late summer of 1943, when Italy changed sides in WWII and the Germans, now their enemies, occupied the north of the country, an Italian Resistance was born. Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca were four young Piedmontese women who joined the Resistance, living secretively in the mountains surrounding Turin. They were not alone. Between 1943 and 1945, as the Allies battled their way north, thousands of men and women throughout occupied Italy rose up and fought to liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators.

We are all too familiar with the stories of Jews who were tortured and killed in concentration camps throughout the Third Reich. But less is known about the persecution of Polish prisoners housed in Majdanek, a concentration and extermination camp on the outskirts of the city of Lublin in south-eastern Poland. The Counterfeit Countess tells this story through the lens of the efforts of one remarkable woman, herself a Jew, who passed as Polish aristocracy, became a lead official in a Polish relief organisation and an officer in the underground resistance movement known as the Polish Home Army.

During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding anti-homosexual policies and procedures of the military. In Coming Out Under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontations - not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed.

Combining vibrant novelistic storytelling with extensive research, interviews, and previously unpublished accounts, Simon Parkin describes for the first time the role that women played in developing the Allied strategy that, in the words of one admiral, "contributed in no small measure to the final defeat of Germany." Rich with unforgettable cinematic detail and larger-than-life characters, A Game of Birds and Wolves is a heart-wrenching tale of ingenuity, dedication, perseverance, and love, bringing to life the imagination and sacrifice required to defeat the Nazis at sea.

Kate Armstrong was an ordinary young woman eager to leave an abusive childhood behind her when she became the first female cadet admitted to the Royal Military College of Canada. As she struggled for survival in the ultimate boys’ club, she called on her fierce and humourous spirit to push back against the whims of a domineering and patriarchal organization. Later in life, feeling unfulfilled in her post-military career, she realized that finding her true path forward meant she had to go back to the beginning and revisit the truth of what she had experienced all those years ago.

By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands. In this riveting biography, Susan J. Eischeid explores how Maria Mandl, regarded locally as "a nice girl from a good family," came to embody the very worst of humanity.

In 1944, Benito Mussolini's daughter, Edda, gave Hitler and her father an ultimatum: release her husband, Galeazzo Ciano, from prison, or risk her leaking her husband's journals to the press. To avoid the peril of exposing Nazi lies, Hitler and Mussolini hunted for the diaries for months, determined to destroy them. Hilde Beetz, a German spy, was deployed to seduce Ciano to learn the diaries' location and take them from Edda. Drawing from in‑depth research and first-person interviews, Mazzeo gives listeners a riveting look into this little‑known moment in history.

Train to Nowhere is a war memoir seen through the sardonic eyes of Anita Leslie, a funny and vivacious young woman who reports on her experiences with a dry humour, finding the absurd alongside the tragic. Daughter of a baronet and first cousin once removed of Winston Churchill, she joined the Mechanised Transport Corps as a fully trained mechanic and ambulance driver during WWII, serving in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Italy, France and Germany.

Andrée Griotteray was nineteen when the Germans invaded France and occupied Paris, where she worked as a clerk in the passport office. When her younger brother, Alain, created a resistance network named Orion, Andrée joined his efforts, secretly typing up and printing copies of an underground newspaper, and stealing ID cards which allowed scores of Jewish citizens to escape persecution. Charming and pretty, Andrée nimbly avoided the unwanted attentions of German officers, even as she secretly began working as an undercover courier.

Have you ever heard about the "Hello Girls" of World War I? These heroic women worked as telephone switchboard operators for the U.S. military. Despite the dangers of war, they kept American officers in contact with their soldiers during battle, and spoke in French and English. Yet, "Hello Girls" weren't recognized for their wartime service. What historic year did women win the right to vote?

Ex-Army Civil Affairs specialist Jo Gunning is a loner. No commitments. No fixed address. She's enjoying her anonymity in Virginia when she crosses paths with a runaway teenage girl in need. Assisting the girl in getting home leads to a phone call for help, and a claim from the girl that her father is holding her hostage. As Jo searches for answers, she finds that nothing is what it seems, and no one is telling the truth.