World War Ii Fiction

The year is 1939 and Europe is hurtling toward war. Paul Muller is an intelligence agent trying to fend off threats from Germany, but also from Britain and France. Secret agreements reveal unexpected danger and new menacing entanglements as Switzerland becomes a target in the impending conflict. Muller uncovers plots and schemes to gain advantage by ruse and ploy—and violence.

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.

It is September 1940 - a year into the war - and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around the Epping Forest home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents to influenza as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons with Bertie. All her birds are extraordinary to Susan - loyal, intelligent, beautiful - but none more so than Duchess, who shares a special bond with Susan and an unusual curiosity about the human world.

The island of Tarawa, a tiny spit of sand out in the middle of the Pacific, teemed with five hundred pillboxes filled with artillery pieces and highly motivated Japanese soldiers. Their commanding officer encouraged his troops, saying, “It would take one million men one hundred years” to conquer Tarawa. They were convinced that the Americans would be slaughtered before they ever got ashore.

In 1942, Kay Summersby's life is changed forever when she is conscripted to drive General Eisenhower on his fact-finding visit to wartime London. Despite Eisenhower's marriage to Mamie, the pair takes an immediate liking to each other, and he buys Kay a rare wartime luxury: a box of chocolates. So begins a tumultuous relationship that, against all military regulation, sees Kay traveling with Eisenhower on missions to far-flung places before the final assault on Nazi Germany.

The 164th Army Division has come to reinforce the beleaguered First Marine Division, which has been fighting the Japanese for months. It will be the Division's first combat test as well as it's bloodiest. The fighting has come to a standstill with neither side giving ground. The 164th is desperate to break the stalemate and the mounting casualties. Their possible solution comes in the form of a British Coast Watcher. Thomas Welch offers to take a small unit into the jungle to meet up with a force of natives to instigate a guerrilla war against the Japanese rear.

A young sergeant, recovered from battle against Rommel's Afrika Korps, is appointed leader of a dozen know-it-all draftees being poured into the Army's replacement pool. He toughens them into an effective team. As they land at Utah Beach, the Wehrmacht hands out its own bloody lessons. In minutes, one is dead and a second wounded, the onset of a pitiless 10-month ordeal. In horrific combat from Normandy through the Bulge to the Elbe River, they learn to defeat a skilled and hardened enemy. All pay a steep price.

Identical twins Maggie and Tillie are thriving in 1940s London. Waitresses in one of the city’s finest institutions and both with budding romances, the war could not feel farther away. But, slowly, the tides begin to change. The war in Europe is creeping toward the UK, and the men are being called to aid in military efforts. Tillie’s fiancé Colin joins the RAF, flying dangerous missions over Germany, and Maggie’s childhood love Micah finds himself far away in France, with no way to return.

Abandoned by her father and neglected by her self-centered, unstable mother, Sheila McGee cannot wait to escape the drudgery of her mill village life in Northern Ireland. Her classic Irish beauty helps her win the 1941 Linen Queen competition, and the prize money that goes with it finally gives her the opportunity she's been dreaming of. But Sheila does not count on the impact of the Belfast blitz which brings World War II to her doorstep. Now even her good looks are useless in the face of travel restrictions, and her earlier resolve is eroded by her ma's fear of being left alone.

Maria von Wedemeyer knows the realities of war. Her beloved father and brother have both been killed on the battlefield. The last thing this spirited young woman needs is to fall for a man under constant surveillance by the Gestapo. How can she give another piece of her heart to a man so likely to share the same final fate? Yet when Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an old family friend, comes to comfort the von Wedemeyers after their losses, she discovers that love isn't always logical.

Dr. Richard Buckley returns home to his wife and beloved hometown of Dunderrig, weary and heart-sick over the horror and pointlessness of The Great War. Soon, trouble is coming from all sides—Richard’s unhappy wife leaves Dunderrig, and a Nazi occupied Europe marches steadily closer to home. In the blink of an eye, the peace he’d craved and enjoyed since his days on the battlefield are gone. Meantime, James and Juliet come of age in a world on the brink of chaos, where the remnants of rebellion at home have snowballed into the horrors of yet another world war.

1944. Lasse de se sentir impuissante devant les atrocités de la guerre, Alice décide de passer à l’action : elle déménage à Montréal dans une pension de famille et devient calculatrice au laboratoire de l’Université de Montréal, où travaille déjà son frère Simon. Loin de son mont Saint-Hilaire et de sa classe d’élèves du primaire, elle doit se familiariser avec cette grande ville. Elle pourra compter sur l’amitié de sa colocataire Deborah, qui lui fera découvrir l’univers des boîtes de nuit. Alice s’avoue enfin qu’elle rêve de vivre l’amour, au risque d’être écorchée.

Abigail, the story of a headstrong teenager growing up during World War II, is the most beloved of Magda Szabo's books in her native Hungary. Gina is the only child of a general, a widower who has long been happy to spoil his bright and willful daughter. Gina is devastated when the general tells her that he must go away on a mission and that he will be sending her to boarding school in the country. She is even more aghast at the grim religious institution to which she soon finds herself consigned.

Summer, 1939. British journalist John Russell has just been granted American citizenship in exchange for agreeing to work for American intelligence when his girlfriend, Effi, is arrested by the Gestapo. Russell hoped his new nationality would let him safely stay in Berlin with Effi and his son, but now he’s being blackmailed. To free Effi, he must agree to work for the Nazis. They know he has Soviet connections and want him to pass them false intelligence. Russell consents, but secretly offers his services to the Soviets instead.

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.

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.

The Battle of Britain defined the future for Britain, Europe, and America. Bluebirds tells the story of four ordinary young men who are thrown together as Hitler plunges the European continent into its darkest hours. Andrew Francis and Gerry Donaldson were born on different sides of the Atlantic just before The Great War. Together with the mildly psychotic Bryan Hale, they fly Spitfires through the summer of 1940.

Inspired by the stories told by her father about his German childhood and letters between her grandparents that were hidden in an attic wall for 50 years, Motherland is a novel that attempts to reckon with the paradox of the author's father - a product of her grandparents' fiercely protective love - and their status as passive Nazi-sympathizers known as Mitläufer.

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.

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.