World War Ii Fiction

London, November 1941. Following the departure of the formidable Henrietta Bird from Woman’s Friend magazine, things are looking up for Emmeline Lake as she takes on the new challenges as a wartime advice columnist. Her relationship with boyfriend Charles is blossoming, while Emmy’s best friend Bunty, still reeling from the very worst of the Blitz, is bravely looking to the future. Together, the friends are determined to Make a Go of It.

September 1939. London is in blackout; war has been declared, but Dulcie Treadwell can think only of her heartbreak over American broadcaster, Glenn Reeves, who didn’t say goodbye before leaving for Berlin. Posted to Bletchley Park, Dulcie must concentrate on helping the war effort by cracking the German Enigma codes. The hours are long and the conditions tough, with little recognition from above. Until she breaks her first code. Dulcie finally settles into something she was born to do. But just as she’s proving her worth, a shocking betrayal leads to Dulcie’s brutal dismissal.

Auschwitz, 1942: Her entire body trembles as she stands in the infirmary and realises the horrifying truth. She’s a nurse, but instead of saving her fellow inmates, she’s about to be ordered to kill them… Surrounded by thick fog from the nearby forest, Orli stumbles from the cattle truck onto the frostbitten grounds of Auschwitz. Betrayed by her own husband for being a German resistance fighter, she has no one left in the world, and this is now her home.

As war rages across the world, Princess Elizabeth comes face to face with the dashing naval officer she first met in London nine years before. One of the youngest first lieutenants in the Royal Navy, Philip represents everything she has always been taught to avoid. Instability. Audacity. Adventure. But when the king learns of their relationship, the suitability of the foreign prince is questioned by all at court. He is the risk she has never been allowed to take. The risk not even the shadow of the crown will stop her from taking.

Germany, 1941: I stroke the blonde curl away from my daughter’s face, and my heart swells. I never imagined having children, and I never thought I’d love someone this much. Clara is the most precious thing to me. I whisper to her that I will do everything I can to keep her safe.

1936. Anglo-Breton translator Annie Wrenne is working in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. Annie becomes a nurse on the front line, but after falling in love with a patient, she ends up pregnant - and abandoned - by a man she thought she knew. Annie passes the rest of the war in a haze, her only consolation her relationship with mysterious Republican fighter Carlos Ortega. Annie finds herself caught up in Ortega’s world, a web of intrigue, which leads to her recruitment into MI5.

Milan, 1492: When a 16-year-old beauty becomes the mistress of the Duke of Milan, she must fight for her place in the palace—and against those who want her out. Soon, she finds herself sitting before Leonardo da Vinci, who wants to ensure his own place in the palace by painting his most ambitious portrait to date. Munich, World War II: After a modest conservator unwittingly places a priceless Italian Renaissance portrait into the hands of a high-ranking Nazi, she risks her life to recover it, working with an American soldier, part of the famed Monuments Men team, to get it back.

Rhoda Middleton suspects her husband Peter is having an affair. But when Rhoda tracks the mysterious woman down, she finds she is not his lover after all, but the wife of his wartime best friend, Archie Foster. There is only one problem - Rhoda has never even heard of Archie Foster.

England, 1944. On a classified Navy base situated atop the cliffs of Dover, telegraph operator Katie Kingston toils day and night intercepting and translating enemy transmissions in Morse Code, hunting for the next piece of information that will give Britain the edge in the ongoing war. But as the entire base quietly prepares for Britain’s most daring operation yet, Katie has more at stake than her fellow telegraphists. Because among the allied forces due to land on the shores of Normandy in Operation Overlord is Special Forces Lt. Ciaran McElroy, an Irishman who has stolen her heart.

While the Battle of Berlin in 1945 is widely known, the horrific story of the Halbe Kessel remains largely untold. In April 1945, victorious Soviet forces encircled 80,000 men of the German 9th Army in the Halbe area, South of Berlin, together with many thousands of German women and children. The German troops, desperate to avoid Soviet capture, battled furiously to break out toward the West, where they could surrender to the comparative safety of the Americans.

Winter 1944: Months after the Liberation of France, ex-Boston cop Billy Boyle finds himself in a Paris reeling from the carnage it has endured but hopeful that an end to war is in sight. When Billy finds a rare piece of artwork after a tense shoot-out in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, he thinks it could be connected to the Syndicat du Renard, a shadowy network of Nazi sympathizers known to be smuggling stolen artwork out of France. Trailing the Syndicat, Billy discovers that someone with a high level of communications clearance may be using his position to aid the thieves.

For Stella Bled Lawrence, being wealthy and stylish in 1938 is exactly what it's cracked up to be. She's blissfully unaware of the rising tensions in Europe even as she travels to Vienna on the eve of the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Stella and her husband, Nicky, witness the night's atrocities firsthand. Even as they watch the horror, they never imagine it will touch them personally, a pair of wealthy Americans on their honeymoon, but touch them it does.

Consequences is a love-story-times-three that opens on the eve of the Second World War, with a chance meeting in St. James' Park, London. Wholly in love, Lorna and Matt leave the city for a cottage in a rural Somerset village. Their intimate life together is shattered when the war begins and by Matt's tragic death in action.

It's 1940, and the British Expeditionary Force is caught ill prepared for the onslaught of the German Blitzkrieg and its deadly panzers. Caught in the desperate retreat to Dunkirk, Tom Harsker, son of a World War One ace, discovers that he is a natural soldier. Escaping to England and with complete disaster narrowly averted, Tom is selected to join the newly formed Commandos.

In The Commodore, the navy in 1942-1943 is fighting a losing battle against Japan for control of the Solomon Islands. Vice Admiral William "Bull" Halsey is tasked with changing the course of the war. Halsey, a maverick, goes on the offensive and appoints a host of new destroyer commanders, including a wild card named Harmon Wolf. An American Indian from a Minnesota reservation, Wolf has never fit in with the traditional navy officer corps. But under Halsey, Wolf's aggressive tactics and gambling nature bring immediate results.

Liesl and Erich have found a home in Ireland away from the chaos of war-ravaged Europe. As the dark news of what has happened to the Jews filters through, they are torn—love for their mother and their home on one hand, and the profound sense of peace and belonging they have in Ballycreggan on the other. Like all of the other children who escaped Nazi territory on the Kindertransport, they must wait to hear the fate of their loved ones.

It’s July 1946, and after a decade of Depression and war, life in America is returning to normal. But for Charlotte and Mary Oswald, one tumultuous summer will unearth all their secrets and upend their world, once again. Charlotte Oswald’s life is dictated by rules. Where she can go. Whom she can speak to. How she can spend her long, dull summer days. It’s a small, closeted existence, but necessary to protect Charlotte, who has suffered from debilitating fits since childhood.

The Bahamas, 1941. Newly widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the duke and duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Or so Lulu imagines.

It is September 1940. Maggie and her young siblings, Grace and Billy, are living in the East End of London with their mother. Their father has been killed at Dunkirk, and their mother goes into hospital to have her fourth child, leaving the children with a neighbor. In one of the worst bombing raids of the war, their home is destroyed, and the neighbor is killed. Bewildered and frightened, the children wander the streets until they are taken in by some nuns.

Calliope Adham—young, strong-willed, and recently widowed—is schoolmistress in the village of Molyvos when Hitler's army invades Greece in 1941. Well-read and linguistically gifted, she is recruited by the Germans to act as their liaison officer. It is the beginning of a personal and national saga that will last for several decades. Calliope's wartime duties bring her into close contact with Lieutenant Lorenz Umbreit, the Wehrmacht commander. The schoolmistress is an active member of the Greek Resistance, yet her friendship with the German blossoms against all odds.