World War Ii Fiction

Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white—for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of eighteen hundred starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called the Arisan Maru, his survival doubtful.

On a freezing night in January 1941, a little Jewish girl is found on the steps of an apartment building in Bucharest. With Romania recently allied with the Nazis, the Jewish population is in grave danger, undergoing increasingly violent persecution. The girl is placed in an orphanage and eventually adopted by a wealthy, childless couple who name her Natalia. As she assimilates into her new life, she all but forgets the parents who were forced to leave her behind. They are even further from her mind when Romania falls under Soviet occupation.

Though war rages across mainland Europe and London is strafed by German aircraft, the little village of Pipley in Hertfordshire bustles along much as it always has. Olive Bright, 22, fills her days by helping at her father's veterinary practice and tending to her beloved racing pigeons. Desperate to do her bit, Olive hopes that the National Pigeon Service will enlist Bright Lofts' expertise and use their highly trained birds to deliver critical, coded messages for His Majesty's Forces.

Lina is just like any other 15-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys - until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia.

When a former teammate of Chunk’s is killed in a shocking ambush, rumors begin to fly that the Lion of Ramadi, the infamous Iraq War sniper who racked up dozens of American kills, has returned with a mission to target American SEALs. Chunk and his core team—Saw, a skilled and lethal sniper; Riker, who has an uncanny ability to escape death; and Whitney Watts, a former CIA analyst who sees patterns everyone else seems to miss—are mobilized to prosecute the threat.

Berlin, 1945: Ester Pasternak walked out of the gates of Auschwitz barely alive. She survived against devastating odds, but her heartbreaking journey is only just beginning. In the camp, Ester gave birth to a tiny fair-haired infant, only for her precious baby to be snatched from her and taken to a German family. Now the war is over, Ester longs to find her little girl.

Nineteen-year-old Libby moves to Berlin to escape her suffocating family - but instead of offering freedom, the city is under siege by the Nazis. Jewish books are burned, storefronts smashed and every day innocent people vanish into thin air. Libby cannot - will not - turn a blind eye. When Libby meets Harro, she knows there’s more to him than his dazzling smile and cornflower-blue eyes. The whip marks on his back, scars from the SS, tell his true story: He is a resistance fighter.

Berlin, 1930—When a wave of change sweeps a radical political party to power, Sofie von Meyer Rhodes’s academic husband benefits from the ambitions of its newly elected chancellor. Although Sofie and Jürgen do not share the social views growing popular in Hitler’s Germany, Jürgen’s position with its burgeoning rocket program changes their diminishing fortunes for the better. But as Sofie watches helplessly, her beloved Berlin begins to transform, forcing her to consider what they must sacrifice morally for their young family’s security, and what the price for their neutrality will be.

Ever since the Nazis came to power, violence has spread through the city Esther Spielmann once called home. Each night she prays her family will be spared. But when her husband and father are murdered alongside fellow Jews during Kristallnacht, she has no choice but to send her beloved son, Sascha, to safety. Esther’s heart breaks as she watches his thin legs trembling in the cold as he is ushered with the other crying children towards the Kindertransport.

Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades.

England, 1941: Life has always been cruel to Ethel. Raised in an orphanage by a merciless mistress, she never knew the meaning of love. And now she has fallen for the one man who is forbidden to her - Karl, a German held captive in the local prisoner-of-war camp. He might be the enemy, but he has her heart. When Ethel discovers she’s pregnant, she is labelled a traitor and shunned by all. The love of her life is torn away from her, but she vows to protect their precious daughter. But the unthinkable happens....

Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie. When the Nazis invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is persuade his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading “north,” where new jobs and safety await. Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy reassures passengers on the station platform every day.

Norway, 1940. Liv has lived a quiet life on her family farm, dreaming of a happy life after the war is finally over. But all of her dreams vanish when the Nazi soldiers arrive in her village and a senior officer see something special in her... something that Hitler and the high command in Berlin is desperate to have at any cost. England, 1968. Agnes, although made orphan from the war, has grown up happy in the quiet wealth of the English countryside, raised by her adoring grandfather to be a perfect lady.

Can a young war correspondent find herself and follow her heart? In this work of historical fiction, 20-something Annabella “Annie” March arrives in France in 1944 intending to write about the war. Soon, however, Annie begins to distance herself from her sometimes-mentor, sometimes-rival - the great Martha Gellhorn - and Gellhorn’s larger-than-life husband, the novelist Ernest Hemingway. She turns to photography in the hopes of making her own name and, to her delight, discovers that images come more easily than words.

London, July 1944. Editor Emmy Lake's career is soaring: Woman's Friend magazine is a huge success, and she is finally realizing her dream of becoming a War Correspondent. On the personal front, Emmy's husband Charles has been posted closer to home, and her good friends Bunty and Harold are planning their summer wedding in the countryside. They all know how lucky they are. But after nearly five years of war, the nation is struggling with loss, deprivation, and fear.

The Isle of Jersey was once a warm and neighborly community, but in 1943, German soldiers patrol the cobbled streets, imposing a harsh rule. Nazis have ordered Grace La Mottée, the island's only librarian, to destroy books that threaten the new regime. Instead, she hides the stories away in secret. Along with her headstrong best friend, she wants to fight back. So she forms the Wartime Book Club: a lifeline, offering fearful islanders the joy and escapism of reading.

Sophie was born to be a rebel, raised by parents who challenged the brutal Nazi regime. Determined to follow in their footsteps, she leaves for university, defying Hitler’s command for women to stay at home. She knows instantly that she isn’t alone, that there are more courageous souls like her who will fight against evil. But it is only a matter of time before the Gestapo closes in.... And when Sophie is imprisoned in an interrogation room, staring a Nazi officer in the eye, will she take their secrets to her grave?

Yorkshire, 1943. Lily Baines, a bright young debutante increasingly ground down by an endless war, has traded in her white gloves for a set of headphones. It’s her job to intercept enemy naval communications and send them to Bletchley Park for decryption. One night, she picks up a transmission that isn’t code at all—it’s a cry for help.

In this sweeping story based on the true experiences of nurses dubbed "the Angels of Bataan," three women shift in and out of each other's lives through the darkest days of the war, buoyed by their unwavering friendship and distant dreams of liberation.

German bombers are arriving daily, seeking to crush England. But in a rural Hampshire village, things have remained fairly quiet - until an elderly loner, Will Blackwell, is brutally murdered. The method of his killing bears the hallmarks of the traditional vanquishing of a witch, and indeed local legend claims that as a boy Blackwell encountered a ghostly black dog sent from the devil, who struck a bargain for Blackwell's soul.