World War Ii Fiction

Ivy Zimmerman is successfully navigating her life as a young Mennonite woman, one generation removed from her parents' Old Order Amish upbringing. But when her parents are killed in a tragic accident, Ivy's way of life is upended. As she deals with her grief, her sisters' needs, and her Dawdi and Mammi's strict rules, Ivy finds solace in both an upcoming trip to Germany for an international Mennonite youth gathering and in her great-aunt's story about Ivy's great-grandmother's visit to Germany in the late 1930s.

France, 1939: A talented singer, Ruth Lacroix has left Maine to live with her aunt and uncle, dreaming of performing at the Casino de Paris. But with the outbreak of war, and the heartbreaking news that her cousin has been killed by German forces, that goal is supplanted by another—to support France in any way she can.

In a remote corner of France, Jewish refugee Ella Rosenthal has finally found a safe haven. It has been three years since she and her little sister, Hanni, left their parents to flee Nazi Germany, and they have been pursued and adrift in the chaos of war ever since. Now, they shelter among one hundred other young refugees in a derelict castle overseen by the Swiss Red Cross.

In this sequel to The Mistress of Auschwitz, the story continues with Eleonore as she struggles to cope with the impact of her harrowing detainment at the notorious concentration camp. Although she has been liberated by the Allies, she is not yet free from the horrors that she witnessed. Striving to heal from the trauma, Eleonore searches for meaning as she begins a new life.

As Hitler’s troops sweep into Vienna, Austrian Max Dornbach promises to help his Jewish friends hide their most valuable possessions from the Nazis, smuggling them to his family’s summer estate near the picturesque village of Hallstatt. He enlists the help of Annika Knopf, his childhood friend and the caretaker’s daughter. Eighty years later, Callie Randall is mostly content with her quiet life, running a bookstore with her sister and reaching out into the world through her blog. Then she finds a cryptic list in an old edition of Bambi that connects her to Annika’s story.

England, 1942. The Nazis' relentless Blitz may have paused, but London's nightly blackouts continue. Now, under the cover of darkness, a madman is brutally killing and mutilating young women in eerie and exact re-creations of Jack the Ripper's crimes. What's more, he's targeting women who are reporting for duty to be Winston Churchill's spies and saboteurs abroad. The officers at MI5 quickly realize they need the help of Special Agent Maggie Hope to find the killer dubbed "the Blackout Beast". A trap is set.

1942. When Helda Dahlstrøm flees her abusive husband and Nazi-occupied Norway with her eight-year-old son she doesn't know if they'll make it out alive. In her desperate journey to safety she'll find safety on the rocky shores of the Shetland Islands, rescued by Canadian Flight Sergeant Bill Gauthier. As WWII's destruction rages at their doorsteps, can love find its way through the rubble?

Paris, 1939: The Nazis think Éliane can't understand German. They’re wrong. They think she’s merely cataloging art in a Louvre museum and unaware they’re stealing national treasures for their private collections. They have no idea she’s carefully decoding their notes and smuggling information to the Resistance. But Éliane is playing a dangerous game. Does she dare trust the man she once loved with her secrets, or will he only betray her once again?

In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Dorothy Thom, Spelman graduate, librarian and Francophile, joins the Women’s Army Corps wanting to do her part for the war effort. Longing for adventure, she has one question for the recruiter: “Do you think I’ll get to go abroad?” As Dorothy and her sister WACs discover, life in the Army is an adventure filled with unexpected deprivations and culture shock. Women from all levels of society, secretaries, teachers, and sharecroppers, work together to navigate a military segregated by race and gender.

At the close of World War II, a shell-shocked solider, Jan Jovic, was forced to inflict a game of life and death on a peaceful Bosnian community. In a few short hours, this young man was confronted by more love - and hate - than most experience in a lifetime. Years later, Jan has become a world-renowned writer with widespread influence in the United States, his past buried deep in his memory. Until at the most inopportune time, the game Jan witnessed comes back to haunt him...and unwittingly leads him to a beautiful but broken woman caught in an underworld of crime.

Sisters Alice and Jenny are in their early 20s when the Germans occupy their home of Jersey. Alice, a nurse, is called to work in the German hospital, unaware that she will find a great love but that she will make an even greater sacrifice and be sent to a place across the seas where she will witness unbearable suffering. Meanwhile her sister, Jenny, is drawn into a circle of islanders who decide to rise up and resist the occupiers. For both sisters, the war will cause them to make extraordinary choices, experience unimaginable heartbreak and emerge forever changed....

Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director during the summer of 1944. A javelin thrower and weightlifter, he is disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As the devastating disease begins to ravage Bucky’s playground, Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: fear, panic, anger, bewilderment, suffering, and pain.

As the war clouds gather over Europe, the Roby family are thankful to have started their new life in Wivenhoe safe from German bombs…for the moment at least. And with the safe arrival of baby Grace, family life at Harbour House seems to be settling down. But Emily Roby finds life stifling. She’s not keen on her new baby sister, doesn’t like her new school and feels as though sometimes her parents still treat her as a baby, but also a grown up when it suits them! Emily’s only friend is Nancy, the new girl working at Harbour House.

Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she and her baby brother, Oskar, were sent out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. For Oskar, though, their new family is the only one he remembers. When a woman from a Jewish reclamation organization seizes them, believing she has their best interest at heart, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves.

Winter 1939: Danusha and her family are forced to flee their home when the Nazis invade Poland. Danusha’s mother, Anna, changes her name and secures a position as a housekeeper in a German doctor’s mansion in Kraków where Gestapo meetings are hosted in the kitchen. Her secret is their salvation, but what Danusha remembers most is the solitude, with only her baby brother and the girl in the mirror for company.

London, 1946. The city struggles to rebuild itself after the devastation of the Blitz. Food is rationed, good jobs are scarce, and even the most honest families are forced to take a bit of “crooked” just to survive. Alice Diamond, the Queen of Thieves, rules over her all-female gang with a bejeweled fist. Her “hoisters” are expert shoplifters, the scourge of London’s upscale boutiques and departments stores.

1941. Steven Katz is the son of prosperous landowners in rural California. Although his parents don’t approve, he’s found true friends in Nick, Suki, and Ollie, sons of field workers. The group is inseparable. But Steven is in turmoil. He’s beginning to acknowledge that his feelings for Nick amount to more than friendship. When the bombing of Pearl Harbor draws the US into World War II, Suki and his family are forced to leave their home for the internment camp at Manzanar. Ollie enlists in the army and ships out. And Nick must flee.

France, 1938. While Hitler rebuilds Germany and French and English leaders focus on appeasement, one man risks everything to smuggle information out of Munich - and into the hands of a young woman. Evelyn Ainsworth is enjoying a carefree summer with her relatives in the high society of Paris. When her father stops to visit on his way from London to Prague, she never dreams that one favor for him will change her life forever. For beneath the glittering gaiety on the continent, a menacing shadow is growing.

When a beautiful English-speaking young woman named Anya is recruited to be a Russian spy working with the Nazi party, her first thought is that it means she can escape a terrifying situation at home. But when she finds herself sent to work as a land girl in a beautiful corner of England and begins to make friends—ones she knows she may have to betray—she fears she’s made a terrible mistake. The only person she can turn to is her fellow informer, Nikolai, and she finds herself impossibly drawn to his quiet intensity. But being together increases the risk to them both.

London, 1940. When nurse Elsie offers to send a reassuring letter to the family of a patient, she has an idea. She begins a book of last letters: messages to be sent on to wounded soldiers’ loved ones should the very worst come to pass so that no one is left without a final goodbye. London, present day. Stephanie has a lot of people she’d like to speak to: her estranged brother, to whom her last words were in anger; her nan, whose dementia means she is only occasionally lucid enough to talk.