World War Ii Women

This is the story of Nancy Harkness Love who, early in World War II, recruited and led the first group of 28 women to fly military aircraft for the US Army. Love was hooked on flight at an early age. At 16, after just four hours of instruction, she flew solo “a rather broken down Fleet biplane that my barnstorming instructor imported from parts unknown”. The year was 1930: Record-setting aviator Jacqueline Cochran (and Love’s future rival) had not yet learned to fly, and the most famous woman pilot of all time, Amelia Earhart, had yet to make her acclaimed solo Atlantic flight.

What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known that the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured commonplace book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age.

When Jess bumps into Milan unexpectedly, sparks are reignited, and she wonders if she made a mistake finishing with him in Amberton. But matters are complicated when a film company arrives at Bentley Priory to make a morale-boosting film about the RAF. The lead actor is none other than Leonard Steele, a man from Jess’ past who could ruin everything she has worked so hard to build.

Vittoria is a noble Jewish woman living in northern Italy. With the onset of World War II, her life changes completely. When the Nazis arrive in the quiet town, the entire family is forced to flee and cross the border to Switzerland using fake identities. But not everything goes according the plan. One of her children is not allowed to cross the border with the rest of the family and must be left behind. Now, Vittoria must make a critical decision that could scar her and the family forever.

Ellie Carver arrives at her grandmother's bedside expecting to find her silently slipping away. Instead, the beloved woman begins speaking. Of a secret past and castle ruins forgotten by time. Of a hidden chapel that served as a rendezvous for the French Resistance in World War II. Of lost love and deep regret....

Mary DiNunzio gets a terrifying telephone call while she's working late, then goes home to find a shadow lurking at her front door. When a lawyer close to her turns up dead, Mary begins to suspect that the case she's been working on, involving the suicide of an Italian-American in an internment camp during World War II, may not be ancient history after all.

On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle. Barred from combat zones and faced with entrenched prejudice and bureaucratic restrictions, these women were forced to fight for the right to work on equal terms with men.

December 1941. War has erupted in the Pacific, spelling danger for Gina Capelli Thorpe, an American expat living in Manila. When the Japanese invade and her husband goes missing, Gina flees with her daughter to the Zambales Mountains to avoid capture - or worse. Desperate for money, medicine, and guns, the resistance recruits Gina to join their underground army and smuggles her back to Manila.

In this illuminating biographical novel, Sherry Jones spans Josephine Baker's early years in servitude and poverty in America to her rise to fame as a showgirl in her famous banana skirt to her activism against discrimination, and her many loves and losses. From 1920s Paris to 1960s Washington to her final, triumphant performance, one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th century comes to stunning life on the page. With intimate prose and comprehensive research, Sherry Jones brings Josephine Baker into focus for the first time in a joyous celebration of a life lived in technicolor.

Occupied France, 1940. When the staff at a field hospital draw straws to find out who will join the evacuation from Dunkirk, Nurse Cate is left behind. But when the Nazis arrive to claim prisoners of war, she takes her chance and flees into the night, taking one patient with her. Fifty miles away, the surrendering soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment are shot dead by the advancing Germans. Beneath the pile of bodies two men survive, crawling to the safety of a nearby farmhouse, where sisters Elise and Adelaide risk their lives to take them in.

Decades after the end of World War II, the name Ravensbrück still evokes horror in the minds of those who know about this infamous all-women’s concentration camp. Particularly shocking was the discovery that sometimes-lethal medical experiments were performed on some of the inmates. Ravensbrück was atypical in other ways as well, not just as the only all-female German concentration camp, but because 80% of them were political prisoners. Among them was a tight-knit group of women who had been active in the French Resistance.

January 1942. The Avallon Hotel and Spa offers elegance and sophistication in an increasingly ugly world. Run with precision by June Hudson, the Avallon is where high society goes to see and be seen, and where the mountain sweetwater in the fountains and spas can wash away all your troubles. June was trained by the Gilfoyles, the hotel's aristocratic owners, and she has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. Now, though, the Gilfoyle family heir has made a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats.

In Allison Montclair's The Lady from Burma, murder once again stalks the proprietors of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau in the surprisingly dangerous landscape of post-World War II London.

The ATA is calling upon its most trusted pilots to deliver precious bombers wherever they're needed. Ellie Simpson, who can fly a Spitfire as well as the boys, is their newest recruit. Giving her all to a job she loves leaves Ellie precious little time for squadron leader Jack Reynolds. And while Ellie is brave enough to take the controls of a Spitfire, it takes a different kind of courage to open her heart to love once again. With her friends and family in constant danger, she realises that their love is strong enough to stand the test of all the hardship the war can throw at them.

As a volunteer for the ambulance service, Ruby has the dangerous task of driving along pitch-dark roads during the blackout. With each survivor she pulls from the rubble, she is helping to fight back against the enemy bombers, who leave nothing but destruction in their wake. Assigned to her crew is Joseph, who is unable to fight but will stop at nothing to save innocent lives. Because he is not in uniform, people treat him with suspicion, and Ruby becomes determined to protect this brave, compassionate man who has rescued so many, and captured her heart.

Half a world away from her home in Manitoulin Island, Ethel Mulvany is starving in Singapore’s infamous Changi Prison, along with hundreds of other women jailed there as POWs during the Second World War. They beat back pangs of hunger by playing decadent games of make-believe and writing down recipes filled with cream, raisins, chocolate, butter, cinnamon, ripe fruit - the unattainable ingredients of peacetime, of home, of memory. In this novelistic, immersive biography, Suzanne Evans presents a truly individual account of WWII through the eyes of Ethel.

1939. After the sudden and tragic loss of her husband, Helen is returning home to her mother’s house in Biggin Hill, Kent - the one place she vowed she’d never go back to again. Alone and not knowing where to turn, Helen finds herself joining the local women’s sewing circle despite being hopeless with a needle and thread. These resourceful women can not only make do and mend clothes, quilts and woolly hats, but their friendship mends something deeper in Helen, too.

1960, New York City: College student Rita Klein is a pioneering woman in the new field of computer programming—until she unexpectedly becomes pregnant. At the Hudson Home for Unwed Mothers, social workers pressure her into surrendering her baby for adoption. Rita is struggling to get on with her life when she meets Jacob Nassy, a charming yet troubled man from the Netherlands who is traumatized by his childhood experience of being separated from his mother during the Holocaust.

So often, we remember war heroes as men completing great feats of strength on the battlefield, saving the lives of their fellow soldiers. The stories that are all too often forgotten are those of the women. These are true stories of female prisoners of war, courageous nurses taken prisoner while serving in the military to take care of those soldiers. They are the women who risked life and limb to do what they could to stop the spread of fascism. Within the minutes of this book lie the stories of five incredible women prisoners of war during World War Two.

It’s 1943 in London. Paige Miller, an ordinary shopgirl at the fabled department store Selfridges, falls for Danny, an American GI who comes by the books counter at the same time every day. As she slowly lets him into her heart, Paige realizes that Danny is keeping a secret. One that could change the course of the war—and both their lives.