World War Ii Women

The Colley family is made of modest farmers in the Missouri Ozarks. Although Southerners, the Colleys try to remain neutral, a fact ignored by the Union militia who confiscate their livestock, burn their farm, and arrest their daughter, Adair, on charges of “enemy collaboration”. Yet as this innocent young woman soon discovers, fate can have a double edge. While imprisoned, she falls in love with her interrogator, a Union major who helps her escape.

Riga, 1943. Cycling the streets to deliver fresh loaves, Zenta passes empty houses, curtains open, doors unlocked, their occupants forced out by Russian or German hands. Above the newly built town hall, a Nazi flag waves in the breeze. Since her brother became a soldier and her sister joined the resistance, Zenta is all her parents have left. Then one morning her sister returns. Tired, worn, with a newly rounded belly, Estere is as determined as ever to fight for their freedom.

Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, has lost contact with its informant in northern Italy, just as important information about the future plans of Austria and Nazi Germany is coming to light. And young Elena Standish, to her surprise, is the only person who can recognize MI6's man - because he is her former lover. Aiden Strother betrayed Elena six years ago, throwing shame on her entire family. Now, with so much to prove, Elena heads to Trieste to track down Aiden and find out what happened to his handler, who has mysteriously cut off contact with Britain.

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.

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.

This is the incredible true story of the greatest spy you’ve never heard of - as told to the author by the woman herself. At the outbreak of World War Two, Nancy Wake’s glamorous life in the South of France seemed far removed from the fighting. But when her husband was called up for military service, Nancy felt she had just as much of a duty to fight for freedom. By 1943, her fearless undercover work even in the face of personal tragedy had earned her a place on the Gestapo’s "most wanted" list.

In World War II, 59,000 women voluntarily risked their lives for their country as US Army nurses. For more than half a century these women's experiences remained untold, almost without reference in books, historical societies, or military archives. After years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews, Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee have created a dramatic narrative that at last brings to light the critical role that women played throughout the war.

Anna has found solace and love in the colorful Romany camp. How long will this last under the watchful eye of a spurned and obsessed Nazi? In the unrelenting grimness of Ravensbrück, Moriah is caught in the web of Dagna's deadly ambition and schemes. Her chances for survival diminish with every passing moment. Shunned by society for the telling scar on her face, Elica struggles to live with the consequences of her selfish choices. Will she ever find love, redemption, or her son Theo, again?

Meet the Godmothers: Filomena is a clever and resourceful war refugee with a childhood secret, who comes to America to wed Mario, the family's favored son. Amie, a beautiful and dreamy French girl from upstate New York, escapes an abusive husband after falling in love with Johnny, the oldest of the brothers. Lucy, a tough-as-nails Irish nurse, ran away from a strict girls' home and marries Frankie, the sensuous middle son. And the glamorous Petrina, the family's only daughter, graduates with honors from Barnard College despite a past trauma that nearly caused a family scandal.

American Amelia Montague defied her family five years ago to marry the man she loved, but that decision cost her everything. Disowned by her family, and left a penniless widow after her husband’s death, Amelia becomes her cousin Wallis Simpson’s private secretary in France. With no other prospects available, Amelia has no choice but to succeed, and under their Aunt Bessie’s direction, hopes to have a positive influence on Wallis and the Duke of Windsor. During the next two years, Amelia realizes that not everything with the Windsors is glittering happiness.

When Kitty's latest assignment for the New York Sentinel Ladies' Page takes her to Westfield Hall, she expects to find an orderly establishment teaching French and dancing, but there's more going on at the school than meets the eye. Tragedy strikes when a student named Elspeth is found frozen to death in Central Park. The doctors proclaim that sleepwalking was the cause, but Kitty isn't so sure. Determined to uncover the truth, Kitty must investigate a more chilling scenario - a murder that may involve Elspeth's scientist father and a new invention by a man named Thomas Edison.

Born in a quiet English village shortly before the onset of the Second World War, Simon Brand’s life is quickly and inextricably interwoven with the Clare-Thompson family and their country Estate which borders the village. His mother moves them away from the village after the war, and an honors degree in economics at Cambridge sees him opting for what proves to be a brilliant career as a business/financial consultant in the City. At the end of a day of goodbyes, in Cambridge, his eyes meet those of an extraordinarily beautiful young woman through the window of a bus.

1920s Germany: Though the world has changed in the wake of the Great War, it is still ruled by men. Even a woman as resourceful and intelligent as Niki Rittenhaus needs alliances in order to survive. Her marriage to Rickard Länger, a movie producer for Berlin's Passport Pictures, seems convenient for them both. When Rickard succumbs to increasing pressure from the Nazis to make propaganda movies, a horrified Niki turns away from her own film aspirations and instead, begins to write.

As Nazi soldiers round up the Jews in their town, Róza and her five-year-old daughter, Shira, flee, seeking shelter in a neighbor’s barn. Hidden in the hayloft day and night, Shira struggles to stay still and quiet, as music pulses through her and the farmyard outside beckons. In this make-believe world, Róza can shield Shira from the horrors that surround them. But the day comes when their haven is no longer safe, and Róza must make an impossible choice: whether to keep Shira by her side or give her the chance to survive apart.

When conflict photographer Jackson Swann dies, he leaves behind a conflict of his own making when his three daughters, each born to a different mother, discover that they’re now responsible for the family’s Oregon vineyard - and for a family they didn’t ask for.

Connie Fitzwalter never imagined that her passion for music would lead her into a world of danger and intrigue. When her old family friend, Stephen, who works for the foreign office, tells Connie the true scale of the violence against Jewish people in Germany and Austria, she can stand aside no longer. Together, Stephen and Connie devise a daring mission to help families escape the clutches of Nazi persecution. Under their cover as music enthusiasts traveling to high-society concerts in Europe, Connie and her sister Dottie begin by smuggling money and valuables for families over the border.

Lilia is an emotionally wrenching coming-of-age and compelling family drama. Trapped under Mussolini’s reign and Hitler’s occupation, this riveting true story is propelled by a brave girl’s courage and a family’s bond as they struggle to survive the battle between the forces of evil and the power of love.

We are all too familiar with the stories of Jews who were tortured and killed in concentration camps throughout the Third Reich. But less is known about the persecution of Polish prisoners housed in Majdanek, a concentration and extermination camp on the outskirts of the city of Lublin in south-eastern Poland. The Counterfeit Countess tells this story through the lens of the efforts of one remarkable woman, herself a Jew, who passed as Polish aristocracy, became a lead official in a Polish relief organisation and an officer in the underground resistance movement known as the Polish Home Army.

After World War II, Mathilde leaves France for Morocco to be with her husband, whom she met while he was fighting for the French army. A spirited young woman, she now finds herself a farmer’s wife, her vitality sapped by the isolation, the harsh climate, and the mistrust she inspires as a foreigner. But she refuses to be subjugated or confined to her role as mother of a growing family.

By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands. In this riveting biography, Susan J. Eischeid explores how Maria Mandl, regarded locally as "a nice girl from a good family," came to embody the very worst of humanity.