World War Ii Women

Lillian Kaufman hasn't heard from her twin sister since Eleanor left for a mysterious job at an Army base somewhere in Tennessee. When she learns, on an unexpected phone call, that Eleanor is missing, Lillian takes a train from New York down to Oak Ridge to clear up the matter. It turns out that the only way into Oak Ridge is to assume Eleanor's identity, which Lillian plans to do swiftly and perfectly. But Eleanor has vanished without a trace—and she's not the only one.

1918. Timid Emmaline Balakin lives more in books than her own life. That is, until an envelope crosses her desk at the Dead Letter Office bearing a name from her past, and Emmaline decides to finally embark on an adventure of her own—as a volunteer librarian on the frontlines in France. 1976. Kathleen Carre is eager to prove to herself and to her nana that she deserves her acceptance into the first coed class at the United States Naval Academy. But not everyone wants female midshipmen at the Academy, and after tragedy strikes close to home, Kathleen becomes a target.

Andrée Griotteray was nineteen when the Germans invaded France and occupied Paris, where she worked as a clerk in the passport office. When her younger brother, Alain, created a resistance network named Orion, Andrée joined his efforts, secretly typing up and printing copies of an underground newspaper, and stealing ID cards which allowed scores of Jewish citizens to escape persecution. Charming and pretty, Andrée nimbly avoided the unwanted attentions of German officers, even as she secretly began working as an undercover courier.

Once inseparable, Berlin teenagers Ilse Fischer and Renate Bauer find their friendship ripped apart by their nation’s abrupt swing into fascism. Ilse, a so-called Aryan, throws her lot in with the Nazi Party, while Renate sees her once-secure world dismantled by Adolf Hitler's race laws and then shattered by a shocking betrayal. Decades later, that same betrayal will upend the life of Ilse's daughter, Ava, as she discovers long-buried truths about her mother's past.

2010, San Francisco. Anna Young is content with her life, running a bustling deli and taking care of her adored grandfather Max, who raised her. Max has never spoken of his past until he hands over an old map, the plans to a grand house just north of Berlin. With a shaking finger, he points to it and says, “I left something behind under the floorboards. Please bring it home before I die.”

After her mother becomes too ill to work, the responsibility to provide for the family falls to Violet as the oldest of nine. When the world enters the Great War, she serves as a nurse, helping men who could very well be her brothers. Working as a stewardess and wartime nurse, Violet not only survives a shipwreck but also two sinkings, one on the infamous Titanic. No one can understand why she would return to sea, but something keeps drawing Violet back to the tumultuous waters, where she struggles to put the tragedies of her past behind her and pursue a life and love all her own.

Liverpool, 1940. When her childhood sweetheart, Johnny, is killed in action, Maxine Grey loses more than her husband - she loses her best friend. Desperate to make a difference in this awful war, Maxine takes a nursing job at London’s St Thomas’ hospital. She takes comfort in the attentions of a handsome surgeon, but Edwin Blake isn’t all he seems. And as the Blitz descends on the capital, Maxine faces more heartache. When she returns to Liverpool, she harbours a secret.

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.

Hamburg, 1942. Seventeen-year-old Anna knows she can never tell her proud parents the truth about where she is going. She must hide the fact that she is pregnant, that the father of her unborn child is dead, and that she is on her way to a special maternity home, where her baby will be given to a perfect family. She tells herself that this is the best solution. She doesn’t expect to feel the rush of love for her beautiful baby boy in the white blanket or the devastation when he is snatched from her, never to be seen again.

Their wings were weak, their talons broken…yet they flew the Soviets into winning the war against the Nazis. They were ignored, laughed at, and forced to do chores beneath their ranks. Why? They were the "weaker" gender. Despite being capable, they were initially denied entry into combat. And when they did enlist, their treatment only worsened: They were assigned worn-out uniforms and left to the mercy of rusted equipment on the battlefield. These adversities didn’t stop the Soviet female fighters from going ahead and showing unprecedented excellence in warfare.

A train carrying exiled German prisoners from a labor camp arrives in southern France. Within moments, word spreads that Nazi capture is imminent, and the men flee for the woods, desperate to disappear across the Spanish border. One stays behind, determined to ride the train until he reaches home, to find a woman he refers to simply as “her.”

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.

Fresne Prison, 1940: A former maid at a luxury villa on the Riviera, Margot Bisset finds herself in a prison cell with writer and French Resistance fighter Joséphine Murant. Together, they are transferred to a work camp in Germany for four years, where the secrets they share will bind them for generations to come. Paris, around about now: Evie Black lives in Paris with her teenage son, Hugo, above her botanical bookshop, La Maison Rustique. Life would be so sweet if only Evie were not mourning the great love of her life.

In the small French town of Colmar, swastikas hang from lampposts, tanks are lined up outside the town hall, and 21-year-old Marie-Claire is in love. She will do anything for her childhood friend Jacques, including spying on her German boss, Dietrich Kurtz. Anything to make Jacques see her in a new light, as something more than just a silly little girl. But when Jacques rejects her, everything changes. Mortified and stung, Marie-Claire feels the need for revenge. She turns her back on those she loves and is catapulted into a new life.

At her assisted living center in Wedding Tree, Louisiana, 93-year-old Amelie O'Connor is in the habit of leaving her door open for friends. One day she receives an unexpected visitor - Kat Thompson, the ex-fiancée of her late husband, Jack. Kat and Jack were high school sweethearts who planned to marry when Jack returned from France after World War II. But in a cruel twist of fate, their plans were irrevocably derailed when a desperate French girl overheard an American officer's confession in a Parisian church...

Desperate to be reunited with her husband, Daniel, Elica walks into the dreaded den of the ruthless Gestapo. She's ready to sacrifice anything for their love. Anna and her family find themselves at the mercy of Anna's heart-throb, Ulf. Ulf's obsession with Anna puts him in a quandary—between his loyalty to the Fuhrer and his burning desire for the forbidden fruit.

Dans des archives de famille, Emmanuel Rougier découvre une petite enveloppe écrite au crayon provenant de la prison allemande d'Orléans. Elle est datée du 8 mars 1943 et signée d'une grand-tante : Madeleine Fauconneau du Fresne. Lettre dramatique d'une femme emprisonnée, isolée dans sa cellule, et qui parvenait malgré tout à rendre grâce à Dieu. D'investigations en découvertes, l'auteur tombe sur l'histoire extraordinaire de cette femme qui a refusé la défaite de 1940 puis sauvé de la déportation son amie Yvonne Netter, avocate juive et féministe, en organisant son évasion du camp de Pithiviers.

Orkney, 1940. Five hundred Italian prisoners-of-war arrive to fortify these remote and windswept islands. Resentful islanders are fearful of the enemy in their midst, but not orphaned twin sisters Dorothy and Constance. Already outcasts, they volunteer to nurse all prisoners who are injured or fall sick. Soon Dorothy befriends Cesare, an artist swept up by the machine of war and almost broken by the horrors he has witnessed. She is entranced by his plan to build an Italian chapel from war scrap and sea debris, and something beautiful begins to blossom.

From the author of the “fast-paced, heartbreaking, and hopeful” (Kristin Harmel, author of The Room on Rue Amélie) The Light After the War, a riveting and heartfelt story of a young woman recruited to be a spy for the resistance on the French Riviera during World War II.

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.