English French Wars

In the early years of World War II, it was an amazing feat for an Allied airman shot down over occupied Europe to make it back to England. By 1943, however, pilots and crewmembers, supplied with "escape kits", knew they had a 50 percent chance of evading capture and returning home. An estimated 12,000 French civilians helped make this possible. More than 5,000 airmen, many of them American, successfully traveled along escape lines organized much like those of the US Underground Railroad.

After saving her family farm from falling into disrepair Framboise, a secretive widow, lives a quiet life splitting her time between home and the creperie where she brings her mother's recipes to life. When her nephew approaches her to exploit her family's culinary legacy, Framboise is forced to confront her dramatic childhood at the heart of the German Occupation of France.

England has relied on court whispers, ballroom plots and gold payments for intelligence during past wars, but Napoleon Bonaparte’s ascension has shown the need for something more. It is the dawn of British secret service, and no map reveals the path for this new type of espionage. Some early steps are taken in 1802 by Lieutenant Philip Collier, an outcast lacking patronage to advance his military career. He accepts a covert assignment inside France, seeing a chance for glory and promotion, but his exuberance leads to a series of stumbles. He is left stranded in Paris, searching for ...

In this haunting memoir that reflects on the Holocaust and its legacy, award-winning author Sandell Morse discovers stories of bravery and resistance enacted during WWII in Southern France. In the course of six years at a writing residency in France, during which she met with survivors and historians, she painstakingly pieces together the puzzle that had been beguiling her over the years: What was the real story of the French Jews under the Vichy government during The Second World War?

An extraordinary wartime memoir, combining the best kind of adventure story with a coming-of-age testimony of unforgettable resonance and poignancy.

September 2011, Halkidiki, Northern Greece: A solitary 86-year-old man gazes across an Aegean headland, knowing that he must finally confront his past. He begins to write...September 1939, Nieppe, Northern France:14 year-old Stephen is living with his family, 25 kilometres from Ypres. His French mother battles with her encroaching blindness.

Major Connor MacKinnon despises his commander, Lord William Wentworth, beyond all other men. Ordered to rescue Wentworth's niece after the Shawnee take her captive, he expects Lady Sarah Woodville to be every bit as contemptible as her uncle. Instead, he finds a brave and beautiful lass in desperate peril. But the only way to free Sarah is for Connor to defeat the Shawnee warrior who kidnapped her - and claim her himself.

The bombs were falling and the smoke rising from the concentration camps, but all Hitler's daughter knew was the world of lessons with Fraulein Gelber and the hedgehogs she rescued from the cold. Was it just a story or did Hitler's daughter really exist? And If you were Hitler's daughter, would all the horror that occurred be your fault, too? Do things that happened a long time ago still matter?

In the heart of war-torn France, two brothers, Markus and Charles Lefèvre, rise to defy the encroaching darkness of Nazi occupation. Their bond, forged in the trenches of the Great War, becomes a bastion of hope as they lead a courageous resistance. Their journeys unfold in two volumes: "La Maquis Cell" and "The Eagles of Vercors."

Left profoundly deaf after an accident, Émile is no stranger to isolation—or heartbreak. Now, as Nazi planes loom over Guernsey, he senses life is about to change forever. Trapped in a tense, fearful marriage, Isabelle doesn't know what has become of Émile and the future she hoped for. But when she glimpses him from the window of the French House, their lives collide once more. Lieutenant Schreiber is more comfortable wielding a paintbrush than a pistol. But he has little choice in the role he is forced to play in the occupying forces—or in his own forbidden desires.

The once impoverished medical student Agnes Glock is now the fabulously wealthy Mrs Mulberry. Her estate in the mountains is magnificent, a haven for those too ravaged by the Great War to cope with the society that first condemned them to battle and which now shuns them. The War has, however, stolen Agnes's chance to graduate as a doctor, as well as the fiance she adored.

After a failed honey-trap mission for British Intelligence leads to the breakdown of her marriage, French journalist Iris escapes to Dijon, seeking refuge in the cottage of her beloved aunt, Eva. But Eva is gone, the streets are full of distrust, and Iris is soon followed by the very last man she wants to see – the British civil servant and traitor she was tasked with catching, now keen to rekindle their affair. Eva’s home used to be a comforting place, where the locals sought out Eva’s homemade tinctures and cures and gifted jars of fresh honey from the garden. Now it is a place of danger.

Despite the assurances that the French would never hand their ships over to Germany, Churchill would put in motion a campaign attempting to destroy their fleet. As a result, Operation Catapult would be one of the most controversial and unique episodes of World War II.

The invasion across the Channel came in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. That day, forever known as D-Day, the Allies commenced Operation Overlord by staging the largest and most complex amphibious invasion in human history. The complex operation would require tightly coordinated naval and air bombardment, paratroopers, and even inflatable tanks that would be able to fire on fortifications from the coastline, all while landing over 150,000 men across nearly 70 miles of French beaches.

When her favourite beech tree is felled in a storm, Ann feels as if someone has died. But when long-hidden seed packets are found inside the trunk, Ann realizes there are more memories than her own lurking within the ancient tree. A century earlier, head gardener William Hatherwick and Hester Mordaunt, mistress of Beechgrave, share a love for the mighty estate - and an undeclared love for each other. But when war breaks out, William is sent to the battlefields of France, and as the conflict rages on, Hester grieves beneath the tree.

At 3 a.m. on February 21, 1865, a band of 65 Confederate horsemen slowly made its way down Greene Street in Cumberland, Maryland. Thinking the riders were disguised Union scouts, the few Union soldiers out that bitterly cold morning paid little attention to them. In the meantime, over 3,500 Yankee soldiers peacefully slept. Within 30 minutes, McNeill’s rangers had kidnapped Union generals George Crook and Benjamin Kelley from their hotels and spirited them out of town.

In this audiobook, read by Paul Spera, each historical event is replaced into context and presented in clear and easy-to-read snippets, so that younger and older readers can deepen their understanding of how modern France came to be and broaden their culture.

In February 1793, in the wake of the War of American Independence and one year after British prime minister William Pitt the Younger had predicted fifteen years of peace, the National Convention of Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands. France thus initiated nearly a quarter century of armed conflict with Britain. During this fraught and still-contested period, historian Nathaniel Jarrett suggests, Pitt and his ministers forged a diplomatic policy and military strategy that envisioned an international system anticipating the Vienna settlement of 1815.

France, 1942: A Nazi Officer steals a Matisse painting that becomes a symbol of freedom against the oppressors. Francesca, an artist and conservator, grieving over the death of her daughter at the hands of German soldiers, flees Paris. She has only a handful of paintings and a desire for revenge she is ill-equipped to pursue. In the long, hard winter that follows, she joins a group of Partisans in their battle to free France and salvage her culture. She becomes embroiled in a plot to recover Le Mur Rose, the stolen painting.

When a small town constable sees an elderly woman scavenging in the bins behind the general store he is not sure what to do with her. The woman seems confused and speaks only French so he enlists the help of the local school teacher as translator. They are shocked to learn the woman thinks she is in Occupied France and that the war is still going. The following day the woman has recovered and is once more speaking in English. They learn her name is Mary and they coax Mary into telling her story. She is at first reluctant, saying that the story is not really hers, but the story of how a ...

The French Invasion of Italy in 1494: The History and Legacy of the Conflict That Started the Italian Wars chronicles the decisive campaign that forever changed the Italian peninsula at the end of the 15th century. You will learn about the First Italian War like never before.