Historical Fiction War Ii

London, 1940. Emmeline Lake is Doing Her Bit for the war effort, volunteering as a telephone operator with the Auxiliary Fire Services. When Emmy sees an advertisement for a job at the London Evening Chronicle, her dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent suddenly seem achievable. But the job turns out to be working as a typist for the fierce and renowned advice columnist Henrietta Bird. Emmy is disappointed but gamely bucks up and buckles down.

England, 1939: The Penrose sisters couldn't be more different. Skye is a daring and brash pilot, and Liberty is the one to defy her at every turn. Even if women aren't allowed in the Royal Air Force, Skye is determined to help the war effort. She's thrilled when it reunites her with her childhood soul mate, Nicholas. She's less thrilled to learn Nicholas is now engaged to an enigmatic Frenchwoman named Margaux Jourdan.

December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. The trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn't know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor. Spanning the entirety of World War II, Five Decembers is a beautiful, masterful, powerful novel that will live in your memory forever.

Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest - and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives.

Paris, 1941: as Coco Chanel’s assistant, Adèle lives side by side with German officers in the splendor of The Ritz hotel. But Adèle has a secret. She is working for the resistance, right under the Germans’ noses. As occupied Paris becomes more and more dangerous, Adèle will have to decide if she can risk everything to save innocent lives and protect the man she loves. Present day: Chloé’s grandmother has never spoken about the war and avoids questions about the legendary designer she once worked for. Now Chloé has come to Paris, to uncover the truth about Adèle’s life.

Irish domestic worker Norah King's decision to ask her wealthy employer, Caroline Parker, for an elegant red coat that the Beacon Hill matriarch has marked for donation ignites a series of events that neither woman could have fathomed. The unlikely exchange will impact their respective daughters and families for generations to come, from the coat's original owner, marriage-minded collegian Cordelia Parker, to the determined and spirited King sisters of South Boston, Rosemary, Kay, and Rita.

Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While war ravages the city above her, Clara has risked everything she holds dear to turn the Bethnal Green tube station into the country’s only underground library. Down here, a secret community thrives with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a café, and a theater—offering shelter, solace, and escape from the bombs that fall upon their city. Along with her glamorous best friend and assistant Ruby Munroe, Clara ensures the library is the beating heart of life underground. As the war drags on, the women's determination is tested to the limits.

It's 1937. Fear and suspicion stalk the Continent. A million have died in Stalin's Great Purge and the Nazi terror grips Germany. But British intelligence is still trying to work out who the enemy is. As Europe heads towards war, treason is in the air. British spymasters know there is one Soviet agent in their ranks, codenamed Agent ‘Archie', and there's a frantic search to find them. What they don't know is that he is not the only traitor.

Nina Argenta doesn’t want the traditional life of a rural Italian woman. The daughter of a strong-willed midwife, she is determined to define her own destiny. But when her brother emigrates to America, she promises her mother to never leave. When childhood friend Pietro Pante briefly returns to their mountain town, passion between them ignites while Mussolini forces political tensions to rise. Just as their romance deepens, Pietro must leave again for work in the coal mines of America. Nina is torn between joining him and her commitment to Italy and her mother.

In the summer of 1932, Maisie Dobbs' career takes an exciting new turn when she accepts an undercover assignment directed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service. Posing as a junior lecturer, she is sent to a private college in Cambridge to monitor any activities "not in the interests of His Majesty's government". She soon finds herself investigating a web of activities being conducted by the emerging Nazi Party.

Berlin, 1943: Ava Müller is a proud supporter of the German war effort, working for Joseph Goebbels alongside her father, a high-ranking official in the Reich. With her sister Hanna, a nurse, braving bombing raids to save lives, they are a model Nazi family. Until Ava discovers her parents and Hanna are secretly working for the resistance… Returning to their country home, Ava is shocked to find her childhood friend Eliana Goldman and her family hidden in the attic.

In the midst of World War II, an English musician, Norah Chambers, places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Singapore, desperate to keep her safe from the Japanese army as they move down through the Pacific. Norah remains to care for her husband and elderly parents, knowing she may never see her child again. Sister Nesta James, a Welsh Australian nurse, has enlisted to tend to Allied troops. But as Singapore falls to the Japanese she joins the terrified cargo of people, including the heartbroken Norah, crammed aboard the Vyner Brooke merchant ship.

Ania hears the explosion of gunshots before she sees the Nazi soldiers approach her beloved home. Her family don’t have time to run, but she does. Hiding nearby, she listens to her sister’s screams and – stroking the red ribbon she keeps tied around her wrist – she begins to plot her revenge… Taunted her whole life for being smarter than anyone else in the village, now living in war-torn Poland, being governed by Nazis who think Poles are subhuman and women only good for one thing… Ania now only has her wits to rely on, if she's going to survive.

Paris, 1940: Madeline tries to scream, but she can’t breathe. A German soldier is working to free her from the rubble–but if he reaches her, he will find the books hidden beneath her clothes… When the Germans seize Paris, its peaceful streets fill with terror overnight, and nowhere is safe. Desperate to help her friends, Parisian bookseller Madeline Valette turns her bookshop into a sanctuary for those in hiding, but she knows it’s only a matter of time before she’s found out.

April 1941: Belfast has escaped the worst of the Second World War—so far. Over the next two months, it will be so destroyed from above that people will say, in horror, “My God, Belfast is finished.” Many won’t make it through, and those who do will be forever changed. Living amid the rubble are sisters Emma and Audrey. One is engaged to be married; the other is in a secret relationship with another woman.

Winter 1944: Months after the Liberation of France, ex-Boston cop Billy Boyle finds himself in a Paris reeling from the carnage it has endured but hopeful that an end to war is in sight. When Billy finds a rare piece of artwork after a tense shoot-out in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, he thinks it could be connected to the Syndicat du Renard, a shadowy network of Nazi sympathizers known to be smuggling stolen artwork out of France. Trailing the Syndicat, Billy discovers that someone with a high level of communications clearance may be using his position to aid the thieves.

During World War II, a family finds life turned upside-down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes turn on the newcomers. Rennie has just turned thirteen and until this time, life has pretty much been predictable and fair. But the winds of change are coming, and with them, a shift in her perspective and a discovery of secrets that can destroy even the most sacred things. Part thriller, part historical novel, Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas is a riveting exploration of the darkest—and best—parts of the human heart.

The story told in Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad unfolds across the length and breadth of Russia and Europe. At the heart of the novel is the Shaposhnikov family. Even as the Germans advance, the matriarch, Alexandra Vladimirovna, refuses to leave Stalingrad. Far from the front, her eldest daughter, Ludmila, is unhappily married to the Jewish physicist Viktor Shtrum. Viktor's research may be of crucial military importance, but he is distracted by thoughts of his mother in the Ukraine, lost behind German lines.

For Iris, each visit to her mother in St Mabon’s Cove, Cornwall has been the same—a serene escape from the city. But today, as she breaths in the salt air on the doorstep of her beloved childhood home, a heavy weight of anticipation settles over her. Iris knows she’s adopted, but any questions about where she came from have always been shut down by her parents, who can’t bear to revisit the past. Now, Iris can’t stop thinking about what she’s read on the official paperwork: BABY GIRL, FRANCE, 1939 – the year war was declared with Nazi Germany.

1942. Hannah Martel has narrowly escaped Nazi Germany after her fiancé was killed in a pogrom. When her ship bound for America is turned away at port, she has nowhere to go but to her cousin Lily, who lives with her family in Brussels. Fearful for her life, Hannah is desperate to get out of occupied Europe. But with no safe way to leave, she must return to the dangerous underground work she thought she had left behind.