Historical Fiction War Ii

Tan Twan Eng's debut novel casts a powerful spell and has garnered comparisons to celebrated wartime storytellers Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene. Set during the tumult of World War II, on the lush Malayan island of Penang, The Gift of Rain tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits. In 1939, 16-year-old Philip Hutton - the half-Chinese, half-English youngest child of the head of one of Penang's great trading families - feels alienated from both the Chinese and British communities.

The Isle of Jersey was once a warm and neighborly community, but in 1943, German soldiers patrol the cobbled streets, imposing a harsh rule. Nazis have ordered Grace La Mottée, the island's only librarian, to destroy books that threaten the new regime. Instead, she hides the stories away in secret. Along with her headstrong best friend, she wants to fight back. So she forms the Wartime Book Club: a lifeline, offering fearful islanders the joy and escapism of reading.

On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on wood floors and voices echo off the marble staircase, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art dealer’s family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished.

From the author of The Lost Girls of Paris comes a riveting tale of courage and unlikely friendship during World War II - now a New York Times best seller.

In the heart of war-torn Rotterdam, the latest instalment of the Fernsby's War Series unfolds in a gripping saga of espionage, love, and sacrifice. Rotterdam finds Michael Fernsby in a deadly game of cat and mouse, sent to the Netherlands on the eve of the German invasion with the fate of Europe in the balance. Meanwhile, Mina's broadcasts of courage and truth have made her the Nazis' most wanted. Michael's beloved, the voice behind the rallying cries of a suppressed nation, now stands directly in the crosshairs of the menace he seeks to dismantle.

September 1896: As an aspiring archaeologist, Smith College graduate Betsy Hayes travels to Athens, desperate to break into a very male-dominated field and find work at some of the world’s most famous excavation sites. In the midst of the heat and dust of Greece she finds an unlikely ally in philanthropist Charles, Baron de Robecourt, one of the few men who takes her academic passion seriously.

Sara Schönflies, a young Jewish woman from a line of gifted tailors and seamstresses, finds her world shattered by the rise of the Nazi regime. When Sara and her sisters are transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, their talent becomes a lifeline. Their survival hinges on sewing beautiful dresses for the wives of SS officers and Nazi dignitaries. Amidst the horrors and suffering, Sara's determination, her sisters' unwavering courage, unyielding defiance, and the unexpected friendship with a member of the Sonderkommando become beacons of hope.

January 1945. The first day of the New Year. The German offensive in the Ardennes Forest is over, ending in defeat for the Nazis. American, British, and French troops are ready to begin the final assault on the Third Reich. The Nazis appear to be as good as beaten. Yet they have more surprises up their sleeve, and the nature of the fighting is about to change. The Nazis have prepared a series of attacks, one of them calculated to deliver a hammer blow to the Allies from which they will be unable to recover. Second Lieutenant Murphy, in command of 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, is enjoying a ...

Max is on a mission. Well, two missions. One has been assigned by his British spymasters: Infiltrate the Funkhaus, the center of Nazi radio and propaganda. The other they have forbidden: Find his parents.

In the final months of World War II, a clandestine group known as The Choir smuggles thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Rome Escape Line. When an unidentified airman falls from the sky, The Choir is plunged into lethal danger, and the survival of the Escape Line itself is threatened.

With his cold, steely-eyed focus on killing Japanese ships, Malachi Stormes is an enigma to his officers and crew - especially when it becomes clear he is willing to take huge chances to achieve results. Firefish sinks more ships than any Perth boat on her first war patrol, but Stormes’ unconventional tactics literally frighten his crew. His crew members are proud of their boat’s accomplishments but wonder if their iron-willed skipper will bring them home alive.

It is April 1943, and Marine aviator Cletus Frade, Army demolition's wizard Anthony Pelosi, and communications expert David Ettinger are thrust again into the lethal nest of intrigue that is wartime Buenos Aires. A clandestine German vessel sets sail to resupply submarines in the South Atlantic...as a massive shipment of money earmarked for postwar Reich makes its way to South America...and a coup designed to topple the government reaches critical mass. In the midst of it all, the German-ordered assassination of Cletus Frade's father demands only one response: revenge.

Sweetbitter meets The Nightingale in this pause-resisting novel about a woman who returns to her family’s ancestral vineyard in Burgundy and unexpectedly uncovers a lost diary, an unknown relative, and a secret her family has been keeping since World War II. To become one of only a few hundred certified wine experts in the world, Kate must pass the notoriously difficult Master of Wine examination. She’s failed twice before; her third attempt will be her last chance.

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.

Afganistán, 2004. La doctora Edith Lombard, de Médicos Sin Fronteras, hace guardia en un hospital de Kabul. Al atender a una joven en quirófano advierte en su cuello algo que atrae su atención: un collar del que cuelga una perla de ámbar. Una perla que Edith reconoce enseguida, pues fue robada en su casa de Quebec dieciocho años antes, en un atraco en el que su madre falleció de un disparo. Una perla de la que su padre, Édouard Lombard, había contado que perteneció a la famosa Cámara de Ámbar de San Petersburgo, desparecida durante la II Guerra Mundial.

Milan, 1492: When a 16-year-old beauty becomes the mistress of the Duke of Milan, she must fight for her place in the palace—and against those who want her out. Soon, she finds herself sitting before Leonardo da Vinci, who wants to ensure his own place in the palace by painting his most ambitious portrait to date. Munich, World War II: After a modest conservator unwittingly places a priceless Italian Renaissance portrait into the hands of a high-ranking Nazi, she risks her life to recover it, working with an American soldier, part of the famed Monuments Men team, to get it back.

When Jeanne uncovers a dusty old box in her father’s garage, her world as she knows it is turned upside down. She has inherited a bookstore in a tiny French village, just outside of Paris, from a mysterious woman named Laurence. Traveling to France to search for answers about the woman her father has kept a secret for years, Jeanne finds the store boarded up, in complete disrepair. Inside, she finds a tiny silver pendant hidden beneath the blackened, scorched floorboards. As Jeanne pieces together Laurence’s incredible story, she discovers a woman whose bravery knew no bounds.

In a sleepy German village, Allina Strauss’s life seems idyllic: she works at her uncle’s bookshop, makes strudel with her aunt, and spends weekends with her friends and fiancé. But it's 1939, Adolf Hitler is Chancellor, and Allina’s family hides a terrifying secret—her birth mother was Jewish, making her a Mischling. One fateful night after losing everyone she loves, Allina is forced into service as a nurse at a state-run baby factory called Hochland Home. There, she becomes both witness and participant to the horrors of Heinrich Himmler’s ruthless eugenics program.

In the desolate middle of the largest ocean on earth, two great navies approached, one bent on conclusive battle, the other lying in ambush. Six months after Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto again crossed the Pacific with the largest and most powerful naval armada the world had ever seen, this time to finish the job. Nimitz waited for him with what he had, placed exactly where he needed it. Both admirals depended on their fliers, some veterans of battle, others raw and unproven. Striking first meant decisive victory.

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past.