Historical Fiction War Ii

Lina Meisel, a retired librarian in Florida, is reading the newspaper one morning when she freezes. Her eyes lock on a photograph of a book she hasn’t seen in 65 years - a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II - an experience Lina remembers well - and the search to reunite people with the texts stolen from them so long ago. The book in the photograph is one of the most fascinating cases.

In this sweeping story based on the true experiences of nurses dubbed "the Angels of Bataan," three women shift in and out of each other's lives through the darkest days of the war, buoyed by their unwavering friendship and distant dreams of liberation.

Belfast, October 1940. Twenty-year-old zookeeper Hettie Quin arrives at the city docks in time to meet her new charge: an orphaned three-year-old Indian elephant named Violet. As Violet adjusts to her new solitary life in captivity and Hettie mourns the recent loss of her sister and the abandonment of her father, new storm clouds gather. A world war rages, threatening a city already reeling from escalating tensions between British Loyalists and those fighting for a free and unified Ireland.

Growing up in 1960s Brooklyn, Lena wants to be a baker just like her mother was back in Poland prior to World War II. But questions about those days, and about a sister Lena never even knew, are ignored with solemn silence. It’s as if everything her parents left behind was a subject never to be broached. The one person in whom Lena can confide is her best friend, Pearl. When she suddenly disappears from Lena’s life, Lena forges ahead.

In the summer of 1943, Eva Brunner is taking photographs of Nazi-looted art hidden in the salt mines of the Austrian hinterland. Across the ocean in Connecticut, Josephine Evans is working as a humble typist at the Yale Art Gallery. When both women are called to Italy to contribute to the war effort, neither imagines she will hold the fate of some of the world’s greatest masterpieces torn from the Uffizi Galleries and other Florentine art collections in her hands.

It's just a small story really, about, among other things, a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist: books.

Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.

London is burning. The Luftwaffe is coming. And Trip Gibson is in the fight of his life. From the award-winning author of the bestselling Journeyman Chronicles of the American Revolution and Sunward I’ve Climbed comes Frank A. Mason’s unforgettable sequel—a visceral, emotionally charged novel set in the fury of the Battle of Britain. It’s 1940. American pilot Trip Gibson has joined the Royal Air Force, determined to stop Hitler’s war machine from leveling Britain. But flying for King and Country turns out to be far more brutal than he imagined. In the chaos of dogfights over ...

Brought up amid the luxury of plantation life, Marianne Johnston never questions her sheltered life until, driven by her conscience, she joins the Underground Railroad. Soon Marianne is living a dangerous double life, helping slaves flee by night and acting the belle by day. And nothing is riskier than her attraction to wild, heartless young Southerner Yves Chamard - while being courted by his noble older brother.

Dashing and well-connected, Lanny Budd has earned the trust of the Nazi high command. To Adolf Hitler and his inner circle, the American art dealer is a “true believer” committed to their Fascist cause. But Lanny is actually a secret agent serving as President Franklin Roosevelt’s eyes and ears in Germany. When he learns of the Führer’s plans for conquest, Lanny’s dire warnings to Neville Chamberlain and other reluctant European leaders fall on deaf ears.

Can a young war correspondent find herself and follow her heart? In this work of historical fiction, 20-something Annabella “Annie” March arrives in France in 1944 intending to write about the war. Soon, however, Annie begins to distance herself from her sometimes-mentor, sometimes-rival - the great Martha Gellhorn - and Gellhorn’s larger-than-life husband, the novelist Ernest Hemingway. She turns to photography in the hopes of making her own name and, to her delight, discovers that images come more easily than words.

Italy, 1937. In a tiny village in rural Lombardy, Graziella Ponti is born into a loving family. Though they are not rich and life is full of challenges, Graziella and her family are content and safe, surrounded by the tightly knit community of Pieve Santa Clara. But when the shadow of World War Two falls across the village with the arrival of Nazi soldiers, nothing in young Graziella’s life will ever be the same again.

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa 14-year-old in 1943 - aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal US resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles.

The Marine Raiders are licking their wounds after the successful battle at Tasimboko. But that battle was only the preview of the main event to come…and now the clock is ticking down to destruction!

In this final chapter to The Mistress of Auschwitz, Eleonore struggles with the consequences of her actions at Mrs. Meyers' manor. While in a foreign land, Eleonore begins to hope for what she thought had been lost forever. She begins to find healing through a wonderfully chaotic but passionate family, learning to use her gifts again, and an unsought romance with a man that she once despised. But all is not as it seems.

A modern master of the historical novel, Jeff Shaara has painted brilliant depictions of the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, and World War I. Now he embarks upon his most ambitious epic, a trilogy about the military conflict that defined the 20th century. The Rising Tide begins a staggering work of fiction bound to be a new generation's most poignant chronicle of World War II.

Can the dream of freedom overcome fear and oppression? In this novel spanning Prague’s tumultuous twentieth century, friendships and marriages are tested to the limit. In the summer of 1914, young love beckons and the future seems bright for three friends as they reach adulthood, but the dark clouds of war throw into stark relief the differences between them which had never mattered before. From World War One and the heady days of liberty which follow, to Nazi occupation during World War Two, and afterwards Communist dictatorship, life threatening risks must be taken. Friends and families...

Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives.

In this sequel to The Mistress of Auschwitz, the story continues with Eleonore as she struggles to cope with the impact of her harrowing detainment at the notorious concentration camp. Although she has been liberated by the Allies, she is not yet free from the horrors that she witnessed. Striving to heal from the trauma, Eleonore searches for meaning as she begins a new life.

Meet Esther Weiss, a close friend of Lili and Océane from their days at a Swiss finishing school before the war. As we continue the epic saga from 'In Picardy's Fields,' 'The Diamond Courier,' and 'The Parisian Spy,' Esther steps into the limelight with her own gripping story in ‘The Norwegian Assassin’. Vienna, 1938 Esther's life is meticulously planned, with a bright future alongside her fiancé, Carl Bernstein. But the annexation of Austria by Hitler shatters their dreams. The wedding is indefinitely postponed, and the Weiss family's idyllic existence is upended. Forced to flee ...