Literary Fiction War

January 1918. Laura Iven has been discharged from her duties as a nurse and sent back to Halifax, Canada, leaving behind a brother still fighting in the trenches of the First World War. Now home, she receives word of Freddie's death in action along with his uniform -but something doesn't quite make sense. November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped under an overturned pillbox with an enemy soldier, a German, each of them badly wounded. Against all odds, the two men form a bond and succeed in clawing their way out.

Will is a young American ad executive in Paris. Except his agency is a front for the CIA. It's 1959 and the Cold War is going strong. But Will doesn't think he's a warrior-he's just a good-hearted Detroit ad guy who can't seem to figure out Parisian girls. Zoya is a beautiful young woman wandering les boulevards, sad-eyed, and coming off a bad breakup. In fact, she impaled her ex on a spike. Zoya, it turns out, has been a beautiful young woman for hundreds of years; she and her far more traditionally witchy-looking companion, Elga, have been thriving unnoticed in the bloody froth of Europe's wars.

Widely-celebrated author Sinan Antoon's fourth and most sophisticated novel follows Nameer, a young Iraqi scholar earning his doctorate at Harvard, who is hired by filmmakers to help document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the excursion, Nameer ventures to al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad, famed for its bookshops, and encounters Wadood, an eccentric bookseller who is trying to catalogue everything destroyed by war, from objects, buildings, books and manuscripts, flora and fauna, to humans.

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.

Only a few months after the end of the Second World War, a new battle is beginning in the little village of Chawton. Once the final home of Jane Austen, the Chawton estate is dwindling and the last piece of Austen's heritage is at risk of being sold to the highest bidder.... Drawn together by their love of her novels, eight very different people - from a local farmer to a glamorous film star - must unite to attempt something remarkable.

Queenie is only 14 and has been deserted by her mother. Set in Liverpool and Wales at the outbreak of World War II, this story explores themes of female friendship and betrayal from the perspective of a group of women of widely different ages.

A must-read for fans of Anna Jacobs, Dilly Court and Jennifer Donnelly Plans are nothing more than dust and life has a way of dangling happiness in front of you, only to snatch it away. Victoria Caldwell discovers it’s much easier to protect her children when decisions are made for them. Would her son, Sean, really have ended his life? Is her daughter, Bella, old enough to choose the right man? Will her stepdaughter, Kate, allow her insecurities to ruin her life? For Victoria, their pain is her torture. Sean’s life in America was a heady mix of work and pleasure until faced with ...

On a ravaged street overlooking a cemetery in Beirut's Christian enclave, we meet an eccentric young man named Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker. When his father meets a sudden and untimely death, Pavlov is approached by a colorful member of the mysterious Hellfire Society - an anti-religious sect that, among many rebellious and often salacious activities, arranges secret burial for outcasts who have been denied last rites because of their religion or sexuality.

Once upon a time in an enormous forest lived a woodcutter and his wife. The woodcutter is very poor and a war rages around them, making it difficult for them to put food on the table. Yet every night, his wife prays for a child. A Jewish father rides on a train holding twin babies. His wife no longer has enough milk to feed both children. In hopes of saving them both, he wraps his daughter in a shawl and throws her into the forest. While foraging for food, the wife finds a baby wrapped in a shawl. Although she knows harboring this baby could lead to her death, she takes the child home.

In Erinnerung an seine Kindheit macht sich der Erzähler auf die Suche nach der ehemaligen Besitzerin einer Imbissbude am Hamburger Großneumarkt. Er findet die hochbetagte Lena Brücker in einem Altersheim und erfährt die Geschichte ihrer "schönsten Jahre" und wie es zur Entdeckung der Currywurst kam. Der Bogen spannt sich weit zurück in die letzten Apriltage des Jahres 1945.

"A Coming of age tale set in the antebellum South" When a young prodigy in 1850s Virginia begins to question the morality of slavery, will he have the fortitude to take action? Gideon Covington is embroiled in the bloody siege at Vicksburg during the Civil War and is not confident that he will survive the battle. He has therefore decided to reveal the extraordinary events that brought him here. Gideon’s tale begins when he is twelve years old. The boy is considered to be a genius and although he longs for a university education, he seems destined to remain in rural Virginia as he is heir ...

À l'occasion de la commémoration du 80e anniversaire de la rafle du Vel d'Hiv (les 16 et 17 juillet 1942) et suite au succès de ce roman devenu une référence, nous publions une nouvelle édition de "Elle s'appelait Sarah", augmentée d'une postface inédite. Paris, mai 2002. Journaliste américaine, Julia Jarmond est chargée de couvrir la commémoration de la rafle du Vel d'Hiv. Elle décide d'enquêter sur le destin de ces familles juives raflées, et en particulier celui de Sarah.

East Prussia, 1943. Hitler hides away in the Wolfsshanze - his hidden headquarters. The tide is turning in the war, and his enemies circle ever closer. Ten women are chosen. Ten women to taste his food and protect him from poison. Twenty-six-year-old Rosa has lost everything to this war. Her parents are dead. Her husband is fighting on the front line. Alone and scared, she faces the SS with nothing but the knowledge every bite might be her last. Caught on the wrong side of history, how far is Rosa willing to go to survive?

The Willow Wren is based on the true story of a neurodivergent boy growing up in Nazi Germany, surviving bombing, the Hitler Youth, and Russian occupation before escaping to the west.

Now middle-aged, Meadows seeks out his former captors in their civilian lives to help him bury his son, a Marine killed in Iraq, in Arlington National Cemetery. When he learns that the authorities have told him a lie about the circumstances of his son's death, he decides, with the help of the two others, to transport him home to Portsmouth. And so begins the journey, centered around a solemn mission, but, as in the first book, a protest against injustice and celebration of life, too, at once irreverent, funny, profane, and deeply moving.

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller. This is the story of four Londoners, three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy.

1937. When Mythily's plane suddenly loses all power and crashes into the jungle of a mysterious uncharted island, she and her companion Barry are faced with a kaleidoscope of horrors. They discover they are not alone. Initially they think the giant flesh eating spider-crabs are their biggest threat, until they uncover a far bigger secret that threatens the entire world. A survivor's tale of a lost island, alien visitation and giant flesh eating spider-crabs. "A wild read, full of suspense, great characters, and a plot that keeps you guessing. If you like unusual and slightly barmy (in the ...

Olivia Marsten never imagined she'd be a war bride. But when her childhood best friend surprises her with a marriage proposal, she reluctantly accepts. She can't bear to send him off to serve in the Navy with a broken heart...even though her heart belongs to someone else. Sparks fly the moment mysterious stranger Peter Becker lays eyes on Olivia. He never hesitated to pull her out of harm's way-risking his own life to save hers. Yet as kind as he is handsome, Peter harbors a dark secret.

In the days following the Six-Day War, a survivor of the Holocaust visits the reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall in the Old City, he encounters the beggars and madmen that congregate there every evening - and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present.

This moving short novel is based on true events that took place during the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, when the Japanese invaded the Chinese city, slaughtering not only soldiers but raping and murdering the civilian population as well. It tells the story of an American missionary who, for a few terrifying days, finds himself sheltering a group of schoolgirls, prostitutes, and wounded Chinese soldiers in the compound of his church.