World War Short Stories

It is said that books are written to bring sunshine into our dull, grey lives—to show us places we want to escape to, lives we want to live, people we want to love. But there are also stories that can only be found in the deepest, darkest corners of the library. Stories about the unexplained, of lost souls, of things that go bump before the silence. Before the screaming. And some stories just disappear. Stories printed in old newspapers, broadcast live on the wireless, sometimes not even published at all—these are the stories you cannot find on even the dustiest of library shelves.

The Definitive Sci-Fi Collection is a collection of 28 classic science fiction novels and stories, read by an esteemed cast of award-winning narrators. Included here are stories by some of the most iconic science fiction writers of all time, including H.G. Wells; Jules Verne; H.P. Lovecraft; Margaret Cavendish; Yevgeny Zamyatin; and more.

Jack and Maggie Harris are adrift on ravaged streets during the London Blitz. Their home is gone. They have nowhere to go and nothing left to lose. With only the memories of their greatest loss - the death of their child during a Christmas years before - Jack and Maggie settle in a seemingly deserted mansion for the night.

After her mother’s passing, Aldona finds a tin filled with old letters from a prisoner at Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp in northern Germany. Amid the descriptions of daily deprivations and humiliations at the camp, she uncovers the heart-wrenching story of a small circle of women who risked their lives to hide a baby girl from the guards. Aldona is rocked to the core by this record of courage and sisterhood during one of the grimmest chapters of human history.

From the build-up to the fighting, through to the reverberations still felt in the aftermath, this is a compelling, accessible and immediate history of the war, perhaps the most complex, frightening and destructive event in world history. Discover how deep-seated local fears and hatreds escalated into one vast global conflict that was fought out to the bitter end - from the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party to Pearl Harbour, the D-Day landings and Hiroshima.

As a 41-year-old man confronts his own mortality in this collection's title story, he recalls his Spokane Indian father's chilling death from alcoholism and diabetes. Another tale features an eccentric salesman pursuing a married woman from airport to airport. And then there's the film editor who sees nothing wrong with altering footage to fit preconceived views - until he becomes the target of media distortion.

A fascinating collection of short stories by great writers that examine aspects of the first world war, from action in the trenches, to the psychological impact of war on individuals and their relationships, to heroic adventure stories, to ghosts and war graves. A wonderful collection!

Journey through the sinister corridors of history with these chilling tales of horror and survival. From the freezing desolation of Barbarossa to the war-torn memories of a young Georgian expat in Vienna, and from post-apocalyptic nightmares to the forest witches in the Ardennes feasting on the souls of Belgian soldiers, each story unravels a dark narrative of human endurance and fear. Encounter monstrous moral dilemmas, vengeful spirits, and eerie confrontations in this anthology where the past's shadows collide with horror's depths. Prepare for a gripping blend of history and the macabre ...

In the unforgiving skies of the Aleutian Islands, Captain “Chick” Williams is a seasoned World War II pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps. As a leader of a tight-knit crew, Williams is accustomed to flying perilous bombing and transport missions over the frozen Alaskan landscape and beyond, but when a devastating Japanese fighter attack nearly obliterates his squadron, Williams faces a grim reality—his crew is lost, and he is left questioning his survival. However, when a mysterious light in the sky envelops Jack's plane, saving him from certain death, the strange phenomenon grants him a...

In 1943, the 20-year-old Polish poet Tadeusz Borowski was arrested and deported to Auschwitz as a political prisoner. What he experienced in the camp left him convinced that no one who survived Auschwitz was innocent.

In 1943, a young soldier named James Jones returned from the Pacific, lightly wounded and psychologically tormented by the horrors of Guadalcanal. When he was well enough to leave the hospital, he went AWOL rather than return to service, and began work on a novel of the World War II experience. Jones’s AWOL period was brief, but he returned to the novel at war’s end, bringing him to the attention of Maxwell Perkins, the legendary editor of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe.

December 1943. Adolf Hitler is dead. Having turned aside the Soviet Union's initial assault into the Greater Reich, the Wehrmacht is now stymied at the gates of Moscow. Indifferently equipped, the young men of the American Air Expeditionary Force are thrown into action in order to keep the Soviet Union in the war. December 1965. Tabitha Cobb, a master's student at Berkley University, sets out to learn the truth about the AAEF and the scars it left on its survivors. Attempting to earn a scholarship, Tabitha quickly learns that sometimes, ignorance truly is bliss.

World War II was the greatest conflict in human history, involving over 100 million people serving in the forces of the Axis and the Allies and resulting in 50 to 70 million deaths. This book covers war in Europe, war in the Pacific and war across a number of other fronts between 1939 and 1945. Features the leading protagonists in the conflict, their ideological positions and the strategies they employed.

Frances and Ginger Park, authors of both children's books and young adult novels, based this inspiring and deeply affecting tale on their own mother's childhood. Winner of the International Reading Association Award, My Freedom Trip features a courageous girl named Soo who makes a desperate bid for freedom by journeying from North Korea to South Korea. Her father awaits across the border, but to achieve her new life, Soo must leave her mother behind.

The short stories written during and about World War I are often overshadowed by the excellent verse of the War Poets. Yet the short story is perhaps their equal in other ways. Within these succinct little time capsules of words are captured ideas, attitudes, feelings and life that are expressed in a few minutes just as movingly, imaginatively and tellingly as in any other form. Some of these stories will be familiar, but some may not. From Virginia Woolf to Katharine Mansfield and John Buchan to C. E. Montague, various writing styles try to make sense of this world at war.

As time passes, the collective memory fades, and the suffering of the victims eventually vanishes with them, to be replaced merely by stories, passed down, without the pain, without the full understanding. So, for the most part, those who come after do not comprehend, and fail to see the warning signs, the darkness gathering again, seeping down, swirling all around them, overcoming them imperceptibly, like the gradual onset of night. Courage deserts many among the few who do see, and they cower in fear, while only a select band is left to raise a cry, irrespective of the price to be paid. ...

‘Tony’s wife wasn’t cold before tongues started wagging about me and him,' Anna complained. 'If only I could . . . ’ ‘What?’ Megan picked up Ann’s bag. ‘Shout the truth from the rooftops.’ ‘Do that,' Megan warned, 'you’ll lose your job and there’ll be two more widows scrubbing the Graig workhouse yard and three more children taken into Maesycoed orphanage. Forget the gossips. Think of the dinner we’ll have tomorrow.’

All Mel and Dana wanted was a weekend break... Mel and Dana take a long weekend break with the family on a Lake Erie island, or so they planned. Things just never seem to work out as they plan because crime follows them everywhere. Will they ever get a break? Probably not, but maybe Mel will find the career spark that's been missing for a while. This is a short story featuring Mel and Dana that takes place sometime after Book 12 of the Morelville Mysteries series. You don't need to have read the series to enjoy this story, but it will certainly help you understand Mel and her motivations. ...

Nineteen gut-wrenching reports from the front lines of the War of the Worlds, as logged by Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, H.P. Lovecraft, Winston Churchill, Jules Verne, and many of the other most famous writers of the time. The most popular and acclaimed science fiction writers of today relive the Martian invasion through the eyes of their famous predecessors.

The stories you’ve dreamed of; the people you crave to meet; or would love to be. The aliens who’d make you shiver, or laugh. The huge risks of guiding your spacecraft here, or there. The adventures you’d have if only you had the nerve… Or the utter romance of doing that… The humour of orbital disasters and alien conflicts; the perils of ill-advised time-interference; the sheer romance of null-gravity love; the terrors of a leaky hull; the fear of a bullying boss when you’re a thousand light years beyond.; the choices you face in the big, black Vac. Mostly a laugh or a satisfied...