French Wars

In this haunting memoir that reflects on the Holocaust and its legacy, award-winning author Sandell Morse discovers stories of bravery and resistance enacted during WWII in Southern France. In the course of six years at a writing residency in France, during which she met with survivors and historians, she painstakingly pieces together the puzzle that had been beguiling her over the years: What was the real story of the French Jews under the Vichy government during The Second World War?

France, 1942: A Nazi Officer steals a Matisse painting that becomes a symbol of freedom against the oppressors. Francesca, an artist and conservator, grieving over the death of her daughter at the hands of German soldiers, flees Paris. She has only a handful of paintings and a desire for revenge she is ill-equipped to pursue. In the long, hard winter that follows, she joins a group of Partisans in their battle to free France and salvage her culture. She becomes embroiled in a plot to recover Le Mur Rose, the stolen painting.

Nazi-occupied Aquitaine, 1943: François Dufy, alcoholic and alone, is dragged into the war effort when he rescues a young Jewish girl from the Nazi Security Police. She breathes life into his world and gives him a reason to go on. Dufy begins a path of revenge on the occupying Germans. A sniper in the Great War, he uses his skills to devastating effect, always posing as the town drunk. Then the British drop supplies and a beautiful SOE agent whom Dufy falls in love with. But as the invaders hunt down the partisans in the deep, crisp woodland, nothing works out as Dufy had hoped.

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2017 One of NPR Fresh Air's "Books to Close Out a Chaotic 2017" NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2017’s Great Reads “How lucky for us readers that Shapiro has been listening so perceptively for decades to the language of food.” —Maureen...

In the early years of World War II, it was an amazing feat for an Allied airman shot down over occupied Europe to make it back to England. By 1943, however, pilots and crewmembers, supplied with "escape kits", knew they had a 50 percent chance of evading capture and returning home. An estimated 12,000 French civilians helped make this possible. More than 5,000 airmen, many of them American, successfully traveled along escape lines organized much like those of the US Underground Railroad.

A year after John Bradstreet’s raid of 1758—the first and largest British American riverine raid mounted during the Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War)—Benjamin Franklin hailed it as one of the great “American” victories of the war. Bradstreet heartily agreed, and soon enough, his own official account was adopted by Francis Parkman and other early historians.

À 85 ans, Clara s'éteint dans sa propriété provençale. Chef de clan et gardienne de la tribu Morvan-Meyer, elle a toujours surmonté les deuils, les mensonges, les trahisons ; elle a maintenu l'honneur et l'unité de la famille en dépit de tout. Elle a surtout fermé les yeux sur la tragédie qui déchira le destin de ses deux fils trente ans plus tôt. Pour elle, ses cinq petits-enfants ont respecté la loi du silence. Les voici désormais seuls, face à eux-mêmes et à leurs propres démons...

1945. Une maison de pierres blanches, aux volets bleus : Vallongue est l'image de la sérénité. Pourtant, entre ces murs, la guerre est loin d'être finie. Clara constate avec tristesse les malheurs que ces cinq ans de conflit ont infligé à sa famille. Son fils Charles, de retour d'Allemagne où il était prisonnier, n'est plus que l'ombre de lui-même. Quant à Édouard, le second fils Morvan, la disparition de sa femme et de sa fille le ronge de l'intérieur. Et entre les deux hommes, le feu couve.

Leclerc, c'est un parcours, un destin et une légende. Au lieu de l'image d'Épinal du génie ou du visionnaire, l'action du général en Afrique prend plus d'ampleur, son commandement de la 2e division blindée apparaît dans toute sa complexité, son rôle dans la décolonisation est réexaminé. La description de ses relations avec l'armée, de Gaulle et sa famille achève le portrait d'un homme qui lutta contre les ennemis de la France, mais aussi contre ses propres faiblesses.

Séoul. Deux idols se battent pour décrocher les récompenses et le cœur des fans. C'est la guerre à chaque concert ! Sur scène comme en backstage, tous les coups sont permis. Qui les fans choisiront-ils ? Tae, chanteur rebelle ? Ou Bae, leader torturé ? Mais quand les médias décident de s'en mêler, ils font une révélation fracassante : Bae annonce qu'il rejoint le groupe de son rival ! Pourquoi ? Que cache-t-il ? Tae découvrira-t-il le secret de son nouveau coéquipier ?

Huriel, 1er août 1914 : Léon Aumoine se marie avec Marguerite, une fille Bigouret. Ils ont vingt ans. Mais la messe est à peine finie que le tocsin résonne au loin. Le lendemain, après une nuit de noces à l'hôtel Terminus, Léon embarque à Montluçon. C'est la guerre. Marie Aumoine voit partir son fils aîné avec courage et résignation. Bientôt, elle le sait, ses trois autres fils suivront. Jean, le bachelier, rejoint le 121e. Raymond, le "mauvais garçon", fait ses classes dans le deuxième contingent.

For nearly 200 years huge wooden warships called “ships of the line” dominated war at sea and were thus instrumental in the European struggle for power and the spread of imperialism. Foremost among the great naval powers were Great Britain and France, whose advanced economies could support large numbers of these expensive ships. This book, the first joint history of these great navies, offers a uniquely impartial and comprehensive picture of the two forces - their shipbuilding programs, naval campaigns, and battles, and their wartime strategies and diplomacy.

George Lamming—one of the Caribbean’s most powerful literary voices—reimagines the age of European exploration to expose the deep scars of conquest in this novel, which Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’'o, perennial contender for the Nobel Prize, calls “one of the great political novels in modern...

The French painter Jean Hélion’s unique and deeply moving account of his experiences in Nazi prisoner-of-war camps prefigures the even darker stories that would emerge from the concentration camps. This serious adventure tale begins with Hélion’s infantry platoon fleeing from the German army and warplanes as they advanced through France in the early days of the war. The soldiers chant as they march and run, “They shall not have me!” but are quickly captured and sent to hard labor.

If you like Hornblower and Sharpe, you will love this all-action nautical page-turner from much loved author G.S.Beard. You'll feel as if you are in the midst of the action! 'If you like sea stories, you will enjoy this, and even if you think you don't but enjoy things like Sharpe, it might just...

Acadie, 1917. Dans un village acadien de bord de mer, où la vie se déploie au fil de ses saisons et de ses luttes, dans sa beauté et son âpreté, Jean-Baptiste, à peine un homme, et la jolie Angelaine s’aiment éperdument. Du jour au lendemain, leur monde bascule du tout au tout. Devenu orphelin en temps de guerre, désemparé, le jeune homme s’enrôle dans l’Armée canadienne et quitte les rivages de son Acadie natale et sa bien-aimée. Il pense partir au front, mais il se retrouve dans les magnifiques montagnes de la Franche-Comté, à y bûcher rudement le bois à coeur de jour.

Considering the suspicions, jealousies, bigotry, and crass opportunism inherent whenever one power occupies another, Golden Ghetto: How the Americans and French Fell in and out of Love During the Cold War pieces together an improbable tale of how fear and skepticism were crushed by trust and friendship.

A landmark new history of Syria—a country forged in conflict, cursed by civil war and dictatorship, and pivotal to the future of the Middle East “A masterful history of Syria that is both sweeping in scope and brimming with vivid detail...a riveting and insightful book.” —Wendy Pearlman...

Summer 1939 - When war breaks out, Sylvie is marooned with her cousin Nell's family in the Chiltern hills and cannot return to her Normandy home. During the early days of rationing, blackouts, and the threat of bombers in the skies, Sylvie and Nell have to grow up quickly. Yet as the war rages around them, it's the competition and jealousy between the two that dominates their lives. When the girls fall in love with the same man, their relationship is truly tested. But the war pulls them all apart and changes the course of their lives – until their secrets are revealed.

The life story of Major Robert Rogers, the New England frontiersman who recruited companies of colonial soldiers, known as Rogers' Rangers, to fight for the British in the French and Indian War, is a compelling mix of military intrigue and national identity. This feisty major codified colonial military strategies into a document, known as Standing Orders, and put these principles to practice in many battles, campaigns, and scouting.