Historical Fiction War Ii

Celebrated singer Genevieve Dumont is both a star and a smokescreen. An unwilling darling of the Nazis, the chanteuse’s position of privilege allows her to go undetected as an ally to the resistance. When her estranged mother, Lillian de Rocheford, is captured by Nazis, Genevieve knows it won’t be long before the Gestapo succeeds in torturing information out of Lillian that will derail the upcoming allied invasion. The resistance movement is tasked with silencing her by any means necessary - including assassination.

Mars 1943. Le Reich vient de perdre Stalingrad. Pour Joseph Goebbels, il faut absolument redonner le moral à l'armée allemande et porter un coup aux Alliés. Or sur le territoire soviétique, près de la frontière biélorusse, à Smolensk, ville occupée par les Allemands depuis 1941, la rumeur enfle. Des milliers de soldats polonais auraient été assassinés et enterrés dans des fosses communes.

In 1947, photographer and war correspondent Janey Everett arrives at a remote surfing village on the Hawaiian island of Kauai to research a planned biography of forgotten aviation pioneer Sam Mallory, who joined the loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War and never returned. Obsessed with Sam’s fate, Janey has tracked down Irene Lindquist, the owner of a local island-hopping airline, whom she believes might actually be the legendary Irene Foster, Mallory’s onetime student and flying partner.

Poland, 1942. After witnessing the destruction of her hometown in Warsaw, Anna Kowalski joins the Polish Resistance. She is tasked with smuggling as many children as possible out of the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewers and relocating them to safety. Through her work, Anna meets Johnnie Nowak, an RAF pilot who had managed to escape from a prisoner of war camp. He's not safe in Warsaw, so Anna leads him out of the city to protect him...

Décembre 1942. La France est désormais totalement occupée. Pour Albane, Noël s’annonce sous le signe des restrictions, sans la présence rassurante de Raphaël, membre actif d’un réseau de résistance. Si elle cède à une joie timide lorsqu’il lui annonce son retour, des incidents troublants se succèdent au château, faisant peser une mystérieuse menace sur la jeune femme, sa famille et ses amis. Révoltée par les exactions commises par des soldats allemands, Albane se consacre à son métier d’enseignante sans pour autant renoncer au combat.

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 door slammed and the unmistakable sound of boots came crashing up the hall. Liese held her little daughter’s hand so tightly, the tiny fingers had turned purple. The SS officer’s hand was at Liese’s throat before she saw him move. "I can kill you easily, then I can kill your daughter." He relaxed his grip a little. "Or perhaps I could kill her first?" England, 40 years later. When Karen Cartwright is unexpectedly called home to nurse her ailing father, she goes with a heavy heart.

April, 1940. Hitler is invading Denmark on Tuesday. Olivia Redmond has only a weekend to bring a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and his war-altering research to Britain. The scientist and his wife want to leave, but their troublesome daughter will do anything to stop her parents from departing. When the daughter’s German fiancé is murdered, the police refuse to let anyone depart until they find the killer. If Olivia wants to escape Denmark with the chemist and his breakthroughs, she will have to unmask the killer before the Nazis stop her forever.

In The Commodore, the navy in 1942-1943 is fighting a losing battle against Japan for control of the Solomon Islands. Vice Admiral William "Bull" Halsey is tasked with changing the course of the war. Halsey, a maverick, goes on the offensive and appoints a host of new destroyer commanders, including a wild card named Harmon Wolf. An American Indian from a Minnesota reservation, Wolf has never fit in with the traditional navy officer corps. But under Halsey, Wolf's aggressive tactics and gambling nature bring immediate results.

In the spring of 1957, Jacob Versteeg is graduating from high school at the top of his class. Quite an accomplishment for a guy who spent his young childhood in a German concentration camp. When the war ended, he was adopted by Huub Versteeg, a kind fellow POW at Bergen-Belsen who had taken him under his wing. For ten years Jacob grew up in Chicago surrounded by the love of his new family, including Danny and Anya McClain and their two young children. In fact, he has thrived.

In August of 1939, as Britain watches the headlines in fear of another devastating war with Germany, three childhood companions must choose between friendship and country. Erstwhile, socialite Nora is determined to find her place in the Home Office’s Air Raid Precautions Department, matchmaker Hazel tries to mask two closely guarded secrets with irrepressible optimism, and German expat Marie worries that she and her family might face imprisonment in an internment camp if war is declared.

London, 1938: The bookstore just doesn’t feel the same to Gertie Bingham ever since the death of her beloved husband Harry. Bingham Books was a dream they shared together, and without Harry, Gertie wonders if it’s time to take her faithful old lab, Hemingway, and retire to the seaside. But fate has other plans for Gertie. In Germany, Hitler is on the rise, and Jewish families are making the heart-wrenching decision to send their children away from the growing turmoil. After a nudge from her dear friend Charles, Gertie decides to take in one of these refugees.

One woman must make the hardest decision of her life in this unforgettably moving story of resistance and faith during one of the darkest times in history. Told from alternating perspectives, While Paris Slept reflects on the power of love, resilience, and courage when all seems lost.

In a remote Newfoundland outpost at the onset of the Second World War, the young Catholic Wish Furey meets the passionate, independent 16-year-old Protestant Sadie Parsons. They begin an intense affair that is cut short as prejudice and mistrust drive Wish away, into the British Army and the war. At home in Newfoundland, Sadie turns her back on her family and moves to St. John's to wait for Wish - until she receives word that he is dead. Fifty years later, Sadie returns to Newfoundland to scatter her American husband's ashes and to face her past.

A gripping historical novel that tells the little-known story of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai during WWII. 1939: Two young girls meet in Shanghai, also known as the “Paris of the East”. Beautiful local Li and Jewish refugee Romy form a fierce friendship, but the deepening shadows of World War II fall over the women as they slip between the city's glamorous French Concession district and the teeming streets of the Shanghai Ghetto. 2016: Fleeing London with a broken heart, Alexandra returns to Australia to be with her grandparents, Romy and Wilhelm.

Max Wolff is a committed soldier of the Reich. So when he is sent home wounded, only to discover that his mother is sheltering two young Jewish women in their home, he is outraged. His mother’s act of mercy is a gross betrayal of everything Max stands for. He has dedicated his life to Nazism, fighting to atone for the shame of his anti-Hitler father’s imprisonment. It’s his duty to turn the sisters over to the Gestapo. But he hesitates, and the longer Max fails to do his duty, the harder it becomes.

From the author of The Power of One comes a new novel about Africa. The time is 1939. White South Africa is a deeply divided nation with many of the Afrikaner people fanatically opposed to the English. The world is also on the brink of war, and South Africa elects to fight for the Allied cause against Germany. Six-year-old Tom Fitzsaxby finds himself in The Boys Farm, an orphanage in a remote town in the high mountains, where the Afrikaners side fiercely with Hitler's Germany.

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.

Le livre d'Anthony Doerr possède la puissance et le souffle des chefs-d'œuvre. Il nous entraîne, du Paris de l'Occupation à l'effervescence de la Libération, dans le sillage de deux héros dont la guerre va bouleverser l'existence : Marie-Laure, une jeune aveugle, réfugiée avec son père à Saint-Malo, et Werner, un orphelin, véritable génie des transmissions électromagnétiques, dont les talents sont exploités par la Wehrmacht pour briser la Résistance. En entrecroisant le destin de ces deux personnages, ennemis malgré eux, dans le décor crépusculaire d'une ville pilonnée par les bombes, Anthony Doerr dessine une fresque d'une beauté envoûtante.

It was a misty Wednesday morning. Inside the Gestapo headquarters, you could cut the tension with a knife. There was a traitor in their midst: Someone had leaked a list of the SS to the British press. The head of the Gestapo called me into his office. Panelled oak walls, a grand piano in the corner, rugs lining the floor—the place where he ordered executions every day.