Literary Fiction War

In Gone for Soldiers, Jeff Shaara carries us back 15 years before the momentous conflict he has so brilliantly chronicled, to a time when the Civil War's most familiar names are fighting for another cause, junior officers marching under the same flag in an unfamiliar land, experiencing combat...

By Cecile depicts post-World War II France as it reels from war and recovery. In Paris, an orphan girl, Cecile, finds refuge with an older man. He introduces her to nightclubs, intellectuals, artists (Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Eartha Kitt!), and non-monogamy. When she falls for his mistress, she begins to live a life she deems worthy of writing about...but only under the pseudonym of her husband.

James Fenimore Cooper was America's first successful popular novelist. Son of the prominent federalist William Cooper, founder of the Cooperstown settlement, James was educated at Yale in preparation for a genteel life as a federalist gentleman. After his father's death in an 1809 duel, Cooper quickly squandered his inheritance, and at thirty was on the verge of bankruptcy. He turned to writing but his first book, Precaution (1820), was a failure.

One of the greatest Vietnam War novels ever written, by an award-winning writer who experienced it firsthand. Deployed to Vietnam with the U.S. Army's 1069 Intelligence Group, Spec. 4 James Griffin starts out clear-eyed and hardworking, believing he can glide through the war unharmed. But the...

A riveting novel about two women--one Serbian, one Bosnian--whose deep friendship spans decades and continents, war and peace, love and estrangement, in the vein of Elena Ferrante and Julia Alvarez. From the moment Marija walks into Lara's classroom, freshly moved to Serbia from Sarajevo, Lara...

From the best-selling author of Longbourn, a haunting new novel of spies and artists, passion and danger, hope in the face of despair Paris, 1939. The pavement rumbles with the footfall of Nazi soldiers marching along the Champs-Élysées. A young, unknown writer—Samuel Beckett—recently...

"A tense and compelling drama of the wars without and the wars within—and of the flame of violence that burns through the American psyche." —T.C. Boyle, New York Times bestselling author of The Women "Stunning . . . [Parker is] a brave and daring writer." —Lisa See, New York Times...

An entirely original novel in which a book—Joseph Roth's masterpiece Rebellion—narrates its own astonishing life story, from 1930s Germany to the present day, at the heart of a gripping mystery. “A powerful, powerful piece of work.” —Colum McCann, best-selling author of Apeirogon...

An overwhelmed new mom discovers unexpected parallels between life in twenty-first-century America and her grandmother’s account of their family’s escape from the Nazis in this sharp, heartfelt novel. “A fresh perspective—one that’s both haunting and hilarious—on dual-timeline war...

One of the great war novels, The Red Badge of Courage describes the first experience of front-line combat through the eyes of a young recruit, Henry Fleming, in one of the battles of the American Civil War. Under the stress of battle, Fleming is forced to face strong, conflicting emotions, ranging from bravado to terror as the conflict ebbs and flows.

The time is roughly now and Kai, a white-collar worker, has just been abandoned by his longtime lover. Follow him through a labyrinth of alleyways as he reels from this sudden departure. Accompany him up snowy mountains where he contemplates ending his own life. That mourning can be both an art and ever-unfolding journey is epitomized in the paths that Kai crosses and the lives he alters for better or worse.

Tracing the historic arc of Abraham Lincoln's life from his picaresque days as a gangly young man in Sangamon County, Illinois, through his improbable marriage to Kentucky belle Mary Todd, to his 1865 visit to war-shattered Richmond only days before his assassination, I Am Abraham hews to the familiar Lincoln saga, seamlessly braiding Lincoln family members and military figures with a parade of fictional extras - wise-cracking knaves, conniving hangers-on, patriotic whores, and dying soldiers.

From Fobbit author David Abrams, Brave Deeds is a compelling novel of war, brotherhood, and America. Spanning eight hours, the audiobook follows a squad of six AWOL soldiers as they attempt to cross war-torn Baghdad on foot to attend the funeral of their leader, Staff Sergeant Rafe Morgan. As the men make their way to the funeral, they recall the most ancient of warriors yet are a microcosm of 21st-century America, and subject to the same human flaws as all of us.

William Dean Howells was born in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, of Welch, Irish, and German forebears. Along with Mark Twain, he was one of the great novelists of his time. This book, the realisic saga of the rise and redemptive fall of an American tycoon, is considered to be his best novel.

Cultural and familial fireworks flare when the headstrong teenage daughter of a wealthy New Yorker falls passionately in love with a young man from New Orleans, and from a very different background indeed. What makes this story sizzle and soar are its time and place - the United States during the Civil War and Victorian England - and a couple of key facts about the protagonists.

In the summer of 1853, in Lafayette City, Louisiana, 11-year-old Elias Abrams loses his mother to yellow fever. Grief-stricken and alone, he becomes embroiled in the street life of New Orleans. After Elias is falsely accused of a crime, and in order to escape arrest, he enlists in the Third Louisiana Regiment, where 3,000 other Jews will ultimately fight for the Confederacy. Before long, though, Elias' past catches up with him, and he realizes that he must face his demons, or lose the woman he loves

Caught in the midst of England's War of the Roses, young Dick Shelton's loyalties are torn between a guardian who betrays him and the leader of the secret fellowship, "The Black Arrow".

Sitting in a jail cell on the eve of his hanging, April 1, 1875, freedman Persimmon "Persy" Wilson wants nothing more than to leave some record of the truth - his truth. He may be guilty but not of what he stands accused: the kidnapping and rape of his former master's wife. In 1860 Persy had been sold to Sweetmore, a Louisiana sugar plantation, alongside a striking light-skinned house slave named Chloe. Their deep and instant connection fueled a love affair and inspired plans to escape their owner, Master Wilson, who claimed Chloe as his concubine.

Claude Wheeler resembles the youngest son of an American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds what he has been searching for all his life.

The son of an English father and a Russian mother, Charlie Doig is a big man: in stature, spirit, and sexual appetite. In 1914, he is on a mission for the Academy of Science in Russia when war breaks out. Doig, who has no intention of being killed, returns to his home near Smolensk and to the woman he loves, Elizaveta. But imperial Russia is doomed. Trapped by the snow with Doig and Elizaveta are a motley collection of old aristocrats and two soldiers seeking refuge, one of whom, Doig fears, is a Bolshevik.