Adult
All That I Am by Anna Funder
The Archivist by Martha Cooley
A young woman's impassioned pursuit of a sealed cache of T. S. Eliot's letters lies at the heart of this emotionally charged novel -- a story of marriage and madness, of faith and desire, of jazz-age New York and Europe in the shadow of the Holocaust. The Archivist was a word-of-mouth bestseller and one of the most jubilantly acclaimed first novels of recent years.
Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh
Bakerton is a community of company houses and church festivals, of union squabbles and firemen's parades. For its tight-knit citizens -- and the five children of the Novak family -- the 1940s will be a decade of excitement, tragedy, and stunning change. Baker Towers is a family saga and a love story, a hymn to a time and place long gone.
Beside a Burning Sea by John Shors
One moment, the World War II hospital ship Benevolence is patrolling the South Pacific on a mission of mercy—to save wounded American soldiers. The next, Benevolence is split in two by a torpedo, killing almost everyone on board. A small band of survivors makes it to the deserted shore of a nearby island.
A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell
Death is merely the beginning of Chaim Skibelski’s troubles. In the opening pages, he is shot along with the other Jews of his small Polish village. But instead of resting peacefully in the World to Come, Chaim, for reasons unclear to him, is left to wander the earth, accompanied by his rabbi, who has taken the form of a talking crow.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death tells the story of Liesel --- a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling helps sustain her foster parents and the Jewish man they are hiding in their basement, as well as their neighbors.
Breath and Shadows by Ella Leffland
Ella Leffland brilliantly explores the perils of ordinary life that threaten the well-being, even the sanity, of one member of each of three generations of a Danish family in Europe and America -- people who are daring enough to believe that goodness and truth are possible in worlds they cannot control.
A Brother's Blood by Michael C. White
Wolfgang Kallick arrives in a rural town, hoping to unravel the mystery of his brother's death. His questions trigger disturbing, long-dormant memories in Libby, a flinty Yankee store owner, and she is drawn inexorably into the drama when she realizes that her own family is involved in the case. Then Libby's own brother is killed, and she suspecs that the two deaths are somehow linked.
Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks
In blacked-out, wartime London, Charlotte Gray develops a dangerous passion for a battle-weary RAF pilot, and when he fails to return from a daring flight into France she is determined to find him.
City of Women by David R. Gillham
At the height of the Second World War, Berlin has essentially become a city of women. While her husband fights on the Eastern Front, Sigrid Schröder goes to work every day and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law. Her tedious existence is turned upside down when she finds herself hiding a mother and her two young daughters, and she must make terrifying choices that could cost her everything.
The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan
Set against the magnificent backdrop of Alaska in the waning days of World War II, The Cloud Atlas is an enthralling debut novel, a story of adventure and awakening—and of a young soldier who came to Alaska on an extraordinary, top-secret mission…and found a world that would haunt him forever.
The Concubine's Daughter by Pai Kit Fai
Li-Xia, or “Beautiful One,” seems destined to become a concubine herself. But Li refuses to submit to her fate, outwitting her father’s orders to bind her feet and escaping the silk farm with an English sea captain in a journey that will take her from remote mountain refuges to the perils of Hong Kong on the eve of World War II.
Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
On an Italian-occupied Greek island during WWII, Pelagia, a willful, beautiful local girl, has two suitors vying for her love: Mandras, a gentle fisherman turned ruthless guerilla, and the charming, mandolin-playing Captain Corelli. Corelli's Mandolin is rich with loyalties and betrayals, and set against a landscape where the factual blends seamlessly with the fantastic.
Crabwalk by Günter Grass
The Gustloff, a German cruise ship turned refugee carrier, was attacked by a Soviet submarine in January 1945. Some nine thousand people went down in the Baltic Sea, making it the deadliest maritime disaster of all time. Born to an unwed mother on a lifeboat the night of the attack, Paul Pokriefke is a middle-aged journalist trying to piece together the tragic events.
Eight Million Gods and Demons by Hiroko Sherwin
In Meiji-era Japan, an idealistic Japanese politician named Taku takes Emi as his child bride. Emi cherishes Taku's doting love. That is, until she meets Hana, a wicked geisha, and discovers a betrayal so devastating it would take the aid of eight million gods to overcome.
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
This beautiful novel portrays the convergence of four damaged lives in a bomb-riddled Italian villa in the last days of the war. Hana, the grieving nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the emotionally detached Indian sapper, Kip—each is haunted in different ways by the riddle of the man they know only as the English patient, a nameless burn victim who lies swathed in bandages in an upstairs room.
The Fall: A Novel by Simon Mawer
Against a shifting backdrop of Alpine peaks, a small Welsh village, and the bombed-out London of World War II, a man and two women come together. Years later, the tangle of their relationships is imprinted on the lives of two fatherless young men, friends since childhood, who find themselves similarly ensnared in a series of love triangles.
Family Secrets: A Vengeance of Tears by R. A. Siracusa
Disdained by her father and facing an arranged marriage, young Angela Rosarno yearns to be loved for herself. She flees her home and travels to Sicily into the arms of Santino Camastro, a man she has come to love only through his letters though never met. Wooed and rushed into marriage, she learns -- all too late -- that her husband is not the man who penned the letters.
Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky
At the center of the novel is Silvio, who has returned to this small town after years away. As his narration unfolds, we are given an intimate picture of the loves and infidelities, the scandals, the youthful ardor and regrets of age that tie Silvio to the long-guarded secrets of the past.
Four Freedoms by John Crowley
In the early 1940s, as the nation's young men ship off to combat, a city springs up, seemingly overnight in the fields of Oklahoma: the Van Damme airplane factory, a gargantuan complex dedicated to the construction of the necessary machinery of warfare. Laborers—mostly women—flock to this place, enticed by the opportunity to be something more than wife and homemaker.
The German Woman by Paul Griner
This riveting war story introduces us to the beautiful Kate Zweig, the English widow of a German surgeon, and Claus Murphy, an exiled American with German roots—two lovers with complicated loyalties.
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell
Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, Lexie Sinclair plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who wears duck-egg blue ties and introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, post-war Soho. She learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to embrace her life fully and with a deep love.
Heart of Deception by M. L. Malcolm
From M. L. Malcolm, the acclaimed author of Heart of Lies, comes a powerful sequel that spans the years from World War II to the turbulent 1960s—the riveting story of a family struggling with choices forced upon them by war . . . and the consequences that will take a generation to unfold.
Hitler's Niece by Ron Hansen
Hitler's Niece tells the story of the intense and disturbing relationship between Adolf Hitler and the daughter of his only half-sister, Angela, a drama that evolves against the backdrop of Hitler's rise to prominence. The story follows Geli from her birth in Linz, Austria, through the years in Berchtesgaden and Munich, to her tragic death in 1932 in Hitler's apartment in Munich.
The Homecoming by Dan Walsh
No sooner is Shawn Collins home from the fighting in Europe than he's called upon to serve as a war hero on a USO bond tour. But Shawn just wants to stay home with his son Patrick and grieve the loss of his wife in private. When Shawn asks Katherine Townsend, Patrick's former social worker, to be Patrick's nanny while he's on the road, he has no idea how this decision will impact his life.
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
A young Native American, Abel has come home from a foreign war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world -- modern, industrial America -- pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, claiming his soul...
The House of Gentle Men: A Novel by Kathy Hepinstall
Charlotte sets off on a mission of love in the backwoods of Louisiana, only to be violated by three soldiers in a lonely section of the forest. Charlotte's young life is destroyed, but another life is growing inside her. Years later, Charlotte comes to House of Gentle Men, a mysterious sanctuary where sad, damaged women are administered to by haunted men wishing to atone for their past crimes.
In My Hands Irene Gut Opdyke with Jennifer Armstrong
Irene Gut was just 17 in 1939, when the Germans and Russians devoured her native Poland. Just a girl, really. But a girl who saw evil and chose to defy it. In this memoir, she tells her harrowing story.
In Open Spaces by Russell Rowland
Set in the vast and unforgiving prairie of eastern Montana from 1916 to 1946, In Open Spaces is the compelling story of the Arbuckle brothers. With breathtaking descriptions of the Montana landscape, Russell Rowland masterfully weaves a fascinating tale of the psychological wars that can rip a family apart...and, ultimately, the redemption that can bring them back together.
La’s Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith
When Lavender, La to her friends, moves to the Suffolk countryside, it’s not just to escape the London Blitz but also to flee the wreckage of a disastrous marriage. But as she starts to become a part of the community, she detects a sense of isolation. Her deep love of music and her desire to bring people together inspire her to start an orchestra.
Leeway Cottage by Beth Gutcheon
In April 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, Sydney Brant, a wealthy girl of the Dundee summer colony, marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well matched, but Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to the fortunes of Hitler's war. By the time the war is over, Laurus's family has played an active role in Denmark's grassroots rescue of the country's Jews.
Liberation by Joanna Scott
Adriana Nardi is only 10 years old when Allied forces occupy her island home during World War II, plaguing the Italian village with violence and uncertainty. Amdu is a Senegalese soldier who abandons his comrades and befriends Adriana. Decades later, 60-year-old Adriana revisits her memories of the war and her doomed relationship with Amdu, even as a present crisis threatens her life.
The Linen Queen by Patricia Falvey
Neglected by her self-centered, unstable mother, Sheila McGee cannot wait to escape the drudgery of her mill village life in Northern Ireland. Her Irish beauty helps her win the 1941 Linen Queen competition, and the prize money finally gives her the opportunity she's been dreaming of. But Sheila does not count on the impact of the Belfast blitz which brings World War II to her doorstep.
A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka
On the eve of World War II, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon falls in love with a girl fabled for her angelic looks. To court Anielica Hetmanskáhe offers up his “golden hands” and transforms her family’s modest hut into a beautiful home, thereby building his way into her heart. But war arrives to cut short their courtship and send the young lovers far from home to the promise of a new life in Kraków.
Mason's Retreat by Christopher Tilghman
The year is 1936, and the world is on the brink of war. American expatriot Edward Mason, owner of a failing machine factory, is fighting more private battles. In the face of defeat, he abandons his adopted home in England in order to reclaim his inheritance on Maryland’s Eastern Shore---a ruinous, thousand-acre estate known ominously as Mason’s Retreat.
Matters of Chance by Jeannette Haien
Morgan and Maude Shurtliff fall in love and marry in the years before World War II. Unable to have children of their own, Morgan and Maude adopt twin girls. The four go home to their beautiful house outside of New York City and begin to settle into what they hope will be a long and happy life. But Morgan is called to serve in World War II, leaving Maude to raise her daughters alone.
A Memory Between Us Wings of Glory, Book Two by Sarah Sundin
Major Jack Novak has never failed to meet a challenge--until he meets army nurse Lieutenant Ruth Doherty. When Jack lands in the army hospital after a plane crash, he makes winning Ruth's heart a top priority mission. But he has his work cut out for him. Not only is Ruth focused on her work in order to support her orphaned siblings back home, she carries a shameful secret.
A Memory of War by Frederick Busch
Psychologist Alexander Lescziak savors a life of quiet sophistication on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, when a new patient declares he is the doctor’s half-brother, the product of a union between Lescziak’s Jewish mother and a German prisoner-of-war. Suddenly Lescziak finds his world closing in on him, as events acquire new significance.
Miracle at St. Anna by James McBride
Four soldiers from the army's Negro 92nd Division find themselves separated from their unit and behind enemy lines. Risking their lives for a country in which they are treated with less respect than the enemy they are fighting, they discover humanity in the small Tuscan village of St. Anna di Stazzema.
The Mirror by Lynn Freed
Designed to appear like an antique diary, with photographs tucked into each chapter, this fictional memoir of a beautiful, ruthlessly ambitious American woman follows her path to wealth and power in South Africa between the two world wars.
Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons
At the outset of World War II, Jack Rosenblum, his wife Sadie, and their baby daughter escape Berlin, bound for London. Jack acquires Saville Row suits and a Jaguar. But the one key item that would make him feel fully British -membership in a golf club-remains elusive. In post-war England, no golf club will admit a Rosenblum. Jack hatches a wild idea: he'll build his own.
The Museum Guard by Howard Norman
This is an amazing and beautifully written novel about two museum guards, one an eccentric uncle, the other his orphaned nephew, DeFoe. By day they spend their time curating an art collection, breaking the silence of the museum with heated conversation; by night we learn about their loves and past histories.
Next to Love by Ellen Feldman
In Next to Love by Ellen Feldman, three young women --- Babe, Millie and Grace --- who live in a small town in Massachusetts all send the men they love off to fight in World War II. Not everyone returns, and those who do are profoundly changed, reminding us that the scars of war run deeper than the day that victory is won. This character-rich story begins before the men head out and continues right through the early ’60s.
Night Ride Home by Barbara Esstman
With her two teenage children, Simon and Clea, who shared her love of horses, Nora ran the family horse ranch on the banks of the Missouri River. When Simon is killed in a riding accident, her marriage and the world she made for herself is shattered. Ozzie Kline, a horse wrangler who has loved her since they were teenagers, steps in to help her rebuild her life.
Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow
Stewart Dubinsky knew his father had served in World War II. And he'd been told how he had rescued Stewart's mother from the horror of a concentration camp. But when he learns of his father's court-martial and imprisonment, he is plunged into the mystery of his family's secret history and driven to uncover the truth about this enigmatic, distant man who'd always refused to talk about his war.
The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee
The Piano Teacher is a tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong. In 1942, Englishman Will Truesdale falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world.
Resistance by Owen Sheers
In a remote and rugged Welsh valley in 1944, in the wake of a German invasion, all the men have disappeared overnight, apparently to join the underground resistance. Their abandoned wives, a tiny group of farm women, are soon trapped in the valley by an unusually harsh winter—along with a handful of war-weary German soldiers on a secret mission.
Saints and Villains by Denise Giardina
In the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War, there were few instances of shining moral courage, let along secular sainthood. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Nazi resister was the exception. This emblematic figure risked his life--and finally lost it--through his participation in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler and topple his regime.
The Seasons of the EmmaLee by Michael Lindley
The Seasons of the EmmaLee is a love story set in Charlevoix, Michigan in the 1940s and the present day; it is a story of unexpected love, betrayal, murder and redemption.
The Servants' Quarters by Lynn Freed
Haunted by phantoms of the Holocaust, young Cressida lives in terror of George Harding, who, severely disfigured, has returned from the front to recover in his family’s stately African home. When he plucks young Cressida’s beautiful family from financial ruin, establishing them in the old servants’ quarters of his estate, Cressida is swept into a future inexorably bound to his.
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13, rue Therese by Elena Mauli Shapiro
In Paris, American academic Trevor Stratton discovers a box full of century-old artifacts. The pictures, letters and objects in the box relate to the life of Louise Brunet, a Frenchwoman who lived through both World Wars. As he becomes enamored with the charming, feisty Louise of his imagination, he notices another alluring Frenchwoman, his clerk Josianne, with whom he decides he is falling in love.
The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett
In the fall of 1916, America prepares for war—but in the community of Tamarack Lake, the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, mainly immigrants, fill the large public sanatorium. But when the well-meaning efforts of one enterprising patient lead to a tragic accident and a terrible betrayal, the war comes home.
Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
Out of print for nearly three decades until the hardcover re-release last year, Ali and Nino is Kurban Said's masterpiece. It is a captivating novel as evocative of the exotic desert landscape as it is of the passion between two people pulled apart by culture, religion, and war.
Alice in Exile: A Novel by Piers Paul Read
It is 1913 when Alice meets Edward Cobb, the eligible son of a baronet. When Alice's father, a radical publisher, gets involved in a scandal, Edward breaks off their engagement, unaware that Alice is expecting his child. Desperate, she travels to Russia to serve as a governess for charming Baron Rettenberg, as the Russian Revolution and World War I rage on.
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
As the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenches of No Man's Land, Sebastian Faulks creates a world of fiction that is as tragic as A Farewell to Arms and as sensuous as The English Patient.
C by Tom McCarthy
Opening in England at the turn of the twentieth century, C is the story of Serge Carrefax. As Serge goes from a Bohemian spa to the skies of World War I, and from a German prison camp into the tombs of Egypt, we follow his life through the tumultuous course of the nascent modern era.
The Crimson Portrait by Jody Shields
Spring 1915. On a sprawling country estate not far from London a young woman mourns her husband, fallen on the battlefields of what has been declared the first World War...
But the isolated and eerie stillness in which she grieves is shattered when her home is transformed into a bustling military hospital to serve the war's most irreparably injured.
A Cup of Tea by Amy Ephron
Rosemary Fell was born into privilege. She has wealth, well–connected friends, and a handsome fiance, Philip Alsop. Finally she has everything she wants. It is then, in a moment of beneficence, that Rosemary invites Eleanor Smith into her home for a cup of tea. This leads to a tempestuous and all–consuming love triangle –– until the tides of war throw all their lives off balance.
Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett
Fall of Giants is Ken Follett’s magnificent historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families --- America, German, Russian, English, and Welsh --- as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage.
Life Class by Pat Barker
In the spring of 1914, a group of students at the Slade School of Art have gathered for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant is easily distracted by a fellow student, Elinor Brooke. By the time he returns from World War I, Paul must confront not only the overwhelming, perhaps impossible challenge of how to express all that he has seen, but also the fact that life, and love, will never be the same for him again.
My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young
The lives of two very different couples are irrevocably intertwined and forever changed in this stunning World War I epic of love and war.
A Passion Most Pure: Daughters of Boston, Book 1 by Julie Lessman
Refusing to settle for anything less than a romantic relationship that pleases God, Faith O'Connor steels her heart against her desire for the roguish Collin McGuire. To further complicate matters, Faith finds herself the object of Collin's affections, even as he is courting her sister. The Great War is raging overseas, and a smaller war is brewing in the O'Connor household.
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