Protecting Paige


Deby Eisenberg - 2015
    It is the still innocent year of 1962, and twelve-year-old Paige Noble awakens in a hospital room in Chicago. She has no memory of the random act of gang violence that has left her injured and orphaned. As she waits for her famous uncle to come for her, Paige develops a bond with Gladys, a comforting black nurse’s aide, unaware that Gladys’s son was involved in the crime. Soon, the charismatic Maxwell Noble, a celebrated photographer, is located in Europe and rushes to her side. Although he has led a globetrotting bachelor life, he surprises Paige by embracing his new responsibility. He reveals to her a family legacy in the headlines, beginning with the 1915 Eastland disaster on the Chicago River. But Maxwell struggles to hide his long-time obsession with Paige’s mother, his enchanting French sister-in-law. When Paige discovers her mother’s hidden diary, the secrets of the past begin to surface. Paige and her uncle embark on a journey to France, retracing events of WWII and the Holocaust, in an effort to find the one remaining family member they could claim. Her parents were always intent on protecting Paige, but Maxwell allows her to embrace the Jewish history and heritage that she was denied. A beautiful and moving story about a young girl’s coming-of-age and a man’s quest for a lost love, Protecting Paige combines family drama and fascinating historical detail to create a rich, thought-provoking world.

Eva's Cousin


Sibylle Knauss - 2000
    It is here where an elderly woman arrives and recollects her past—and her peripheral role in a chapter of world history. She walks along a beaten path, which has come into being because so many tourists have ventured this way . . . to see something that exists only in her memory.In the summer of 1944, twenty-year-old Marlene is thrilled when her older, more glamorous cousin, Eva Braun, Adolph Hitler’s mistress, invites her to come to the Fuhrer’s Bavarian mountain retreat. Against her father’s wishes, Marlene accepts, and immediately sets forth to Berghof.There, while Hitler is away desperately trying to turn the tides of war, Marlene finds herself in a strange paradise, a world of opulence and imminent danger, of freedom and surveillance. The two women sneak off and skinny-dip in a nearby-lake, watch films in the Fuhrer’s private cinema, and flirt with the SS officers at the dinner table—one of whom will become Marlene’s first lover.Initially delighted by Eva’s attentions, Marlene later tries to understand the elusive connection between her cousin and the man she loves.In quiet defiance, she begins to commit her own acts of subversion, which include listening to BBC radio broadcasts, forbidden by the Fuhrer. But a clandestine mission of mercy will force her to question her allegiance to both her cousin and her country—and to face the chilling reality that exists outside her sheltered world.Based on the true experiences of Eva Braun’s cousin, Gertrude Weisker, who has shared her memories with Sibylle Knauss after more than fifty years of silence, Eva’s Cousin is a novel that illuminates the banality of the domestic face of evil. It casts a special light on the profound questions of innocence and complicity that still haunt much of the world today.From the Hardcover edition.

This Shining Land


Rosalind Laker - 1985
    In one terrifying night, her gentle life is shattered and her innocence ends. Then she meets Steffen Larsen who ignites in her feelings as fierce as the war raging around them. Risking everything, Johanna joins Steffen in Norway's Resistance and enters a dangerous double life...

Once Night Falls


Roland Merullo - 2019
    Luca Benedetto has joined the partisans in their fight against the German troops ravaging the shores of his town on Lake Como. While risking his life to free his country, Luca is also struggling to protect Sarah, his Jewish lover who’s hiding in a mountain cabin. As the violent Nazi occupation intensifies, Luca and Sarah fear for more than their own lives.In the heart of their village, their mothers have also found themselves vulnerable to the encroaching Nazis. But Luca’s mother, undeterred, is devising her own revenge on the occupiers. With Mussolini deposed and Allied armies fighting their way up the peninsula, the fate of Italy hangs in the balance, and the people of Lake Como must decide how much they’re prepared to sacrifice for family, friends, and the country they love.The most trying of times will create the most unexpected heroes and incredible acts of courage in this stirring narrative as seen through the eyes of those devastated by war-torn Italy.

The Moment Before Drowning


James Brydon - 2018
    Captain Jacques le Garrec, a former detective and French Resistance hero, returns to France in disgrace, traumatized after two years of working in the army intelligence services, and accused of a brutal crime.As le Garrec awaits trial in the tiny Breton town where he grew up, he is asked to look into a disturbing and unsolved murder committed the previous winter. A local teenage girl was killed and her bizarrely mutilated body was left on display on the heathland in a way that no one could understand.Le Garrec’s investigations draw him into the dark past of the town, still haunted by memories of the German Occupation. As he tries to reconstruct the events of the girl’s murder, the violence and guilt intertwine with his own recollections of Algeria and threaten to submerge him.

The Electric Hotel


Dominic Smith - 2019
    A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man’s doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder.For nearly half a century, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films, who started out as a concession agent for the Lumière brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days foraging mushrooms in the hills of Los Angeles and taking photographs of runaways and the striplings along Sunset Boulevard. But when a film-history student comes to interview Claude about The Electric Hotel—the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montrose—the past comes surging back. In his run-down hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments and reels in desperate need of restoration, and Claude’s memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.

The Search


Maureen Myant - 2008
    Jan's father has been summarily executed by the Nazis. His mother and his older sister Maria have disappeared, and his younger sister Lena has been removed to a remote farm in the German countryside. With Europe is in the throes of war, the ten-year-old boy embarks on a personal journey to reunite the family he has been violently torn from. The experiences he goes through and the horror he faces during this desperate quest will change his life for ever. While examining the devastating effects of war on ordinary families, "The Search" provides an exploration of fear and loss, and of the bond between parents and children. Riveting, moving, at times disturbing, Maureen Myant's debut novel will haunt its readers for a long time after they have put it down.

Promise


Eva Schloss - 2006
    Written specially for children, Eva describes her happy early childhood in Vienna with her kind and loving parents and her older brother Heinz, whom she adored. But when the Nazis marched into Austria everything changed. Eva's family fled to Belgium, then to Amsterdam where, with the help of the Dutch Resistance, they spent the next two years in hiding - Eva and her mother in one house, and her father and brother in another. Finally, though, they were all betrayed and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Despite the horrors of the camp, Eva's positive attitude and stubborn personality (which had often got her into trouble) saw her through one of the most tragic events in history and she and her mother eventually returned to Amsterdam. Sadly her father and brother perished just weeks before the liberation.Eva and her mother went back to the house where Heinz and his father had hidden, for Eva had remembered that Heinz had told her he had hidden his paintings beneath the floorboards there. Sure enough, there were over thirty beautiful paintings. Heinz hadn't wasted any of his talents during his captivity. For Eva, here was a tangible, everlasting memory of her brother and a reminder of her father's promise that all the good things you accomplish will make a difference to someone, and your achievements will be carried on. Heinz's paintings have been on display in exhibitions in the USA and are now a part of a permanent exhibition in Amsterdam's war museum. Told simply and clearly for younger readers, "The Promise" is an unforgettable story, written by Eva Schloss, the step-daughter of Otto Frank and Barbara Powers, Eva's very close friend.

The Words I Never Wrote


Jane Thynne - 2020
    Within its case she discovers an unpublished novel, igniting a transatlantic journey to fill the gaps in the story of Cordelia and her sister’s loving yet tempestuous relationship.England, 1936: Cordelia’s socialite sister, Irene, marries a German man from a powerful family who whisks her away to Berlin. Cordelia remains in England to pursue the writing career she cherishes, but in the male-dominated world of journalism, she can only get hired as a typist. The sisters exchange letters as politics begin to boil in Europe and tensions come to a head when Cordelia discovers Irene’s husband is a Nazi sympathizer. Does that make Irene one by proxy? With increasing desperation, Cordelia writes to Irene, seeking to understand her loyalties. But the sisters’ letters don’t tell the whole story. So Cordelia decides to fill in the blanks by sitting down with her Underwood and—finally—writing the truth.When Juno discovers the trove of letters the two exchanged, a vivid portrait of Berlin in the devastating years during and after the war comes into focus. In this moving novel, Jane Thynne offers an intimate glimpse into a lesser known side of World War II.

The Hunger Journeys


Maggie de Vries - 2010
    You are not trying to take a train to Germany. Second, your papers are false. Do you think you can trump up false papers and just walk onto one of our trains?”It’s World War Two in Amsterdam. Lena leaves her starving family to travel by train with her friend Sofie to Almelo, a town close to the German border, in search of food. It’s a risky plan. The girls have false papers and are quickly pulled off the train by German soldiers. Only by fluke do they get back on again-with the help of Albert, one of the soldiers. After Lena discovers that the train had also been used to transport Jews to concentration camps, she fears her new friendship with the well-meaning Albert may lead her into more danger. Sofie, too, befriends a soldier, a relationship that quickly turns serious and has unfortunate consequences for both girls.

Hannah and Emil


Belinda Castles - 2012
    Hannah, a Russian Jew in the West End of London, leaves home for Europe. In Brussels, working for the trade unions, she meets the devastated Emil, who has just crossed the border on foot from Nazi Germany, leaving tragedy in his wake.After they make a new life in England, war strikes, and Emil, an enemy alien, is transported to Australia. Determined to find him, Hannah sets off on the dangerous journey across the seas ...

Courage and Grace


Yoseph Komem - 2019
    Perpetual mortal danger. Only a combination of resourcefulness and pure luck can save them. Joseph and Yitzhak are two young brothers hiding under fake Christian identities in the Aryan section of a city in Poland during the Holocaust.The two brothers, like their parents, know their lives are in constant danger and that any mistake may expose their true identities, sending them to a painful death.The small family does everything in its power to save itself and is lucky to receive assistance from their courageous gentile friends, but their seemingly free lives outside the ghetto becoming increasingly difficult and complex with every passing day…Before their eyes lies one thing only—the extraordinary struggle to stay alive against all odds.Courage and Grace is the chilling and inspiring documentation of a story that will leave you riveted to your seat, flood you with heartbreaking emotions and, at the same time, with enormous hope for a better future.

In Love and War


Alex Preston - 2014
    The novel is told through the eyes, letters and journals of Esmond Lowndes, who comes to Italy a lonely young man in the shadow of his politician father. On the cobbles of Florence’s many-storied streets, he deepens his appreciation of art and literature, and falls in love.With the coming of war, Esmond finds himself drawn into the Tuscan Resistance, hunted by the malevolent Mario Carità, head of the Fascist secret police. With his lover, Ada, at his side, he is at the centre of assassination plots, shoot-outs and car chases, culminating in a final mission of extraordinary daring.In Love and War is a novel that will take you deep into the secret heart of history. It is a novel of art and letters, of bawdy raconteurs and dashing spies. With Esmond Lowndes you will see the beauty of Florence and the horror of war as it sweeps over the city’s terracotta rooftops. In Love and War is both epic and intimate, harrowing and heartwarming.

An Eagle's Odyssey: My Decade as a Pilot in Hitler's Luftwaffe


Johannes Kaufmann - 2019
    He may have been an ordinary Luftwaffe pilot, but he served during an extraordinary time, with distinction. Serving for a decade through both peacetime and wartime, his memoir sheds light on the immense pressures of the job.In this never-before-seen translation of a rare account of life in the Luftwaffe, Kaufmann takes the reader through his time in service, from his involvement in the annexation of the Rhineland, the attack on Poland, fighting against American heavy bombers in the Defence of the Reich campaign. He also covers his role in the battles of Arnhem and the Ardennes, and the D-Day landings, detailing the intricacies of military tactics, flying fighter planes and the challenges of war.His graphic descriptions of being hopelessly lost in thick cloud above the Alps, and of following a line of telegraph poles half-buried in deep snow while searching for a place to land on the Stalingrad front are proof that the enemy was not the only danger he had to face during his long flying career.Kaufmann saw out the war from the early beginnings of German expansion right through to surrender to the British in 1945. An Eagle’s Odyssey is a compelling and enlightening read, Kaufmann’s account offers a rarely heard perspective on one of the core experiences of the Second World War.

The Long Path Home


Ellen Lindseth - 2020
    From desperate small-town teen to star of the burlesque circuit, Violet Ernte has survived tough choices and more than one reinvention. Now, framed for an underworld murder, she has one way out: agree to keep Marcie, a reckless USO showgirl and mobster’s daughter, on the straight and narrow. Vi’s new act: play innocent ingenue and join the all-American song-and-dance troupe bound for overseas to a war-torn Italy.When a USO headliner goes missing soon after landing, the disappearance has treacherous implications for the entire troupe. With Marcie’s safety in peril, Vi turns to battle-roughened army sergeant Ansel Danger for help. But getting closer to Ansel means exposing her past and her double life of scandal and deception. And in a heartbeat, she could lose everything.Defiant and resilient, Vi is used to taking risks. This time it’s for redemption. To love, and to be loved. And for a second chance at a future she thought was lost forever.