Few people's lives were unaffected in some way by that fateful day and these stories reflect this.Some of them are set at Pearl Harbor itself, in other parts of the United States and in Singapore. Other stories take place in Europe: occupied France, Germany and Northern Ireland. They explore the experiences of U.S. servicemen and women, a German Jew, Japanese Americans, a French countess, an Ulster Home Guard, and many others.The authors invite you to step into December 1941 with them.THE STORIES:Deadly Liberty by R.V. Doon: Connie Collins, a navy nurse on the hospital ship, USS Solace, takes liberty the day before Pearl Harbor. Her budding romance wilts, an AWOL nurse insists she find a missing baby, and she's in the harbor when WWII erupts. Under fire, she boards the ship--and witnesses a murder during the red alert chaos. When liberty turns deadly, shipmates become suspects.The List by Vanessa Couchman: A high-ranking German officer is assassinated in Western France and 50 hostages are shot. Fifty more will be executed if the killers are not handed over. Jewish communist Joseph Mazelier is on the list. Will Countess Ida agree to help him escape?Christmas Eve in the City of Dreams by Alexa Kang: On his last night in New York, a young grifter sets out to turn the table on those who shorted him before he leaves for the draft. Will he win or lose?Allies After All by Dianne Ascroft: Although their nations are allies, from their first meeting American civilian contractor Art Miller and Local Defence Volunteer, Robbie Hetherington loathe each other. But Northern Ireland is too small a place for such animosity. What will it take to make the two men put aside their enmity and work together?Time to Go by Margaret Tanner: A young sailor, who died at Pearl Harbor, finally meets his soulmate on the 75th Anniversary of the battle. Will she be prepared to leave the 21st century with him? Or will they forever remain apart?Turning Point by Marion Kummerow: Eighteen-year-old German Jew Margarete Rosenbaum is about to be sent to a labor camp, when a bomb hits the building she lives in. Emerging from the rubble she's presented with an unexpected opportunity. But how far is she willing to go to save her life? I am an American by Robyn Hobusch Echols: Ellen Okita and Flo Kaufmann are high school seniors in Livingston, California. Ellen is a first generation American who lives in the Yamato Colony, composed of about 100 families of Japanese descent. Flo's father is a first generation American. After Pearl Harbor, the war hits home fast and brings unforeseen changes to them and their families.A Rude Awakening by Robert A. Kingsley: Singapore, December 1941; the fortress sleeps, believing its own tales of strength and invulnerability. A rigidly class based society throws garden parties and dines sedately, disregarding the slowly growing number of warning signals. Suddenly, the underestimated enemy ferociously attacks and the myth of invincibility is shattered forever.

    The Germans called it Auschwitz. Auschwitz; a name now synonymous with man's darkest hour. Contrary to widespread belief, Auschwitz was not just a camp for those that the Third Reich deemed 'undesirables' - Jews, homosexuals and communists - hundreds of British Tommies were also incarcerated there and beheld the atrocities meted out by Hitler's brutal SS. This is the true story of one of those witnesses. Forced to do hard labour in an industrial factory, beaten by SS guards, part of a partisan group aiding in the plans for a mass breakout of Jewish prisoners. An escapee, a survivor; Arthur Dodd - a Spectator in Hell.

    In September 1939, Bella was a carefree teenager living in Poland when the German army struck. She was rounded up with her friends and family and sent to a series of grim Jewish ghettos. After loved ones were separated and lost through the war years, Bella survived by changing her identity. Narrowly escaping death each time, she moved from place to place, odd job to odd job, new name to new name. After finding the birth certificate of a Catholic girl five years her senior, she became Sabina Mazurek. Then she went into the eye of the storm, Germany, where she believed she might be safest. "Sabina is her story. As in "Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank and "Night" by Elie Wiesel, Bella Kuligowska marshaled unexpected resources to manage as a teen during the horrors of World War II. Sabina offers a different perspective on how many Jews survived outside of the concentration camps, in more familiar yet infinitely hostile settings, with the help of others along the way.

    When Hitler came to power in 1933, one Jewish family refused to be destroyed and defied the Nazis only to come up against another struggle-confronting apartheid in South...

    Cherry, despite his short sight, undertook an epic journey in the Antarctic winter to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin. The temperature fell to 70 degrees below zero, it was dark all the time, his teeth shatterd in the cold and the tent blew away. But we kept our tempers, Cherry wrote, even with God.

    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.

    Suzanne Malherbe, a shy seventeen-year-old with a talent for drawing, is completely entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, who comes from a family of wealthy Jewish intellectuals. They embark on a clandestine love affair, terrified they will be discovered, but then, in an astonishing twist of fate, the mother of one marries the father of the other. As “sisters” they are finally free of suspicion, and, hungry for a more stimulating milieu, they move to Paris at a moment when art, literature, and politics blend in an explosive cocktail.Having reinvented themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, they move in the most glamorous social circles, meeting everyone from Hemingway and Dalí to André Breton, and produce provocative photographs that still seem avant-garde today. In the 1930s, with the rise of anti-Semitism and threat of fascism, they leave Paris for Jersey, and it is on this idyllic island that they confront their destiny, creating a campaign of propaganda against Hitler’s occupying forces that will put their lives in jeopardy.Brilliantly imagined, profoundly thought-provoking, and ultimately heartbreaking, Never Anyone But You infuses life into a forgotten history as only great literature can.

    A beautiful French agent, Catherine Pradier, risks her life to deceive the Nazis as to where and when the Allies will invade the Continent of Europe and begin the end of World War II.

    Two sisters seek to overcome impossible odds to be reunited, in this utterly devastating and unforgettable novel about sisterhood, courage and survival.All they had left was each other. Until the Nazis tore them apart.After years of hiding from the Nazis, Rachel Epstein and her little sister Mindel are captured by the Gestapo and sent to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. The only ray of light for either girl is that they are together.But on arrival they are separated. As she’s seventeen and deemed an adult, Rachel is sent to work in a brutal factory whilst four-year-old Mindel is sent into the so-called “star” camp for Jewish prisoners. All on her own, Rachel knows her sister will have no chance of survival—unless she can find someone to take care of her.Working in the windowless, airless factory—filling munitions casings with chemicals that burn her fingers and make her eyes sting—the only thing that keeps Rachel going is the thought of her little sister. Because if there’s even a chance Mindel is alive, Rachel knows she must try to save her.But, separated by barbed wire, and treated brutally by SS guards who do not even see them as human beings, can either of the orphaned sisters ever dare to hope that they’ll find their way back to each other? And to freedom?A completely heartbreaking, utterly gripping tale of courage, loss and overcoming impossible odds, perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Ragged Edge of Night and The Orphan’s Tale.

    Anna, a devoutly Catholic teenager, watches as her friend is shot, as her father is dragged off for conscription in the German army.Szymon, the young village priest, stands silently with his parishioners as their church is ransacked and torched. Anna clings to him—her dear friend and confidant—and by some luck, the Germans spare them.Five Septembers later, Anna and Szymon still cling together, now amid the turmoil of war. Though Anna dreads her engagement to a local ruffian and Szymon fears for his father’s life back home, the two find solace in their friendship.But when the Soviet army comes to “liberate” them, Anna endures an unspeakable atrocity and Szymon suffers his own tragedy. Now bound even more tightly by the sorrows they carry, they face a choice: honor the vows they’ve made to others or risk everything for the chance at salvation in each other.

    It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.Written over the course of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, Matterhorn is a visceral and spellbinding novel about what it is like to be a young man at war. It is an unforgettable novel that transforms the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful and universal story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice: a parable not only of the war in Vietnam but of all war, and a testament to the redemptive power of literature.A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. This is his first novel. He lives in rural Washington State.

    She was an ordinary German schoolgirl from an average family thrust into the extraordinary circumstances of war. Her memoir vividly describes the price she, her family, and all the German people paid for Hitler's ambition. Relived through her memories, it is truly a story of childhood innocence lost, but also of survival through grit and courage. She endured air raids, bomb shelters, military training, capture, imprisonment, rape and harrowing escape. The author has created a razor-sharp, clear-eyed and tense narrative about her life during this frightening time, as well as the story of her early struggles as a German war bride settling into a new life in America. This is Dorchen, and she is a remarkable woman.

    After the war, Gretel fell in love with a British officer. When he was transferred back to England, her determination and bravery were tested once more.

    Medallion. While sitting in traffic heading to her great-grandfather's eighty-fourth birthday party, Hayden asks her dad why her great-grandfather speaks the way he does. What follows is a car ride she will never forget as she learns about his difficult childhood. From living in the Lodz ghetto at age ten to surviving the hells of Auschwitz and a death march from Gorlitz concentration camp at fifteen, Teddy Znamirowski faced unfathomable horrors, narrowly escaping death time and time again. Liberated at sixteen, he took on smuggling as a means to survive. It was not until the Bricha approached him and he became a lead operative - smuggling thousands of refugees across country borders - that he was finally able to begin his life again. Teddy's story is one of survival amidst horrific circumstances. The author does not sensationalize the suffering his grandfather and his family endured, but in this work of narrative nonfiction simply recreates this remarkable man's early life during one of the darkest moments of human history.