Wolfpack 351


R. Cameron Cooke - 2019
    submarines of Wolfpack 351 are low on fuel, torpedoes, and morale. Their only means of escape is a narrow passage teeming with enemy aircraft, mines, and coastal batteries – and guarded by a menacing Japanese fleet led by a legendary admiral hell-bent on stopping them. Facing the imminent destruction of the entire wolfpack, and with few options remaining, the American admirals in Pearl Harbor turn to an aging submarine, the only boat close enough to help. With time running out, the USS Aeneid – a V-boat from another era – must spring the trapped submarines from their watery prison before they meet their fates under the hull-shattering wrath of the enemy’s depth charges.

Now You Know: A Novel


Susan Kelly - 2013
    It ends with a promise. On her deathbed Frances extracts it from her three daughters—the utterly capable homemaker Alice; the recalcitrant Allegra, a recovering alcoholic; and bohemian Edie, who shrinks in the face of any commitment: their promise to “look after Libba.” As if the formidable, tough-minded Libba Charles, author of ten books, a literary celebrity, needed looking after. Yet when they are summoned by Libba to Creek Cabin, their mother’s summer hideaway in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, they go. None of them is prepared, though, for what they will discover there—about their mother, about Libba, about themselves—in this poignant, adroit rendering of reunions and farewells.

Time No Longer


Taylor Caldwell - 1941
    Karl Erlich loves his country. But these are dangerous times for Germany, whose poor and downtrodden have been seduced by an Austrian sign painter named Adolf Hitler. Karl’s twin brother, Kurt, a distinguished scientist, has already pledged his allegiance to the Third Reich, a regime that Karl finds cruel and oppressive. But he soon has even more reason to fear: There is talk of the Nazis singling out the Jews for extermination. Karl and Kurt’s younger sister, Gerda, is engaged to Eric Rheinhardt, a German Jew. Before Gerda and Eric can escape to America, Eric is arrested by the Gestapo.   Then the unthinkable happens, and in the wake of searing tragedy, Karl cuts all ties with his brother. A onetime candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, he is no longer able to write, eat, or sleep. His wife, Therese, fears for his sanity. She knows she must get her husband away from the madness that is now Germany. But can she rescue her husband, who is rapidly becoming like their beleaguered Rhineland—inconsolable, frightened, and thirsting for revenge? As she seeks answers, unknowingly thrusting herself into harm’s way, Therese will discover the powerful ties that bind German to Jew, and come to realize that the only one way to save Karl is to save Germany.   Set in the years of the Nazis’ ascent to power, Time No Longer is at once a universal and intensely personal novel about the struggle against hate and fear that can elevate an ordinary man to extraordinary heights and the unassailable bond between two brothers.

My Brother's Shadow


Monika Schröder - 2011
    Sixteen-year-old Moritz is torn. His father died in the war and his older brother still risks his life in the trenches, but his mother does not support the patriotic cause and attends subversive socialist meetings. While his mother participates in the revolution to sweep away the monarchy, Moritz falls in love with a Jewish girl who also is a socialist. When Moritz's brother returns home a bitter, maimed war veteran, ready to blame Germany's defeat on everything but the old order, Moritz must choose between his allegiance to his dangerously radicalized brother and those who usher in the new democracy.

The Bride’s Trunk: A Story of War and Reconciliation


Ingrid Dixon - 2016
    She has survived British and American bombs and witnessed the destruction of Aachen, her ancient and beautiful city. How will a German woman cope in austere post-war Britain, where she is still regarded as the enemy?Illustrated with almost 100 images and original documents, The Bride’s Trunk describes the adventures of an unremarkable piece of luggage and three generations of its owners, whose journeys across Europe are determined by the turbulent events of twentieth century history.

The Berlin Crossing


Kevin Brophy - 2012
    Brandenburg 1993: The Berlin Wall is down, the country is reunified and thirty-year-old school teacher Michael Ritter feels his life is falling apart. His wife has thrown him out, his new West German headmaster has fired him for being a socialist, former Party member and he is still clinging on to the wreckage of the state that shaped him. Disenfranchised and disenchanted, Michael heads home to care for his terminally ill mother. Before she dies, she urges him to seek out an evangelical priest, Pastor Bruck, who is the only one who knows the truth about his father. When Michael eventually tracks him down, he is taken on a journey of dark discoveries, one which will shatter his foundations, but ultimately bring him hope to rebuild them.

The Loneliness of Survival


Diana Finley - 2014
    Anna, a traumatised Jewish refugee, meets Sam, a British army officer in wartime Palestine.The novel spans 100 years of Anna's life; born in 1914 in a comfortable secular family in Vienna, her childhood is secure and protected until increasing anti-Semitism changes everything. A naive early affair causes a crisis. Anna escapes to Palestine carrying a secret buried deep within herself - one she cannot acknowledge for many years.When Anna and Sam meet, both are overwhelmed by unexpected love, but can they survive the challenges thrown up by their complex life together? Sam is posted to post-war Berlin and Anna must adjust to living in the land of the enemy. Her struggle results in psychological trauma, affecting her relationships with all those she loves. Will she succeed in overcoming the ghosts and secrets of her past and find some resolution?

Born Under a Lucky Star: A Red Army Soldier's Recollections of the Eastern Front of World War II


Ivan Philippovich Makarov - 2020
    That was on his first day at the front.Thrown into an open field to face German tanks and artillery fire, with only rifles and machine guns to defend themselves with, almost 2,000 men of his regiment were wiped out in only six days at the Eastern Front. At this rate, Ivan struggled to comprehend how he would survive the hundreds of battles that lay before him, with death seeming to be the only certainty.In his raw and trenchant memoir, Ivan recounts the terror and despair faced by a Red Army soldier on the Eastern Front.He has no sympathy for Stalin and his incompetent commanders, who sought awards and recognition at the expense of their soldiers’ lives. He simply wanted to serve his country.It is rare to find first-hand accounts of the Great Patriotic War from Red Army soldiers, as many did not survive to tell the tale. For the first time, Ivan reveals his gripping recollections of battles, times, places, and people encountered throughout World War II, from when he was drafted in 1941 until their victory in 1945.These recollections he dared not put on paper until 1992.

A Girl Called Renee: The Incredible Story of a Holocaust Survivor


Ruth Uzrad - 2017
    This is the unbelievable autobiographical story of Ruth Uzrad, a Jewish teenager whose life was turned upside down by the Nazi regime. After her father was arrested one night from their Berlin apartment by the Gestapo, Ruth’s mother sends 13 year-old Ruth and her two younger sisters out on their escape route across Europe by train to the safety of Belgium. But then the Nazis also reach Belgium, driving Ruth into the French Jewish underground… Later, when the Nazis conquer Belgium, Ruth and one of her sisters escape to France, leaving the youngest sister behind to be taken in by a Belgian foster family. Later, Ruth joins the Jewish underground movement in France and takes on a false identity and a new name, Renee. As an underground fighter, she participates in special operations aimed at rescuing Jews in danger. When the German police set out to arrest her, she manages to cross the border into Spain and eventually makes her way to Israel, where she makes her home and spends the rest of her life.

The Nazi's Wife


Peter Watson - 1985
    At the centre of a complex triangle of love and deception is a hoard of gold coins – looted by the Nazis from the monasteries and museums of occupied Europe. Based on a true story, The Nazi’s Wife powerfully evokes the edgy post-war atmosphere of intrigue and suspicion. Following the German surrender, Walter Wolff, an officer in the US Army’s art recovery unit, is assigned to track down the priceless treasure which may be helping to finance the escape plans of high-ranking Nazi officials. Wolff sets out in pursuit of Rudolf von Zell, Bormann’s right-hand man last in possession of the coins. His only lead is von Zell’s beautiful, enigmatic wife Konstanze. But as Wolff carefully works towards winning her trust, he finds himself falling in love; and as the relationship and the pressure to fulfil his mission intensify, a desperate battle of wills – and hearts – ensues. Has the hunter now become the prey? From stark military offices to lush European landscapes and isolated mountain retreats,

Berlin Embassy


William Russell - 1940
     But what did the German people think of the war? And what had they actually thought about the rise of the Nazi party? William Russell, a young US diplomat who worked in the American Embassy in Berlin, explains in detail his experiences of Germany in the early phases of the war from August 1939 through to April 1940. By asking questions to his friends, colleagues and people who he passed on the streets, Russell uncovered the state of minds of normal Germans, what they were thinking, doing and saying through the course of 1939 and 1940. Drawing evidence from a variety of sources, including newspapers, the radio, recently published books, as well as the jokes and gossip that circulated on the streets of the German capital, Russell is able to demonstrate how not all Germans were card-waving Nazis, but how the vast majority were politically apathetic, nervous of the future and often outwardly critical of the Nazi regime. Russell explains how many Germans laughed at figures such as Joseph Goebbels and Herman Goering when they were in privacy of their own houses. Although written in only second year of the war it is clear that Russell and many of his friends are aware of the impending horrors that the war will cause and he tries desperately throughout the book to do his best for those who would suffer the most at the hands of the Nazi regime. Berlin Embassy is the classic account of Germany and its people in the first year of the Second World War. “The small things that happen to the small people- as reported by a man in a small job in the American embassy in Berlin, who managed to get the man in the street to talk frankly.” Kirkus Reviews “Exciting reading … A very fine book.” William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany William Russell was an author and journalist who after completing his education had worked in the Berlin Embassy during 1939 and 1940. After he left Germany he joined the U.S. Army and served two years as an Order of Battle Specialist in the Intelligence Branch in England. He passed away in 2000. His book Berlin Embassy was first published in 1941.

In the Face of Fear: The Authentic Holocaust Survival Story of the Weisz Family


Thomas Weisz - 2018
    Tomorrow they will be taken to the ghetto, the last step before deportation to Auschwitz and certain death. But one man defies the Nazis and seeks to deny them these victims. Alone, unarmed and crippled, Joseph Cseh, a smooth talking (black marketer), struggles to rescue the woman he loves and her entire family. Surrounded on all sides he stands up to the fascists, playing a life and death con game. But can he bluff the Gestapo and defeat an army? This is the amazing true story of the Weisz family and the man who took it upon himself to try and do some good in a world turned evil.

A Postcard from the Volcano: A Novel of Pre-War Germany


Lucy Beckett - 2009
    From the idyllic surroundings of his ancestral home to the streets of cosmopolitan Breslau menaced by the Nazi SS, Hofmannswaldau uncovers the truth about his own identity and confronts the modern ideologies that threaten the annihilation of millions of people.A Postcard from the Volcano opens with the outbreak of World War I and the Prussian pride and patriotism that blind the noble von Hofmannswaldau family to the destruction that lies ahead for their country. The well-researched narrative follows the young count as he leaves home to finish his education and ends up a stranger in the land of his birth.Both intelligent and sensitive, Beckett’s prose explores the complex philosophical and political questions that led Europe into a second world war, while never losing sight of a man whose life is shaped by his times. A deeply moving historical novel that shows the horrific impact that two world wars had on whole countries, and how individuals struggled to deal with the incredible challenges presented by such devastation.

Ungentlemanly Warfare


Howard Linskey - 2019
    An impossible mission. Failure is not an option. 1943. With Nazi Germany facing defeat, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering has authorized mass production of the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, a jet-propulsion engine aircraft faster than any plane in the Allies' arsenal. But the Komet is unstable, and British Intelligence has discovered that German scientist Professor Gaerte has been tasked to fix the plane's flaw. To prevent the Komets from getting airborne, an undercover task force must infiltrate Nazi-occupied France and assassinate Gaerte.Captain Harry Walsh is one of Britain's most effective, ruthless, and unorthodox Special Operations Executive agents. Allied with an American OSS and Free French operatives, Harry leads his squad behind enemy lines where he's reunited with fellow SOE operative--and former lover--Emma Stirling. But as the team proceeds with their mission, an SS officer from Harry's past pursues the Englishman on a very personal mission of revenge . . ."Reads like the new The Day of the Jackal--swift, deadly, game over!" --John Ellsworth, USA Today bestselling author of The Point of Light "A heart-pounding thriller from cover to cover. I couldn't put it down." --James D. Shipman, author of Task Force Baum "A perfect companion for fans of the great Ken Follett." --Chuck Driskell, author of Final Mission: Zion

The Fighter


Jean-Jacques Greif - 1998
    As a boy from a very poor neighborhood in Warsaw, he can't run away when Polish kids attack the Jews, because his legs are weak. So he learns to use his fists, his head and other weapons to defend himself and his brothers.When the family moves to Paris in 1929, everyone finds work and life improves slowly. Moshe, now Maurice, is a leather worker and a young husband. At a Jewish sports club, he takes up boxing, and becomes an amateur flyweight. But the war comes to Paris, and by 1942, the French police round up foreign Jews and the Germans deport them by the hundreds every day. They send Maurice to the death camp at Auschwitz.In the camp, SS officers sense Maurice's strength. They command him to box against a dying prisoner. Now Maurice is faced with an impossible moral dilemma: kill the prisoner or be killed by the SS for refusing to obey them. Or will he find a way out?Translated from French by award-winning author Jean-Jacques Greif, The Fighter isn't simply another book about the Holocaust. It is a book about a hero who discovers the death-defying power of his own humanity.