Book picks similar to
A Farewell to France by Noel Barber


historical-fiction
romance
historical
war

The Last Green Valley


Mark T. Sullivan - 2021
    But after already living under Stalin’s horrifying regime, Emil and Adeline decide they must run in retreat from their land with the wolves they despise to escape the Soviets and go in search of freedom.Caught between two warring forces and overcoming horrific trials to pursue their hope of immigrating to the West, the Martels’ story is a brutal, complex, and ultimately triumphant tale that illuminates the extraordinary power of love, faith, and one family’s incredible will to survive and see their dreams realized.

The Rescue Man


Anthony Quinn - 2009
    With writing that is both immediate and deeply steeped in its time, Anthony Quinn recreates wartime Liverpool.

Dirty Snow


Georges Simenon - 1948
    Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty thief, and, as Dirty Snow opens, he has just killed his first man. Through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, Frank will pursue abjection until finally there is nowhere to go.Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as "one of the very few novels to come out of German-occupied France that gets it exactly right." In a study of the criminal mind that is comparable to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Simenon maps a no man's land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction—and redemption, perhaps, as well—by forces beyond its control.

A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding


Jackie Copleton - 2015
    Her grandson and her daughter, Yuko, perished nearly forty years ago during the bombing of Nagasaki. But the man carries with him a collection of sealed private letters that open a Pandora’s Box of family secrets Ama had sworn to leave behind when she fled Japan. She is forced to confront her memories of the years before the war: of the daughter she tried too hard to protect and the love affair that would drive them apart, and even further back, to the long, sake-pouring nights at a hostess bar where Ama first learned that a soft heart was a dangerous thing. Will Ama allow herself to believe in a miracle?

The Hummingbird


Stephen P. Kiernan - 2015
    But her skills and experience are tested in new and dramatic ways when her easygoing husband, Michael, returns from his third deployment to Iraq haunted by nightmares, anxiety, and rage. She is determined to help him heal, and to restore the tender, loving marriage they once had.At the same time, Deborahs primary patient is Barclay Reed, a retired history professor and expert in the Pacific Theater of World War II whose career ended in academic scandal. Alone in the world, the embittered professor is dying. As Barclay begrudgingly comes to trust Deborah, he tells her stories from that long-ago war, which help her find a way to help her husband battle his demons. Told with piercing empathy and heartbreaking realism, The Hummingbird is a masterful story of loving commitment, service to country, and absolution through wisdom and forgiveness.

Mrs. Miniver


Jan Struther - 1939
    Mrs. Miniver's adventures have charmed millions. This edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the book's orginal publication in the U.S., features a new introduction by Greer Garson, who won the Academy Award as best actress for her role as Mrs. Miniver.

An Infinity of Mirrors


Richard Condon - 1964
    A beautiful young French Jew, Paula Bernheim, and a Prussian officer, Wilhelm von Rhode, meet and fall in love. Within a few months they are married and settled in Berlin--just as Hitler's rise to power begins. The story of what happens to this young couple serves as a microcosm for the European convulsion, as Hitler's poisonous brand of anti-Semitism invades every strata of society.

The Sword of Honour Trilogy


Evelyn Waugh - 1965
    Its central character is Guy Crouchback, head of an ancient but decayed Catholic family, who at first discovers new purpose in the challenge to defend Christian values against Nazi barbarism, but then gradually finds the complexities and cruelties of war too much for him. Yet, though often somber, the Sword of Honour trilogy is also a brilliant comedy, peopled by the fantastic figures so familiar from Waugh's early satires. The deepest pleasures these novels afford come from observing a great satiric writer employ his gifts with extraordinary subtlety, delicacy, and human feeling, for purposes that are ultimately anything but satiric.

Those Who Save Us


Jenna Blum - 2004
    Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.

The Puppet Boy Of Warsaw


Eva Weaver - 2013
    He becomes a puppeteer in the Warsaw ghetto, but when his talent is discovered, Mika is forced to entertain the occupying German troops instead of his countrymen.It is also the story of Max, a German soldier stationed in Warsaw, whose experiences in Poland and later in Siberia's Gulag show a different side to the Second World War. As one of Mika's puppets is passed to the soldier, a war-torn legacy is handed from one generation to another.

Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase


Louise Walters - 2014
    What you do, to this child, to this child's mother, it is wrong...Roberta likes to collect the letters and postcards she finds in second-hand books. When her father gives her some of her grandmother's belongings, she finds a baffling letter from the grandfather she never knew - dated after he supposedly died in the war.Dorothy is unhappily married to Albert, who is away at war. When an aeroplane crashes in the field behind her house she meets Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski, and as their bond deepens she dares to hope she might find happiness. But fate has other plans for them both, and soon she is hiding a secret so momentous that its shockwaves will touch her granddaughter many years later...

The Kites


Romain Gary - 1980
    Ludo’s quiet existence changes the day he meets Lila, a girl from the aristocratic Polish family who own the estate next door. In a single glance, Ludo instantly falls in love forever; Lila, on the other hand, remains elusive. Thus begins Ludo’s adventure of longing, passion, and steadfast love for Lila, who begins to reciprocate his feelings just as Europe descends into war. After Germany invades Poland, Lila and her family disappear, and Ludo’s journey to save her from the Nazis becomes a journey to save his loved ones, his country, and ultimately himself.Filled with unforgettable characters—an indomitable chef who believes Michelin stars are more enduring than military conquests; a Jewish brothel Madam who reinvents everything about herself during the war; a piano virtuoso turned RAF pilot—The Kites is Romain Gary’s poetic call for resistance in whatever form it takes.

My Name Is Resolute


Nancy E. Turner - 2014
    Now Turner has written the novel she was born to write, this exciting and heartfelt story of a woman struggling to find herself during the tumultuous years preceding the American Revolution.The story begins in 1729, when Resolute Talbot and her siblings are captured by pirates, taken from their family's plantation in Jamaica, and brought to the New World. Resolute and her sister become indentured servants and are taught the trade of spinning and weaving. Betrayed by her first love, Resolute falls back on her skill with a loom to survive. Then she meets a young woodsman who is living a double life and is wanted in England. When British rule begins to crush the Colonials, Resolute begins to work in secret, hiding her craft and smuggling goods to keep Patriot soldiers clothed. Ultimately she becomes a friend of Margaret Gage, the very real wife of the commanding general of the British Army in America. On the night of April 18, 1775, Resolute carries a message to the Reveres' silver shop, changing the course of American history.Heart-wrenching, brilliantly written, and historically authentic, My Name is Resolute is destined to become an instant classic.

The Days of Winter


Cynthia Freeman - 1978
    The blazing saga of Europe caught between two world wars...and a family redeemed from pride and sin by their passionate humanity.RUBIN -- who defied his upper-class English rank to love a woman his family called whore.MAGDA -- lifted from the nightworld of Bucharest and Paris by a man she was driven to betray.JEANETTE -- fated to relive her mother's sins as the wife of one man, mistress to his brother.JEAN-PAUL -- who could never give his own name to Jeanette, or to the child of their love.

The Secret Keeper


Kate Morton - 2012
    She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and watches as her mother speaks to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime. A crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy—her vivacious, loving, nearly perfect mother.Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress living in London. The family is gathering at Greenacres farm for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday. Realizing that this may be her last chance, Laurel searches for answers to the questions that still haunt her from that long-ago day, answers that can only be found in Dorothy’s past.Dorothy’s story takes the reader from pre–WWII England through the blitz, to the ’60s and beyond. It is the secret history of three strangers from vastly different worlds—Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy—who meet by chance in wartime London and whose lives are forever entwined. The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams and the unexpected consequences they sometimes bring. It is an unforgettable story of lovers and friends, deception and passion that is told—in Morton’s signature style—against a backdrop of events that changed the world.