Fourteen-year-old Vera has led a sheltered life with her overbearing, religious mother and older sister. But her world is turned upside down with the arrival of the Lovell family on her street. Vera quickly befriends the daughter, Angela, an impulsive, worldly young woman who opens Vera's eyes to what she has been missing. But Vera, unaware of the effect she has on men, invites the unwanted attention of Angela's father, with devastating consequences. Outraged at the news that her teenage daughter is pregnant, Vera is sent to a home for wayward girls. After giving birth to a baby boy, Vera manages to escape the brutality of the institution, only to end up homeless. Alone and struggling to make ends meet, Vera is determined to give her son a better life, at any cost. But just as their fortunes seem to change for the better, everything Vera has worked for is threatened. June Hampson brings heartbreak, warmth, and humor to this compelling tale of family tragedy and a young mother's fight for her son.

    Sevek and the Holocaust: The Boy Who Refused to Die is a unique and powerful memoir about a young boy's journey during the Holocaust and his effort later to make peace with the past.

    She soon discovered her mama had been hiding secrets from her since she was a small child. These secrets start to unfold when she opens a box hidden in the back of a closet. Opening this box will create an entirely different world that Karlee never dreamed was waiting for her. Will Karlee have the strength and courage to face the secrets, or will she close the box keeping everyone from knowing the truth? If you like funny, heartwarming Southern stories with a touch of mystery, you will fall in love with the characters in The Problem with Pearls.

    Following an emotional and traumatic escape from the advancing German forces they arrive in England. As a result of their experiences, and the manner that they combated the Nazi regime, the three sisters, all civilians, are seconded, along with the survivors of their group, into the intelligence section of General De Gaulle’s newly formed Free French Force. After extensive training in England they return to occupied France living in fear of betrayal and capture.

     When the German war machine rolled over the Netherlands in May 1940, Titia Wetselaar Bozuwa was an eight-year-old girl living in the southern city of Breda. She wrote about her family’s endurance of that five-year Occupation in her memoir, In the Shadow of the Cathedral. In Defiance, her first work of fiction, she pays tribute to the many who defied the German Occupation. Challenging the expectations of Dutch society, Anna Smits enrolls as a medical student at Utrecht University. But in a country occupied by Nazi Germany, student life is not what Anna expected. Social clubs are closed; Jews are forbidden from attending schools; and in 1943, students are ordered to sign a declaration of loyalty to the occupying German government. Anna and her seven closest friends—the Group of Eight—refuse to sign. Inspired by a sermon about the Good Samaritan—a sermon that got the minister thrown into prison—the Group of Eight vows to help the victims of Hitler’s brutal regime. They hide Jews and provide them with fake IDs; they keep desperately needed medicines out of the hands of the Nazis; they raise funds for orphaned Jewish children. But as the war drags on and the Nazis’ hold tightens, the Group of Eight shrinks. The few that remain defiantly resist the ever-onerous Occupying force. But how can they fight the lawlessness with which the Germans shoot first and don’t bother with questions? How can they fight the devastating Hunger Winter of 1945? Anna clings to her beliefs and mission, aided by her remarkable grandmother, Baroness van Haersolte, as the country waits for liberation. But will they all survive that long?

    In this fascinating coming-of-age memoir of the years 1942-1946, the sole surviving descendant of a prominent European dynasty of Hasidic rabbis describes her miraculous survival as a teenager wandering through the Holocaust.

    Just six years old when a band of Nazi soldiers arrived in her tiny shtetl in Myadel, Poland, Linda observed atrocities no child ever needs to witness. With her parents and two brothers, during the summer of 1942, Linda was forcibly relocated into a ghetto where most of the Jewish men were led to the nearby forest and killed in a pogrom. After the massacre, Linda escaped with her family into the Ponar Forest, but only after evading Polish nationals and Nazis that patrolled Poland's countryside. Deep in the woods, Linda's family lived in a cave. They survived brutal winters, eluded partisan fighters that might force Linda's father to leave the family, and remained out of sight from Nazis and Polish police, who at one point, came only feet from their dugout.Written with historian Todd M. Mealy during a time when Holocaust deniers aim to rehabilitate the Nazi ideology and as roughly 400,000 survivors remain with us, Displaced presents Schwab's singular voice. Her narrative will help maintain-if not bolster-Holocaust knowledge, as her story of surviving the Polish wilderness during WWII and in a Displaced Persons Camp after the war is unique from most accounts. Displaced will inspire the rest of us to confront hatred in its many forms.

    . . The turret was rolling away when the Sherman ignited . . . a bright orange flame shot up, followed by a mushroom cloud explosion. . . flashes of tracer exploded across the battlefield . . . I must pay tribute to the crew of the second Sherman, who seemed undaunted . . ." Recorded by researchers in 1962, these three eyewitness statements by former Waffen SS panzer crewmen relate the sheer violence and aggression of tank combat between the late-war panzers and the Allied Sherman variants. Italy 1944: An SS Panther stands guard over a stricken Elefant tank destroyer, as US Army Shermans move in for the kill. Includes a rare account of the Sherman calliope in action. Normandy 1944: Two Panthers and supporting infantry cause havoc in a British supply line, including combat against the Sherman Firefly and Churchill Crocodile. The Ardennes 1945: A Jagdtiger takes on a series of Shermans in the final stages of the Ardennes campaign, told in ruthless clarity by the Jagdtiger's 128mm gun crew. With ice-cold detail, phenomenal drama and sense of crisis, these first-hand accounts stand out today as one of the most remarkable testimonies to the experience of tank warfare in WW2. They will fascinate anyone interested in tank combat, the Waffen SS, the Sherman variants in action and the use of armor from 1941 to 1945. The complete collection of these unique interviews, covering panzer battles from Barbarossa to Berlin, is available in the Sprech Media book 'SS Panzer SS Voices.'

    . . The war is over and the soldiers are coming back to the bomb-ravaged East End. Tom Smith is one of the thousands who are returning home. It's been an eventful war, what with a spell of desertion, and Tom can't wait to see his wife Jessie, their son Billy and the new baby daughter he hasn't even laid eyes on.But life back home wasn't easy either, especially when Jessie's army pension was stopped. So when she was told to put Emma-Rose into a home for her own good, she thought it was best. But how will Tom take the news? There is worse to come, when Tom learns that Jessie's old boyfriend has been helping her during the war.A compelling family saga set in the aftermath of the Second World War, from the author of Time Will Tell and Where Sparrows Nest.

    Let the Bells Ring is an evocative wartime saga from much-loved author Anne Baker, as a family face battles in life and love. Perfect for fans of Sheila Newberry and Cathy Sharp.Hannah and her mother Esme are lucky to escape when their home is destroyed during a bombing raid. Forced to move in with Esme's difficult sister-in-law, they make the best of things, and soon Hannah falls for the boy next door, Eric Goodwin. But Esme's worried; she's always been afraid of Eric's father Arnold, and she suspects that Eric is a chip off the old block, full of charm but up to no good. Is innocent Hannah being drawn into an unpredictable and dangerous world of crime? What readers are saying about Let the Bells Ring 'I have read 14 of Anne Baker's books and have enjoyed every one of them. The books are easy to read with fascinating storylines. I couldn't put Let the Bells Ring down and felt I was part of the plot. I found myself daydreaming about what I would do if I was a certain character in the book''This book kept me engrossed from the first to the last page'

    To make ends meet she gets a job at the Cherry Ballroom in West London and it is here that she meets James, a Canadian airman, and they fall in love. But then Polly's husband turns up, very much alive...Life is even harder for Polly after the war; James has gone; her husband is involved in a criminal gang; and their daughter suffers from an illness that leaves her deaf. But Polly's spirit remains strong and with courage and determination she find the happiness she and her daughter deserve.

    Enjoy moments of humor, live incidents of aviation suspense and feel the sorrow of tragic times.

    I was locked in the attic and only the older daughter, Len, was at home. I heard her say that she did not have a key to the attic door since her mother always carried the key, and I knew trouble had come. I moved over into a large box that was pushed under the eaves that was our agreed-upon hiding spot. I closed the top as best I could and soon heard the sounds of the attic door being broken down. In came a man to search the attic. More than once I saw the shadow of the searcher over me.” In this remarkable memoir, Ellen-Ruth Karpowitz Song recounts with astonishing clarity and a touch of humor her harrowing experiences as a child hiding from The Nazis in German-occupied Holland during World War II. Shuffled from family to family over an event-filled three-year period, Ellen-Ruth recalls how her saviors repeatedly risked their own lives to shield hers from the atrocities of the time. Ellen-Ruth’s grown children also provide their thoughts on their mother’s early history, and share insights into how this knowledge has affected their own lives. An extensive Appendix includes documentation of the ordeal and a photo gallery of lives lost and those left to carry on. Featured in Steven Spielberg’s SHOAH project, Ellen-Ruth’s amazing story is a memorable testimony of the strength of the human spirit. May we never forget...

    But as work at the docks gets scarcer and the political unrest of the 1930s begins to impinge on them, she wonders if even this is too much to ask. Especially when Pat begins to show the strain in gits of temper aimed, to her astonished fury, at Katie herself. Meanwhile their 16-year-old daughter Molly is getting an increasing amount of attention from boys in the area, in particular from the masterful and confident Bob Jarvis. But Jarvis has a darker side - his links with the violent Blackshirts. And when Molly meets another boy, Jewish Simon Blomstein, she begins to realise life isn't as simple as she thought it was. . .

    And with G-d's help, he saved not only himself but also his parents and a host of friends, relatives, and strangers from almost certain death. If Ludvik Wieder's adventures were fiction, they would seem too contrived. But everything told is the unembellished truth. At the age of 26, Ludvik had it all—health, wealth, good looks, popularity, and a growing business in one of Europe's brightest capitals. Then, one dreadful Sunday in the spring of 1943, the Nazis marched into Budapest and imposed a series of repressive measures that threatened the life of every Jew in Hungary. From that day on, all that mattered was survival. Suddenly, life hung by a shred of paper— the proper “Aryan” identification. Determined to survive, Ludvik boldly entered the black market to buy those precious scraps of false identity that might save him and his loved ones from disaster. Soon he was living a double life, outwardly forsaking his Orthodox Jewish upbringing to pose as a gentile, at the same time clinging steadfastly to his beliefs, never for a moment forgetting who he was and where he came from. Soon he became a master of deception— whether it was posing as a trusted “gentile” factory employee, disguising himself as a drunken peasant, or assuming the dress and manner of a member of the Hungarian S.S. Somehow, he had the capacity to enlist the aid of an unlikely assortment of non-Jews, who helped him at the peril of their lives—among them, a peasant woman who befriended him in prison and offered her home as his haven for the duration of the war… a Hungarian Air Force officer, who “adopted” Ludvik's niece as his own illegitimate child, lent him his apartment as a hiding place and smuggled a series of vital ID papers to him… the Skid Row derelict who saved the life of Ludvik's nephew by pretending to be the boy's uncle. The book traces Ludvik's life, beginning with his placid, essentially easygoing boyhood in Czechoslovakia. Then, in 1940, after the Hungarian takeover, he was inducted into forced labor. It describes the cruelty and black humor of the labor camp, which helped him to develop the cunning and ingenuity that enabled him to sharpen his survival skills and avoid being sent to fatal service on the Russian front. The story then focuses on the Nazi occupation, culminating in Ludvik's near-execution at the hands of his Russian liberators. Armed with optimism, unswerving faith in the Almighty, and his own resourcefulness, Ludvik never let fear keep him from doing whatever was necessary to save himself and his fellow Jews. Throughout his heart-stopping adventures —and even in the darkest moments of despair, when events propelled him to the brink of suicide—Ludvik was motivated to go on by consummate devotion to his beloved mother. He knew he had to survive, for he had promised her he would.