Book picks similar to
A Web of Secrets by Roberta Kagan


historical-fiction
historical-fiction-ww2
world-war-2-holocaust
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The Silver Ladies of London


Lesley Eames - 2018
    This is a heart-warming story of friendship, loyalty, courage and love. Perfect for the fans of Elaine Everest and Daisy Styles. Dismissed without references when their employer's valuable necklace goes missing, friends Ruth, Lydia, Jenny and Grace try to rebuild their lives far from home in London. A surprise financial inheritance and gift of a beautiful silver Rolls Royce leads them to set up in business as female chauffeurs and the Silver Ladies of London is born. But driving is a man's world and the girls face a future fraught with constant challenges. Soon their business; romances and even their friendship come under threat. Can the Silver Ladies overcome their struggles and find love, success and happiness? Featuring four heroines, a scandal, a secret and a silver Rolls Royce.

The Lion's Den


Eoin Dempsey - 2021
    A new opportunity in a country on the precipice of unspeakable evil.November 1932. Seamus Ritter, a widower with four children, returns from riding the rails in an America crippled by the great depression. Realizing that his homecoming will not be how he envisioned it, and in a desperate attempt to make amends with his 16-year-old daughter, Maureen, Seamus accepts an invitation to come and work for his long-lost uncle in Berlin. With little other choice, Seamus takes the ship to Germany with his family. Maureen leaves everything to go with her father she no longer trusts, dedicated to taking care of her younger siblings.The Germany the Ritter family encounters is vastly different than the one Seamus spent time living in as a child. An upstart politician called Adolf Hitler has come to the fore, but surely it’s only a matter of time before the right-thinking members of society banish him to the fringes of the political landscape he emerged from.As the Ritter family struggles to adjust to life in a country ravaged by unemployment and internal strife, Seamus meets Lisa, a beautiful and mysterious woman weighed down by the ghosts of her past life. When tragedy strikes, Lisa and Seamus will be forced to act together to save their lives and build a future together in a nation that, unbeknownst to the citizens there, is about to descend into the greatest evil the world has ever known.

The Name On The List: A WW2 Historical Novel, Based on a True Story of a Jewish Holocaust Survivor (World War II Brave Women Fiction)


Orly Krauss-Winer - 2020
    

The Frenchman's Daughters


Paul Sinkinson - 2013
    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.

A Light in the Window


Marion Kummerow - 2021
    But when she’s mistaken for his daughter in the aftermath of the blast, Margarete knows she can make a bid for freedom…Issued with temporary papers—and with the freedom of not being seen as Jewish—a few hours are all she needs to escape to relative safety. That is, until her former employer’s son, SS officer Wilhelm Huber, tracks her down.But strangely he doesn’t reveal her true identity right away. Instead he insists she comes and lives with him in Paris, and seems determined to keep her hidden. His only proviso: she must continue to pretend to be his sister. Because whoever would suspect a Nazi girl of secretly being a Jew?His plan seems impossible, and Margarete is terrified they might be found out, not to mention worried about what Wilhelm might want in return. But as the Nazis start rounding up Jews in Paris and the Résistance steps up its activities, putting everyone who opposes the regime in peril, she realizes staying hidden in plain sight may be her only chance of survival…Can Margarete trust a Nazi officer with the only things she has left though… her safety, her life, even her heart?

The Long Road to Auschwitz


Anthony Vincent Bruno - 2019
    Max is a British Territorial soldier and Zia is a Jewess from the south of France. Zia's grandmother is a wealthy socialite who owns a painting that could embarrass the Nazis. Zia is kidnapped by the Gestapo and Max is hospitalised on the same day. He awakes to find no trace of his beloved who he had planned to marry in England. The Red Cross reported that it was almost certain that Zia was trafficked across the border and delivered to Sachsenhausen Labour Camp at Oranienburg, not far from Berlin on the night of May 26th, 1939. A criminal act, regardless of the forthcoming war. The first warring Germans to step over the border onto French soil did not do so until May 13th, 1940. The Gestapo had kidnapped her 343 days before they attacked France.June 6th, 1944 - four years later, Max is one of 150,000 Allied troops headed towards the Normandy beaches. He has two options - find the woman he could never forget or kill the people responsible for her death. From the very beginning, Berlin had ordered SS Hauptsturmführer Dieter Baumann to deal harshly with their VIP captive but never to kill her. Through three concentration camps, ending in Auschwitz, Zia wishes she had been killed many times over. Traumatized, she has no idea that Max and a few unlikely friends are battling their way through Nazi occupied Europe in a crazy attempt to rescue her. Berlin tries one last ploy to get their hands on her grandmother's painting. Zia's life hangs in the balance when Max meets his own personal nemesis in the guise of an undercover Gestapo officer. This novel explores the dark depths that humans can sink to in times of war. It is for adults only and even then; it is not for readers of a sensitive disposition. Whatever you read in this novel of extraordinary graphic Holocaust content, consider this – it was immeasurably worse, a hundred thousand times so.

The Time Between Us: an emotional, gripping historical page turner


Marina McCarron - 2021
    

The Fleethaven Trilogy


Margaret Dickinson - 2001
    Plough the Furrow begins in 1910. Esther Everatt, shunned by her family and desperate for work and a place to say, finds her way to Sam Brumby's farm. Able to work alongside any man, she earns old Sam's grudging respect. Prepared to risk everything to secure her future, Esther marries a local farmhand. But as war arrives she comes to understand that only the truest of love can survive the passing of the seasons. Sow the Seed follows the story of Kate, Esther's daughter. Kate is determined to marry her childhood sweetheart, Danny. But when she reaches eighteen Kate is told the bitter truth of her family's past and the reasons why marriage to Danny can never happen. Heart-broken Kate witnesses many things amidst the chaos and destruction of WWII, which finally lead her to experience a love that allows her to leave the past behind. Reap the Harvest is set in the aftermath of the disastrous Lincolnshire floods of 1953. Kate's daughter Ella finds herself compelled to live at Brumby's Farm with her grandmother, Esther. This story of love, war, secrets and tragedy seems destined to repeat itself in heartache before coming full circle and bringing this glorious trilogy to a close.

The Perfect Marriage


Debbie Viggiano - 2014
    Unlike her surname, the marriage is far from perfect but, as she’s also mum to baby Luke, leaving isn’t an easy option. When best friend Lucy announces she’s getting married and having a hen night, Rosie relishes a night off from drudgery. Waking up the following morning in businessman Matt Palmer’s bed wasn’t on the agenda. But Matt is no marriage wrecker. Or is he? Suddenly Rosie’s life is turned upside down…from not recalling what took place between Matt Palmer’s silk sheets to discovering her drunken husband is also a gambling addict…from having her home wagered away in a poker game to being pursued by a murderous loan shark. As Rosie lurches from one crisis to another, life is far from perfect. Indeed, will Rosie Perfect ever get her perfect happy-ever-after?

Into the Burning Dawn


Natalie Meg Evans - 2020
    His deep brown eyes gazed into hers with determination and longing. ‘Will you do it? Risk everything and join us?’Twenty-one-year-old Imogen Fitzgerald was raised in an English orphanage and never knew her parents. So when World War Two breaks out, she refuses to leave the life she’s worked so hard to build for herself, teaching English to little Marco and Eloisa in the beautiful Italian city of Naples. With their father Giancarlo away fighting for the fascists, there’s no one else to care for these lost children. Imogen’s dark hair and perfect Italian will protect her for now, but if anyone discovers her secret identity as an enemy of Italy, Marco and Eloisa will be left with no one.As the shadows of bomber planes darken the azure-blue waters of the bay, the one person Imogen can depend on is Fabrizio, the children’s uncle. He’s never seen eye-to-eye with their father, and Imogen is forbidden to speak to him… but whenever they secretly meet in the lemon groves Imogen instantly feels safe. Fabrizio talks passionately of the resistenza, the underground group fighting the regime, and soon Imogen herself is involved – smuggling food along the rocky coast, and even supplying information on Giancarlo to help fight the Nazis and end this awful war.But when Giancarlo suddenly returns, injured from the fighting, Imogen is shocked to find him much changed. Rather than the fascist sympathiser she knew and resented, she sees in Giancarlo a man who would do anything to protect his children and his beloved Italy. Was she wrong to expose him as a traitor?Torn between two sides, Imogen’s own life is thrown into terrible danger when a child goes missing and her secret identity is exposed… did she put her trust in the wrong man? And is it too late to save herself, and the children from the horrors of war?An absolutely stunning and evocative historical read about the bravery of ordinary people in dark times, that will sweep you away to the breath-taking coastline of Italy. Perfect for fans of The Nightingale, The Tuscan Child and All the Light We Cannot See.

The Girl with the Scarlet Ribbon: An emotional and gripping World War 2 historical novel


Suzanne Goldring - 2022
    

The Day the Germans Came


Ella Gyland - 2022
    Inspired by the incredible true story of how the people of Denmark saved their Jewish neighbours during WW2Helsingør, Denmark, 1943In the midst of the German occupation during World War Two, Inger Bredhal joins the underground resistance and risks her life to save members of Denmark’s Jewish community and help them escape to Sweden.

The Jam Factory Girls


Mary Wood - 2020
    Caring for her siblings and working long hours at Swift's Jam Factory in London’s Bermondsey is exhausting. Thankfully her lifelong friendship with Dot helps to smooth over life’s rough edges.When Elsie and Dot meet Millie Swift, they are nervous to be in the presence of the bosses’ daughter. Over time, they are surprised to feel so drawn to her, but should two East End girls be socializing in such circles?When disaster strikes, it binds the women in ways they could never imagine. Long-held secrets are revealed that could change all their lives...

No Place Like Home


Jane Renshaw - 2021
    They have left the rat race of the big city and moved into a gorgeous, custom-built house in the Scottish Highlands. Bram has already planted up a vegetable plot and is planning to create a wildflower meadow and keep chickens and goats.But then a dead crow appears on their washing line, their vegetables are weedkilled and someone shoots at Bertie, a gentle guide dog belonging to Kirsty’s mother.The police say it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just bored local teenagers hanging out in the woods. But Bram is sure that more sinister forces are at work, that these events may be connected to a terrible secret in Kirsty’s past.And he’s right. As the campaign against them escalates, the family is pulled down into a relentless spiral of terror and violence until the home they always dreamed of becomes a nightmare from which they may never escape.

The German Girl


Lily Graham - 2021
    And if we go home, the Nazis will take us too…’Hamburg 1938. Fifteen-year-old Asta is hurrying home from school with her twin brother Jurgen. The mood in the city is tense – synagogues have been smashed with sledgehammers, and Asta is too frightened to laugh as she used to.But when she and Jurgen are stopped in the street by a friend, her world implodes further. Her Jewish parents have been dragged into the streets by German soldiers and if she and Jurgen return to their house, they will be taken too.Heartbroken at the loss of her parents, Asta knows they must flee. With her beloved brother, she must make the perilous journey across Germany and into Denmark to reach their only surviving relative, her aunt Trine, a woman they barely know.Jammed into a truck with other refugees, Asta prays for a miracle to save herself and Jurgen. Crossing the border is a crime punishable by death, and what she and Jurgen must embark on a dangerous crossing on foot, through the snowy forest dividing Germany and Denmark. And when barking dogs and armed soldiers find Jurgen and Asta escapes, she must hold on to hope no matter what. One day she will find her twin, the other half of herself. Whatever the price she has to pay…A gripping and poignant read that will break your heart and give you hope. Fans of Fiona Valpy, Kristin Hannah and Catherine Hokin will be gripped by the story of a brave brother and sister seeking safety during one of the darkest times in our history.