Book picks similar to
Barricades: The Journey of Javert by C.A. Shilton
historical-fiction
history-reimagined
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The Illusion of Separateness
Simon Van Booy - 2013
The same world moves beneath each of them, and one by one, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, they discover the vital parts they have played in each other's lives, a realization that shatters the illusion of their separateness. Moving back and forth in time and across continents, The Illusion of Separateness displays the breathtaking skill of, "a truly special writer who does things with abstract language that is so evocative and original your breath literally catches in your chest" (Andre Dubus III).
Beneath a Scarlet Sky
Mark T. Sullivan - 2017
He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.
The German Midwife
Mandy Robotham - 2018
A prisoner in the camps, Anke Hoff is doing what she can to keep her pregnant campmates and their newborns alive.But when Anke's work is noticed, she is chosen for a task more dangerous than she could ever have imagined. Eva Braun is pregnant with the Führer's child, and Anke is assigned as her midwife.Before long, Anke is faced with an impossible choice. Does she serve the Reich she loathes and keep the baby alive? Or does she sacrifice an innocent child for the good of a broken world?An unforgettable tale of courage, betrayal and survival in the hardest of circumstances, perfect for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Alice Network.
Assignment: Casablanca
Peter J. Azzole - 2019
Their mission is simply to provide a temporary Top Secret special intelligence communications center to support U.S. members of a high level Allied war planning meeting.An easy mission quickly goes awry. Only two months after the Allied assault and occupation of Casablanca (Operation TORCH), the city remains a hotbed of Vichy and German sympathizers and spies. One unexpected event leads to another. Things get dicey, with life threatening situations, shots fired and dead bodies. Tony is diverted from Casablanca on a brief classified fact-finding mission to a neutral country's island. That mission gets complicated and ultimately results in spy catching and another death. Returning to Casablanca, events result in Tony meeting Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.Between "Casablanca's" covers are communications intelligence, counter-intelligence, military politics, diplomatic tension, WWII history, family dynamics, and in the final analysis, a very exciting, twisting and fast moving story.
The Fallen Snow
John J. Kelley - 2012
. . and then vanishes. Pulled from the rubble of an enemy bunker days later, he receives an award for valor and passage home to Hadley, a remote hamlet in Virginia’s western highlands. Reeling from war and influenza, Hadley could surely use a hero. Family and friends embrace him; an engagement is announced; a job is offered.Yet all is not what it seems. Joshua experiences panics and can’t recall the incident that crippled him. He guards a secret too, one that grips tight like the icy air above his father’s quarry. Over the course of a Virginia winter and an echoed season in war-torn France, The Fallen Snow reveals his wide-eyed journey to the front and his ragged path back. Along the way he finds companions – a youth mourning a lost brother, a widowed nurse seeking a new life and Aiden, a bold sergeant escaping a vengeful father. While all of them touch Joshua, it is the strong yet nurturing Aiden who will awaken his heart, leaving him forever changed.Set within a besieged Appalachian forest during a time of tragedy, The Fallen Snow charts an extraordinary coming of age, exploring how damaged souls learn to heal, and dare to grow.
Winter Men
Jesper Bugge Kold - 2014
Karl, a former soldier and successful businessman, dutifully answers the call to defend his country, while contemplative academic Gerhard is coerced into informing for the Gestapo. Soon the brothers are serving in the SS, and as Hitler’s hateful agenda brings about unspeakable atrocities, they find themselves with innocent blood on their hands.Following Germany’s eventual defeat, Karl and Gerhard are haunted by their insurmountable guilt, and each seeks a way to escape from wounds that will never heal. They survived the war and its revelation of systematic horrors, but can they survive the unshakable knowledge of their own culpability?
Dragonfly
Leila Meacham - 2019
The men and women from very different backgrounds--a Texan athlete with German roots, an upper-crust son of a French mother and a wealthy businessman, a dirt-poor Midwestern fly fisherman, an orphaned fashion designer, and a ravishingly beautiful female fencer -- all answer the call of duty, but each for a secret reason of his or her own. They bond immediately, in a group code-named Dragonfly. Soon after their training, they are dropped behind enemy lines and take up their false identities, isolated from one another except for a secret drop-box, but in close contact with the powerful Nazi elite who have Paris under siege. Thus begins a dramatic and riveting cat-and-mouse game, as the young Americans seek to stay under the radar until a fatal misstep leads to the capture and the firing-squad execution of one of their team. But...is everything as it seems, or is this one more elaborate act of spycraft?
The House of Dreams
Kate Lord Brown - 2014
The House of Dreams combines Brown's lovely, lyrical writing and signature interwoven past/present narrative style with an even more commercial time period and a fascinating real-life story.In 2000, Gabriel Lambert is a celebrated painter who hides a dark secret. Sophie Cass, a journalist struggling to begin her career and with a family connection to Lambert, is determined to find the truth about his past and the little known story of the real Casablanca.In 1940, an international group of rescue workers, refugee intellectuals, and artists gather in the beautiful old Villa Air Bel just outside Marseilles. American journalist Varian Fry and his remarkable team at the American Relief Center are working to help them escape France, but "the greatest man-trap in history" is closing in on them. Despite their peril, true camaraderie and creativity flourishes - while love affairs spring up and secrets are hidden. At the House of Dreams, young refugee artist Gabriel Lambert changed the course of his life - and now, sixty years later at his home in the Hamptons, the truth is finally catching up with him.
The Girl Across the Sea
Noëlle Harrison - 2021
Her chest felt tight, and her heart was cracking. If only she could be sure her secret was safe. If only she could go home to Ireland…New York, 1933. Ellen looks at her sleeping husband and precious daughter for the last time. They have longed to return home to Ireland for many years, but now the time has come, and the boat is ready to leave. But Ellen knows the dark secret she hides means she can never go back. Heart breaking into a million little pieces, she kisses her little girl goodbye and lays a precious turquoise necklace down beside her head, before fleeing into the night.Ireland, years later. Mairead’s world is falling apart. Recently separated, she has returned home to nurse her dying mother, Brigid. As Brigid passes, she calls out for her mother, Ellen, a woman Mairead knows nothing about.All alone in the world, Mairead is stricken with guilt that she couldn’t honour her mother’s last wish. She travels to New York, the last place her grandmother was seen, clutching all that she has of her – a stunning turquoise necklace and a small black-and-white photograph. Mairead’s search leads her across America to Arizona where she discovers that Ellen was on the run, a wanted woman, accused of a terrible crime.Mairead can’t believe that the young woman with laughing eyes and an innocent smile could have such a dark past. But as she uncovers the secrets and lies that forced her grandmother to abandon her only daughter, will Mairead’s own future be ruined by the shadows of her family’s secrets?Be transported to the wild west coast of Ireland by this beautiful read about the sacrifices a mother will make to protect her child. Fans of The Light Between Oceans and Lisa Wingate will adore this heart-breaking book.
The Sharp Hook of Love: A Novel of Heloise and Abelard
Sherry JonesSherry Jones - 2014
Extraordinarily educated and quick-witted, she is being groomed by her uncle to become an abbess in the service of God. But with one encounter, her destiny changes forever. Pierre Abelard, headmaster at the Nôtre Dame Cloister School, is acclaimed as one of the greatest philosophers in France. His controversial reputation only adds to his allure, yet despite the legions of women swooning over his poetry and dashing looks, he is captivated by the brilliant Heloise alone. As their relationship blossoms from a meeting of the minds to a forbidden love affair, both Heloise and Abelard must choose between love, duty, and ambition.Sherry Jones weaves the lovers’ own words into an evocative account of desire and sacrifice. As intimate as it is erotic, as devastating as it is beautiful, The Sharp Hook of Love is a poignant, tender tribute to one of history’s greatest romances, and to love’s power to transform and endure.
Lady Macbeth
Susan Fraser King - 2008
I have fought with sword and bow, and struggled fiercely to bear my babes into this world. I have loved deeply and hated deeply, too. Lady Gruadh, called Rue, is the last female descendent of Scotland’s most royal line. Married to a powerful northern lord, she is widowed while still carrying his child and forced to marry her husband’s murderer: a rising war-lord named Macbeth. Encountering danger from Vikings, Saxons, and treacherous Scottish lords, Rue begins to respect the man she once despised–and then realizes that Macbeth’s complex ambitions extend beyond the borders of the vast northern region. Among the powerful warlords and their steel-games, only Macbeth can unite Scotland–and his wife’s royal blood is the key to his ultimate success. Determined to protect her small son and a proud legacy of warrior kings and strong women, Rue invokes the ancient wisdom and secret practices of her female ancestors as she strives to hold her own in a warrior society. Finally, side by side as the last Celtic king and queen of Scotland, she and Macbeth must face the gathering storm brought on by their combined destiny.From towering crags to misted moors and formidable fortresses, Lady Macbeth transports readers to the heart of eleventh-century Scotland, painting a bold, vivid portrait of a woman much maligned by history. From the Hardcover edition.
The Lost Soldier
Diney Costeloe - 2000
In 1921, eight ash trees were planted in the dorset village of Charlton Ambrose as a timeless memorial to the men killed in World War One. Overnight a ninth appeared, marked only as for 'the unknown soldier'. But now the village's ashgrove is under threat from developers. Rachel Elliot, a local reporter, sets out to save the memorial and solve the mystery of the ninth tree. In so doing, she uncovers the story of Tom Carter and Molly Day: two young people thrown together by the war, their love for each other, their fears for the present and their hopes for the future. Embroiled in events beyond their control, Tom and Molly have to face up to the harsh realities of the continuing war, the injustices it allows and the sacrifices it demands.
Annelies
David R. Gillham - 2019
Having survived the concentration camps, but lost her mother and sister, she reunites with her father, Pim, in newly liberated Amsterdam. But it’s not as easy to fit the pieces of their life back together. Anne is adrift, haunted by the ghosts of the horrors they experienced, while Pim is fixated on returning to normalcy. Her beloved diary has been lost, and her dreams of becoming a writer seem distant and pointless now. As Anne struggles to overcome the brutality of memory and build a new life for herself, she grapples with heartbreak, grief, and ultimately the freedom of forgiveness. A story of trauma and redemption, Annelies honors Anne Frank’s legacy as not only a symbol of hope and perseverance, but also a complex young woman of great ambition and heart.Anne Frank is a cultural icon whose diary painted a vivid picture of the Holocaust and made her an image of humanity in one of history’s darkest moments. But she was also a person—a precocious young girl with a rich inner life and tremendous skill as a writer. In this masterful new novel, David R. Gillham explores with breathtaking empathy the woman—and the writer—she might have become.
The River: A Christopher Radcliff Short Story
A.D. Swanston - 2018
. . Cambridge on the morning of a day in April, the year of Our Lord 1569.And Christopher Radcliff, Doctor of Civil Laws at Pembroke Hall and recruiter of clever young men to the service of the Earl of Leicester, is amongst a crowd of excited townsfolk and university scholars gathered on a field to watch a game of foot ball. It is to be played between the apprentices of the town and pupils of the colleges and it is hoped it will reconcile differences between town and gown. Bets are placed, wagers made. On the field long-standing animosities surface and violence breaks out but not before the college team is victorious, thanks to the skill of a Pembroke Hall man, John Groom.Later that day, Radcliff is summoned to the senior tutor’s rooms. It transpires that John Groom has been locked up on a serious charge of assault – he’d nearly caused a cobbler’s apprentice to drown. If found guilty, Groom would be expelled from college and face imprisonment. But Christopher smells a rat. He believes the charge to be the fabrication of someone with a serious grudge against the young man, and yet it does seem as if Groom is hiding something. Enlisting the help of his friend Edward Allington and his wife Katherine, Dr Radcliff knows the truth lies somewhere within the infamous den that is Slegge’s gaming house…
Across the Winding River
Aimie K. Runyan - 2020
His only request of his daughter is to go through the long-forgotten box of memorabilia from his days as a medic on the western front. Then, among his wartime souvenirs, Beth finds a photograph of her father with an adoring and beautiful stranger—a photograph worth a thousand questions.It was 1944 when Max was drawn into the underground resistance by the fearless German wife of a Nazi officer. Together, she and Max were willing to risk everything for what they believed was right. Ahead of them lay a dangerous romance, a dream of escape, and a destiny over which neither had control.But Max isn’t alone in his haunting remembrances of war. In a nearby private care home is a fragile German-born woman with her own past to share. Only when the two women meet does Beth realize how much more to her father there is to know, all the ways in which his heart still breaks, and the closure he needs to heal it.