The Last Telegram


Liz Trenow - 2012
    She’s tried for decades to forget, but now an unexpected event pulls her back to the 1940s British countryside. She finds herself remembering the brilliant, lustrous colors of the silk she helped to weave at her family’s mill, the relentless pressure of the worsening war, and the kind of heartbreaking loss that stops time. In this evocative novel of love and consequences, Lily finally confronts the disastrous decision that has haunted her all these years.

The Girl from Krakow


Alex Rosenberg - 2015
    Rita Feuerstahl comes to the university in Krakow intent on enjoying her freedom. But life has other things in store—marriage, a love affair, a child, all in the shadows of the oncoming war. When the war arrives, Rita is armed with a secret so enormous that it could cost the Allies everything, even as it gives her the will to live. She must find a way both to keep her secret and to survive amid the chaos of Europe at war. Living by her wits among the Germans as their conquests turn to defeat, she seeks a way to prevent the inevitable doom of Nazism from making her one of its last victims. Can her passion and resolve outlast the most powerful evil that Europe has ever seen?In an epic saga that spans from Paris in the ’30s and Spain’s Civil War to Moscow, Warsaw, and the heart of Nazi Germany, The Girl from Krakow follows one woman’s battle for survival as entire nations are torn apart, never to be the same.

Hannah's War


Jan Eliasberg - 2020
    Groundbreaking physicist Dr. Hannah Weiss is on the verge of the greatest discovery of the 20th century: splitting the atom. She understands that the energy released by her discovery can power entire cities or destroy them. Hannah believes the weapon's creation will secure an end to future wars, but as a Jewish woman living under the harsh rule of the Third Reich, her research is belittled, overlooked, and eventually stolen by her German colleagues. Faced with an impossible choice, Hannah must decide what she is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of science's greatest achievement. New Mexico, 1945. Returning wounded and battered from the liberation of Paris, Major Jack Delaney arrives in the New Mexican desert with a mission: to catch a spy. Someone in the top-secret nuclear lab at Los Alamos has been leaking encoded equations to Hitler's scientists. Chief among Jack's suspects is the brilliant and mysterious Hannah Weiss, an exiled physicist lending her talent to J. Robert Oppenheimer's mission. All signs point to Hannah as the traitor, but over three days of interrogation that separate her lies from the truth, Jack will realize they have more in common than either one bargained for. Hannah's War is a thrilling wartime story of loyalty, truth, and the unforeseeable fallout of a single choice.

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.

Hour of the Assassins: A Novel


Andrew Kaplan - 1987
    His atrocities were unspeakable, and among his victims were the wife and child of a man named Wasserman, who was forced to watch them die. Mengele survived the war, disappearing into hiding in South America, and Wasserman ran too—fleeing to America to make a fortune in pornography. Now he is dying of cancer, but before he goes, he wants to see Mengele dead.   To hunt the evil doctor, he recruits John Caine, an ex-CIA agent whose time in Vietnam gave him his own close-up view of evil. Seeking the Angel of Death in the jungles of South America, Caine discovers a sinister conspiracy code-named Starfish and realizes that Mengele is only the beginning.

Ghost Sniper


David Healey - 2014
    On the dawn of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, two snipers find themselves fighting a battle all their own. One is a backwoods hunter from the Appalachian Mountains in the American South, while the other is the dreaded German “Ghost Sniper” who earned his nickname on the Eastern Front. Locked in a deadly duel across the hedgerow country of France, the hunter matches wits and tactics against the marksman, both of them one bullet away from victory—or defeat—as Allied forces struggle to gain a foothold in Europe.

The Wartime Singers


Lesley Eames - 2021
    

Pride Runs Deep


R. Cameron Cooke - 2005
    is rebuilding its fleet while the badly damaged Submarine Division Seven holds the line against the Japanese Navy. The loss of even one more submarine could be devastating--and every enemy ship that slips through means more lives lost. But Lieutenant Commander Jack Tremain is determined to whip into shape a boat that's returned from a hellish patrol and make the Japanese pay--even if this is his last mission ever.

A Good Nazi?


David Canford - 2018
    But as Hitler's repression increases, their lives are forever changed. When war comes, will they help each other during their darkest hours, or will hatred prevail? From the idyllic surroundings of the Bavarian Alps to the vastness of Russia and the beauty of Lake Maggiore in Italy, a tale of families torn apart by war and its aftermath but also a novel about the resilience of the human spirit and the power of forgiveness and love, by the author of Betrayal in Venice.Fans of novels such as Beneath a Scarlet Sky, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and White Rose, Black Forest should enjoy this.

The Girl I Left Behind


Andie Newton - 2019
    But when her childhood best friend shows Ella that you can't always believe what you see, Ella finds herself thrown into the world of the German Resistance. On a dark night in 1941, Claudia is taken by the Gestapo, likely never to be seen again, unless Ella can save her. With the help of the man she loves, Ella must undertake her most dangerous mission yet and infiltrate the Nazi Party. Selling secrets isn't an easy job. In order to find Claudia, Ella must risk not only her life, but the lives of those she cares about. Will Ella be able to leave behind the girl of her youth and step into the shoes of another?

The Fire by Night


Teresa Messineo - 2017
    Enemy bombs have destroyed her hospital convoy, and now Jo singlehandedly struggles to keep her patients and herself alive in a cramped and freezing tent close to German troops. There is a growing tenderness between her and one of her patients, a Scottish officer, but Jo’s heart is seared by the pain of all she has lost and seen. Nearing her breaking point, she fights to hold on to joyful memories of the past, to the times she shared with her best friend, Kay, whom she met in nursing school.Half a world away in the Pacific, Kay is trapped in a squalid Japanese POW camp in Manila, one of thousands of Allied men, women, and children whose fates rest in the hands of a sadistic enemy. Far from the familiar safety of the small Pennsylvania coal town of her childhood, Kay clings to memories of her happy days posted in Hawaii, and the handsome flyer who swept her off her feet in the weeks before Pearl Harbor. Surrounded by cruelty and death, Kay battles to maintain her sanity and save lives as best she can . . . and live to see her beloved friend Jo once more.When the conflict at last comes to an end, Jo and Kay discover that to achieve their own peace, they must find their place—and the hope of love—in a world that’s forever changed. With rich, superbly researched detail, Teresa Messineo’s thrilling novel brings to life the pain and uncertainty of war and the sustaining power of love and friendship, and illuminates the lives of the women who risked everything to save others during a horrifying time.

Escaping On The Danube River


Shmuel David - 2020
    Realizing the Nazi threat is advancing towards the Balkans with giant strides, his parents are prepared to do anything to save their son’s life.The road to survival, however, is not easy.Just as Europe’s gates are about to shut down, Hanne and 1,100 other youths sail away on the Danube River. On board the ship, under appalling living conditions, Hanne falls in love with Inge, a young German Jewish girl.Soon their love intensifies, and with it, the desire to build a new life together in the Land of Israel. But their journey for survival is becoming increasingly difficult with each passing day.When promises of a boat that should take them to the Black Sea prove false and Nazi army forces are right around the corner, their plan for escape is in real danger. What fate awaits Hanne and Inge? Will they be able to make the dream they share a reality?

The Lieutenant's Nurse


Sara Ackerman - 2019
    She’s never even seen the ocean before, but Eva Cassidy has her reasons for making the crossing to Hawaii, and they run a lot deeper than escaping a harsh Michigan winter. Newly enlisted as an Army Corps nurse, Eva is stunned by the splendor she experiences aboard the steamship SS Lurline; even more so by Lt. Clark Spencer, a man she is drawn to but who clearly has secrets of his own. But Eva’s past—and the future she’s trying to create—means that she’s not free to follow her heart. Clark is a navy intelligence officer, and he warns her that the United States won’t be able to hold off joining the war for long, but nothing can prepare them for the surprise attack that will change the world they know.In the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Eva and her fellow nurses band together for the immense duty of keeping the American wounded alive. And the danger that finds Eva threatens everything she holds dear. Amid the chaos and heartbreak, Eva will have to decide whom to trust and how far she will go to protect those she loves.Set in the vibrant tropical surroundings of the Pacific, The Lieutenant’s Nurse is an evocative, emotional WWII story of love, friendship and the resilient spirit of the heroic nurses of Pearl Harbor.

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?

In Spite of All Terror


V.M. Knox - 2019
    Britain stands alone facing an imminent Nazi invasion. Handpicked groups of men form the covert Auxiliary Units; ordinary by day, they will be saboteurs and assassins by night. With a life expectancy of two weeks, their identities are a closely guarded secret from all but the local senior policeman but once activated, that policeman will be the cell's first victim. Clement Wisdom, a humble vicar and leader of the East Sussex Auxiliaries, receives the invasion alert and assembles his team. Burdened with the tension between his faith and his patriotic duty, he sets out to eliminate the Police Inspector, only to find him dead already. While assisting Lewes Police to find the Inspector's killer, events take an ominous turn as one by one, members of Clement’s team are found callously murdered. Priorities shift and every aspect of life is called into question when Clement becomes embroiled in the murky world of espionage, where nothing is what it seems. In Spite of All Terror is the first in a series of crime thrillers that mix historical fact, crime fiction and superb characterisations. They will keep you hungry for the next piece of this wartime puzzle.