Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in 20th Century

Four people's lives are dramatically torn apart by a single terrifying event. Two days before Christmas the express train to Strasbourg crashes into a local train in the winter darkness outside Paris. On board is Gilles Malroux, a man with a shady past and a strong reason to avoid the police. In the mayhem of the crash he is badly injured but to avoid capture by the police he swaps identity papers with one of the other victims of the impact. Gilles tries to flee in the dark but finds himself taken to the house of a woman he doesn't know but who calls him Davide.

London, 1944. Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While the world remains at war, in East London, Clara has created the country's only underground library, built over the railway tracks in the disused Bethnal Green tube station. Down here, a whole community thrives: with hundreds of bunk beds, a café and a theatre offering shelter from the bombs that fall above. Along with her glamorous best friend and assistant librarian, Ruby Munroe, Clara ensures the library is the beating heart of life underground.

In A Presumption of Death, Jill Paton Walsh tells how World War II changed the lives of Peter, Harriet and their growing family. The story opens in 1940. Harriet Vane - now Lady Peter Wimsey - has taken her children to safety in the country. But the war has followed them: glamorous RAF pilots and even more glamorous land-girls scandalise the villagers; the blackout makes the nighttime lanes as sinister as the back alleys of London.

Rosa Kusstatscher has built a global fashion empire upon her ability to find the perfect outfit for any occasion. But tonight, as she prepares for the most important meeting of her life, her usual certainty eludes her. What brought her to this moment? As she struggles to select her dress and choose the right shade of lipstick, Rosa begins to tell her incredible story. The story of a poor country girl from a village high in the mountains of Italy. Of Nazi occupation and fleeing in the night. Of hope and heartbreak in Switzerland; ambition, glamour and love in Paris.

London, 2017. When her beloved grandmother, Sylvie, sends her to Paris to retrieve a dress she wore decades before. But not everything is as it seems, and the long-buried secrets she discovers, hidden in a collection of priceless Dior gowns, could change everything. Paris, 1952. Post-war France is full of glamour and privilege, and Alice Ainsley is in the middle of it all. As the wife to the British ambassador to France, her life is a whirlwind of jewels, banquets and couture dresses, but beneath the glittering façade, Alice is suffocating in a loveless marriage.

From enchanting cliff tops and white sandy bays to the pretty cobbled streets of St Helier, Jersey is known as the land of milk and honey. But for best friends Bea Rose (the local postwoman) and Grace Le Motte (who works in the island's only library) it becomes the frontline to everyday resistance when their beloved island is occupied by German forces in 1940.

1939. Seventeen-year-old Nora Jennings has spent her life secure in the certainty of a bright, happy future - until one night of passion has more catastrophic consequences than she ever could have anticipated. Labelled a moral defective and sectioned under the Mental Deficiency Act, she is forced to endure years of unspeakable cruelty at the hands of those who are supposed to care for her.

Poland, 1942. After witnessing the destruction of her hometown in Warsaw, Anna Kowalski joins the Polish Resistance. She is tasked with smuggling as many children as possible out of the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewers and relocating them to safety. Through her work, Anna meets Johnnie Nowak, an RAF pilot who had managed to escape from a prisoner of war camp. He's not safe in Warsaw, so Anna leads him out of the city to protect him...

Japanese-occupied Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara's children are in terrible danger. Her eldest child Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day. Jasmin, the youngest, lives confined in a basement for her own safety. And her son, Abel, has disappeared without a trace. Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.

When the bombers appear like a flock of birds over the horizon, Sibil Helinger, 17, is enjoying market day in the small Spanish town of Guernica. With no warning, clouds of German planes are upon them and bombs fall on the town like rain. Reeling with shock, Sibil spends the next few days frantically searching for her relatives in the smouldering rubble. Though she finds her little sister trapped in the ruins, she discovers her mother and the others are dead.

The audiobook tells the story of Stella Fortuna, born into rural poverty in a mountainside Calabrian village in the early 20th century. After being abandoned by their father, who had left to seek his fortune in L'America, Stella grew up with her beloved mother, Assunta, her brother, Giuseppe, and her sister, Tina. Tough, vivacious, and fiercely loyal, the sisters were always inseparable, going on to support each other through immigration, marriage, children, loss - and the seven (or eight, depending how you count them) near-death experiences Stella suffered throughout her life.

Celebrated singer Genevieve Dumont is both a star and a smokescreen. An unwilling darling of the Nazis, her position of privilege allows her to go undetected as an ally to the resistance. When her estranged mother, Lillian de Rocheford, is captured by Nazis, Genevieve is shaken. She knows it won't be long before the Gestapo succeeds in torturing information out of Lillian that will derail the upcoming allied invasion. The resistance movement is tasked with silencing her by any means necessary - including assassination.

Two candidates are vying to become chancellor of Germany. One is a patriot who has served for many years, the other a usurper, stoking the flames of nationalistic hate. Both harbour secrets, but only one knows the truth about the other. Everything turns on the events of one fateful day - 30th April 1945 - and what happened deep beneath Berlin in the Fürherbunker.

Against the backdrop of pre-WWII Berlin, British pianist Audrey James and her best friend Isle face the imminent threat of Nazi oppression. When Ilse's family disappears and Nazi officers confiscate their home, Audrey becomes their housekeeper and Ilse is forced into hiding in the attic-a prisoner in her own home. As borders close and rumours of death camps swirl, Audrey makes the life-changing decision to join the covert resistance and risk everything to protect her loved ones.

1948, Berlin. World War II has ended and there is supposed to be peace; but Russian troops have closed all access to the city. Roads, railway lines and waterways are blocked and two million people are trapped, relying on airlifts of food, water and medicine to survive. The sharp eyes of the Russian state police watch everything. Anna and Ingrid are both searching for answers - and revenge - in the messy aftermath of war. Both are living in the shadows of a city where the line between right and wrong has become dangerously blurred. But they cannot give up in the search for a lost child.

November, 1941. Germany is about to win the war. Only one thing still separates the Nazis from a certain victory: they must find the three remaining all-powerful swastikas and reunite them with a fourth that is safely hidden away in Himmler's mountain stronghold. Churchill has no choice but to mobilise his best man, double agent Tristan Marcas, and employ the most risky techniques to beat them to it. It all comes to a showdown at a ball in Venice.

May 1940. With Nazi forces sweeping across France, invasion seems imminent. The English Channel has never felt so narrow. In rural Sussex, war veteran John Cook has been tasked with preparing the resistance effort, should the worst happen. But even as the foreign threat looms, it's rumours of a missing child that are troubling Cook. A 12-year-old girl was evacuated from London and never seen again, and she's just the tip of the iceberg - countless evacuees haven't made it to their host families. As Cook investigates, he uncovers a dark conspiracy that reaches to the highest ranks of society.

EVERYONE IS GRIPPED BY STEPHEN RONSON!

1941. With the men away fighting, animal-lover Hettie Quin is made Belfast Zoo's first-ever female zookeeper. She is put in charge of Violet, a three-year-old Indian elephant, and they soon form a special bond. With Violet at her side, Hettie can almost escape the grim reality of her life: the father who has abandoned her family; the sister who recently died; the war that's raging hundreds of miles away.

Left profoundly deaf after an accident, Émile is no stranger to isolation—or heartbreak. Now, as Nazi planes loom over Guernsey, he senses life is about to change forever. Trapped in a tense, fearful marriage, Isabelle doesn't know what has become of Émile and the future she hoped for. But when she glimpses him from the window of the French House, their lives collide once more. Lieutenant Schreiber is more comfortable wielding a paintbrush than a pistol. But he has little choice in the role he is forced to play in the occupying forces—or in his own forbidden desires.