Showing titles in 20th Century

Discover the story of Australia in the Great War through the eyes and stories of John Murray - a would-be journalist, aspiring artist, and young soldier. John’s dairies capture the history, events, and experiences of Australians, as each instalment builds to tell the story of Australia’s journey from peacetime through to the war’s end. Share a young Australian’s hopes, his insights, and his pain, as war changes the fabric of his world and his family.

In July 1944, Arielle von Auspeck arrives at the glamorous Hotel Ritz in occupied Paris. Half-French, half-German, she is happy to be back in France, where she her husband, Gregor, a retired colonel, will join her soon from Germany. Arielle and Gregor have thus far been able to hide their private opposition to Hitler. Then her world falls apart. She receives word that Gregor was part of Operation Valkyrie and a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in Poland, and has been shot as a traitor.

Yorkshire, 1943. Lily Baines, a bright young debutante increasingly ground down by an endless war, has traded in her white gloves for a set of headphones. It’s her job to intercept enemy naval communications and send them to Bletchley Park for decryption. One night, she picks up a transmission that isn’t code at all—it’s a cry for help.

The warm sea breeze ruffles the pages of my notebook as I meet the bright eyes of the elderly lady sat opposite me on the porch. Sofia has been keeping a devastating secret for over sixty years. Why did she fake her own death during the war? And why is she back now to finally tell her story?

Odile Souchet is obsessed with books, and working at The American Library in Paris for the formidable Director Dorothy Reeder is all she has ever dreamed of. The Library and its thriving community of students, writers, diplomats and book lovers provide her with a safe haven. When war is declared, the Library is determined to remain open. But then the Nazis invade Paris, and everything changes. The Nazi 'Library Protector' changes the rules overnight, declaring a war on words and making the librarians risk their lives to do their jobs.

Germany is at war. The Nazis have absolute power. Evil men carry out their crimes without fear, knowing that the police dare not defy the regime. But Criminal Inspector Schenke - a good man living in terrible times - believes in justice. Whatever the personal cost.

Recruited as a codebreaker of enemy ciphers, ex-debutante Osla Kendall spends her days translating Axis military messages and her nights reading mystery novels. When Osla gets her hands on Agatha Christie's most recent work, N or M?, a mysterious signal within its pages catches her eye, and she and her eccentric book club get in touch with the famous but reclusive writer. Osla's outreach is a welcome distraction for Agatha, who feels restless and underestimated toiling away in a London pharmacy.

Berlin, 1945: Ester Pasternak walked out of the gates of Auschwitz barely alive. She survived against devastating odds, but her heartbreaking journey is only just beginning. In the camp, Ester gave birth to a tiny fair-haired infant, only for her precious baby to be snatched from her and taken to a German family. Now the war is over, Ester longs to find her little girl.

Paris, 1943. The scent of fresh baguettes hangs in the air as Coralie unbolts the door to her bakery with trembling fingers. She must get out of the city. Hiding her precious leather recipe book inside her coat, she promises never to let the secret locations of the people she worked tirelessly to save fall into German hands… Present day. Raven is unhappy about being shipped off to the other side of the country for the summer to stay with the mysterious French grandmother she barely knows.

Early in the Great War, men left Britain’s factories in droves to enlist. Struggling to keep up production, arsenals hired women to build the weapons the military urgently needed. “Be the Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun,” the recruitment posters beckoned. Thousands of women—cooks, maids, shopgirls, and housewives—answered their nation’s call. These “munitionettes” worked grueling shifts often seven days a week, handling TNT and other explosives with little protective gear.

Paris 1943. Elise Chevalier knows what it is to hate. Her fiancé, a young French soldier, was killed by the German army at the Maginot Line. Elise's mother fears for her outspoken daughter. In occupied Paris, there is a punishment for those who draw attention to themselves; those who refuse to stay silent.

Penang, 1939. Sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton is a loner. Half English, half Chinese and feeling neither, he discovers a sense of belonging in an unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such friendship comes at a terrible price.

In 1942, Eva is forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children escaping to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva realises she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember their own identities.

The marines have seized control of the Japanese airfield on Guadalcanal, but this isn’t the end of their troubles…it’s only the beginning. The Japanese bomb them by day, attack from the forbidding darkness of the jungles by night, and their ships, like hungry sharks, prowl just offshore after the sun goes down. Whoever controls the canal controls the war. The Japanese know this, so they concoct a plan to send men and equipment ashore using fast destroyers—ships that can come by night and leave before the Cactus Airforce or Admiral Fletcher’s carrier planes can stop them.

Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe. In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley – aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless – is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state. As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of top secret documents – and suddenly what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that will alter the course of political history.

In Iraq, Captain Matthew Duffy, recruited by British Intelligence, once more faces a German enemy. But Matthew is confused by his attraction to Diane, now working for the Germans, and finds himself having to make a hard decision. Just as he is coming to terms with his choice, he meets his estranged son, James Barrington Jnr. Back in Sydney, George Macintosh is determined to keep control of his business empire and to prevent his nephew David from taking a seat on the Board. Meanwhile, George’s son Donald is packed off to the family station Glen View.

London, 1940. Emmeline Lake and her best friend, Bunty, are trying to stay cheerful despite the Luftwaffe making life thoroughly annoying for everyone. Emmy dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent, and when she spots a job advertisement in the newspaper she seizes her chance - but after a rather unfortunate misunderstanding, she finds herself typing letters for the formidable Henrietta Bird, the renowned agony aunt of Woman's Friend magazine.

Brisbane, 1943: The war continues to devastate, and the battle for the Pacific threatens Australian shores. For Ellie O'Sullivan, helping the war effort means utilizing her engineering skills for Qantas as they evacuate civilians and deliver supplies to armed forces overseas. Her exceptional logic and integrity attract the attention of Central Bureau - an intelligence organization working with England's Bletchley Park codebreakers. But joining Central Bureau means signing a lifetime secrecy contract. Breaking it is treason.

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller. This is the story of four Londoners, three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy.

Confident and strong willed, Kelly Maguire knew from a young age that he could accomplish great things. A constant and abiding love of the ocean would prove to be the making of him. When the call of war is heard in the early 1910s, Kelly knows that he must answer it. Enlisting in the Royal Navy, he hopes to win both the war and personal glory. But from the barbarous battles of Gallipoli to the nightmarish action at Antwerp, Kelly, along with his young shipmates, begins to learn the trials a sailor must face, trials that will forge him from a boy into a man.