Showing titles in World War I

1921. In the sleepy village of Charlton Ambrose, eight ash trees stand as a timeless memorial to the men killed in the Great War. On a dark and chilly night, a ninth tree appears. Who planted it and why? And who was 'the unknown soldier' for whom it is marked? 2001. Eighty years later, the memorial is under threat from developers. Local reporter, Rachel Elliott, is determined to save it, and to solve the mystery of the ninth tree. The trail will take her into the dark heart of her own family history; to a tragic, love; and to a secret that has been kept since the war to end all wars.

Craiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, and army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers' job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients' minds, the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front. 

January 1918. Laura Iven has been discharged from her duties as a nurse and sent back to Halifax, Canada, leaving behind a brother still fighting in the trenches of the First World War. Now home, she receives word of Freddie's death in action along with his uniform -but something doesn't quite make sense. November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped under an overturned pillbox with an enemy soldier, a German, each of them badly wounded. Against all odds, the two men form a bond and succeed in clawing their way out.

1917: America's declaration of war against Germany gives Grace Winter, a keen-eyed New York Times investigative reporter, a much sought after opportunity to make her mark on the Western Front, albeit in ways she had never expected. But by 1918 the gruesome reality of trench warfare has set in, and an invisible new enemy - The Spanish Flu - is killing allied soldiers in their droves.

From the time of William the Conqueror, the Beaumonts have enjoyed the privileges of wealth and position. Their pleasure is to be nothing more than farmers and knights of the realm. Nevertheless, with the dawn of the 20th century, a stray artillery shell slays the current baronet and Thomas Beaumont finds himself the new incumbent, but with no farming knowledge, his first instinct is to run. However, the family motto reads: Where there is a will, there is a way. Sir Thomas finds his way, and by the end of the war, the future looks brighter. Then another deadly crisis rears its head.

When her husband returns shell-shocked and broken from the Great War and his mother makes her life a misery, Betty Wellow discovers how bitter and hard life can truly be. But it is not until a devastating storm sweeps through their small fishing village and endangers her life that she sees her chance to escape - and takes it. Fleeing to Bristol, she changes her name to Mabel Brook and takes a position as a maid. But tragedy strikes once more after the sudden death of her mistress, and she is cast back onto the streets.

Hampshire, 1913. Amidst the glitz and glamour of England’s High Society, Sarah Trenwith is more of a wallflower living in the shadow of her beautiful sister Marianne. But as the war approaches Sarah will have to step out of the place society and her family have assigned her if she’s to do her part and claim the love she always dreamed of from afar.

In the heat of the French summer, young Englishman Stephen Wraysford travels to France and falls in love with his host's wife, Isabelle Azaire. When the world stops, their affair falters, and Stephen signs up. In a maze of tunnels under the trenches, Stephen finds the courage this war demands from the men in his command. And it is here that he will fight for everything he has ever known and loved.

Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years, a bond formed by a lifetime of memories. Since childhood they have seen each other through life's milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, REM concerts, unexpected Scottish wakes, marriages, infertility, children. As Ash notes, 'Edi's memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.' When Edi is diagnosed with the final stages of terminal ovarian cancer, she makes the painstaking decision to leave behind her husband and son to move to a hospice down the road from Ash.

It is 1916, and war rages across Europe and the Middle East. Patrick Duffy is fighting in the fields of France, his cousin Matthew in the skies above Egypt. Meanwhile, at home, George Macintosh is passing information to the Germans, seeking to consolidate his power within the family company.

It’s 1917, three years into the Great War, when Edie takes up a teaching post in the small Australian town of York. Mourning the loss of her beloved brother on the Front and evading her father’s plans for a respectable marriage, she’s glad to keep busy teaching at Miss Raison’s School for Girls. After a little persuasion, Edie agrees to take part in a comfort scheme sending photos of home to the troops. Edie’s new venture throws her into the path of the family secrets, scandals and class complexities of her new town – and a handsome, exasperating man her father would never approve of.

As war looms in Europe, 18-year-old Jane Shaw runs the household as an unpaid servant on a meagre budget. When tragedy strikes and she loses her beloved younger brother in suspicious circumstances, Jane takes a position in service looking after Ned, a troubled young boy. Here she meets dashing David Heron, Ned's Uncle and they form an immediate attachment until she is dismissed after being accused of stealing a piece of jewellery. Returning home, Jane and her sister, Melia, are soon orphaned and left at the mercy of their Aunt Alice.

We follow the fortunes of Mickey Bliss and his fellow signallers from the Lahore Division of the British Indian Army as they experience life - and death - on the front line. Meanwhile, Dr Celestine de Tullio battles to save soldiers suffering from gas gangrene and trench fever - and experiences the fighting firsthand when she enlists in the Serbian Army and commands a dangerous offensive. They are all cogs in an immense machine, one which connects situations across the whole theatre of the war, over four long years.

Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery—he has never been told how or where it took place and has only a distant memory of his mother. But he knows that the fate of his grandfather's brother, Einar, is somehow bound up with this mystery. One day, a coffin is delivered for his grandfather long before his death—a meticulous, beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Perhaps Einar is not dead after all. 

Single mother Sarah is guilt-ridden when an accident leaves her young daughter Melody seriously injured and their once music-filled lives silent. When she discovers her grandmother Rosalie's old war correspondence, she thinks she might have found a way to save her family, but it will require a leap of faith she isn't sure they are ready to take.

The last thing Mellie Vale remembers before the fever takes her is running through the bush as a monster chases her - but no one believes her story. In a bid to curb Mellie's overactive imagination, her benefactors send her to visit a family friend, Anthea Winstanley. Anthea is an amateur palaeontologist with a dream.

A strange twist of fate connects a British soldier fighting in WWI in 1916 with a young woman living in modern-day England a century later, in this haunting best-selling literary time-travel novel.

Brothers Thom and Archie are the best of friends and never disagree, until the beautiful, young and very headstrong Molly James comes into their life. Molly might be playing a game with the brothers - but when war strikes and they both join up to fight, it isn't a game anymore. Based on the true story of the author's grandfather's wartime experiences, At the Going Down of the Sun explores the intense bond between soldiers and brothers fighting in war, and a love that may tear them apart.

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.

Peacetime has brought little respite for Verity Kent. Intrigue still abounds, even within her own family. As a favour to her father, Verity agrees to visit his sister in Wiltshire. Her once prosperous aunt has fallen on difficult times and is considering selling their estate. But there are strange goings-on at the manor, including missing servants, possible heirloom forgeries and suspicious rumors - all leading to the discovery of a dead body on the grounds.