Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in World War II & Holocaust

American horse trainer Adia Kensington is living her dream of working at the famous Janów Podlaski stables in Poland, where the best Arabian horses in the world are bred. But her plans to bring a priceless stallion to the US are derailed when the German army storms into her adopted country in 1939. Little does she know this is just the beginning of six long years of occupation that will threaten her beloved horses at every turn.

December 1941: As bombs fall on Pearl Harbor, singer Hattie James faces a personal nightmare when her sister Olivia vanishes. The kidnappers demand an impossible price—her father's classified list of undercover American and Nazi spies. Wartime paranoia and family loyalty take Hattie to Washington, D.C., with Maya and Commander Leo Bell to hunt an elusive, high-ranking mole in the War Department who is after those lists. Leo, a military intelligence officer with access to classified operations, becomes their crucial inside man, navigating the treacherous corridors of power.

Winter 1944: Months after the Liberation of France, ex-Boston cop Billy Boyle finds himself in a Paris reeling from the carnage it has endured but hopeful that an end to war is in sight. When Billy finds a rare piece of artwork after a tense shoot-out in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, he thinks it could be connected to the Syndicat du Renard, a shadowy network of Nazi sympathizers known to be smuggling stolen artwork out of France. Trailing the Syndicat, Billy discovers that someone with a high level of communications clearance may be using his position to aid the thieves.

Summer 1944: Yugoslavia is locked in a war within a war. In addition to fighting the German occupation, warring factions battle each other. Hundreds of Allied airmen have been shot down over this volatile region, among them American lieutenant Bill Bogdonavich. Though grateful to the locals who are risking their lives to shelter and protect him from German troops, Bogdonavich dreams of the impossible: escape.

Haunted by an unfathomable tragedy in a Michigan copper-mining town, Fenna Vos has learned to focus on her own survival, even as World War II rages on. Now, she performs with an escape artist. Her honed ability to control her surroundings and elude entrapments, physical or otherwise, helps her run from the trauma of her youth. Then, Fenna is recruited by British intelligence.

Hannah longs for the days when she used to be free, but now, she is a Jewish prisoner at Theresienstadt, a model ghetto where the Nazis plan to make a propaganda film to convince the world that the Jewish people are living well in the camps. But Hannah will do anything to show the world the truth. Along with other young resistance members, they vow to disrupt the filming and derail the increasingly frequent deportations to death camps in the east.

In 1939 Georgia, far removed from the war brewing overseas, Cora Cain's world feels small—and shrinking. There, she runs The Brunswick, her family's once-grand hotel, which is now struggling as the town's general store. When Thomas Watkins arrives seeking work and solace after his mother's death, a connection sparks between them. Through Thomas, Cora glimpses a life beyond obligation and her war hero father's unpredictable moods. But everything changes when Cora is asked to turn The Brunswick into a sanctuary for Jewish children fleeing persecution in Germany.

This debut novel from food writer Leah Eskin of the Chicago Tribune combines the historical sweep and emotional power of The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer and the resonant use of food and recipes of Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.

Seemingly overnight, the German blitzkrieg of Warsaw in 1939 turns its streets to a war zone and shatters the life of each citizen - Polish, Jewish, or otherwise. Sophie Kumiega, a British bride working in the city's library, awaits news of her husband, Janek, recently deployed with the Polish Air Force. Though Sophie is determined that she and the baby in her womb will stay safe, the days ahead will draw her into the plight of those around her, compelling her to help, whatever the danger.

In the midst of WWII, Jane Linder pours all her energy and dreams for a family into her career at the Toronto Children's Aid Society. As acting directress, Jane hopes for a permanent appointment so she can continue making a difference in the lives of troubled children. But if anyone were to find out she is divorced, everything would change. Garrett Wilder has been hired to overhaul operations at the Children's Aid Society. He hopes to impress the board members with his findings and earn the vacant director's position. Despite their competing interests, feelings begin to blossom.

Southern France, 1944: What should be a simple assignment with a Special Operations Executive officer gets complicated quickly as Billy navigates the tensions between Resistance groups in the process of gathering information on Vichy officials and other collaborators who escaped with the retreating Germans. Unexpectedly, the SOE officer has many enemies in the Resistance, linked to the failed Vercors uprising. With sacrifice and betrayal afoot, Billy doesn’t know who he can trust, or how close to death this case may bring him.

As a child growing up in 1920s Paris, Ida Chagall copes with her father Marc Chagall's brilliant artistic mind and overbearing ego and the tight leash he keeps on her. But as Ida blossoms into a young woman, she begins to glimpse freedom and opportunities for herself.

New York City, 1968: The customers at Café Marie don’t come just for the excellent coffee and pastries. They come for the sophisticated ambiance, and the illusion of being somewhere other than a bustling, exhausting city. Headwaiter Charles Ward helps create that illusion through impeccable service—unobtrusive, nearly invisible, yet always watchful.

In his first-ever collection, the award-winning author of the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries presents an eclectic mix of new and previously published mystery stories rife with historical detail and riveting wartime storytelling. Full of terror, action, amusement, and bliss, The Refusal Camp is a must-have collection from one of historical crime fiction’s most acclaimed authors.

1955 in New York City: the city of instant coffee, bagels at Katz’s Deli, and ultramodern TVs. But in a certain walk-up in Chelsea, the past is as close as the present. Rashka Morgenstern, now Rachel Perlman, came to Manhattan with her uncle Fritz in a wave of displaced Jews who had managed to survive the horrors of war. She had hoped to find freedom from pain, in New York and in the arms of her new American husband, Aaron.

Since the attack on Pearl Harbor, Gordon Hooper and his buddy Jack Armitage have stuck to their values as conscientious objectors. Much to their families’ and country’s chagrin, they volunteer as smokejumpers rather than enlisting, parachuting into and extinguishing raging wildfires in Oregon. But the number of winter blazes they’re called to seems suspiciously high, and when an accident leaves Jack badly injured, Gordon realizes the facts don’t add up.

Rachel, the mother of the aging professor Thomas Vanderlinden, shared her life with two men. Both went by the name of Rowland Vanderlinden. The first husband went abroad and never returned. The second, whom Rachel also unquestioningly accepted as her husband, was a mystery. In an attempt to understand his mother's adventurous decisions regarding love and marriage, Thomas sets out on a journey to the far reaches of the Pacific to find the first Rowland, and his real father. As the mystery of the two Rowlands unfolds throughout the novel, so too does a fascinating portrait.

El año 1916: Primera Guerra Mundial. Dos hombres se juegan susvidas en una partida de ajedrez. Uno es recluta movilizado, el otro es empleado de ferrocarril. Es un juego con consecuencias graves, y el ganador cambiará su identidad con la de sus contrincante. El año 1943: Segunda Guerra Mundial. Amphitryon es un proyecto de dobles que se entrenan para sustituir a algunos líderes nazis en apariciones públicas. Cincuenta años después, todavía hay una pregunta sobre quien era realmente aquel hombre.

March, 1945. Allied forces are battle-worn but wearily optimistic. Russia's Red Army's advancing hard on Germany from the east, bolstering Allied troops moving in from the west and north. Soon, surely, Axis forces must accept defeat. Yet for Captain Jim Curtis, each day's a reminder of how unpredictable and uncertain warfare can be. Captured during the Battle of the Bulge after the Germans launched a devastating surprise attack, Curtis is imprisoned at a POW camp in Hammelburg, Bavaria. Conditions are grim. Inmates and guards are freezing and starving, rations dwindling day by day.

Surviving Dresden beautifully portrays the poignant and inspiring human struggle between good and evil in the search for peace during the last bloody days of World War II. On the ground, on that horrific night, is a courageous young Jewish woman, Gisela Kauffmann. Having just received orders to be herded off to a concentration camp, Gisela will do anything to save herself and her family. In the air, RAF bomber Captain Wallace Campbell is torn between his sworn military duty to bomb an unarmed city crowded with refugees, and his growing conviction that total war is immoral.