Showing titles in World War II & Holocaust

France, 1942 Once, Paulette Leblanc spent her days flirting, shopping and drawing elegant dresses in her sketch pad. Then German tanks rolled into France, and a reckless romance turned into deep betrayal. Blaming herself for her mother’s arrest by the Gestapo, Paulette is sent away to begin a new life in Paris, working as apprentice to fashion designer Sabine Ballard. But Maison de Ballard is no ordinary fashion house. While seamstresses create the perfect couture gowns, clandestine deals and secrets take place out of sight.

In the early hours of 5 June 1944, Captain Rob Collins, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is languishing in hospital, receives a call that will take him on a journey through England that will change his life. Mike Walker's play is an epic journey across England poised on the edge of a historical moment. It is set on June 5th, the day before the invasion. It is a portrait of England waiting for the invasion that will change the course of history, but an invasion only a very few know that is about happen. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliet Stevenson and Claudia Harrison.

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.

Europe, 1940s: Imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, Spanish fighter and photographer Mateo Baca is ordered to process images of the camp and inmates for a handful of photo books being made for presentation to top Nazi figures. Just five books in total, or so the officials think. Mateo manages to make a secret sixth book and, with the help of a local woman, Lena Lang, it remains hidden until the end of the war.

June 1940. France has fallen to the Nazis, and Britain may be next—but to many Americans, the war is something happening “over there.” Veronica Grace has just graduated from college; she and her mother, Violet, are looking for a fresh start in sunny Los Angeles. After a blunder cost her a prestigious career opportunity in New York, Veronica is relieved to take a typing job in L.A.—only to realize that she’s working for one of the area’s most vicious propagandists. Overnight, Veronica is exposed to the dark underbelly of her new home, where Nazis are recruiting Americans.

June 1942. Grace Sinclair never meant to sign up to the ATS, but when her parents made it clear she had to marry a man she hated, Grace ran away to the safety of the army. But with her cut-glass accent and upper-class ways, Grace finds it hard to fit in with the other girls and begins to think she has made a terrible mistake. Things get worse for Grace when she meets dashing Squadron Leader Chris Holloway who shares sad and shocking news about Grace’s brother. Heartbroken, Grace confides in fellow ATS girl Ruth who offers her a shoulder to cry on.

Connie Starr was always a difficult child. Her mother knew as soon as Connie entered the world that day in Ballarat in 1934 and opened her lungs to scream, there was more chaos in the world than before and it wouldn't leave until Connie did. From the safety of a branch high in her lemon tree where she speaks to angels, she sees the world for what it is - a swirling mass of beauty and darkness, of trauma and family, of love and war and truth and lies - lies that might just undo her and drive her to a desperate act.

April, 1945. As the Americans storm the Buchenwald concentration camp, among the survivors are Jakob and Emmanuelle, barely more than teenagers. Each of them has lost everything and everyone in the unspeakable horrors of the war. But when they meet, they find hope and comfort in each other. They marry and build a happy, prosperous life for themselves and their new family, but their pasts cast a long shadow over the present....

It is 1941 and Britain is pressed on all sides. With Japan in the war and convoys being sunk by submarines and surface raiders the last bastion fighting Hitler is beleaguered. The Commandos are the only ones who can fight beyond the Atlantic Wall. Tom Harsker and his section are sent behind enemy lines to destroy gun emplacements and then rescue a captured Resistance leader. Then they are given the task of joining the Campbelltown Raid on St. Nazaire. There they find themselves in greater danger than ever before.

We Germans takes the form of a letter written by the now 90-year-old soldier to his grandson, telling him of his experiences in the war and his grappling with the extent to which he feels guilt and shame about his own behaviour and the behaviour of Germany. The novel is interrupted at various points by the grandson, who offers his own perspective on his grandfather.

Faye Bright always felt a little bit different. And today she’s found out why. She’s just stumbled across her late mother’s diary which includes not only a spiffing recipe for jam roly-poly, but spells, incantations, runes and recitations...a witch's notebook. And Faye has inherited her mother’s abilities. Just in time, too. The Crow Folk are coming. Led by the charismatic Pumpkinhead, their strange magic threatens Faye and the villagers.

June 1946. As the residents of Winthrop Island prepare for the first summer season after the sacrifice of war, a glamorous new figure moves into the guest cottage at Summerly, the idyllic seaside estate of the wealthy Peabody family. To Emilia Winthrop, daughter of Summerly’s year-round caretaker and a descendant of the island’s settlers, Olive Rainsford opens a window into a world of shining possibility. While Emilia spent the war years caring for her incapacitated mother, Olive traveled the world, married fascinating men, and involved herself in political causes.

Based on true events, a heartbreaking story of love, family, hope, and survival set in post-World War II Italy - crafted with the heart of Orphan Train and Before We Were Yours - about poor children from the south sent to live with families in the north to survive deprivation and the harsh winters.

Spring 1944, the south coast of England. The Fifth Battalion, Wessex Regiment, wait patiently and nervously for the order to embark. There is boredom and fear, comedy and pathos as the men all drawn from different walks of life await the order to move. With an economy of language that belies its emotional impact, From the City, from the Plough is a vivid and moving account of the fate of these men as they embark for the beaches of Normandy and advance into France, where the battalion suffers devastating casualties.

In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Lanny Budd’s financial acumen and his marriage into great wealth enable him to continue the lifestyle he has always enjoyed. But the devastation the collapse has wrought on ordinary citizens has only strengthened Lanny’s socialist ideals. In Germany to visit relatives, Lanny encounters a disturbing atmosphere of hatred and jingoism. But Lanny’s gravest fear is the threat a national socialist government poses to the German Jewish family of Hansi, the musician husband of Lanny’s sister, Bess.

The first in a gripping new series of detective novels set at the birth of Stalin’s Russia. It is the time of the Great Terror. Inspector Pekkala – known as the Emerald Eye – was the most famous detective in all Russia. He was the favourite of the Tsar. Now he is the prisoner of the men he once hunted. Like millions of others, he has been sent to the gulags in Siberia and, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, he is as good as dead....

Italy, 1940. With Florence on the cusp of war, Il Scorpione, the no-nonsense Englishwomen of the city, find their genteel livelihoods under grave threat by the approach of the Nazis. Tea rooms and bookshops are closed by the Fascists, and the women are forced to join the war effort. Desperate to help in any way that she can, Angelina Leone, expert art-historian and the half-Italian niece of Il Scoprione’s founder makes a deal with the devil.

London, December 1943. As the Russian army repels German forces from Stalingrad, Maggie Hope takes a much-needed break from spying to defuse bombs in London. But Maggie herself is an explosion waiting to happen. Traumatized by her past, she finds herself living dangerously - taking huge risks, smoking, drinking, and speeding through the city streets on a motorbike. The last thing she wants is to get entangled in another crime.

It’s 1943. The war rages. The newly launched WASP program is recruiting. And barnstormer fan Georgeanne “George” Ector’s dream is to take to the skies. Grit is what she inherited from her mother, an Oklahoma farm girl at the turn of the century who preferred taking apart an engine to stitching linens for a hope chest. She taught her daughter well. George isn’t the only woman about to follow her calling.

A desperate search for a missing MI6 colleague and the microfilm he possesses leads Professor Katrin Nissen deep into the maelstrom of Nazi-controlled Berlin. Impulsive and reckless, Dieter Weiss may have pushed his luck too far and taken one chance too many. Against all odds, Katrin has just one week to find him.