Showing titles in World War II & Holocaust

Following the death of his beloved father, Arthur is sent to Canada for safety with a group of evacuees on the eve of the Second World War. Alone and afraid, plagued with seasickness, and an unknown future, he can't imagine things getting any worse. Far from what he feared, Arthur is welcomed with warmth and kindness. But even on the other side of the world, the war can’t be escaped and before long, his new family are touched by it too. Faced with another dramatic change in his life, everything starts to change again for Arthur.

Jenny Tanner opens the box she has cherished for decades. Contained within are her most precious mementoes, amongst them a pebble, a carving and a newspaper cutting she can hardly bear to read. But Jenny knows the time is finally here. After the war, in a mountainside village in Italy, she left behind a piece of her heart. However painful, she must return to Cinque Alberi. And lay the past to rest.

There’s a super storm brewing out in the Pacific… one that will change the course of history forever… After three successful raids on Japanese outposts, the men and pilots of USS Enterprise are ready to get out there and hit Tojo once more. However, something dark and dangerous lies on the horizon… but before they face that storm, the U.S. Navy and Army has a delivery to make… right to Hirohito’s front porch!

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.

It is 1941, and America teeters on the brink of war. Outgoing naval officer Ensign Jim Avery escorts British convoys across the North Atlantic in a brand-new destroyer, the USS Atwood. Back on shore, Boston Navy Yard secretary Mary Stirling does her work quietly and efficiently, happy to be out of the limelight.

Kay Lynn Brooke is a wife and mother in Berkeley, California, building a solid future with her husband and family. Then on December 7, 1941, the bombing of Pearl Harbor throws Kay Lynn’s life, and the lives of everyone she knows and loves, into chaos.

As WWII ravages the world and the Japanese Empire has set its sights on Australia, the Americans have come to save us. But not all soldiers are heroes and not all heroes are soldiers. Sergeant Joe Washington, a US Military Police, loves music and photography but spends his days delving into the sordid and petty crimes committed by the thousands of American troops passing through town. While trying to find stolen gasoline stores, he is sent to investigate the body of an American soldier found dumped in a cemetery. Suddenly Joe is up against notorious detective Frank Bischof.

Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence. Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It’s a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them.

Christmas Eve, 2019. Ninety-four-year-old Molly lies in her hospital bed. A stroke and a fall may have broken her body - but her mind is alive with memories. London, 1940s. Molly is a bright young woman, determined to help the war effort and keep her head up despite it all. Life becomes brighter when she meets and falls in love with a man who makes her forget everything with one dance. But then war forces her to make an unforgettable sacrifice.

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.

Ania hears the explosion of gunshots before she sees the Nazi soldiers approach her beloved home. Her family don’t have time to run, but she does. Hiding nearby, she listens to her sister’s screams and – stroking the red ribbon she keeps tied around her wrist – she begins to plot her revenge… Taunted her whole life for being smarter than anyone else in the village, now living in war-torn Poland, being governed by Nazis who think Poles are subhuman and women only good for one thing… Ania now only has her wits to rely on, if she's going to survive.

From childhood, Katherine knows she is different and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she faces the most human of problems - who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition? On her quest to conquer the Riemann Hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity and to secrets long buried during World War II.

In Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup final, royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

1938, as the world spirals towards war, Klara Koch is employed as Hitler's personal cook. While Germany reveres the image of the Fuhrer, Klara and the household staff are privy to the real Hitler—his secrets, his ailments and his addictions. As Klara observes those circling the Fuhrer, she realises that not all of them are his admirers. Hitler is right to be paranoid. This thoroughly researched and compelling story takes listeners right up close and personal with Hitler as he spirals increasingly out of control in pursuit of his drug-fuelled quest for world domination.

Stubborn, plain-spoken and from an unimpressive family, Lydia Polk never expected to be chosen to work under Isadora Goode, the Grand Mistress of the Royal Academy of Witches. Now, three years into her apprenticeship, and with Hitler’s armies rampaging across Europe, the Witches of Britain have joined the war effort – but not without some resistance from within, the British government having originally forced the witches into hiding. As Lydia’s power grows, she too joins the cause, tracking down magical relics in order to keep them out of Nazi hands.

Following a humiliating experience involving the man she thought she’d marry, Iris Tredwick signs up to the Wrens in order to escape and - hopefully - find ‘the right sort’ of man to please her mother. After a bumpy start, Iris manages to befriend outspoken Mary and dreamer Sally as they are sent to their first posting - in Orkney. There she meets engineer Rob, whose flirtatious nature both charms and confounds straight-laced Iris. Much more appropriate for her is local doctor Stewart, if only she felt the same spark for him as she does for Rob.

It is 1946 and in the village of Oakbourne the men are home from the war. Their bodies are healing but their psychological wounds run deep. Everyone is scarred - those who fought and those left behind.

D-Day. June 6th, 1944. The trajectory of the Second World War – and with it the course of modern history – is changed forever. For three young former schoolmates from South Wales, their war is only just beginning. These young men, and thousands of others, will soon be a part of one of the bloodiest and most brutal parts of the Normandy campaign: the battle for Hill 112. The horror, the fear, the filth; the savage fighting; the sheer exhilaration and moments of farce and laughter: those who come through the carnage will never be the same again.

1942. Three years into the war, Pam turns down her hard-won place at Oxford University to become a codebreaker at Bletchley Park. There, she meets two young men, both keen to impress her, and Pam finds herself falling hard for one of them. But as the country’s future becomes more uncertain by the day, a tragic turn of events casts doubt on her choice. Present day. Julia is struggling to juggle her career, two children and a husband jealous of her success. Her brother presents her with the perfect distraction: forgotten photos of their grandmother as a young woman at Bletchley Park.

Joanna Ryan’s father has gone off to war, leaving her in the care of her step-mother, a woman more concerned with having a good time than being any sort of parent to her. But then she finds a puppy, left for dead, and Joanna becomes determined to save him, sharing her meagre rations with him. But, in a time of war, pets are only seen as an unnecessary burden and she is forced to hide her new friend, Harry, from her step-mother and the authorities. With bombs falling over Bristol and with the prospect of evacuation on the horizon, can they stay together and keep each other safe?