Showing titles in World War II & Holocaust

Ruth, a young schoolteacher, volunteers as an escort helping to evacuate children from war-torn Britain to Australia and New Zealand. On the voyage, she forms an unexpected bond with nine-year-old Fergus - and with Bobby, a fellow volunteer who initially infuriates Ruth with his laidback air, yet somehow gets under her skin and throws her ordered life into chaos.

As the Allied forces fight to repel invaders in the Pacific, the Duffy and Macintosh clans face their greatest challenges at home. Sergeant Jessica Duffy relishes her work as a code breaker in MacArthur's headquarters but is secretly reporting on the Americans to the Prime Minister. Captain James Duffy, a decorated fighter pilot with the United States Marine Corps, is expected to wait out the war assisting the bond effort. Major David Macintosh has survived prison camps, torture and countless battles, but can he endure the machinations of his obsessive cousin, Sarah?

All Hanna Fischer ever wanted to do was to study physics under the great Albert Einstein. But when, as a teenager in 1919, her life is suddenly turned upside-down, she is catapulted into a new and extraordinary life - as a secretary, a scientist, a sister and a spy. From racist gangs in Berlin to gangsters in New York City, Nazis in the 1930s and Hitler's inner circle during the Second World War, Hanna will encounter some of history's greatest minds and most terrible moments, all while desperately trying to stay alive.

Before she mastered the art of French cooking in midlife, Julia Child found herself working in the secrets trade in Asia during World War II. Single, six foot two, and thirty years old, Julia McWilliams took a job working for America's first espionage agency, years before cooking or Paris entered the picture. The Secret War of Julia Child traces Julia's transformation from ambitious Pasadena blue blood to Washington, DC file clerk, to head of General "Wild Bill" Donovan's secret File Registry as part of the Office of Strategic Services.

Berlin, 1944: Amira and Gisele have been best friends since they were children, and now Gisele is the only person who knows Amira’s secret. A secret that puts her and everyone she loves in unimaginable danger amid the daily horror and violence of Nazi Germany. With the threat of exposure drawing closer, Gisele’s suggestion that Amira marries her friend Fred, a famous pianist, might just be the lifeline she needs to keep them both safe. Because Fred has secrets too.

31 June, 1943. An RAF crew prepare for their next bombing raid on Germany. It is a night that many will never forget. Len Deighton's devastating novel is a gripping minute-by-minute account of what happens over the next 24 hours. Told through the eyes of ordinary people in the air and on the ground - from a young pilot to the inhabitants of a small town in the Ruhr - Bomber is an unforgettable portrayal of individuals caught up in the wreckage of war.

Paris, 1940: As the German soldiers march down the Champs-Élysées, the Bélanger twins know there is no escape – their lives are about to change forever. But while Sophie, a third-year medical student, works long days and nights saving casualties of war at the American hospital, and waits anxiously for news of her fiancé from the front line, her recently widowed twin, Adèle, is determined to enjoy her freedom. Nothing – not the bombs, the curfews or the Nazi officers sidling up to her in nightclubs – can stop her from indulging in the temptations of Parisian society.

London: 1968. Liz Houghton is languishing as an obituary writer at a London newspaper when a young girl’s disappearance captivates the city. If Liz can break the story, it’s her way into the newsroom. She already has a scoop: Her best friend Marisa is a police officer who is assigned to the case. Liz follows Marisa to Dorset, where they make another disturbing discovery. Over two decades earlier, three girls disappeared while evacuating from London. One was found murdered in the woods near a train line. The other two were never seen again.

A wartime nurse risks everything to protect mothers and babies in Nazi-occupied Guernsey. Decades later, a hidden record reveals a devastating family truth. Based on a remarkable true story of one woman’s extraordinary courage.

DECEMBER 1944 In New Guinea, a young Australian nurse, Lotte Wyld, chances upon her first love, Virgil Nicholson, a soldier in the Allies' hard-fought jungle campaign. At Los Alamos in the United States, idealistic physicists Miriam Carver and Fred Johnson join Robert Oppenheimer and a team of brilliant scientists in a collective dream to build a weapon that will stop all war, while Kitty Oppenheimer wrestles with restrictions on her freedom. And on the sacred island of Miyajima in Japan, Hiroko Narushima is doing her best to protect her family.

Set during the outbreak of the Second World War, Night over Water is a feat of storytelling from the best-selling master of the historical thriller, Ken Follett. On a bright September morning in 1939, two days after Britain has declared war, a group of privileged but desperate people gather in Southampton to board the largest, most luxurious airliner ever built.

England, 1943: Home is no longer safe for eight-year-old twins Molly and Jacob. Night after night, wailing bombs and screeching planes skim the rooftops overhead. They cradle each other, shivering in terror, not knowing if they'll live to see dawn. Their mother, Martha, has no choice but to evacuate them to the safety of the countryside. At the train station, Martha bites back tears as she says good-bye to her precious children. Knowing she might never see them again, she gives Jacob a letter, pressing the envelope into his hands and telling him to only read it if they are in danger.

In Auschwitz, every day is a fight for survival. Alma is inmate 50381, the number tattooed on her skin in pale blue ink. She is cooped up with thousands of others, torn from loved ones, trapped in a maze of barbed wire. Every day people disappear, never to be seen again. This tragic reality couldn’t be further from Alma’s previous life. An esteemed violinist, her performances left her audiences spellbound. But when the Nazis descend on Europe, none of that can save her....

Claudia Hampton - beautiful, famous, independent, dying. But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world...and in the process, my own'. And it is her story, from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. But Claudia's life is entwined with others, and she must allow those who knew her, loved her, the chance to speak. There is Gordon, brother and adversary; Jasper, her untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool conventional daughter; and then there is Tom, her one great love.

Only a few months after the end of the Second World War, a new battle is beginning in the little village of Chawton. Once the final home of Jane Austen, the Chawton estate is dwindling and the last piece of Austen's heritage is at risk of being sold to the highest bidder.... Drawn together by their love of her novels, eight very different people - from a local farmer to a glamorous film star - must unite to attempt something remarkable.

France, 1942. At the end of the day, the schoolteacher releases her pupils. She checks they have their identity passes and warns them not to stop until the German guards have let them through the barrier that separates occupied France from Free France. As the little ones fly across the border and into their mothers' arms, she breathes a sigh of relief. No one is safe now. Not even the children.

May, 1964. At a youth festival in East Berlin, an unlikely young couple fall in love. In the bright spring days, anything seems possible for them - it is only many years later, after her death, that Kaspar discovers the price his wife paid to get to him in West Berlin. Shattered by grief, Kaspar sets off to uncover Birgit's secrets in the East. His search leads him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, and to a young girl who accepts him as her grandfather. Their worlds could not be more different - but he is determined to fight for her.

Charlotte Sauvin has always seen the world differently. At home on 33 Place Brugmann, in the heart of Brussels, her father and her closest friends and neighbours – the Raphaëls from the fourth floor, and Masha from the fifth – have ensured her secret is safe. But when the Nazis invade Belgium, and Masha and the Raphaëls disappear, Charlotte must navigate her new world alone.

1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France, a group of women determined to rebuild devastated French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen - children's libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears.

Only one man can foil a plot set to change the course of history.... Ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope is enjoying life at Le Val, the facility in Northern France where he trains others in the dangerous art of hostage rescue, until a chance incident forces him to take on the role of bodyguard to the Swiss billionaire Maximilian Steiner. The victim of a recent abduction attempt, Steiner believes that a neo-Nazi terror group are bent on seizing a prized document from his personal collection.