Historical Survival Stories

Yvette Manessis Corporon grew up listening to her grandmother's stories about how the people of the small Greek island Erikousa hid a Jewish family - a tailor named Savvas and his daughters - from the Nazis during World War II. Nearly 2,000 Jews from that area died in the concentration camps, but even though everyone on Erikousa knew Savvas and his family were hiding on the island, no one ever gave them up, and the family survived the war. Years later, Yvette decided to track down the man's descendants - and eventually found them in Israel.

This program features a bonus chapter of the author's preliminary research interviews with the sisters featured in the book. "An uplifting tale, suffused with a karmic righteousness that is, at times, exhilarating." —Wall Street Journal Rebecca Frankel's Into the Forest is a gripping story of...

After promising Sigmund on his deathbed that they would reunite the family in a peaceful and friendly country, they make their way via ship to Colombia, the country Nellie had made her home just as the Nazi movement in Germany was gaining momentum. After their safe arrival, Freddy is forced to look for work in order to support his mother and himself while adjusting to new surroundings at the same time. After some fortuitous, work-related encounters, Freddy decides to not only run his own lingerie business but produce the raw materials he needs himself.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE LATEST, SWEEPING, BREATHTAKING AND HEARTBREAKING HISTORICAL FICTION FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE PARIS AFFAIR In order to save her family’s future, Stella Penhallam is forced to uncover the secrets of their past… With her family’s perfumery in dire straits, Stella...

Novas is the thrilling second instalment in Lou Vane’s Fortune Falls apocalyptic survival series—a story of found family, divided loyalties, impossible choices, and how far people will go to protect the ones they love. Still reeling from the devastating attack on the Fortune Falls community, Jess fears history will repeat itself when a new group of survivors arrives. With supplies stretched thin and pressure mounting, their only hope lies in an expedition far beyond the safety of the plateau.

When a spontaneous time leap sends Nickolas Flux back to Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Endurance Expedition to Antarctica, what's a teenage history buff to do? Try to avoid becoming stranded at the bottom of the world, of course!

The New York Times bestselling author of The Dressmakers of Auschwitz weaves together the stories of four Jewish girls during the Holocaust, strangers whose lives were unknowingly intertwined by everyday garments. Jock Heidenstein, Anita Lasker, Chana Zumerkorn and Regina Feldman all faced the...

‘In sixteen hundred and sixty-six, London burned like rotten sticks.’ Left alone and homeless by the Great Plague, Sam struggled to survive. He was lucky to get a job working for the Giraud family. But Andre, the son of his boss, doesn't make life easy. Then a fire breaks out on Pudding Lane...

In these coming-of-age tales set on the Menominee Indian Reservation of the 1980s and 1990s, Thomas Pecore Weso explores the interrelated nature of meals and memories. As he puts it, “I cannot separate foods from the moments in my life when I first tasted them.” Weso’s stories recall the foods that influenced his youth in northern Wisconsin: subsistence meals from hunted, fished, and gathered sources; the culinary traditions of the German, Polish, and Swedish settler descendants in the area; and the commodity foods distributed by the government that made up the bulk of his family’s pantry.

Charlie West went to bed one night an ordinary high school student. He woke up a hunted man. Terrorists are trying to kill him. The police want to arrest him for the stabbing death of his best friend. He doesn't know whose side he's one or who he can trust. With his pursuers closing in on every side, Charlie makes his way back to his hometown to find some answers.

Read by Golden Globe and Olivier Award winner, and Oscar nominee, Jessie Buckley (Hamnet, Wicked Little Letters) The bestselling Richard and Judy Book Club pick and BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick. For readers of Circe and The Handmaid’s Tale, Kiran Millwood Hargrave's The Mercies is inspired by...

A BRAND NEW unforgettable, heart-wrenching and utterly unputdownable tale of courage, sacrifice and hope from the bestselling author of The Rainbow . Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah, Fiona Valpy and All the Light We Cannot See. 🦋🗝️ 1939, Poland: Would you save a child in a warzone?...

Twelve-year-old Ann understands there is only one thing to be grateful for as a slave: having her family together. But when the master falls into debt, he plans to sell both Ann and her younger brother to two different owners. Ann is convinced her family must run away on the Underground Railroad. Will Ann's family survive the dangerous trip to their freedom in the North? This Girls Survive story is supported by a glossary, discussion questions, and nonfiction material on the Underground Railroad, making it a valuable resource for young listeners.

This audiobook includes a collection of 12 stories and poems drawn from Davis Deen's Trinidadian background. The writing is warm and rich, rooted in and uttering from the Caribbean oral tradition.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The enthralling true story of the rise and reign of O-Six, the celebrated Yellowstone wolf, and the people who loved or feared her. Before men ruled the earth, there were wolves. Once abundant in North America, these majestic creatures were hunted to near...

In the heart of darkening Europe, amidst the looming war, "Vienna on Fire" by Don Gabor tells the riveting story of Greta Kolbe, an eighteen-year-old Jewish woman whose life was upended when German troops annexed Austria in 1938. Her peaceful existence is replaced by a nightmare of terror as she, along with Vienna's Jewish community, faces an ordeal of intimidation. Greta's journey of resilience begins as she flees Nazi Vienna to escape arrest for her resistance activities, embarking on a dangerous trek to Holland, with a spiteful ex-suitor and the Gestapo closely trailing her.

On the night of January 30, 1945, the U.S. Army's Sixth Ranger Infantry Battalion carried out one of the most daring and dramatic rescue missions of World War II. In a surprise nighttime raid deep behind enemy lines in the Philippines, American Rangers and Filipino guerrilla fighters risked everything to free hundreds of American prisoners of war from a brutal Japanese prison camp.

Mister Tidwell is a scholarly Oxford professor snatched out of his bookish world and pressed into service aboard Lord Nelson’s legendary British fleet - in the position of schoolmaster. Such is the life of the land-loving, seafaring Mister Tidwell, Gunner. Thrust into service at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Tidwell soon finds himself directly in the line of fire and way out of his depth. Fate has cast him into a terrible and terrifying spot - alone on deck to face the fearsome approach of a French man-o’-war.

LILIA is a gripping, cinematic novel inspired by my family's extraordinary true story of resilience and survival during World War II, under Mussolini's Fascist Italy and Hitler's brutal Nazi occupation. Amid the devastation of war, a young girl and her family struggle to endure unimaginable loss, betrayal, and the daily terror of Nazi rule. Stripped of her childhood and forced to navigate an unforgiving world, Lilia clings to the one thing that cannot be taken from her: hope.