Adult
All That I Am by Anna Funder
ALL THAT I AM is an affecting and beautifully evocative debut novel about a group of young German exiles who risk their lives to awaken the world to the terrifying threat of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh
Bakerton is a community of company houses and church festivals, of union squabbles and firemen's parades. For its tight-knit citizens -- and the five children of the Novak family -- the 1940s will be a decade of excitement, tragedy, and stunning change. Baker Towers is a family saga and a love story, a hymn to a time and place long gone.
Beside a Burning Sea by John Shors
One moment, the World War II hospital ship Benevolence is patrolling the South Pacific on a mission of mercy—to save wounded American soldiers. The next, Benevolence is split in two by a torpedo, killing almost everyone on board. A small band of survivors makes it to the deserted shore of a nearby island.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Living in Germany during World War II, young Liesel Meminger scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist --- books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids.
City of Women by David R. Gillham
At the height of the Second World War, Berlin has essentially become a city of women. While her husband fights on the Eastern Front, Sigrid Schröder goes to work every day and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law. Her tedious existence is turned upside down when she finds herself hiding a mother and her two young daughters, and she must make terrifying choices that could cost her everything.
Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
On an Italian-occupied Greek island during WWII, Pelagia, a willful, beautiful local girl, has two suitors vying for her love: Mandras, a gentle fisherman turned ruthless guerilla, and the charming, mandolin-playing Captain Corelli. Corelli's Mandolin is rich with loyalties and betrayals, and set against a landscape where the factual blends seamlessly with the fantastic.
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell
Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, Lexie Sinclair plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who wears duck-egg blue ties and introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, post-war Soho. She learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to embrace her life fully and with a deep love.
The House of Gentle Men: A Novel by Kathy Hepinstall
Charlotte sets off on a mission of love in the backwoods of Louisiana, only to be violated by three soldiers in a lonely section of the forest. Charlotte's young life is destroyed, but another life is growing inside her. Years later, Charlotte comes to House of Gentle Men, a mysterious sanctuary where sad, damaged women are administered to by haunted men wishing to atone for their past crimes.
La’s Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith
When Lavender, La to her friends, moves to the Suffolk countryside, it’s not just to escape the London Blitz but also to flee the wreckage of a disastrous marriage. But as she starts to become a part of the community, she detects a sense of isolation. Her deep love of music and her desire to bring people together inspire her to start an orchestra.
Leeway Cottage by Beth Gutcheon
In April 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, Sydney Brant, a wealthy girl of the Dundee summer colony, marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well matched, but Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to the fortunes of Hitler's war. By the time the war is over, Laurus's family has played an active role in Denmark's grassroots rescue of the country's Jews.
Next to Love by Ellen Feldman
In Next to Love by Ellen Feldman, three young women --- Babe, Millie and Grace --- who live in a small town in Massachusetts all send the men they love off to fight in World War II. Not everyone returns, and those who do are profoundly changed, reminding us that the scars of war run deeper than the day that victory is won. This character-rich story begins before the men head out and continues right through the early ’60s.
Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow
Stewart Dubinsky knew his father had served in World War II. And he'd been told how he had rescued Stewart's mother from the horror of a concentration camp. But when he learns of his father's court-martial and imprisonment, he is plunged into the mystery of his family's secret history and driven to uncover the truth about this enigmatic, distant man who'd always refused to talk about his war.
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The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett
In the fall of 1916, America prepares for war—but in the community of Tamarack Lake, the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, mainly immigrants, fill the large public sanatorium. But when the well-meaning efforts of one enterprising patient lead to a tragic accident and a terrible betrayal, the war comes home.
Alice in Exile: A Novel by Piers Paul Read
It is 1913 when Alice meets Edward Cobb, the eligible son of a baronet. When Alice's father, a radical publisher, gets involved in a scandal, Edward breaks off their engagement, unaware that Alice is expecting his child. Desperate, she travels to Russia to serve as a governess for charming Baron Rettenberg, as the Russian Revolution and World War I rage on.
C by Tom McCarthy
Opening in England at the turn of the twentieth century, C is the story of Serge Carrefax. As Serge goes from a Bohemian spa to the skies of World War I, and from a German prison camp into the tombs of Egypt, we follow his life through the tumultuous course of the nascent modern era.
The Crimson Portrait by Jody Shields
Spring 1915. On a sprawling country estate not far from London a young woman mourns her husband, fallen on the battlefields of what has been declared the first World War...
But the isolated and eerie stillness in which she grieves is shattered when her home is transformed into a bustling military hospital to serve the war's most irreparably injured.
Life Class by Pat Barker
In the spring of 1914, a group of students at the Slade School of Art have gathered for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant is easily distracted by a fellow student, Elinor Brooke. By the time he returns from World War I, Paul must confront not only the overwhelming, perhaps impossible challenge of how to express all that he has seen, but also the fact that life, and love, will never be the same for him again.
My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young
The lives of two very different couples are irrevocably intertwined and forever changed in this stunning World War I epic of love and war.
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