Tag: WWII
Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon is a story of dichotomies as it is both an incredibly motivating and uplifting story but also incredibly sad and heartbreaking. Based loosely on true events it tells the story of Nancy Wake, a reporter turned smuggler and spy who was on the ground in France during WWII. Told…
The Rose Code by Kate Quinn was simply incredible. The story opens in 1947 days before Princess Elizabeth is set to marry Prince Phillip, Osla Kendall is the former girlfriend of Phillip who now works as a columnist for Tatler. As she is preparing herself for attending the wedding she receives an unusual letter written…
Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally is the slightly fictionalized true story of Oskar Schindler. In the lead up to the Second World War he was an industrialist who managed to own an enamel factory where he was allowed to employ Jewish workers from the Kracow ghetto. At first he stayed concentrated on actually running a…
The Air Raid Book Club by Annie Lyons is sad but still heartwarming. In 1938 Gertie Bingham is mourning the loss of her husband and struggling to run their bookstore that no longer feels the same. Thinking about retiring Gertie ends up postponing when her longtime friend Charles convinces her to instead take in a…
The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan is a book that is mildly sad and heartbreaking but also immensely inspiring and uplifting. It tells the story of three different young women and their interactions with a library at the height of WWII. Juliet has just been hired as a deputy head librarian for the Bethnal Green…
The Mayfair Bookshop by Eliza Knight is an interesting piece of historical fiction. It tells the story of Nancy Mitford, a socialite in 1930’s and 40’s London, and Lucy St. Clair, a modern day book curator who travels to London to work. Nancy Mitford’s story starts in the early 30’s and covers how she works…
We move forward a decade or two with The Winter of the World, book two of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett. As Stalin consolidates power in Russia and Roosevelt becomes President while Hitler rises to power we meet the next generation of the same families we met in the first book, Fall of Giants.…
Have you ever read a story that was just incredibly inspiring but also incredibly heartbreaking and sad at the same time? Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides was just that as it tells the true story of the army rangers that were sent to rescue the soldiers in Cabanatuan camp in the Philippines during WWII. These…
I really struggled while reading this particular book because of its content primarily. The Auschwitz Escape by Joel C. Rosenberg is the first book I have ever read by him and was both great and incredibly sad. As the title indicates it is about WWII, more specifically it is a fictional account of a Jew…
Three generations of women all tied together by secrets. In the book Cecile’s Secret by Ruth E. Hill, it all starts with one secret held by a woman named Cecile Legrand. The book opens on Cecile being recruited to serve as a spy and resistance operative in WWII France in 1944. While there she ends…