Literary Fiction War

August 1945. As Stefano, an Italian POW, heads toward home across war-ravaged Germany, he encounters a young child beside his dead mother. Unable to leave him to an unknown fate, Stefano takes the boy with him, finding refuge in a seemingly abandoned house in a secluded woodland. But the house is far from vacant. Stefano wakes at the arrival of its owner, Erich, a former German soldier, who invites the travelers to stay until they can find safe passage home. Stefano cautiously agrees, intrigued by the disarming German, his reclusive neighbor Rosalind, and her traumatized husband.

Norway, 1940. Nazis pour into Oslo, a shroud of dread looms over the city, and eighteen-year-old Ingrid Solberg fears the worst. Under German rule, harsh rationing and the exorbitant cost of medicine threaten the lives of many, including Ingrid’s mother. And when Ingrid meets a young SS officer, she’s forced to make a desperate choice. Seventy years later, after the death of Ingrid in her adopted country of Canada, her son, Arnold, finds a disturbing letter in her belongings. He embarks on a journey to Oslo to understand his family’s history....

December 1943. In the years before the rise of Hitler, the Gerber family’s summer cottage was filled with laughter. Now, as deep drifts of snow blanket the Black Forest, German dissenter Franka Gerber is alone and hopeless. Fervor and brutality have swept through her homeland, taking away both her father and her brother and leaving her with no reason to live.

While the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Twenty-five years later, as the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes and he is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence and look for answers in his family history.

When Drake Ramsey gets an invitation he can't refuse to embark on a treasure hunt in India, little does he know that it will be a headlong rush into danger that will require all his wits to survive.

The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus becomes small-town Olinger High School; Chiron is George Caldwell, a science teacher there; and Prometheus is Caldwell's 15-year-old son, Peter.

Saba is just a child when he flees the fighting in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia with his older brother, Sandro, and father, Irakli, for asylum in England. Two decades later, all three men are struggling to make peace with the past, haunted by the places and people they left behind.

Born into privilege to one of the last Ottoman pashas, beautiful, spirited Selva is the brightest jewel in her father’s household - until she falls in love with Rafael Alfandari. Though Turkey has long been a safe haven for Jews, marriage between a high-ranking Muslim girl and a Jewish boy is strictly forbidden. Yet young love will not be denied, and Selva and Rafael defy their parents and marry, fleeing to Paris in hopes of a better life - only to find themselves trapped in the path of the invading Nazis.

In this escapade, the Junior Ganymede Club (Jeeves's association of butlers and valets) is revealed to be an arm of the British intelligence service. Jeeves must ferret out a Fascist spy, and only his hapless employer can help. Unfolding in the background are school-chum capers, affairs of the heart, drawing-room escapades, antics with aunts, and sartorial set-tos.

Former house cat turned war hero Mort(e) is famous for taking on the most dangerous missions and fighting the dreaded human bioweapon EMSAH. But the true motivation behind Mort(e)'s recklessness is his ongoing search for a pretransformation friend - a dog named Sheba. When he receives a mysterious message from the dwindling human resistance claiming Sheba is alive, he begins a journey that will take him from the remaining human strongholds to the heart of the Colony.

It is 1910. Jessica and Phyllis Melville have grown up at Ellinghurst, their family estate. A headstrong beauty, Jessica longs for London - the glitter and glamor of debutante life - while bookish Phyllis dreams in vain of attending the university. Neither girl questions that it is Theo, their adored brother, whom their mother loves best. Theo eclipses everyone around him, including the diffident Oskar Grunewald, who is a frequent visitor to Ellinghurst.

Hot on the trail of The Wolf, a rogue Russian military sniper turned Chechen terrorist, Gil Shannon turns from hunter to hunted when his mission is exposed by a traitor high up in US government. Shannon must turn to an unlikely ally - a deadly Russian special operative - to help even the odds.

Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population.

Lieutenant James Shelley, who has an uncanny knack for premeditating danger, leads a squad of advanced US Army military tasked with enforcing the peace around a conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. The squad members are linked wirelessly 24/7 to themselves and a central intelligence that guides them via drone relay - and unbeknownst to Shelley and his team, they are being recorded for a reality TV show.

One hundred miles from the Kuwaiti border, Thomas Benton meets Arwood Hobbes. Benton is a British journalist who reports from war zones in part to avoid his lackluster marriage and a daughter he loves but cannot connect with; Arwood is an American private who might be an insufferable ignoramus or might be a genuine lunatic with a death wish—it's hard to tell. Desert Storm is over, peace has been declared, but as they argue about whether it makes sense to cross the nearest border in search of an ice cream, they become embroiled in a horrific attack.

This classic novel and winner of the Pulitzer Prize tells the story of an Italian-American major in World War II who wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700-year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists. Although stituated during one of the most devastating experiences in human history, John Hersey's story speaks with unflinching patriotism and humanity.

Captain Lord Ramage and the Calypso return from Devil's Island, but Ramage's new wife, Sarah, is missing. The captain would like nothing better than to sail home immediately, but instead he is ordered to shepherd a lumbering convoy of merchant ships back to England. On the way, bizarre events lead him to a full court martial in Plymouth, presided over by his old nemesis, Rear-Admiral Goddard. Ramage must clear his name - or face a sentence of death!

At the age of 13, Pella Marsh emigrates with her family to the Planet of the Archbuilders. These enigmatic aborigines have names like Lonely Dumptruck and Hiding Kneel, and a civilization that baffles and frightens their human visitors. As the spikily independent Pella becomes an uneasy envoy between two species, Girl in Landscape deftly interweaves themes of exploration and otherness, loss, and sexual awakening.

With his first historical high-seas adventure chronicling the exploits of Naval Commander Charles Edgemont, Jay Worrall sets sail in the rousing tradition of C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian.

France, 1356. Ten years ago, the greatest army in Christendom was slaughtered at Crecy when Thomas Blackstone and his fellow archers stood their ground and rained death on the steel-clad might of French chivalry. Blackstone left that squalid field a knight. Now, Blackstone commands a war band and has carved out a small fiefdom in northern France.