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Booklists

Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .

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Booklists and Suggested Reading

World War Fiction Booklist

 

Page Modified: August 19, 2008

World War Fiction - a list of titles related to World War I and World War II.

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Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine.

WW I

• River of Darkness
  Author: Airth, Rennie
  PW Kirkus
  A powerful debut novel set in rural England just after World War I. Sent by Scotland Yard to investigate a murderous attack in a small Surrey village, Inspector John Madden sets out to identify and capture the killer - a demented former soldier with a bloody past.
• The Eye in the Door
  Author: Barker, Pat
  Kirkus
  This prize-winning sequel to the author's acclaimed masterpiece of antiwar literature, Regeneration, "calls to mind . . . Hemingway and Fitzgerald" (Boston Globe) and stands on its own as an eloquently and morally complex novel of the brutal effects of World War I on the human psyche and British society as a whole.
• Right from Wrong
  Author: Bonner, Cindy
  Booklist
  The fourth of Bonner's deliciously romantic historical novels, this classic tale of love, war and sin is set against the rolling hills of Central Texas and the mansard rooftops of Paris.
• The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty
  Author: Barry, Sebastian
  Booklist PW Kirkus Library Journal
  An acclaimed playwrights novel - the heartbreaking epic of a fugitive every man. When a Irish innocent romantic signs up to fight with the British in World War I, he is branded a traitor by his countrymen - and the IRA orders his assassination to be carried out by a childhood friend.
• Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War
  Author: Faulks, Sebastian
  PW Kirkus
  A #1 bestseller in England, this novel is at once a magnificently erotic love story and a savagely powerful evocation of the carnage of World War I. A young Englishman, devastated by his tragic love affair with a married Frenchman, joins the army in 1916 and finds himself behind German lines, transformed into both death's agent and its dispassionate witness.
• Fredy Neptune: A Novel in Verse
  Author: Murray, Les A.
  PW
  When German-Australian sailor Friedrich "Fredy" Boettcher is shanghied aboard a German Navy battleship at the outbreak of World War I, the sight of frenzied mobs burning Armenian women to death in Turkey causes him, through moral shock, to lose his sense of touch. This mysterious disability, which he knows he must hide, is both protection and curse during much of his life, as he orbits the high horror and low humor of a catastrophic age. Told in blue-collar English that regains freshness by eschewing the mind-set of literary language, Fredy's picaresque life - as, perhaps, the only Nordic Superman ever - is deep-dyed in layers of irony and attains a mind-inverting resolution. Publisher Marketing.
• Fast Eddie: A Novel in Many Voices
  Author: O'Connell, Robert L.
  Booklist
  The author of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression returns with a highly original novel of Eddie Rickenbacker - a pioneer in the world of automobiles, America's World War I flying ace, and a major influence on on the aircraft industry.
• No Graves as Yet
  Author: Perry, Anne
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 25.95 ISBN: 0345456521 Date: 2003
  PW
  The New York Times bestselling author and master of historical suspense offers the first in a five-volume series set during World War I.
  Updated 7.1.03
• A Test of Wills
  PW
  Wings of Fire
  PW
  Author: Todd, Charles
  A Test of Wills:
  "An excellent new mystery, and one hopes, the first of a series", raves The Chicago Tribune about this New York Times Notable Book. In 1919, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge remains haunted by World War I, where he was forced to have a soldier executed for refusing to fight. When Rutledge is assigned to investigate a murder involving the military, his emotional war wounds flare. It is a case that strikes dangerously close to home - one that will test Rutledge's precarious grip on his own sanity.
  Wings of Fire:
  In Cornwell, England, three members of the same family have suddenly died. Among the dead is Olivia, the reclusive writer whose war poetry gave Ian Rutledge a handhold on sanity while he fought in the trenches in France. Although no evidence indicates foul play, a concerned and influential relative suspects that the deaths are actually murders, and she convinces Scotland Yard to send someone for a thorough investigation. Rutledge's rival, Bowles, sees the Cornwall incident as an opportunity to get the shell-shocked detective away from London where a recent Ripper-style killing spree promises celebrity for the detective who can crack the case. Accompanying the inspector to Cornwell is Rutledge's constant "companion", Hamish, the young Scot whom he unwillingly had to execute on the battlefield and whose tormenting voice sounds in Rutlege's head, forcing him to face unpleasant truths.
• A Fearsome Doubt: Inspector Ian Rutledge
  Author: Todd, Charles
  Publisher: Bantam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0553801805 Date: 2002
  PW
  Inspector Ian Rutledge may have put the hangman's noose around the neck of an innocent man in this meticulously wrought puzzle and harrowing psychological drama.
  Updated 9.7.02
• The Great War: American Front
  Author: Turtledove, Harry
  Booklist PW
  An alternate history of World War I.
• Maisie Dobbs
  Author: Winspear, Jacqueline
  Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 1569473307 Date: 2003
  Library Journal PW
  "Meet Maisie Dobbs, who in 1929 launches her career as a private investigator and finds herself drawn back to the Great War she thought she'd long since put behind her: an unexpected beginning for Maisie--and a rare treat for mystery fans."--Charles Todd, A Fearsome Doubt.
  Updated 6.19.03

 

WW I Fiction - also worthy of note:

• Parade's End by F.M. Ford
  
• The African Queen by C. S. Forester
  
• Somewhere in France by John Rolfe Gardiner
  
• The Good Soldier Svejk by J. Hasek
  
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  
• A Very Long Engagement by Sebastian Japrisot
  
• The Burden of Desire by Robert MacNeil
  
• All Quiet on the Western Front by E. M. Remarque
  
• And Quiet Flows the Don by M.A. Sholokov

• August 1914 by A. Solzhenitsyn
  
• Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
  

WW II

• Cherries of Freedom
  Author: Andersch, Alfred
  Publisher: Toby $ 19.95 ISBN: 1592640524 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  A German soldier deserts in Italy during the Second World War, and for the first time, experiences real freedom. A classic of post war Germany. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 4.8.04
• Lying With the Enemy
  Author: Binding, Tim
  Publisher: Carrol & Graf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0786706570
  Kirkus
  In 1943 the skies over Guernsey darken, and the search for a killer unearths horrors shared by the British and the Nazis alike, in this heart-stopping novel that bares the human soul in a time of war.
• The Soldier's Return
  Author: Bragg, Melvyn
  Publisher: Arcade $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559706392
  Booklist Library Journal
  When Sam Richardson returns in 1946 from the "Forgotten War" in Burma to his home in England, he finds the war has changed him and his family. As they strive to adjust, the bonds of love and loyalty are stretched to the breaking point in this taut and profoundly moving novel.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 8.16.02
• Eye of the Abyss
  Author: Browne, Marshall
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312311567 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  The author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-nominated mystery, The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders, now delivers an atmospheric and powerful thriller set during the rise of the Nazi party.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 9.22.03
• The Cloud Atlas
  Author: Callahan, Liam
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385336942
  Kirkus LJ
  In a richly inspired debut reminiscent of Snow Falling on Cedars and The English Patient, this stirring novel, set against a magnificent Alaskan backdrop, reveals one of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II in a tale that is both a heart-quickening mystery and a unique love story.
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts | Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 3.1.04
• The Children's War
  Author: Charlesworth, Monique
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400040094 Date: 2004
  Kirkus PW
  Interweaving the stories of Ilse, a half-Jewish girl, and Nicolai, a Hitler Youth, The Children's War is a gripping, unforgettable story of growing up in a world gone mad.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Child Soldiers
  Updated 8.16.04
• Kissed A Sad Goodbye
  Author: Crombie, Deborah
  Kirkus PW
  Crombie weaves a tale of two boys who become allies, then friends, into a story of trust and betrayal whose repercussions echo across six decades.
• Song of the Exile
  Author: Davenport, Kiana
  Booklist
  From New Orleans to Paris to Shanghai, through the horrors of Pearl Harbor, Nazi occupation in Europe, Japanese prison camps, and beyond to Hawaii's struggle toward statehood, this stunningly original novel paints a mesmerizing portrait of the native Hawaiian peoples and their history.
• Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936
  Author: Deaver, Jeffrey
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24.95 ISBN: 0743222016 Date: 2004
  PW Library Journal
  Called the reigning "master of ticking-bomb suspense" (People), Deaver has written a gripping international thriller--with a range of real political figures and Olympic athletes--that introduces his most psychologically complex hero to date.
  Updated 5.20.04
• To the White Sea
  Author: Dickey, James
  PW Kirkus
  From the award-winning, bestselling author of Deliverance and Buckdancer's Choice comes the heart-stopping story of an American tail-gunner who parachutes from his burning plane into Tokyo during the final months of World War II. "A first-rate adventure story". -- Newsweek.
• Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime
  Author: Dunning, John
  Publisher: Scribner $ 26 ISBN: 0743201957
  Booklist
  It's the summer of 1942, and as bombs fall on England, a troupe of gallant actors, sound-effects people, writers, and producers labors to entertain the folks at home. Into this world come Jack Dulaney and Holly Carnahan, determined to find Holly's missing father, whose disappearance and the unsolved murder of an actor seem to be tied up with the very radio station that provides Holly and Jack a lifeline.
• Jitterbug
  Author: Estleman, Loren
  Booklist PW
  Wartime Detroit is dazzlingly recreated in Loren Estleman's latest "tour de force" crime novel. Great auto manufacturers labor mightily; blacks struggle for an economic toehold; whites strive for decent lives in the chaos. The climax, during America's nastiest riots, is unforgettable.
• The Vintage Book of War Stories
  Author: Faulks, Sebastian (ed)
  Publisher: Vintage $ 14 (trade paper) ISBN:1400030404
  Library Journal
  The editors have assembled a powerful collection including some of the past century's finest writers--from Isaac Babel to Tim O'Brien--coming to terms with the dismal inheritance of war.
  Updated 9.23.02
• Charlotte Gray
  Author: Faulks, Sebastian
  Kirkus
  During the darkest days of WWII, a young Scottish woman, falls in love with an RAF pilot. When she learns that his plane has been lost over France, she travels there to work for the Resistance. Soon she finds that the struggle for the country's fate is intimately linked to her own battle to take control over her life.
• Human Voices
  Author: Fitzgerald, Penelope
  Kirkus Library Journal
  Targeted by enemy bombers in 1940, the BBC turns its concert hall into a dormitory for both sexes - and the personal chaos rivals the political. Published for the first time in the U.S.
• The End of the Hunt
  Author: Flanagan, Thomas
  PW
  Interweaving history and fiction, Flanagan tells a complex story of the passionate people who helped shape today's Ireland. "Flanagan manages to sustain interest in the individual lives of his characters while creating a sense of monumental historical drama in which they are players". New York Times Book Review.
• Dark Voyage
  Author: Furst, Alan
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400060184 Date: 2004
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  Tangier, April 1941. In the tradition of The Polish Officer and Blood of Victory, Dark Voyage is Alan Furst at his best - a superb adventure of historical espionage at sea and in the waterfront alleys of port cities, as a decent, good-hearted man becomes a fighting hero in an increasingly threatening world. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars| Espionage
  Updated 7.19.04
• Kingdom of Shadows
  Author: Furst, Alan
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375503374
  PW Booklist
  In spymaster Furst's most electrifying thriller to date, Hungarian aristocrat Nicholas Morath--a hugely charismatic hero--becomes embroiled in a daring and perilous effort to halt the Nazi war machine in Eastern Europe.
  Suggested Reading: Espionage
  
• Red Gold
  Author: Furst, Alan
  Booklist Kirkus PW Library Journal
  Within the fragmented French resistance, an intelligence officer decides to strike a deal with the devil in this rich and suspenseful part thriller, part love story spy novel.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Espionage
• Blood of Victory
  Author: Furst, Alan
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375505741 Date: 2002
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  From "the greatest living writer of espionage fiction" (The Houston Chronicle) comes the story of I.A. Serebin, recruited in Istanbul in 1940 by an agent of the British secret service for a desperate operation to block Hitler's conquest of Europe.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 8.13.02
• Saints and Villains
  Author: Giardina, Denise
  PW Kirkus
  An astonishing novel in the tradition of Schindler's List, Saints and Villains dramatizes the painful dilemma of acting morally in a time of great evil through the fictional recreation of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This emblematic figure risked his life - and finally lost it - through his participation in the failed plot to assassinate Hitler.
• Enigma
  Author: Harris, Robert
  Kirkus
  England 1943. Much of the infamous Nazi Enigma code has been cracked. But Shark, the impenetrable cipher used by Nazi U-boats, eludes everyone. Except for mathematician Tom Jericho.
  Also: Fatherland. An alternate history.
• Closing Time
  Author: Heller, Joseph
  Booklist
  The long-awaited sequel to Catch 22, one of America's most enduring and important novels.
• Thunder Point
  Author: Higgins, Jack
  PW
  In 1992, the wreck of Nazi leader Martin Bormann's submarine is discovered in the Caribbean - along with a secret list of Nazi sympathizers. The names include high-level citizens from the U.S. and Great Britain, but the evidence is at the bottom of the sea. The British government turns to its greatest enemy for help - infamous Sean Dillon.
  Also: The Eagle Has Landed, The Eagle Has Flown, Cold Harbour, Luciano's Luck.
• Land Girls
  Author: Hurth, Angela
  Kirkus
  In rural World War II England, three young women from very different backgrounds find themselves thrown together when they participate in the country's "land girl" program, designed to help alleviate the shortage of farm hands. With wit, charm, and emotion, Land Girls tells the story of their first summer together.
• Black Cross
  Author: Iles, Greg
  Booklist
  It is 1944. The world awaits the Allied invasion of Europe. Churchill has learned that Nazi scientists have developed Sarin - a new weapon that could turn the tide for Hitler. Two men - a pacifist American doctor and a fanatical Jewish assassin - must embark on a murderous mission into Germany. Their target - a human hell where Jews fuel Hitler's last hope.
• Mannequin
  PW
  Salamander
  PW Kirkus
  Author: Janes, Robert
  From Robert Janes' notes:
  Robert Janes invites you to investigate common crime in German-occupied France, 1942-43. His two detectives are Jean-Louis St.Cyr, of the Surete Nationale, and Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo. Murder, arson, theft and extortion went on in the midst of the officially-sanctioned crime on an appalling scale. As practically the only two honest cops left, St.-Cyr and Kohler are hated by the SS and the Gestapo and caught between them and the criminals, the gangsters of the French Gestapo, and even the Resistance!
  Also: Mayhem, Sandman, Stonekiller, Carousel, Mirage.
• Los Alamos
  Author: Kanon, Joseph
  Booklist PW
  PW Editors Favorite Books of 1997 selection.
  Kanon recreates the most compelling real-life drama of this century - an audacious flight of the imagination which interweaves real and fictional figures to create a "what-if' novel of historical intrigue. Spring 1945: As work on the first atom bomb nears completion in New Mexico, Manhattan Project security officer Karl Bruner is found murdered. Is Bruner's killing a result of a violent sexual encounter, or part of a plot that threatens to jeopardize the project itself?
• The Good German
  Author: Kanon, Joseph
  Publisher: Holt $ 26 ISBN: 0805064222 Date: 2001
  Booklist
  Set in Berlin in 1945, a brilliant thriller about the end of one war and the beginning of another is offered by the bestselling author of Los Alamos.
  Updated 8/1/01
• Hart's War
  Author: Katzenbach, John
  PW
  A breathtaking novel of murder and justice in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, from the bestselling author of Just Cause. When a Tuskegee airman arrives at the camp, 2nd Lt. Tommy Hart is tapped to defend him in a murder trial rife with racial tension and raw conflict. The lines between ally and enemy blur and Hart soon realizes that nothing is what it seems.
• The Widow Killer
  Author: Kohout, Pavel
  Kirkus PW
  A cross between the works of Caleb Carr and Thomas Harris, The Widow Killer is the chilling new book by one of Europe's most acclaimed novelists. Pavel Kohout has written a steely, suspenseful piece that will rank as perhaps one of the last important works from one of World War II's direct eyewitnesses.
• While England Sleeps
  Author: Leavitt, David
  PW
  Leavitt has earned high praise for his empathetic portrayal of human sexuality and the complexities of intimate relationships. In While England Sleeps, he moves beyond precisely controlled domestic drama to create a historical novel, set against the rise of fascism in 1930's Europe, that tells a story of love and the violent chaos of war.
• A Gesture Life
  Author: Lee, Chang-Rae
  Booklist PW Kirkus Library Journal
• Breaking the Tongue
  Author: Loh, Vyvyane
  Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393057925
  Kirkus PW
  This brilliant novel chronicles the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in World War II. Central to the story is one Chinese family. Expatriates, spies, fifth columnists, and nationalists--including the elusive young woman Ling-Li--mingle in this exotic culture as the Japanese threat looms.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 2.2.04
• Reich Angel
  Author: Mason, Anita
  Kirkus
  Fredrika is accomplished, privileged and utter committed to becoming a pilot. To achieve this goal she must defy her family and the provincial middle-class society into which she was born. She becomes an Olympic glider pilot, a national heroine. Driven by ambition, she learns to fly propeller planes and dreams of jets and rockets. Volunteering daily for the most hazardous flights, Freddy forces the Luftwaffe to accept her. The only woman flyer in military service, she becomes Germany's top test pilot. Her courage and daring belie the Nazi prescription for German womanhood: kinder, kuche, kirche. But she has put her talents at the service of evil, a fact brought home to her when she falls in love with a woman, putting them both in peril.
• Village of a Million Spirits: A Novel of the Treblinka Uprising
  Author: MacMillan, Ian
  PW
• After Dunkirk
  Author: McGraw, Milena
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0395868858 Date: 1998
  LJ Booklist
  At the threshold of World War II, Wayne Luthie leads the Wonders, an inexperienced British flight squadron playing at war form a safe distance. But soon the fighting draws near. Grace Paley hailed as "memorable and remarkable" this extraordinary debut novel, resonant with the passion and themes of The English Patient and Saving Private Ryan.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  
• Fugitive Pieces
  Author: Michaels, Anne
  Booklist Kirkus PW
  A stunning debut novel from an award-winning poet. Jakob Beer, traumatically orphaned as a young child during World War II, learns, over his lifetime, the power of language to destroy, to omit, to obliterate, but also to restore and to conjure, witness and tell as he comes to understand and experience the extent of what was lost to him and what is possible for him to regain.
• The Man in the Box
  Author: Moran, Thomas
  PW
  Man in the Box To 13-year-old Niki Lukasser, World War II seems very far away. Then a man appears at the Lukasser's door, a doctor who had saved Niki's life, a Jew - now asking to be hidden. "As in the diary of Anne Frank, the blend of confinement, sexual awakening, and cruelty in this novel makes for a potent and unblinking coming-of-age tale" - The New Yorker.
• The Museum Guard
  Author: Norman, Howard
  Kirkus
  When the famous Dutch painting Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam arrives at a museum in Halifax, a disturbed young woman abandons her life in favor of the one she imagines for the painter's subject - even as being a Jew in Amsterdam becomes more perilous as the clouds of World War II gather in Europe.
• A World Away
  Author: O'Nan, Stewart
  PW
  Set in a remote beachfront cottage in the Hamptons one summer during World War II, this rich, romantic story follows the fortunes of the Langer family, whose eldest son is missing in action in the Pacific theater.
• When the Emperor was Divine
  Author: Otsuka, Julie
  Publisher: Knopf $ 18 ISBN: 0375414290
  PW Library Journal Booklist
  Otsuka's commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any previously written--a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | First Fiction Debuts | All Stars Lists
  Updated 9.7.02
• Coming Home
  Author: Pilcher, Rosamunde
  PW
  Against the backdrop of an elegant Cornwall mansion before World War II and a vast continent-spanning canvas during the turbulent war years, this involving story from the bestselling author of and September tells of an extraordinary young woman's coming of age, coming to grips with love and sadness, and in every sense of the term, coming home.
• The Last Valentine
  Author: Pratt, James Michael
  Booklist
  Television reporter Susan Allison is looking for the perfect story about true love, but her heart of hearts tells her such a thing doesn't really exist. Writer Neil Thomas, Jr., wants only to share the powerful message of the "last Valentine", his parents tragic yet triumphant fifty-year love story. On February 14th, 1944, Caroline Thomas said goodbye to her beloved husband, a Navy pilot sent to the Pacific. For fifty years, she waited for him to return - until a miracle happens and she receives his last Valentine. In the present day, when Susan and Neil meet, neither of them expects the emotional outcome: that the story of Neil's parents will bring them together in a love as powerful as she dream of and he remembers.
• Jukebox Queen of Malta
  Author: Rinaldi, Nicholas
  Library Journal
  From the heralded author of Bridge Fall Down comes a lyrical, heart-wrenching story set amidst the chaos - and absurdity - of war-torn Malta during World War II.
• Why She Left Us
  Author: Rizzuto, Rahna R.
  PW
  This powerful first novel weaves in and out of the personal tragedies and political persecution of three generations of a Japanese-American family.
• The End of War: A Novel of the Race for Berlin
  Author: Robbins, David L.
  Kirkus
  The bestselling author of War of the Rats now forges a masterpiece out of the flames of history. In the trenches of Eastern Europe, in the bomb-ravaged halls of Berlin, and along the speeding Western front, millions wage a war whose victors will rule the latter half of the 20th century. Between the Russian marshal and the British prime minister sits the dying American president who plays each leader against the other, seeking victory, seeking peace.
• Last Citadel: A Novel of the Battle of Kursk
  Author: Robbins, David L.
  Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell $ 24.95 ISBN: 0553801775 Date: 2003
  LJ
  A remarkable, passionate tale of espionage, deceit, and unprecedented valor, the tension builds to an unbearable degree as each soldier waits for the sun to rise on July 5, 1943, the day that will change history--and their lives--forever.
  Updated 8.14.03
• In a Dry Season
  Author: Robinson, Peter
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  A playful child wandering in remains unearths a human skeleton that forensics determine to belong to a woman who appears to have been murdered and hidden beneath the floor of an old building.
  The present day investigation runs parallel to the story of the post WWII murder of a young woman.
• The Song and the Truth
  Author: Ruebsamen, Helga
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0375402616
  Kirkus
  A five-year old Jewish girl living on Java in 1939 lives in her own mysterious world of fantasy until her family returns to their homeland of Holland and they are forced into hiding by the German invasion.
• You Are My Sunshine
  Author: Saxton, Judith
  Publisher: St Martins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0312267002 Date: 2000
  PW
  Four girls from very different backgrounds -- newlywed Kay Duffield, shy Emily Bevan, practical Biddy Bachelor, and rebellious Jo Stewart -- learn the value of true friendship as they summon their strength to support each other through the joys and hardships of the war effort in 1940s England.
  Updated 10/5/00
• Resistance
  Author: Shreve, Anita
  PW
  Resistance is the story of a young Belgian woman, an American pilot, and a small war-torn village that shelters them. Richly peopled and fearlessly, gorgeously passionate, it is a powerful exploration of emotion at odds with commitment. No reader who has loved - or resisted love - will forget this lucid and moving tale.
• The Unlikely Spy
  Author: Silva, Daniel
  Booklist Kirkus
  Catherine Blake is the beautiful widow of a war hero. She is also a London hospital and a Nazi spy. Her mission, under direct orders from Hitler, is to discover the Allied plans for D-Day and seal the German victory. Fumbling history professor Alfred Vicary is Churchill's confidante and leader of Britian's counterintelligence operations. His mission is to stop the unknown traitor at any cost, including his life.
• December 6
  Author: Smith, Martin Cruz
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 0684872536 Date: 2002
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  As seen through the eyes of an American con man living in Tokyo days before the Japanese attack, December 6 is Smith at the top of his game. The #1 bestselling author of Gorky Park, Red Square, Havana Bay and Rose returns with his most audaciously original and brilliant novel yet.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Historical Mysteries
  Updated 8.13.02
• The Pilots
  Author: Spencer, James
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399149732
  Kirkus
  Spencer flew B-24 bombers during 1944 and 1945. Decades later he began to write about it. The extraordinary result is The Pilots, a novel-in-stories about a group of young men as they evolve in unpredictable ways during the last years of the war.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• The Book of Kings
  Author: Thackera, James
  Booklist
• Mason's Retreat
  Author: Tilghman, Christopher
  Unfolding with grandeur and suspenseful inevitability, this bestselling novel tells the story of an American family who, after years of extravagant expatriate living in England, return to Maryland, on the eve of World War II, to take up residence at the Retreat, a crumbling family estate on the Chesapeake Bay.
• The Golden Age
  Author: Vidal, Gore
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 27.50 ISBN: 0385500750
  Kirkus
  The concluding volume in Gore Vidal's celebrated and bestselling series of American Chronicle novels -- a unique pageant of the American experience from just before our entry in World War II to the end of the Korean War. - from the Advance Reading Copy.
• Parts of the Furniture
  Author: Wesley, Mary
  PW Library Journal
  Seventeen-year-old Juno Marlowe is caught in a London air raid where she is sheltered overnight by an ailing stranger. Juno is launched by the stranger's sudden death - and the letter he charges her to deliver to his father - on a defiant journey through the blacked-out English countryside to his eccentric but nurturing family.
• Brother's Blood
  Author: White, Michael C.
  Booklist
  Compared to Snow Falling on Cedars by reviewers, this gripping literary mystery revolves around a little-known chapter of 20th century history: the detention of nearly 400,000 German prisoners of war on American soil during World War II.
• The Hiding Room
  Author: Wilson, Jonathan
  PW
  Part political thriller, part poignant love story, The Hiding Room recounts the passionate, tortured affair between Esta Weiss, a Jewish refugee living in Cairo, and Archie Rawlings, a British intelligence officer. But Esta has secrets darker than anything Archie could have imagined - secrets that only come to light fifty years later when Esta's son goes to Jerusalem to bury a mother he barely knew.
• Prisoners of War
  Author: Yarbrough, Steve
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375414789
  Kirkus
  Set in a Mississippi farming town in 1943, Prisoners of War is the story of Marty Stark, returned mysteriously from the front and reassigned to guard men he had been trained to kill--German soldiers whose fighting days are over.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 11.12.03

WW II Fiction - also worthy of note:

• The Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
  
• Out of the Blackout by Robert Barnard
  
• Run Silent, Run Deep by E. L. Beach
  
• The Bridge Over the River Kwai by P. Boulle
  
• The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
  
• The Boat by L. Bucheim
  
• SS-GB, XPD By Len Deighton
  
• The Perfect Gallows by Peter Dickenson
  
• The Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett
  
• The Night Sky by Clare Francis
  
• The Dog Years by Gunter Grass
  
• The Tenth Man by Graham Greene
  
• Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
  
• Mister Roberts by T. Heggen
  
• Shining Through by Susan Isaacs
  
• The Thin Red Line by James Jones
  
• The Painted Bird by Jerzy Koskinski
  
• This Shining Land by Rosalind Laker
  
• The Guns of Navarone, Force Ten From Navarone , Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean
  
• Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
  
• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
  
• The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
  
• The Legacy by Nevil Shute
  
• The Homecoming by C. P. Snow
  
• Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
  
• Battle Cry, Mila 18 by Leon Uris
  
• Mother Night and Slaughterhouse Five: Or the Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut
  
• Von Ryan's Express by D. Westheimer
  
• The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and Rememberance by Herman Wouk

   

 

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