It is 1940 and twenty-year-old Charlotte Richmond watches from her attic window as enemy planes fly over London. Still grieving her beloved brother who never returned from France, she is working hard to keep her own little life ticking over: holding down a dull typist job at the Ministry of Information, sharing gin and confidences with her best friend Elena, and dodging her difficult father. She has good reason to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. She knows what happens when she makes a nuisance of herself. On her way to work she often sees the boy who feeds the birds - a source of unexpected joy amidst the rubble of the Blitz. But every day brings new scenes of devastation, and after yet another heartbreaking loss Charlotte has an uncanny sense of foreboding. Someone is stalking the darkness, targeting her friends. And now he is following her. She no longer knows who to trust. She can't even trust herself. She knows this; her family have told so her often enough. As grief and suspicion consume her, Charlotte's nerves become increasingly frayed, and soon her very freedom is under threat . . . Riveting and deeply moving, The Midnight News is a tour de force from Sunday Times bestselling author Jo Baker - a breathtaking story of friendship, love and war.

The great Russian 20th-century novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stalingrad. Life and Fate is an epic tale of a country told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs. As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman's characters must work out their destinies in a world torn by ideological tyranny and war. Completed in 1960 and then confiscated by the KGB, this sweeping panorama of Soviet Society remained unpublished until it was smuggled into the West in 1980, where it was hailed as a masterpiece.

'Historical fiction of a high order' The Times Spring, 1941. The war in the West is as good as won. Nation after nation has fallen before the Reich's armies. Only Britain endures, her cities under nightly bombardment from the Luftwaffe. Berlin would happily call off the bombers in exchange for a peace treaty. Hitler would like to persuade Britain to turn her back on Europe, to attend to her precious Empire instead, to allow Germany a free hand to deal with the real enemy in the East. Peace, perhaps, but at what cost? For Churchill the price is too high; but for others within the British establishment, it is a price worth paying. On both sides of the channel, advocates of total war or peace-at-all-costs are at each others' throats - all unaware that Rudolf Hess, Hitler's quiet, contemplative deputy, has already taken radical steps to change the fortunes of the war... Raid 42 is part of the SPOILS OF WAR Collection, a thrilling, beguiling blend of fact and fiction born of some of the most tragic, suspenseful, and action-packed events of World War II. From the mind of highly acclaimed thriller author GRAHAM HURLEY, this blockbuster non-chronological collection allows the reader to explore Hurley's masterful storytelling in any order, with compelling recurring characters whose fragmented lives mirror the war that shattered the globe.

Coventry, 1941. The morning after one of the worst nights of the Blitz. Twenty-two-year-old Rose enters the remains of a bombed house to find her best friend dead. Shocked and confused, she makes a split-second decision that will reverberate for generations to come. More than fifty years later, in modern-day Brighton, Rose's granddaughter Lara waits for the return of her eighteen-year-old son Jay. Reckless and idealistic, he has gone to Iraq to stand on a conflict line as an unarmed witness to peace. Lara holds her parents, Mollie and Rufus, partly responsible for Jay's departure. But in her attempts to explain their thwarted passions, she finds all her assumptions about her own life are called into question. Then into this damaged family come two strangers - Oliver, a former faith healer, and Jemmy, a young woman devastated by the loss of a baby. Together they help to establish a partial peace - but at what cost?

'Intriguing, comforting and endearingly familiar' Katie Fforde 'The BBC's most downloaded radio show' The Guardian 'Incredible legacy' The BBC 'Longest running drama in the world' The i News 'Wonderfully nostalgic and comforting' Culture Fly It's 1941 and the war rumbles on. Nowhere is immune to the effects of war, not even Ambridge. But in England's favourite village, something else is occupying the residents... When a prominent villager dies, the main beneficiary's name is a mystery, and no one knows who is set to inherit the estate, cottage and all. The name is hidden within a locked box and the villagers much uncover the password to find out the name of the beneficiary. So when five people are each sent a packet of seeds, the mystery deepens - could the seeds be part of a clue? And can they all work together to unlock the mystery and to discover who is set to inherit? This is the perfect read for all Archers fans.

Culture in Camouflage aims to remap the history of British war culture by insisting on the centrality and importance of the literature of the Second World War. The book offers the first comprehensive account of the emergence of modern war culture, arguing that its exceptional forms and temporalities force us to reappraise British cultural modernity.
The book explores how writers like Ford Madox Ford, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, T.E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf, James Hanley, Rex Warner, Alexander Baron, Keith Douglas, Henry Green, and Graham Greene contested the dominant narratives of war projected by an enormously powerful and persuasive mass media and culture industry. Patrick Deer reads war literature as one element in an expanded cultural field, which also includes popular culture and mass communications, the productions of war planners and military historians, projections of new technologies of violence, the fantasies and theories of strategists, and the material culture of total war.
Modern war cultures, Deer contends, are defined by their drive to normalize conflict and war-making, by their struggle to colonize the entire wartime cultural field, and by their claim to monopolize representations and interpretation of the conflict. But the mobilization of cultural formations during wartime reveals, at times glaringly, the constitutive contradictions at the heart of modern ideas of culture. The Great War failed to produce a popular war culture on the home front, producing instead an extraordinary literature of protest, yet the strategists struggled to regain their oversight over both the enemy across no man's land, and the minds and bodies of their own mass conscript armies. The interwar years saw a massive effort to make strategic fantasies a reality; if the technology of imperial air power or mobile armoured warfare did not yet exist, culture could be mobilized to shore up the ramshackle war machine. During World War Two a fully fledged British war culture emerged triumphant in time of national crisis, offering the vision of a fully mobilized island fortress, a loyal empire, and a modernized war machine ready to wage a futuristic war of space and movement. This was the struggle that British World War Two writers confronted with extraordinary courage and creativity.

A man is found dead in an escape tunnel in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp. Did he die in an accidental collapse - or was this murder? Captain Henry `Cuckoo' Goyles, master tunneller and amateur detective, takes up the case. This classic locked-room mystery with a closed circle of suspects is woven together with a thrilling story of escape from the camp, as the Second World War nears its endgame and the British prisoners prepare to flee into the Italian countryside.

THE TULIP TEAROOMS is a heartwarming and poignant saga from Pam Evans, set in London just after the Second World War. Perfect for readers of Kitty Neale, Katie Flynn and Dilly Court. The Second World War is finally over when Lola Brown meets Harry Riggs at a dance. It is love at first sight but when Harry tells Lola that he is a policeman, her heart sinks. Lola's father is a petty criminal, and if Harry ever finds out and turns him in, it will destroy her family... Harry reluctantly accepts that Lola doesn't want to see him again, and eventually starts to find happiness without her. In the meantime, Lola encounters the eccentric Pickford sisters and sets about transforming their run-down tearooms in London's West End, only to find her own life transformed as well. Despite everything, Harry and Lola continue to feel drawn to each other, but the truth about Lola's family can't stay hidden for ever...

Jackdaws is an irresistible novel of the French Resistance, love, courage and revenge set in the Second War War.

A Failed Mission

Two weeks before D-Day, the French Resistance try to destroy a telephone exchange vital to Nazi communications. Heavily defended, the mission fails disastrously.

A Daring Plan

With invasion looming, Flick Clairet, a British secret agent, proposes a daring but perilous new plan. She, along with an all-female team – the Jackdaws – will infiltrate and neutralise the exchange before Allied Forces land in France.

A Race Against Time

However, unbeknownst to Flick, Rommel has assigned a brilliant spy-catcher – Dieter Franck – to crush the French Resistance. And now Franck is closing in . . .

It is the 1930s, and young John Wilkins has been taught to fly by his ex-Royal Flying Corps father. He longs to fly in battle, but his Christian beliefs bring him into a pastoral role. When conflict looms in the shape of World War II, he has to make a hard decision. Should he continue to shepherd the flock in his village church, or should he apply for a pilot's job in RAF Fighter Command, where the need for experienced pilots is growing? An absorbing story about a fictional character set in a factual historical setting.

From Shanghai to WAke Island, the Corps was America's first line of defense as the winds of war exploded into the devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Now, the bestselling author of the acclaimed BROTHERHOOD OF WAR saga brings to life the men of the Marine Corps--their loves and their loyalties--as they steeled themselves for battle, and prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice...

In this quiet and devastating novel about the rise of fascism, Siggi Jepsen, incarcerated as a juvenile delinquent, is assigned to write a routine German lesson on the "The Joys of Duty." Overfamiliar with these joys, Siggi sets down his life since 1943, a decade earlier, when as a boy he watched his father, a constable, doggedly carry out orders from Berlin to stop a well-known Expressionist artist from painting and to seize all his "degenerate" work. Soon Siggi is stealing the paintings to keep them safe from his father. "I was trying to find out," Lenz says, "where the joys of duty could lead a people." Translated from the German by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins

**AS SEEN ON CHANNEL 4**

Discover Joseph Heller's hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it.

It’s the closing months of World War II and Yossarian has never been closer to death. Stationed in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, each flight mission introduces him to thousands of people determined to kill him.

But the enemy above is not Yossarian’s problem – it is his own army intent on keeping him airborne, and the maddening ‘Catch-22’ that allows for no possibility of escape.

‘The greatest satirical work in the English language’ Observer

A historical adventure chronicling the exploits of the Special Boat Squadron, the seaborne raiders who, by strength and guile, carried out World War Two's most daring covert operations. From this moment on, you and your men, you don't exist. Formed in the darkest hours of the Second World War, as nation after nation fell before the unstoppable Axis advance, the task of the SBS was to strike back at an enemy no army could meet in the field. Trained in sabotage and surveillance, the Special Boat Squadron raided deep behind enemy lines, sowing chaos and capturing much-needed intelligence. Soldiers, adventurers and rogues, their methods were unorthodox, their success rate unprecedented. Operation Anglo, 31 August 1942. Beneath the waves of the Mediterranean, HMS Traveller closes in on the coast of Rhodes. Aboard, eight SBS commandos check their weapons as they prepare to infiltrate and sabotage two Axis bomber fields. Only two of the eight commandos will make it back to alive. Ex-Black Watch Sgt Jim Hunter will be one of the lucky ones, but what he will face next will make Operation Anglo look like a cakewalk. Reviewers on Iain Gale: 'A fast fit fighting yarn that transports you to the deadly hillsides of wartime Crete.' Quentin Letts on SBS 'A powerful novel of men at war. A triumph.' Bernard Cornwell on Four Days in June 'Very exciting.' Daily Telegraph on the Jack Steele series

"Simply miraculous... As her saga becomes ever more spellbinding, so does the reader's astonishment at the magic she creates. This is a story about the triumph of the human spirit over bigotry, intolerance and cruelty, and at the center of The Book of Harlan is the restorative force that is music." - Washington Post Harlan and his best friend are invited to perform at a popular cabaret in the Parisian enclave of Montmartre, but after the City of Light falls under Nazi occupation, they are thrown into Buchenwald-the notorious concentration camp in Weimar, Germany-irreparably changing the course of Harlan's life.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, an enthralling historical saga that recreates the danger, romance, and sacrifice of an era and brings to life one courageous, passionate American—Mildred Fish Harnack—and her circle of women friends who waged a clandestine battle against Hitler in Nazi Berlin.

After Wisconsin graduate student Mildred Fish marries brilliant German economist Arvid Harnack, she accompanies him to his German homeland, where a promising future awaits. In the thriving intellectual culture of 1930s Berlin, the newlyweds create a rich new life filled with love, friendships, and rewarding work—but the rise of a malevolent new political faction inexorably changes their fate.

As Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party wield violence and lies to seize power, Mildred, Arvid, and their friends resolve to resist. Mildred gathers intelligence for her American contacts, including Martha Dodd, the vivacious and very modern daughter of the US ambassador. Her German friends, aspiring author Greta Kuckoff and literature student Sara Weitz, risk their lives to collect information from journalists, military officers, and officials within the highest levels of the Nazi regime.

For years, Mildred’s network stealthily fights to bring down the Third Reich from within. But when Nazi radio operatives detect an errant Russian signal, the Harnack resistance cell is exposed, with fatal consequences.

Inspired by actual events, Resistance Women is an enthralling, unforgettable story of ordinary people determined to resist the rise of evil, sacrificing their own lives and liberty to fight injustice and defend the oppressed.

Will the coming war divide them . . . ? For as long as she can remember Peggy O'Shea has been expected to work at the family dairy, look after her younger siblings, and eventually marry cow-keeper Martin Gallagher. And that's the way it has predictably gone, apart from one glorious summer when at the age of eight she meets handsome Anthony Giardano. But there's bad blood between the Irish O'Sheas and the Italian Giardanos, so perhaps for the sake of both of their families, it's a good thing when Anthony suddenly disappears. Ten years later at the start of the war, Peggy bumps into Anthony again. But as they begin to rekindle their friendship, Italy joins forces with Germany and Liverpool turns on its Italian residents overnight, making any relationship between Peggy and Anthony impossible . . . The Girl From Liverpool is a gritty World War Two historical saga from Elizabeth Morton, acclaimed author of Angel of Liverpool.

A heart-warming wartime story of love and friendship, from the author of the award-winning THE MOTHER'S DAY CLUB Norfolk, 1944 Land Girls, Phylly and Gracie, have become the best of friends - but war work is never easy at Catchetts Farm . . . Poor Gracie wakes each morning worrying about whether she'll ever get to see her airman husband again. And Phylly is trying - and failing - to encourage Jimmy, an evacuee from London, to open up about his heartbreaking past. When they meet Edwin, a handsome airman from the American Airforce, it soon becomes clear that Jimmy isn't the only one playing his cards close to his chest. But what could Edwin wish to hide from the girls? Being a Land Girl means back-breaking work in all weathers, and the girls are determined want to do their bit to support the war effort. As their hardship grows, will the friendship between Phylly and Gracie be strong enough to see them through? A Home from Home is the perfect wartime family saga, filled with heart-warming friendships and a courageous make-do-and-mend attitude. Perfect for fans of Donna Douglas and Elaine Everest. Readers LOVE Rosie Hendry: 'I highly recommend this book and give it a well-deserved five stars' 'It's books like this that remind me why I love reading . . . I can't wait to read more from Rosie Hendry' 'Fabulous - can't wait to read the next book' 'Beautifully written . . . Thank you to Rosie Hendry for writing this five-star book' 'A fantastic book - highly recommended'