September 1940: the height of the Blitz. The Savoy Hotel boasts London's strongest air raid shelter with all the luxury expected from one of the capital's most prestigious hotels. It prompts the arrival of a disgruntled crowd from the East End, demanding they be allowed entry and respite from the endless bombing raids. They are given permission to enter and are stunned by the opulence that greets them. The all-clear sounds the next morning and London comes slowly back to life, but not everyone can dust themselves down and carry on. One of the hotel's guests has been discovered dead, stabbed in the back. Detective Chief Inspector Coburg and Sergeant Lampson are called in and the finger of suspicion falls firmly upon the East Londoners, but not everything is as it seems in these sumptuous surroundings.

Channel to Freedom, is the third part of the fictional trilogy, describing the role and operations of a naval Special Forces unit, based on Tresco, in the Isles of Scilly. It describes the part played in World War 2, by this ultra-secret unit, from D-Day until the end of the war in Europe. So secret was the real-life flotilla, that news of it was not released, under the Official Secrets Act, until 1995. As the war moves to its climax, the Germans become ever more desperate to regain lost ground. In operations demanding the highest levels of courage and personal daring, Lieutenant-Commander Richard Tremayne's specialist experience is called upon, to counter new German threats. Advanced enemy technology, providing them with battle-field advantages over the Allies, becomes one of his major targets, set against impossible time-scales, and the most terrifying personal threat. Leading his highly trained team, he fights on land and at sea, ranging around Europe, from the Kattegat, to the east coast of Ireland and to Mediterranean islands, off Toulon, as well as his familiar battle-grounds of Brittany. Such covert operations, sometimes straying into neutral waters, place intense political pressures on Tremayne, demanding from him, the utmost sensitivity - as well as results.

The crescendo of war, a crushing blow, a path to redemption...Peacetime political machinations threaten Kelly Maguire's ambitions to be a Captain. But then war breaks out, and the world needs men who are willing to risk everything. As World War II explodes, and after a devastating loss in the Battle of Narvik, Maguire finds himself washed up at Dunkirk during the evacuation of 1940. Once more he must prove his worth. On the ocean, and the beaches, Kelly will fight for his country, and for the ones he loves. But, on the verge of true greatness after the Normandy landings, he is tasked with one final mission, one that could end his career... Back to Battle is an earth-shattering novel set at the heart of the bloodiest war ever fought.

'Miraculously right: catching precisely the tone of the relationship . . . thrilling' - The Times 'A must for all Wimsey lovers . . . an entertaining read' - Northern Echo It's 1940, and while the Second World War rages on, Harriet Vane - now Lady Peter Wimsey - has taken her children to safety in the country. But the war has followed them: glamorous RAF pilots and even more glamorous land-girls scandalise the villagers, and the blackout makes the night-time lanes as sinister as the back alleys of London. Then the village's first air raid practice ends with a very real body on the ground - and it's not a war casualty, but a case of plain, old-fashioned murder. And it's not long before a second body is found . . .

Originally published in 1949, Storm Below tells the story of a fictional Royal Canadian Navy ship and its crew. The adventure unfolds over six days of an escort run across the Atlantic Ocean to Newfoundland during the Second World War. The ship, the HMCS Riverford, is a composite of the vessels, mostly corvettes, that author Hugh Garner served on during his time in the Canadian navy, and the Canadian sailors whose experiences he relates are masterfully drawn from the crewmen he knew during his months at sea.

In his preface to Storm Below, his first novel, Garner says: "It takes all kinds to make a world, and it also takes all kinds to make a war -- or fight one after some of the others make it.... They his characters] are not even 'typical' sailors, if such exist. All I can say to justify them is that they are drawn in the image of hundreds who made up the Royal Canadian Navy. They do not need an apology -- they were out there, and we won."

Angelo, a private in Mussolini's 'ever-glorious' Italian army, may possess the virtues of love and an engaging innocence but he lacks the gift of courage. However, due to circumstances beyond his control, he ends up fighting not only for Italy but also for the British and German armies. With his patron the Count, the beautiful Lucrezia, the charming Annunziata, and the delightful Major Telfer, Angelo's fellow characters are drawn with humour, insight and sympathy, making the book a wittily satirical comment on the grossness and waste of war. Eric Linklater, who served with the Black Watch in Italy in World War II, is one of Scotland's most distinguished writers. In Private Angelo he has written a book which demonstrates that honour is not solely the preserve of the brave.

Liliana's beloved husband has been dead six months when she finds a roll of banknotes in a drawer with a note: "Treat yourself to something nice, love". The same morning, in her local cafe, she spies the headline on La Republica: two men have been shot and injured in Rome and it is suspected that Libya's Colonel Gadaffi is behind it. When she reads the name of one of the victims, Abrama Cattaneo, the last forty years of her life in England - not speaking Italian, never mentioning her Italian family - disappear in an instant.

She is transported back to her years in Italy and in Tripoli, and she realises that Cattaneo, a poet, is the nephew she last saw when he was a baby. Immediately she knows what she must do. She boards a place to Rome, where she plans to reclaim the life that she failed to have. Her real life.

Moving between past and present, to explore Liliana's years as a young woman in Tripoli under Italian occupation, The Fourth Shore shines a light on a forgotten period of brutal repression and once again shows that the emotionally crippling effects of war linger for decades after the fighting has stopped.

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But can the SAS distract the Nazis to allow airborne landings to go ahead? September 1944: in the wake of the successful 'Anvil' landings, the Allies plan airborne landings in the Orleans Gap. To 'soften' the enemy beforehand, they decide to drop a squadron of men and jeeps in Central France, to hit enemy positions to distract attention from the landings taking place elsewhere Operation Kipling begins when 46 jeeps and 107 well-armed SAS men from C Squadron are parachuted in with orders to establish a base and contact the Maquis - Frenchmen living in makeshift forest camps, conducting sabotage missions behind enemy lines. Even as they are setting up camp, the airborne landings are cancelled and the SAS ordered to conduct 'aggressive' patrolling. Over the coming weeks, C Squadron must carry out a succession of high risk night raids against the Germans, racing into occupied towns in jeeps, firing on the move, and racing out again: to continually harass the enemy and inflict heavy casualties. Or die trying.

A heart-warming story of friendship and family during the first Christmas of World War Two. Autumn 1939 and London prepares to evacuate its young. In No 5 Jubilee Street, Bermondsey, ten-year-old Connie is determined to show her parents that she's a brave girl and can look after her twin brother, Jessie. She won't cry, not while anyone's watching. In the crisp Yorkshire Dales, Connie and Jessie are billeted to a rambling vicarage. Kindly but chaotic, Reverend Braithwaite is determined to keep his London charges on the straight and narrow, but the twins soon find adventures of their own. As autumn turns to winter, Connie's dearest wish is that war will end and they will be home for Christmas. But this Christmas Eve there will be an unexpected arrival... Praise for The Evacuee Christmas: 'A heart-warming tale of friendship and family' Woman

THE NINTH CLIFFEHAVEN NOVEL BY SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR ELLIE DEAN After the death of her parents in a bombing raid, Mary Jones discovers a secret in the pages of father's diaries. Her search for the truth brings her to Cliffehaven on the south coast. Here, she finds work at the Kodak factory, sifting through the Airgraphs which are being sent from all over the world by the men and women in the armed forces, and by their loved ones. All the while she longs for news of her own sweetheart, fighting in Europe. With the help of Peggy Reilly and her family at Beach View Boarding House Mary starts to build a new life for herself. But events that happened eighteen years before still echo, and should a promise Peggy made then be broken, it will have a devastating affect not only on Mary, but them all... A fabulous, heart-warming Second World War novel in Ellie Dean's bestselling Cliffehaven series (previously called the Beach View Boarding House series).

"I have read few autobiographies more extraordinary . . . Astonishing" OBSERVER "A classic. I preferred it to Primo Levi's If This is a Man" EDWARD WILSON "A child's clear-eyed journey to hell" ANNE SEBBA This is a story of a young boy's journey from a sleepy provincial town in Hungary during the Second World War to the concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen. After a winter in Bergen-Belsen where his father died, he and his mother were liberated by the Americans outside a small German village, and handed over to the Red Army. They escaped from the Russians, and travelled, hiding on a goods train, through Prague to Budapest. Unlike other books dealing with this period, this is not a Holocaust story, but a child's recollection of a journey full of surprise, excitement, bereavement and terror. Yet this remains a testimony of survival, overcoming obstacles which to adults may seem insurmountable but to a child were just part of an adventure and, ultimately, recovery. After having established a career in the West, the author decided to revisit the stages on his earlier journeys, reliving the past through the perspective of the present. Along the way, ghosts from the past are finally laid to rest by the kindness of new friends. With an introduction by Lisa Appignanesi

When a modern woman inherits a Parisian apartment undisturbed since WWII, she discovers that it may hold the key to unraveling her cold great-grandmother's secret life -- a past of sacrifice during a mission to protect those she loved.

1940, Paris
As the heiress to a wealthy Parisian family, Lise Allard grows up immensely privileged, but barely knowing her absentee parents. Instead, she finds her own sense of family among a close circle of friends. Yet when war breaks out and Paris is occupied, she sees her friends taken away one by one. Heartbroken, Lise vows that she will do whatever it takes to help defeat the Germans.

2017, Paris
When Aurelia Leclaire's great-grandmother passes away, the last thing Aurelia expects to inherit is a tiny Paris apartment untouched for over half of a century. But even more shocking is the massive collection of priceless jewelry and fine art secreted inside. When she discovers an unknown painting cherished by Lise, she realizes that it may be the key to unlocking her great-grandmother's story.

Art appraiser Gabriel Seymour is contacted by a woman who claims to have found a painting by his great-great-grandfather. While unearthing its story, Gabriel and Aurelia discover a hidden cache of weapons, encrypted letters, and faded passport photos revealing intertwining family connections and betrayals from the past.

In the Full Light of the Sun follows the fortunes of three Berliners caught up in a devastating scandal of 1930s' Germany. It tells the story of Emmeline, a wayward, young art student; Julius, an anxious, middle-aged art expert; and a mysterious art dealer named Rachmann who are at the heart of Weimar Berlin at its hedonistic, politically turbulent apogee and are whipped up into excitement over the surprising discovery of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent van Gogh. Based on a true story, unfolding through the subsequent rise of Hitler and the Nazis, this gripping tale is about beauty and justice, and the truth that may be found when our most treasured beliefs are revealed as illusions. Brilliant on authenticity, vanity and self-delusion, it is a novel for our times.

Set on an island in the South Pacific during the final days of World War II, when the tide has turned against Japan and the war has unmistakably become one of attrition, "The Breaking Jewel" offers a rare depiction of the Pacific War from the Japanese side and captures the essence of Japan's doomed imperial aims. The novel opens as a small force of Japanese soldiers prepares to defend a tiny and ultimately insignificant island from a full-scale assault by American forces. Its story centers on squad leader Nakamura, who resists the Americans to the end, as he and his comrades grapple with the idea of "gyokusai" (translated as "the breaking jewel" or the "pulverization of the gem"), the patriotic act of mass suicide in defense of the homeland.

Well known for his antiestablishment and antiwar sentiments, Makuto Oda gradually and subtly develops a powerful critique of the war and the racialist imperial aims that proved Japan's undoing.