How could I resist a book with such an unusual title set on an island about which I know nothing (cows, right?) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a charming novel of 1946 London and Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands. London based writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a ... [Continue Reading]
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Geraldine Books, the author of March and Year of Wonders, has written another inspired work of historical fiction. People of the Book is the story of an ancient Hebrew manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, and the book’s conservator, Hanna Heath. The novel alternates between the dramatic ... [Continue Reading]
The Crown in Crisis, Countdown to the Abdication by Alexander Larman
I was disappointed in The Crown in Crisis, Countdown to the Abdication, a day-by-day account of the last month of King Edward VIII’s reign. The author claims to have unearthed unseen archival material and interviews about the crisis in which the king renounces the throne for the woman he loves, the ... [Continue Reading]
When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew… By Hendrika de Vries
A WWII Memoir When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew… is a moving memoir about the author’s childhood in Amsterdam, during and in the immediate aftermath of the war. Although the Germans invaded and occupied the Netherlands in 1940, little Hendrika, born in 1937, was too young to ... [Continue Reading]
The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
Post-war England In 1945, the tiny village of Chawton is coping with the after effects of WWII. Its most famous resident, Jane Austen, who lived in an estate cottage belonging to her brother Edward Knight, is a faint and increasingly diminishing presence. Recognizing the important of the ... [Continue Reading]
Madame Fourcade’s Secret War by Lynne Olson
I have read almost all of Lynne Olson’s World War II era nonfiction books. Although I have my favorites, Citizens of London and Troublesome Young Men, they are all excellent. Her latest, Madam Fourcade’s Secret War, is a welcome addition to the lineup. It may not topple my current favorites, but ... [Continue Reading]
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
Given the enormous number of Churchill biographies, especially of the war years, one might wonder about the necessity of yet another. Eric Larson, author of narrative nonfiction bestsellers, The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of the Beasts, takes the vast mountain of Churchill material ... [Continue Reading]
The Cut-Out Girl by Bart van Es
In 2014, Bart van Es, a professor of English Literature at Oxford University, visits his father’s foster sister, Lien, in Amsterdam. Lien is one of the Holocaust’s “hideaway” children, and the Van Es family sheltered her during the war years. After the war, Lien joined the Van Es family ... [Continue Reading]
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
A romance set in the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau sounds both improbable and rather insensitive, but The Tattooist of Auschwitz is neither. Based on the true story of Lale and Gita Sokolov, Slovakian Jews who meet at Auschwitz, the novel shows the day-to-day life of the camps in ... [Continue Reading]
The Spies of Shilling Lane by Jennifer Ryan
The Spies of Shilling Lane is another British World War Two era novel from the author of the best-seller The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir. For twenty years, the bossy Mrs. Braithwaite reigned supreme over the village of Ashcombe. But after The Divorce, her unwilling subjects turned on her. ... [Continue Reading]