The Only Woman in the Room/ Marie Benedict/ 243 pgs

This is a fictionalization of the early life of Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr. Hedy was born in Austria to wealthy Jewish parents, though the family didn't practice the religion. Hedy was universally recognized as beautiful. The novel details her marriage to a older, wealthy arms manufacturer who had close ties to the Austrian government as well as Italy's Mussolini. Hedy was treated as a trophy wife but she was actually quite intelligent and learned a lot from those who came to meet with her husband. After a few years she was able to escape her controlling, abusive husband and she made her way to the US where she became a well-known actress. Lesser known, she was a brilliant inventor whose idea for a more accurately controlled torpedo firing system was shot down by the Navy. This technology was later used to create wi-fi. A fascinating look at a woman who was only seen for her beauty, not her brains.

Thriver / Mendel Rosenberg / 79 pages

What drew me to this book is that the author lived in St. Louis when he wrote this book.  Mendel Rosenberg lived with his family in Lithuania.  When the Germans invaded Lithuania in World War II the Rosenberg family was forced to move to the ghetto created for Jews in 1941.  Mendel was 14 years old at the time. Eventually the family is transferred to concentration camps.  Mendel's father, grandmother, and brother do not survive the war.  Only Mendel and his mother survive.  The author does a good job telling his story of his life surviving WW II and what he did after the war.

Escape From Paris / Stephen Harding / 206 pages

This is the true story of a small group of downed American aviators in World War II who are hidden and guided out of Nazi occupied France by the French resistance fighters.  The story specifically focuses on American Joe Cornwall and the daughter of the family sheltering him, Yvette Morin.  Yvette and her parents lived and worked at the Hotel des Invalides, a complex of buildings which includes the tomb of Napoleon.  The Morin family with the help of other resistance fighters were able to smuggle in , hide, and help downed Allied flyers escape Nazi France.  Joe Cornwall spent more time with the Morin family due to unexpected circumstances which allowed time for Yvette and Joe to fall in love.  By the time Joe is able to escape he and Yvette are engaged.  Shortly after Joe gets out of France Yvette and her parents are arrested by the Nazis for their resistance activities.  The book follows the story of what happened to Yvette and Joe during the rest of the war and after WWII ends.

The Prisoners of Breendonk / James M. Deem / 320 pages

This is the story of  Breendonk, a small concentration camp in Antwerp, Belgium.  I had never heard of this camp in the many books I have read about World War II, so it caught my attention.  It is well researched and written.  It is also well documented with many pictures, drawings, and archives that helped to follow the story of the many people who were imprisoned at this camp.  This book helps document the history of World War II that must not be forgotten.

Skeletons at the Feast / Chris Bohjalian / 360 pages

This story takes place in January 1945 in the last few months of World War II.  It tells the story of a Prussian family trying to evacuate from their home near the Russian front to Germany to reach the British and American lines.  With them is Callum, a Scottish prisoner of war who has been assigned to work on their farm.  Anna is the family's eighteen year old daughter.  Callum and Anna have fallen in love.  Soon after the family leaves home the father and son leave to join the German fight against the Russians.  That leaves Anna, her mother, and little brother to make their way on their own.  Soon they are joined by Manfred, a twenty-six year old Wehrmacht corporal.  Unknown by the family Manfred is really Uri Singer, a Jew who escaped from a train bound for Auschwitz.  The story is intense and gives the reader the feeling of how the experience must have felt.

Wunderland / Jennifer Cody Epstein / 367 pages

This is a story of three women, Renate Baur, Ilse von Fisher, and Ilse's daughter Ava.  The story is told from Germany in the 1930s and 1940s to the United States in the 1970s to 1989.  Ilse and Renate are close childhood friends growing up in Germany in the 1930s when thew Nazis were coming into power.  Their friendship is split when it is revealed that Renate's father is Jewish.  The girls grow apart as their lives take different paths.  The reader follows Ilse as she becomes part of the Nazi youth movement and Renate as she and her family are forced to change how they live with the continuous rules for the Jews from the Nazi party.  Ilse and Renate continue to cross paths and there are consequences to each of their lives.  Renate is the only member of her family able to get out of Germany when her uncle in the United States sponsors her to immigrate.  Fast forward to the end of the war and Ilse is picking up her daughter, Ava, from a German orphanage.  The story is told from the perspective of each of the women jumping around in the different time periods.  The lives of these three women are intertwined to the very end of the story.  For me it was a fascinating book that told a World War II story from different perspectives.

The Spies of Shilling Lane / Jennifer Ryan / 351 pages

This is a World War II story that takes place in England.  It is written with a lighter tone and humorous characters.  Mrs. Braithwaite is a recently divorced woman in a small English village.  Her husband has divorced her and moved away to marry a younger woman.  This has caused the village to shun her and she is forced out as the leader of their local Women's Voluntary Service.  Mrs. Braithwaite is also afraid that a family secret will be revealed.  She travels to London to track down her only child, Betty, to tell her the secret before it is revealed.  Upon her arrival in London she learns that her daughter is missing.  With the reluctant help of Betty's landlord, Mr. Norris, Mrs. Braithwaite sets out to find her daughter.  Their escapades in the process of tracking down Betty changes both Mrs. Braithwaite and Mr. Norris.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz / Heather Morris / 254 pages

Lale Sokolov is a young Jewish man who has been sent to Auschwitz in 1942.  Because of his fluency in several languages he is given the job of tattooing numbers on incoming prisoners.  This job gives him more freedoms that he uses to help people.  It is here that he meets the woman he falls in love with, Gita.  This book is based on the true story of Lale Sokolov and the love of his life, Gita.  It gives the reader insight to how some prisoners of concentration camps managed to survive their grueling treatment and conditions.

The Lost Wife / Alyson Richman / 358 pages

Josef, a young man studying medicine, and Lenka, a young art student, meet and fall in love and marry in Prague shortly before World War II.  Both are Jewish.  Josef comes from a wealthy family that is able to secure passage to the United States shortly after the Nazis invade.  Lenka makes the decision to stay behind with her family and hopefully reunite safely with her husband.  The chapters alternate from Josef's and Lenka's perspectives.  Lenka's story takes us through her family's experience of being in the concentration camps.

The Mistress of the Ritz / Melanie Benjamin / 369 pages

This is an historical fiction book based on real people and events during World War II in France.  Claude Auzello is the director of the Ritz Hotel in Paris.  He and his wife, Blanche, live at the hotel.  The Ritz is host to many famous guests such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coco Channel, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor until 1940 when Germany marches into Paris and sets up their headquarters at the Ritz. Now the Auzellos, the mistress and master of the Ritz, have a new and dangerous reality in their lives.  I was attracted to this book because it is based on true events and people.  It was suspenseful told the story of a turbulent time very well.

Annelies / David R. Gillham / 402 pages

What an intriguing book!!  We all know the story of Anne Frank.  David Gillham takes this part of history and writes a "What if ?" novel.  His premise is what if Anne Frank survived the death camp?  The author did a wonderful job of telling this story.  It took him several years to do the research to write this novel.  The first part of the book follows the story we know of Anne Frank.  But then the author has Anne surviving the death camp.  Anne is reunited with her father, Otto, in postwar Amsterdam.  The author includes the actual people that we know from Anne's story, but also creates a few characters to tell this story.  The reader follows Anne as she struggles with survival guilt and trying to pick up her life. Reading this book made me feel like I was actually in postwar Amsterdam.  Excellent writing and research!

The Winter Guest / Pam Jenoff / 341 pages

The Winter Guest is a fiction World War II story told in the present and the past.  Twin eighteen year old sisters are raising their three young siblings in Nazi occupied Poland.  The children's father is dead and their mother is in a hospital after a mental breakdown.  An American plane crashes outside the village.  Helena, one of the twins, discovers an injured American paratrooper, Sam, from the plane in the woods while returning from visiting her mother in the hospital.  Helena manages to get the soldier into an abandoned chapel.  She continues to nurse him without telling her sister, Ruth.  Soon Sam and Helena fall in love and Helena helps Sam make contact with the Resistance to escape the Nazis.  The family's mother dies and family secrets are discovered that puts them in danger.  Sam and Helena make plans for the family to flee Poland.  Not everyone survives.

The Light Over London / Julia Kelly / 290 pages

This is a story of two women in two time periods in England.  Cara Hargraves is an apprentice antiques dealer who is recently divorced.  She finds a diary in an antique chest written during World War II by a woman only listed as "Louise".  With the help of her new neighbor, Liam, Cara tires to track down the author of the diary so she can return it to her.  Louise Keene is a young woman living with her parents in a small village in England during World War II.  She works in a small grocery shop.  Her outgoing cousin, Kate, talks Louise into attending a dance two villages over.  Louise meets a dashing RAF pilot, Paul Bolton, at the dance.  Paul is soon courting Louise before he is deployed without warning.  Soon after Louise joins the women's auxiliary branch of the British army.  After training she is assigned to an anti-aircraft gun unit as a gunner girl in London.  Louise's diary records her love story with Paul until it abruptly stops before the war ends with no answers to what happens to Louise and Paul.

City of Women / David R. Gillham / 392 pages

This novel takes place in 1943 at the height of World War II in Berlin, Germany.  It tells a story of survival in a city of mostly women in Nazi Germany.  Sigrid Schroder is a German soldier's wife living with her mother-in-law.  She works as a stenographer in an office.  Sigrid becomes involved with two lovers, one Jewish and one a wounded German officer.  She is drawn into the reality of what is happening in Germany with the Jewish people.  Suddenly her wounded husband returns home.  She is torn between protecting her family and continuing to help the Jewish people in hiding.  This book is intense and kept me on the edge.  It gave me a feel for what life was like in Nazi Germany as a civilian.

The General's Women / Susan Wittig Albert / 387 pages

This book is the fictional account of the historical affair General Dwight D. Eisenhower had with an Irish woman, Kate Sommersby, while he was leading the armed forces in Europe during World War II. Kate was assigned to be his driver when he went over to Europe and she was with him throughout the war.  I had read about this relation ship in my many studies of American history.  It always intrigued me.  The Eisenhower family did a lot to cover up this relationship because of the political interests and future of Dwight Eisenhower.  The author tell the story through the viewpoints of Dwight, Kay, and Dwight's wife, Maime.  I found the book interesting and I learned more about Kate Sommersby.

Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope / Wendy Holden / 368 pages

Born Survivors tells the story of three young Jewish women who gave birth around the same time in 1945.  The women did not know about each other, but were together at Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Poland  in 1944.  They were later sent to the death camp Mauthausen in Austira.  The women managed to conceal their pregnancies. It was nearing the end of the war and the kindness of strangers, which included civilians and guards, helped these women and their babies survive.  Sixty-five years later the three "miracle babies" meet for the first time at Mauthausen for the anniversary of the Americans liberating the camp.  The author does a good job telling the individual stories of each woman.  It is absolutely astounding that these women were able to give birth and for their babies to survive.

Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich / Joachim C. Fest / 179 pages

This book tells the story of the last few days of Adolf Hitler's life which he spent in his Berlin bunker.  It also gives a background of how Hitler came into power and then contrasts that with where he is during the last days of his life.  The difference is striking.  There are many photos included.  If you are interested in World War II history this is a good book to read. 

Beware this Boy / Maureen Jennings / 300 pages

This book is the second in a series of Tom Tyler mysteries by this author.  The story takes place in England during World War II.  Tom Tyler is a detective in Whitchurch, a small town in England.  He is called to investigate a fatal explosion in a munitions factory located in nearby Birmingham.  Tyler tries to determine if the explosion was accidental or sabotage.  The author does an excellent job making the reader feel as if they are in the story experiencing what it was like to live during the bombing of England during the war.  Tyler solves the case, but loose ends are not tied up.  Perhaps to live on in future books?

The Reckoning / John Grisham / 420 pages

John Grisham once again delivers a riveting novel with a gripping story line and well developed characters.  Pete Banning is a decorated World War II hero from Clanton, Mississippi.  His family is a prominent family in the town and owns a large farm that produces cotton.  Pete is married to Liza and they have two children; a son, Joel, and a daughter, Stella.  October 1946 Pete goes to the Methodist church in town of which his family are members, and shoots and kills the pastor, Dexter Bell.  Pete is arrested and goes on trial for the murder all the while not saying why he did it.  The story covers the courtship of Pete and Liza, Pete's fighting in the war, and the repercussions of the murder of Dexter Bell.

Code Girls / Liza Mundy / 416 pages

Code Girls is the story of how over 10,000 American women were recruited by the U. S. Army and Navy as code breakers during World War II.  This part of our fight in World War II has not been written about in great detail, but this author does a good job telling the story in detail with her extensive research.  The women were housed and worked in facilities in Washington, D. C. and Dayton, Ohio.  The women were ordered to never reveal the details of their wartime work, an oath they followed for the rest of their lives.  This book shows us how much these women contributed to helping our country fight the war.  Sometimes there is a lot of detail about codes, however the book was fascinating if you enjoy learning about our history.