Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists: World War II & The Holocaust

Grace Steele and Eliza Jones may be from completely different backgrounds, but when it comes to the army, specifically the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, they are both starting from the same level. Not only will they be among the first class of female officers the army has even seen, they are also the first Black women allowed to serve.
(Description from Amazon)

It's September 1944, and the US is poised to launch Operation Frantic, a shuttle bombing mission to be conducted by American aircraft based in Great Britain, southern Italy, and three Soviet airfields in the Ukraine. Tensions are already high between the American and Russian allies when two intelligence agents-one Soviet, one American-are found dead at Poltava, one of the Ukrainian bases.
(Description from catalog)

A Malayan mother becomes an unlikely spy for the invading Japanese forces during WWII—causing shocking consequences to rain upon her community and family.
(Description from NoveList)

Wealthy, beautiful Naneé was born with a spirit of adventure that transcends her Midwestern roots. For her, learning to fly is freedom. When German tanks roll across the border and into Paris, this woman with an adorable dog and a generous heart joins the resistance. Known as the Postmistress because she delivers information to those in hiding, Naneé uses her charms and skill to house the hunted and deliver them to safety.
(Description from Amazon)

Stripped of her family's privileges by the Nazi party in 1939 Berlin, Hannah Rosenthal forges a pact that she will remain true to her best friend, Leo, before embarking on a refugee ship bound for Havana, where rumors of a deadly plot force her to make an impossible choice. (Description from NoveList.)

March 1945: After commanding destroyers in the Pacific, Captain Wolfe Bowen is in Washington, DC, working for the Chief of Naval Operations. Bowen receives an urgent call about a captured German U-boat in Portsmouth, NH. The presence of two Japanese civilians and the U-boat's size grab Bowen’s attention. After FDR's death, Truman, unaware of the Manhattan Project, assigns Bowen to discover if Japan can produce an atomic weapon.
(Description from NoveList)

Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white for him and for his sweetheart, Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Determined to use her math skills on the home front, Sarah is recruited to Washington, DC, into the covert field of code breaking. Now, the lives of the two young lovers are about to inadvertently collide in one of the most shocking acts of World War II.
(Description from NoveList)

A dual narrative WWII historical novel about love, war, family, and loyalty, about two women, generations apart, who find themselves connected by a mysterious and valuable bottle of wine that was stolen by the Nazis.
(Description from catalog)

In 1940, a prisoner in the Warsaw Ghetto, Adam Paskow joins a secret group of archivists working to preserve the truth of what is happening inside these walls, which leads to unexpected love, but when he discovers a possible escape from the Ghetto, he is faced with an unbearable choice.
(Description from NoveList)

Chicago, 1944: twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from a California concentration camp where they have been "interned" by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The life the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone and they are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier as a forerunner of the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family's reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose's death a suicide, in part because the coroner's examination revealed Rose had recently had an abortion. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life, nor can she imagine Rose carelessly getting pregnant.
(Description from catalog)

1940, Emilia Romagna. Lili and Esti have been best friends since meeting at the University of Ferrara. Mussolini's Racial Laws have deemed Lili and Esti descendants of an 'inferior' Jewish race, but life somehow goes on--until Germany invades northern Italy, and the friends find themselves in occupied territory.
(Description from NoveList)

Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace at a thrift shop. She is certain she has seen it before and that it holds the key to the death of her friend Franny during the war. Following clues to Paris, Louise discovers the dark history of Levitan - a department store that served as a Nazi prison. Louise races to find the connection between the necklace, the department store, and Franny’s death, but nothing is as it seems.
(Description from NoveList)

In 2016, grieving Mari Starwood visits Martha’s Vineyard and uncovers a surprising connection to the Smith sisters, who, during World War II, balanced family struggles, romance, and whispers of espionage while running a farm and forming a transformative book club.
(Description from NoveList)

An international best-seller based on the true story of an Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor traces the experiences of a Jewish Slovakian who uses his position as a concentration-camp tattooist to secure food for his fellow prisoners. (Description from NoveList)

Joining the elite Bletchley Park codebreaking team during World War II, three women from very different walks of life uncover a spy's dangerous agenda years later against the backdrop of the royal wedding of Elizabeth and Philip.
(Description from catalog)

A mother who goes into hiding when Nazis begin arresting Jewish citizens in Poland considers an impossible choice while struggling to keep her 5-year-old daughter, a musical prodigy, from being overheard. (Description from NoveList.)

A twisting, sophisticated World War II novel following a spy who goes undercover as a part of MI5. But in chasing the secrets of others, how much will she lose of herself?
(Description from catalog)

January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa offers luxury in West Virginia.General manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff to offer luxury to Nazis.
(Description from NoveList)

"One of a group of women working as welders in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Rose Arensberg has fallen in love with a disabled veteran while awaiting the return of her husband, Sam, a soldier in the American army serving in Europe. As we follow the bittersweet, heartbreaking stories of Rose and her fellow Rosie-the-Riveters, we're immersed in the day-to-day challenges of life on the home front as seen through the eyes of these resilient women, as well as through the eyes of Eleanor, Rose's impressionable young daughter, and Ruth, the German Jewish refugee Rose has taken into their home. Ruth's desperate attempt to exorcise the nightmare of growing up in pre-war Nazi Germany takes her into the world of professional women wrestlers--with devastating consequences. And Sam's encounters with the horrors of a liberated concentration camp follow him home to Brooklyn in the form of terrifying flashbacks that will leave him scarred forever."-- Provided by publisher.

"Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy began World War II with torpedo bombers that could devastate enemy warships and merchantmen at will. Britain's Royal Navy squadrons went to war equipped with the Fairey Swordfish. A biplane torpedo bomber in an age of monoplanes, the Swordfish was underpowered and under-gunned; an obsolete museum piece, an embarrassment. Its crews fully expected to be shot from the skies. Instead, they flew the ancient 'Stringbag' into legend."-- Provided by publisher.