Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in World War II & Holocaust

1914: Sixteen-year-old Etterly, running from something, hides inside the trunk of a tree and disappears. The police search but find no trace. Her family and friends wrack their brains but come up with nothing. And so slowly life returns to normal. The hole in the tree is boarded up, and the village of Sackwater moves on. Only Etterly's best friend, Betty, clings to hope, insisting she can hear her friend calling for help. 1940: A skeleton is discovered buried in the woods....

Though war rages across mainland Europe and London is strafed by German aircraft, the little village of Pipley in Hertfordshire bustles along much as it always has. Adrift since her best friend, George, joined the Royal Air Force, 22-year-old Olive Bright fills her days by helping at her father's veterinary practice and tending to her beloved racing pigeons. Desperate to do her bit, Olive hopes that the National Pigeon Service will enlist Bright Lofts' expertise and use their highly trained birds to deliver critical, coded messages for His Majesty's Forces. 

Claudia Hampton - beautiful, famous, independent, dying. But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world...and in the process, my own'. And it is her story, from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. But Claudia's life is entwined with others, and she must allow those who knew her, loved her, the chance to speak. There is Gordon, brother and adversary; Jasper, her untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool conventional daughter; and then there is Tom, her one great love.

Left an orphan, five-year-old Rosie Harris is found and raised by Maria, a Romany gypsy. Life on the road is hard, but the little girl soon feels one of the tribe with the travelers. As she grows older, Rosie realises she has 'second sight' and is able to read people's palms and see into their futures. Needing to make a living of her own, she befriends the canal folk, known as the 'cut-rats' traversing the Black Country waterways with their cargo, and so offers readings to anyone who can pay. Pursued by Jake Harding, Rosie instead finds herself falling in love with a married man.

The women of Mulberry Lane anxiously wait for news. Peggy doesn’t know if she’ll ever again see Able, the American father of her twins, while a very odd letter from estranged husband, Laurie, threatens to set the cat among the pigeons. Rose can’t stop loving Jimmy, while Tom can’t stop loving her. Will Gordon ever again be the man he once was? Can he be a proper husband to Maureen, and if he can’t, what will become of their marriage?

May 1942. Thousands of American GIs are stationed across eastern England building airfields to bomb Germany. Cambridge is a 'liberty town' - a hot spot for 'Yanks' on leave. DI Eden Brooke is called to the aerodrome five miles east of the city when the remains of an airman, identified by his dog...

Hetty Heinrich is a young girl growing up under Nazi rule. With an SS Officer father, a brother in the Luftwaffe and a member of the BDM, Hetty is the epitome of a perfect German child. But Walter changes everything. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, perfect-in-every-way Walter. The boy who saved her life. A Jew. As she falls more and more in love with a man who is against all she has been taught, Hetty begins to question everything. Will the steady march of dark forces destroy their world, or can love ultimately triumph?

November 1944. A German rocket strikes London and five young lives are atomised in an instant. November 1944. That rocket never lands. A single second in time is altered and five young lives go on - to experience all the unimaginable changes of the 20th century. Because maybe there are always other futures. Other chances.

Since the house was built in 1810, the Danes have always lived at Woodspring. Over the generations it has given them shelter, solace and joy. War brings change, and the next three generations of the family will lead very different lives, at home and abroad. Peace is shattered, pain is unavoidable, loves are found and lost, but Woodspring is constant, and will always draw them back...

February, 1944. A bitter winter grips occupied France, where Marc Reece leads a circuit of British agents risking their lives in order to sabotage the German war effort from within. But Reece has a second mission, secret even from his fellow agents - including Charlotte, the woman with whom he has ill-advisedly fallen in love. He must secure a document identifying a German spy at the heart of British intelligence. The fate of the Allied forces on D-Day is in his hands. 

New York, present day: On a whim, Juno Lambert buys a 1931 Underwood typewriter that once belonged to celebrated journalist Cordelia Capel. Within its case she discovers an unfinished novel, igniting a transatlantic journey to fill the gaps in the story of Cordelia and her sister and the secret that lies between them. Europe, 1936: Cordelia's socialite sister Irene marries a German industrialist who whisks her away to Berlin. Cordelia, feistier and more intellectual than Irene, gets a job at a newspaper in Paris, pursuing the journalism career she cherishes.

France, 1943. Forced to flee war ravaged Poland, Sara and her parents are offered refuge in a beautiful but dilapidated house in the French Alps. It seems the perfect hideaway, despite haunting traces of the previous occupants who left in haste. But shadows soon fall over Sara's blissful summer and her blossoming romance with local villager Alain. As the Nazis close in, the family is forced to make a harrowing choice that could drive them apart forever, while Sara's own bid for freedom risks several lives.

Calliope Adham—young, strong-willed, and recently widowed—is schoolmistress in the village of Molyvos when Hitler's army invades Greece in 1941. Well-read and linguistically gifted, she is recruited by the Germans to act as their liaison officer. It is the beginning of a personal and national saga that will last for several decades. Calliope's wartime duties bring her into close contact with Lieutenant Lorenz Umbreit, the Wehrmacht commander. The schoolmistress is an active member of the Greek Resistance, yet her friendship with the German blossoms against all odds.

North Yorkshire, September 1940. It's a year since war was first announced and the dangers are becoming all too real for Rosina Calvert-Lazenby and her courageous daughters. When Raven Hall is requisitioned by the army, Rosina must do all she can to protect her family home from the rowdy troops. After Rosina's burgeoning relationship with young sergeant Harry is interrupted as he's posted abroad, the arrival of an older officer who takes a keen interest in her could also spell trouble.

Manchester, 1936 Fascism looms in Europe, and Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts are on the rise. Meanwhile, aspiring artist Rose is drawn to an unlikely stranger, unaware her future is about to be caught up in the growing storm. Facing straitened circumstances, following the death of their clergyman...

1941. The midst of the Blitz. Bombs are raining down on the city. In one terrifying moment, trainee nurse Pippa Luscombe’s life is turned upside-down when her hospital takes a direct hit. As Pippa comes to terms with the full extent of the tragedy, she must pick up the pieces of her life. But the incident has left lasting scars. She determines to dedicate her life to her nursing career, and forget about finding love of her own. Until one day she discovers she has an unexpected admirer. A patient hands her a piece of paper. A heartfelt note to his butterfly girl.

In the harsh confines of Ravensbrück, the infamous Nazi concentration camp for women, Sarah Rothstein a Jewish book keeper, Marie Laurent a French resistance fighter, Zofia Nowicki a Polish nurse, are thrown together in a crucible of suffering. Yet in the face of unimaginable cruelty, they...

London, 1941: In a cramped bunker in Winston Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms, underneath Westminster’s Treasury building, civilian women huddle at desks, typing up confidential documents and reports. Since her parents were killed in a bombing raid, Rose Teasdale has spent more hours than usual in Room 60, working double shifts, growing accustomed to the burnt scent of the Prime Minister’s cigars permeating the stale air. 

London, 1929. Eleanor Hamilton is a dutiful mother, a caring sister and an adoring wife to a celebrated war hero. Her husband, Edward, is a pioneer in the eugenics movement. The Hamiltons are on the social rise, and it looks as though their future is bright. When Mabel, their young daughter, begins to develop debilitating seizures, they have to face the uncomfortable truth - Mabel has epilepsy: one of the 'undesirable' conditions that Edward campaigns against.

1941. Bombs are falling all over Plymouth. Young Maisie O’Sullivan must make a choice that will change her life for ever. Maisie yearns for a family of her own. Raised as a charity orphan in a Catholic convent in Ireland, she believed she was all alone in the world. But when she is twelve, her...