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A compelling and heartrending collection of novels. Perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Annie Groves.A Sister’s PromiseWhen young Molly’s mother is killed in an accident, she and her beloved little brother are parted, with Molly sent to live with her cruel grandmother. After years of hardship, war breaks out and Molly is determined to find her 10 year-old brother. Separated by tragedy and prejudice, can Molly brave The Blitz and bring him to safety?A Daughter’s SecretAgnes Sullivan is only fifteen when she is cruelly abused by someone she trusts. Pregnant and compelled to leave home, she must seek a safe haven in Birmingham. But the back streets of the city prove to be anything but safe and Agnes is forced to seek help from the one person that she never would have dreamed of asking before…A Mother’s PromiseGloria and her husband Joe had everything – until the Great Depression tore their world apart. Starting again from scratch, their fortunes appear to be turning but when Hitler’s bombs start doing their terrible work, another tragedy occurs. From rags to riches and back again, this is a poignant saga of work, bad luck and finally hope.

An elegantly written and highly informative account of a group of Americans living in Paris when the city fell to the Nazis in June 1940.When the German army occupied Paris in the early hours of 14 June 1940, a large American community awaited them. Although the US Ambassador had advised those without vital business to leave when war broke out in 1939, almost five thousand remained. Many had professional and family ties to Paris, and most had a peculiarly American love for the city that was rooted in the bravery of the thousands of Frenchmen who volunteered to help win American independence after 1776. As citizens of a neutral nation, they believed they had little to fear. They were wrong. For four hard years, from the summer of 1940 until US troops occupied Paris in August 1944, Americans were intimately caught up in the city's fate.Those who stayed behind were an eccentric, original and disparate group. Charles Bedaux, a Frenchborn, naturalized American millionaire, had played host to the Duke of Windsor's wedding in 1937 and went on throwing lavish parties for European royalty and high-ranking Nazi officials. Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun, who accepted the legitimacy of the Vichy regime, dealt with anyone, including the Nazis, to keep her beloved American Library of Paris open. Sylvia Beach attempted to run her famous English-language bookshop, Shakespeare & Company, whilst providing help to her Jewish friends and her colleagues in the Resistance. Dr Sumner Jackson, wartime chief surgeon of the American Hospital in Paris, risked his life aiding Allied soldiers to escape to Britain and resisting the occupier from the first day.Charles Glass has written an exciting, fast-paced and elegant account of the moral contradictions faced by Americans in Paris during France's most dangerous years. His discovery of letters, diaries, war documents and police files reveals as never before how American expatriates were trapped in a web of intrigue, collaboration and courage. This is an unforgettable tale of treachery by some, cowardice by others and unparalleled bravery by a few.

Heart Radio x Dreams Bedtime Bookclub April Book of the MonthThe dazzling, powerful story of a gutsy showgirl who tries to conquer her past amongst the glamour of 1960s Las Vegas – finding unexpected fortune, friendship and love.In the summer of 1968, Ruby Wilde is the toast of Las Vegas. Showgirl of the Year, in her feathers and rhinestones, five-inch heels and sky-high headdresses, she mesmerises audiences from the Tropicana to the Stardust. Ratpackers and movie stars, gamblers and astronauts vie for her attention and shower her with gifts.But not so long ago Ruby Wilde was Lily Decker from Kansas: an orphaned girl determined to dance her way out of her troubled past. When she was eight years old, Lily survived the car crash that killed her parents and sister. Raised by an aunt who took too little interest in her and an uncle who took too much, dancing was her solace, and her escape. When a mysterious benefactor pays for her to attend a local dance academy, Lily’s talent becomes her ticket to a new life.Now, as Ruby Wilde, the ultimate Sin City success story, she discovers that the glare of the spotlight cannot banish the shadows that haunt her. As the years pass and Ruby continues to search for freedom, for love and, most importantly, herself, she must learn the difference between what glitters and what is truly gold.

Maps best viewed on a tablet.A magisterial history of the greatest and most terrible event in history, from one of the finest historians of the Second World War. A book which shows the impact of war upon hundreds of millions of people around the world – soldiers, sailors and airmen; housewives, farm workers and children.‘Unquestionably the best single-volume history of the war ever written’ SUNDAY TIMES.All Hell Let Loose reflects Max Hastings’s thirty-five years of research on World War II, and describes not just the course of events, but an epic tale of human experience, from campaign to campaign, continent to continent.This magisterial book ranges across a vast canvas, from the Russian front, where more than 90% of all German soldiers who perished met their fate, to the agony of Poland amid the September 1939 Nazi invasion, and the 1943 Bengal famine, in which at least a million people died under British rule – and British neglect. Some of Hastings’s insights and judgements will surprise students of the conflict, while there are vivid descriptions of the tragedies and triumphs of a host of ordinary people, in uniform and out of it.This is ‘everyman’s story’, an attempt to answer the question: ‘What was the Second World War like?’, and also an overview of the big picture. Max Hastings employs the technique which has made many of his previous books best-sellers, combining top-down analysis and bottom-up testimony to explore the meaning of this vast conflict both for its participants and for posterity.

The superb novelist of men at war moves into the twentieth century and World War Two, telling the story of the eleven days in the sands of North Africa that would change history foreverThere are some battles that change the course of history: Alamein is one of those.In October 1942, Britain and its allies were in real difficulties: Germany and its Axis partners seemed to be triumphant everywhere – in Europe, in Russia, in the Atlantic and were now poised to take the Suez Canal. It was in North Africa that the stand was made, that the tide of World War Two began to turn.It was a battle of strong characters: the famous battle commander Rommel and the relatively untested new British commander, Montgomery, leading men who fought through an extraordinary eleven day battle, in an unforgiving terrain, amid the swirling sandstorms and the desert winds.Iain Gale, author of the outstanding historical novel Four Days in June on the battle of Waterloo, tells the dramatic story through seven characters, almost all based on real people. Drawn from both sides of the conflict, they include a major from a Scottish brigade, the young lieutenant in the thick of the tank battle, the Australian sergeant with the infantry, the tank commander of the Panzer Division and the charismatic Italian commander of a parachute battalion. Through them and others we see the flow of battle, the strategies, the individual actions and skirmishes, the fear, the determination, the extraordinary courage on both sides.

In a return to sweeping social history of wartime, Patrick Bishop – author of bestselling Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys – explores the lives and wartime experience of thousands of men and women who served in all units of the airforce. To mark the centenary of the RAF in 2018.On 1 April 2018, the Royal Air Force will be a hundred years old – a short life by military standards but an extraordinarily important and eventful one.From the start it was special, standing sometimes awkwardly but always proudly a little apart from the existing services. It was a product of the modern age, whose fortunes depended on ever-more sophisticated machines and the right calibre of men to fly them and to keep them airborne.Its achievements between 1939 and 1945 – when it was Britain's last line of defence and the spearhead of its counter-attack, were central to the entire war effort.During these years, one in four of those in uniform wore air force blue and the ethos of the RAF was indistinguishable from the spirit of the nation.Following his bestselling books Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys, Airforce Blue tells personal stories of those who served, using the letters, diaries and memoirs of the participants to create a true picture of what it was like to be a pilot, a navigator, a gunner, a fitter or a WAAF ops room clerk. It recreates the reality of operations, whether wheeling over Kent in a Spitfire in 1940, rumbling towards the Ruhr in a Halifax the 1942 or looking down from the cockpit of a Liberator at the grey corrugated waters of the North Atlantic in 1943. It will also light up the humanity of the participants at every level; their values and motivations, their desires and ambitions.Air Force Blue is a substantial work of history, a monument to the wartime RAF as a whole and a must-buy for the descendants of the million-plus men and women from not just Britain but Canada, Australia and New Zealand who served.

‘A modern day Nancy Mitford.’ Sir Elton John‘Fans of Downton Abbey will love this.’ Davina McCallChristmas morning, 1969.All eleven-year-old Esme Munroe wants for Christmas is for her mother to be on one of her ‘good’ days – and, secretly, for a velvet riding hat. So when she finds an assortment of wet towels and dirty plates in her stocking, she’s just relieved Father Christmas remembered to stop at The Lodge this year.But later that day Esme’s mother disappears in the heavy snow. Even more mysteriously, only the Earl of Culcairn seems to know where she might have gone. Torn between protecting her mother and uncovering the secrets tumbling out of Culcairn Castle’s ornate closets, Esme realises that life will never be the same again after the snow…Susannah Constantine provides a rare glimpse into the secret lives of the scandalous upper classes. Perfect for fans of Downton Abbey and The Crown.

The story of the sexual revolution that brought Freud’s couch to the explosion of the 60s, and the left-field pioneer Wilhelm Reich who made it all happen.Adventures in the Orgasmatron is the untold story of the dawn of the sexual revolution in America – an illuminating, startling, at times bizarre story of sex and science, ecstasy and repression.In the middle of the 20th century, the United States became an adoptive home for dozens of expatriated European thinkers, who saw this rich, young country ripe for sexual liberation. One of the most left-field of them was the Viennese psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, a disciple of Freud’s who had broken with the master. Reich’s own approach was based on his theories of the orgasm and sexual energy, which he dubbed ‘orgone energy’. Instead of the couch, he made use of a tall, slender construction of wood, metal, and steel wool, which he called the orgone box. A highly sexed man himself, Reich thought that a person who sat in the box could elevate their ‘orgastic potential’ ridding the body of repressive forces, improving sexual potency, and enhancing overall health.After World War Two, Reich’s theories caught on among writers and artists, the early adopters of the counter-culture. Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow were amongst those for whom the orgone box represented a yearned-for synthesis of sexual and political liberation, and of physical science and psychology.Meanwhile, Reich himself faced one debacle after another. Albert Einstein heard him out before rebuffing him. The FBI investigated him as a Communist sympathizer: it turned out that they were hunting the wrong man. The federal government banned the orgone box and tagged Reich as a fraud. There were claims of sexual misdeeds, and bouts of Reich’s own mental instability.This is the story of the blossoming of the 20th century’s sexual revolution, and the unshackling of a repressed society, and sex before science.

Never before have the diaries and letters of young people from all sides of World War Two been woven together to provide an account of what it was like to grow up amidst the daily struggles and horrors of this devastating war.We Were Young And At War follows the stories of sixteen teenage boys and girls who write with a disarming directness about their reactions to and experiences of a very adult war. They are British, French, American, Japanese, Polish, German and Russian, each with a unique and heart-rending tale to tell.Only two of them are alive today. Some of them fought and died in the war, others starved to death; many were separated from their families. All were forced to grow up quickly, their lives changed beyond all recognition by their experiences.This is their story.

The Guns of Navarone and its three sequels, in which the same characters are sent on other wartime missions, together in one volume for the first time to mark the 50th anniversary of the original book .THE GUNS OF NAVARONEMallory, Miller and Andrea are united into a lethally effective team. Their mission: to silence the impregnable guns set in the tall cliffs of Navarone. On their success or failure rests one of the most critical offensives of the Second World War.FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONEAlmost before the last echoes of the famous guns have died away, the three Navarone heroes are parachuted into war-torn Yugoslavia to rescue a division of partisans and fulfil a secret mission, so deadly that it must be hidden even from their own allies.STORM FORCE FROM NAVARONEThe surviving commandos are sent on a perilous journey through the Pyrenees to disable the greatest threat to the impending D-Day landings: the 'Werwolf' U-boats. But their Basque guides declare it mission impossible – D-Day is less than six days away.THUNDERBOLT FROM NAVARONESummoned back to Naval HQ, Mallory, Miller and Andrea are given a final assignment: to reconnoitre the Greek island of Kynthos and destroy the German facilities developing the lethal V3 weapon. A rocket expert is to accompany them – but can he be trusted not to turn the operation into a suicide mission?

Did Hitler’s use of unproven exotic weapons cost him the war? Were they worth the price? What effect did the V weapons have on Allied plans, morale and supplies? Roy Irons also investigates Hitler’s thirst for revenge following 1918 and his dread when Russian victories and Allied bombing began to shadow the Third Reich.Roy Irons' fascinating book investigates whether Hitler's campaign would have been a greater success if he had put fewer resources into experimental weapons of revenge such as the V-2 rocket and the V-1 Doodle-bug. Enormous resources were poured into these experimental projects, often inspired by Hitler's thirst for revenge after the collapse of Germany in 1918 and his dread of a recurrence when Russian victories and allied bombing began to cast grim and ever-growing shadows over the Third Reich. He considers such questions as what effect the bombardment really had on London's morale and on Allied supplies through the port of Antwerp? Were these weapons really worth the price? With a foreword by Professor Richard Overy and fascinating images from the Imperial War Museum and Public Record Office, this is a unique account of this key element of the Second World War.

On Platform One of Paddington Station in London, there is a statue of an unknown soldier; he’s reading a letter. On the hundredth anniversary of the declaration of war everyone in the country was invited to take a moment and write that letter. A selection of those letters are published here, in a new kind of war memorial – one made only of words.In a year of public commemoration ‘Letter to an Unknown Soldier’ invited everyone to step back from the public ceremonies and take a few private moments to think. Providing a space for people to reconsider the familiar imagery we associate with the war memorials – cenotaphs, poppies, and silence – it asked the following questions: if you could say what you want to say about that war, with all we’ve learned since 1914, with all your own experience of life and death to hand, what would you say? If you were able to send a personal message to this soldier, a man who served and was killed during World War One, what would you write?The response was extraordinary. The invitation was to everyone and, indeed, all sorts of people responded: schoolchildren, pensioners, students, artists, nurses, serving members of the forces and even the Prime Minister. Letters arrived from all over the United Kingdom and beyond, and many well-known writers and personalities contributed.Opening on 28th June 2014, the centenary of the Sarajevo assassinations, and closing at 11 pm on the night of 4 August 2014, the centenary of the moment when Prime Minister Asquith announced to the House of Commons that Britain had joined the First World War, this book offers a snapshot of what people in this country and across the world were thinking and feeling about the centenary of World War One.