I grew up in a British military family, where the war and its triumphs and tragedies always felt close. My father was a member of the famed British secret agent network, SOE. He parachuted into Greece and faced capture and torture as he helped rescue 7,000 Italian soldiers stranded in the mountains. My mother’s fiancé, Martin Preston, was killed in 1940 in France. My second book, The Very White Of Love, recreated their story in fiction. I have always read passionately about the period and interviewed many other authors about the subject while I curated National Geographic’s popular column, Book Talk.
I wrote...
Star Crossed: A True WWII Romeo and Juliet Love Story in Hitlers Paris
Paris, 1940, the City of Light has fallen under German Occupation. Among patriotic Parisians, the pursuit of art, culture, and jazz have become bold acts of defiance. So has forbidden romance for spirited Jewish teenager Annette Zelman, a student at the Beaux-Arts, and dashing young Catholic poet Jean Jausion.
Despite their devout families’ opposition, the young lovers find acceptance at the famed Café de Flore, whose famous habitués include Simone de Beauvoir and Pablo Picasso. For a time, Annette and Jean feel they have eluded the repression of the Nazis–and, more immediately, their parents’ disapproval. But as persecution of Paris’ Jewish community escalates to arrests and deportations, the maleficent forces gathering around the young lovers set them on divergent and tragically inevitable paths.
Though this is a novel rather than nonfiction, it takes readers into the heart of Nazi-occupied Paris and weaves a powerful love story of two sisters, Isabelle and Vianne, in wartime.
Vianne is forced to take a German Commander into her home for lodging as her husband is being kept in a Nazi prison. Isabelle meets a young partisan who believes that the French people can wage war against the Nazis from within France.
The settings are beautifully handled, and the characters are well-rounded. The book vividly brings to life the horrors of war: starvation, death, and the Holocaust. Based on research Hannah conducted into the French Resistance, it has the feeling of a true story. But it is a beautifully crafted fiction about endurance, resistance, and love.
Soon to be a major motion picture, The Nightingale is a multi-million copy bestseller across the world. It is a heart-breakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the endurance of women.
This story is about what it was like to be a woman during World War II when women's stories were all too often forgotten or overlooked . . . Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac are two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals and passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path towards survival, love and freedom in war-torn France.
I loved this novel set in wartime France. Again, it tells the story of two women.
American, Virginia d’Albert-Lake, is being urged by her husband and family to return to the United States so she can be safe from danger in war-ravaged France. But Virginia has no desire to leave her husband Philippe and their friends. She knows she belongs in her adopted country of France. Nineteen-year-old Brit Violette is fluent in French, having spent half her life in France, and she ends up joining the British secret agent network, SOE.
I loved the ways these two women’s lives, told in alternating chapters, were intertwined. I had tears in my eyes as the story came to a tragic end, as both women were imprisoned in the Ravensbruck concentration camp.
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Buzzfeed · Bookbub · BookTrib · and more!
Two women, two countries. Nothing in common but a call to fight.
A heart-stopping new novel based on the extraordinary true stories of an American socialite and a British secret agent whose stunning acts of courage collide in the darkest hours of World War II.
1940. In a world newly burning with war, andin spite of her American family’s wishes, Virginia d’Albert-Lake decides to stay in occupied France with her French husband. She’s sure that if they keep their heads down, they’ll survive. But…
I loved this book because of the power of the story and the beautifully rendered characters. Though not a World War 2 book but a love story set in the American South, it covers many of the same themes, like oppression and resistance.
The central characters, Ellen and William Craft, were powerfully realized. I followed their journey from slavery to freedom with breathless anticipation as Ellen disguised herself as a wealthy white woman and William as her slave.
I cheered at the end when the Crafts fled to Canada en route to Liverpool, England, where they toured on the lecture circuit and were formally educated on how to read and write. They continued to speak out against slavery and celebrated its ending in America in the 1860s.
The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as "his" slave.
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the…
I was captivated by this powerful novel, which tells the story of a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France.
I especially liked the way Doerr weaves scientific and philosophical references to light, to seeing, and not seeing into the story. I loved the two main characters, Parisian Marie-Laure, who has been blind since she was six years old, and a German orphan called Werner, who is a member of the Hitler Youth.
I was especially gripped by Marie and her father, Daniel’s escape from Paris ahead of the German invasion, and the scenes in which Daniel makes a scale model of their neighborhood in Paris to help young Marie Laure learn her way around, repeating the project in Saint-Malo, where they have taken refuge.
WINNER OF THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR FICTION
A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II
Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.'
For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic…
I was gripped from page one by this true story of two young lovers in Auschwitz.
Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia are trapped inside a waking nightmare, yet nevertheless discover a love that sustained them through history’s darkest hour. I followed their survival beneath the ash-choked skies of Auschwitz with heart-wrenching amazement and was especially moved by how they were protected by their fellow inmates, proving that even in the midst of unimaginable horrors, humanity survives.
I also found the ending of the story deeply satisfying, as, having left the camp, the lovers make plans to meet again, though they are unable to imagine how long their reunion will take or how many lives they will live before they finally come together.
'Haunting and powerfully resonant... this is a story not just of remarkable individuals, but also a tribute to the wider indomitability of the human spirit at the darkest moment in European history' - Sinclair McKay, bestselling author of Berlin and Dresden
Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia's story began when they first locked eyes across the work floor. It was the start of a romance that could have unfolded anywhere if it weren't for one key difference: Zippi and David were prisoners in history's most infamous death camp.
David and Zippi defied the odds by surviving for years beneath the ash-choked…
I’m an avid reader of queer literary fiction not only because I write it but because I’m looking to see my life experience captured on the page. As a gay man, a father of two young boys, and one-half of an interracial married couple, I know the complexity of modern queer living firsthand. In recent years, I’ve been astounded by the breadth of great LGBTQ+ books that examine queerness fully and empathetically. I seek out these books, I read them feverishly, and I become a champion for the best ones. In an era of intense book banning, it’s so important to me to elevate these books and their authors.
The Birthright of Sons is a collection of stories centered around the experiences of marginalized people, namely Black and LGBTQ+ men. Although the stories borrow elements from various genres (horror, suspense, romance, magical realism, etc.), they are linked by an exploration of identity and the ways personhood is shaped through interactions with the people, places, and belief systems around us.
In each of these stories, the protagonists grapple with their understanding of who they are, who and how they love, and what is ultimately most important to them. In almost every case, however, the quest to know or protect oneself is challenged by an external force, resulting in violence, crisis, or confusion, among other outcomes.
The Birthright of Sons is a collection of stories centered around the experiences of marginalized people, namely Black and LGBTQ+ men. Though the stories borrow elements from various genres (horror, suspense, romance, magical realism, etc.), they're linked by an exploration of identity and the ways personhood is shaped through interactions with the people, places, and belief systems around us.
Underpinning the project is a core belief - self-definition is fluid, but conflict arises because society often fails to keep pace with personal evolution. In each of these stories, the protagonists grapple with their understanding of who they are, who and…
