Here are 100 books that In the Shadow of the Past fans have personally recommended if you like
In the Shadow of the Past.
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If there's such a thing as reincarnation, I've definitely done the 1930s! For some reason, I just love the time period–its fashion, its soundtrack, its bravery, and its optimism, even despite the looming specter of WW2. The 1940s intrigue me just as much. I have nothing but awe for the women who lived through such a time and the fierce, determined way they fought for peace and love. I can only hope I might be so strong. This list is full of sapphic characters I heartily admire and I hope you find a great sapphic read here.
As most fans of Sarah Waters will already know, this book has a clever plot device that doubles the magic–it's told backward. It has a wide cast of characters which slowly narrows down to a doomed sapphic love affair that struggled to blossom amid the terror of the London Blitz.
From both a reader's and a writer's perspective, this story has lodged itself firmly in my heart. It examines the why and how–what events brought these two lovers to this point when everything had otherwise seemed perfect? It's not necessarily happy, but it's intricate and untidy, and in that way, it is a realistic reflection of life and love in a time of war and its aftermath.
I thought everything would change, after the war. And now, no one even mentions it. It is as if we all got together in private and said whatever you do don't mention that, like it never happened.
It's the late 1940s. Calm has returned to London and five people are recovering from the chaos of war.
In scenes set in a quiet dating agency, a bombed-out church and a prison cell, the stories of these five lives begin to intertwine and we uncover the desire and regret that has bound them together.
Sarah Waters's story of illicit love and everyday…
If there's such a thing as reincarnation, I've definitely done the 1930s! For some reason, I just love the time period–its fashion, its soundtrack, its bravery, and its optimism, even despite the looming specter of WW2. The 1940s intrigue me just as much. I have nothing but awe for the women who lived through such a time and the fierce, determined way they fought for peace and love. I can only hope I might be so strong. This list is full of sapphic characters I heartily admire and I hope you find a great sapphic read here.
A book with disturbing lessons for our time. This book charts the lives of three women during the 1930s and 40s as the Nazis rise to power and use book burning as a tool to destroy culture and freedom of expression. I adored and was completely captivated by the clever way the author wove a complicated story between three women in three different cities and times.
Almost a character in itself is the spectre of book censorship and the damage it can inflict on society. This book has some very moving scenes–a burgeoning lesbian love affair, a children's game amid the horror of war, a finale that had me reaching for the tissues, and more. The amount of research in this book is incredible!
For fans of The Rose Code and The Paris Library, The Librarian of Burned Books is a captivating WWII-era novel about the intertwined fates of three women who believe in the power of books to triumph over the very darkest moments of war.
Berlin 1933. Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new…
If there's such a thing as reincarnation, I've definitely done the 1930s! For some reason, I just love the time period–its fashion, its soundtrack, its bravery, and its optimism, even despite the looming specter of WW2. The 1940s intrigue me just as much. I have nothing but awe for the women who lived through such a time and the fierce, determined way they fought for peace and love. I can only hope I might be so strong. This list is full of sapphic characters I heartily admire and I hope you find a great sapphic read here.
This was an automatic read for me. E.V. Bancroft always writes a great slow burn, but the fact that this was set amongst the women pilots of the ATA in WW2 was the cherry on top.
The bravery of those women–and all despite the prejudices of the day–makes an extraordinary background to a moving love story. For me, Odette's character is beautifully crafted. This was a tale that stuck with me for a long time.
Can love triumph in the battle between duty and desire. Beryl Jenkinson is a young dreamer determined to break free. Though bound to her family’s garage, her heart dreams of taking flight with Attagirls, the brave women piloting planes across the nation to play a vital role in the war effort.
Odette De Lavigne embodies the allure of a World War Two pin-up girl: glamorous, seductive, and a masterful pilot. But beneath her carefree demeanour lies a poignant secret.
Their destinies collide when Odette literally crashes into Beryl’s life, sparking a blaze of passion and an enduring infatuation. Fate reunites…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
If there's such a thing as reincarnation, I've definitely done the 1930s! For some reason, I just love the time period–its fashion, its soundtrack, its bravery, and its optimism, even despite the looming specter of WW2. The 1940s intrigue me just as much. I have nothing but awe for the women who lived through such a time and the fierce, determined way they fought for peace and love. I can only hope I might be so strong. This list is full of sapphic characters I heartily admire and I hope you find a great sapphic read here.
As a well-established writer of steamy but compelling sapphic romances, Emma Nichols is another auto-read on my list. This book is set in Berlin and rural France during the early 1940s, and its two main characters are studies of resilience in the face of overwhelming darkness. In the character of Johanna, Nichols examines the agony of how to be, how to love, and what to do when a good-hearted person finds themselves on the wrong side of a war simply because of their country's politics.
In the role of the oppressed and downtrodden, we meet an absolute savior–a woman who is prepared to risk everything for love and the women she holds dear. This is a difficult read at times, but ultimately a beautiful one, as love and goodness triumph at the end.
Two women brought together by their ideals despite being on opposite sides of the war become embroiled in more than either of them anticipated. In the crucible of war, can their love defy the odds?
From the celebrated author of Madeleine and Don’t Tell Me Who to Love comes Emma Nichols’ Love in the Shadows — a gripping story of resilience in the face of adversity, weaving the bonds of love and resistance during World War II.
Johanna Neumann, a once-acclaimed pianist, is forced to leave her high-society life in Berlin to support her military husband, the newly appointed Kommandant…
I spent more than five years researching and writing a book about the Japanese submarine force during World War II—a topic virtually untouched by western historians. My research took me to Japan where I interviewed surviving members of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Sixth Fleet—its submarine branch. These men told incredible stories of what it was like to serve aboard a Japanese sub during World War II; stories filled with courage, fear, pathos, and humor revealing the universality of the human condition. I remained moved by them to this day.
Hashimoto was the Japanese sub captain of the I-58, who sank the USS Indianapolisshortly after it delivered the atomic bomb in the closing days of World War II. The story of the Indianapolis has been told in several excellent books including, “In Harms Way” and “Fatal Voyage” as well as the movie, “Jaws,” but never from the Japanese point of view. How Hashimoto and his crew survived the war is integral to this story which makes The Hunt for Red October seem like child’s play. And it’s all true!
What happened to Japan’s submarines and what sort of fight did they put up?
As far as Japan was concerned, the recent war was waged according to a rigid strategy. There was no detailed operational planning. It was a fight in which science had been ignored. In such circumstances the submarine, always highly vulnerable unless used intelligently, was inevitably sacrificed. Throughout the war the whole submarine fleet was in reality a special attack force in which, in the absence of scientific weapons, the crews were just so much human ammunition. Today we hear much about rearmament. If money is to…
My first novel Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain was a collage novel; an interweaving of several voices in order to create a composite portrait of the city of Salisbury, which told several stories as a way of revealing more of the life of that place. Since then I’ve written three more novels, all of them interested in the effects of using different voices to tell different parts of the story. I think that polyphony makes for great books, and these are four examples of that—different ways of weaving multiple tales together.
Calvino, like Perec, was an experimental novelist, interested in imposing games and rules on what he created. Here, he took the convention of the short story collection and used it to dramatise the arrival of the twentieth century into rural Italy—the machine age, but also the fascist age, and the consuming fires of the Second World War. The incremental tension that comes from time passing is a powerful reading experience.
In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.
The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.
This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States…
I fell in love with historical fiction when I was a child. Adventurous tales—especially if they had swordplay in them! And I was fascinated by young people having to choose whether to stand up for what they believed in or run away. Ordinary folk are forced by circumstances—and villains—to do the extraordinary. I empathized and felt like I could be one of them. So when I came to write, I wanted to tell those kinds of stories. I eventually realized what I wrote was 'the intimate epic'—showing how the minor historical players can have a major effect.
This book takes the lives of very ordinary Canadians and throws them into the maelstrom of war. I love that it carefully sets up a world few know about—Toronto in the 1930s—and shows the ambiguity of the times, how anti-Semitism was at home as well as across the water in Europe.
I so enjoyed the Romeo and Juliet love affair at the novel's heart, and I was moved by the trials love is subjected to—as well as shocked by excellent descriptions of war's brutality.
Inspired by a little-known chapter of World War II history, a young Protestant girl and her Jewish neighbour are caught up in the terrible wave of hate sweeping the globe on the eve of war in this powerful love story that’s perfect for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
If you’re reading this letter, that means I’m dead. I had obviously hoped to see you again, to explain in person, but fate had other plans.
1933
At eighteen years old, Molly Ryan dreams of becoming a journalist, but instead she spends her days working any job…
I spent more than five years researching and writing a book about the Japanese submarine force during World War II—a topic virtually untouched by western historians. My research took me to Japan where I interviewed surviving members of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Sixth Fleet—its submarine branch. These men told incredible stories of what it was like to serve aboard a Japanese sub during World War II; stories filled with courage, fear, pathos, and humor revealing the universality of the human condition. I remained moved by them to this day.
This is the first book I’ve ever read written by a Japanese sub commander that describes submarine warfare from the Japanese point of view. Few Japanese sub commanders survived the war, so how Orita lived to tell the tale is just one of the many remarkable stories he recounts in his book. Not only does it read like a suspense thriller, you’ll have newfound respect for the suffering he and his crews went through. Bottom line: The Japanese version of Das Boot!
My family was divided by religion, leaving me skeptical about belief systems. After a background in science, I studied philosophy and became intrigued by Heidegger's ‘pitiless atheism.’ The power of his thought but his personal failings have long been an issue for academics. I have since been fascinated partly by powerful personalities but more by the struggle of their followers as they suspend critical thinking and make huge sacrifices to offer their support. This struggle and difficulty of turning back, particularly as the systems begin to collapse, are a feature of many of the works of fiction that intrigue me most, particularly in the books I have chosen.
The book offers a powerful evocation through snapshots of lives in South London through recent post-war history. Something that emerges almost without you noticing is how much they were all affected by the political and economic changes of the eighties and early nineties. There is no political polemic here, but even those who prosper from these changes suffer from them, possibly more than the others.
It presents recent history in which a way of life was changed forever without us realizing it, and we are still living with the consequences.
Named a Best Book of the Year by TheNew York Times, NPR, Slate, Lit Hub, Fresh Air, and more
From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, an “extraordinary…symphonic…casually stunning” (The Wall Street Journal) novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.
Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in South London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among…
Desperate to honor his father’s dying wish, Layken Martin vows to do whatever it takes to save the family farm. Once the Army discharges him following World War II, Layken returns to Missouri to find his legacy in shambles and…
Stewart Binns is a former academic, soldier, and documentary filmmaker, who became a writer quite late in life. He has since written a wide range of books in both fiction and non-fiction. His passions are history and sport. He has completed a medieval quartet called the Making of England Series, two books about the Great War and a novel set during Northern Ireland’s Troubles. His latest work of non-fiction, Barbarossa, tells the story of the Eastern Front (1945 to 1944) from the perspective of the peoples of Eastern Europe. He is now working on a history of modern Japan.
Taylor’s book was controversial in many ways. He contradicted many of the conventional wisdoms about the war, but more importantly, he annoyed the stuffy world of historical academia by writing popular history which was accessible to a wide readership. He certainly led me to realise that history can be immediate and compelling rather than distant and dry.
A.J.P. Taylor's bestselling The Origins of the Second World War overturns popular myths about the outbreak of war.
One of the most popular and controversial historians of the twentieth century, who made his subject accessible to millions, A.J.P. Taylor caused a storm of outrage with this scandalous bestseller. Debunking what were accepted truths about the Second World War, he argued provocatively that Hitler did not set out to cause the war as part of an evil master plan, but blundered into it partly by accident, aided by the shortcomings of others. Fiercely attacked for vindicating Hitler, A.J.P. Taylor's stringent re-examination…
