Here are 100 books that The Librarian of Burned Books fans have personally recommended if you like
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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.
Stockings with seams, blood-red lipstick, smokey jazz clubs, and unbelievably strong leading ladies—okay, I just said it all in that opening sentence. This book gripped me from the beginning. I could tell from the nail-biting opening that it was going to be gritty and realistic but also revel in the elegance of the time period.
Set in the US during the Second World War, this book is part of a long, slow burn of four incredible reads that I totally devoured and absolutely loved. It's an absorbing, almost infuriating mystery that can only be solved by the love between the two leads. The character of Kathryn, in particular, will stay with me forever.
She fell for the wrong woman … now it’s going to cost her.
New York City, 1943. Reporter Jenny Ryan is plagued with guilt. Plunging into a world of danger after her father's murder, her burning need for justice drives her to take on a ruthless tycoon. But her plan goes awry when she falls for the criminal’s alluring mistress.
OSS agent Kathryn Hammond seethes with frustration. Trapped stateside in a dead-end assignment, the undercover spy fears she'll never pay her wartime debts. But when a feisty journalist enters the picture, her resentment blooms into undeniable desire.
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…
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 work in aviation, so it was natural to write about it when I started as a freelance writer. But I quickly realized that writing about aviation people is much more interesting than writing about airplanes. Because of my military background I found myself writing veterans’ stories. I’ve uncovered many stories that have never been told or have been forgotten over the years. And because I was in the Air Force in the 1980s and 1990s, I knew the events in my new book had never been told. During my research, I found more books with hidden histories and rediscovered some I read decades ago. This list is my favorites.
I originally read this book when it came out in 1990. It is about a group of young women in the Soviet Union who flew as combat pilots during World War II.
With U.S. women still prohibited from flying in combat in 1990, I was thrilled that women had already proven themselves in combat a half-century earlier. The “Night Witches” flew mostly at night, and their bombs relentlessly terrorized German ground forces invading the Russian homeland.
Many of the women were designated as aces for shooting down at least five enemy aircraft, and others were awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.
Although the book has been criticized in recent years for not being entirely factual, it is still a great read about these courageous women.
In 1941 as the Nazi hordes swept eastward into the Soviet Union, the desperate call went out for women to join the Russian air force. Women responded and flew incessant bombing runs; the Germans, who came to dread them, called them 'night witches'.
I work in aviation, so it was natural to write about it when I started as a freelance writer. But I quickly realized that writing about aviation people is much more interesting than writing about airplanes. Because of my military background I found myself writing veterans’ stories. I’ve uncovered many stories that have never been told or have been forgotten over the years. And because I was in the Air Force in the 1980s and 1990s, I knew the events in my new book had never been told. During my research, I found more books with hidden histories and rediscovered some I read decades ago. This list is my favorites.
This book represents another facet of military women, those with a double whammy: Black women. This was especially a problem during WWII, when the army still practiced segregation and initially prohibited Black women from serving overseas, unlike their white counterparts.
After pressure from groups such as the NAACP and intervention by President Roosevelt, the army formed the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion as an all-Black Women’s Army Corps unit. About 850 women served in the 6888th, which was stationed in the UK and France from January 1945 until March 1946. The unit was responsible for routing mail to about 7 million U.S. personnel who served in the European Theater of Operations.
This “double whammy” is a topic that I hope is explored more in future books!
The story of the historic 6888th, the first United States Women's Army Corps unit of African American women to serve overseas
While African American men and white women were invited, if belatedly, to serve their country abroad, African American women were excluded for overseas duty throughout most of WWII. However, under political pressure from legislators like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the NAACP, the Black press, and even President Roosevelt, the US War Department was forced to deploy African American women to the European theater in 1945.
African American women answered the call to serve from all over the country, from…
Before I’m a writer, I’m a reader and I need the realness when it comes to military service. I started as an Army journalist so the details matter to me. When I pick up a book to relax and the main character draws me with a story I can get all the five senses of it, I’m in! On the other hand, I'm usually turned off by books that use veterans as props or either heroes or villains with nothing in between. That’s not who I served with. Where was the gray of the human existence in veteran characters? Gimme books that bring more depth to characters that round out personal experience.
I loved this was a historical fiction novel that featured the Six Triple Eight unit from the Women’s Army Corps. The Midwest was heavily featured including Iowa and the way race played in the way women were allowed to serve. This reminded me that I stand on the shoulders of the women who came before me in the Women’s Army Corps and the treatment of women has come a long way. I struggled with some of the scenarios the two main characters, Grace Steele and Eliza Jones were put into but they rang true for a fictional novel.
Kaia Alderson's debut historical fiction novel reveals the untold, true story of the Six Triple Eight, the only all-Black battalion of the Women's Army Corps, who made the dangerous voyage to Europe to ensure American servicemen received word from their loved ones during World War II.
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 (WAAC), 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…
I have had a lifelong passion for history—the choices and challenges faced by others in trying times. I find myself looking for connections and a visit to the Holocaust Museum in DC led me to just such a connection with the story of the White Rose Resistance group, sending me down a rabbit hole of research that has blossomed into years of looking for little known stories of WWII heroes and heroines. From there telling their stories through my stories has become my passion.
An American working in Paris, a German doctor, and a Polish teenager working for the Resistance are thrown together in this WWII story based on real events culminating in the notorious Ravensbruck Camp for women, famous for its medical experimentation during the war. It’s a story of survival and courage and unlikely friendships.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • One million copies sold! Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this remarkable debut novel reveals the power of unsung women to change history in their quest for love, freedom, and second chances.
“Extremely moving and memorable . . . This impressive debut should appeal strongly to historical fiction readers and to book clubs that adored Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See.”—Library Journal (starred review)
New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new…
I write historical nonfiction, I’m an avid reader, and I’ve long been fascinated by the past. But I’m far less interested in the stories of powerful people, political intrigues, and significant battles. I would rather read (and write) hidden history: the stories that have not yet been discovered or fully explored and stories that are left out of history books—accidentally or deliberately. I find these far more compelling. They often provide a deeper look at how history affects those who lack power, influence, and money but who nevertheless do remarkable and often heroic things. I live in Portugal and have started working on a new historical nonfiction book.
In 2018, I went to an author reading by Liza Mundy. Deep into researching my own nonfiction book, I was fascinated as Mundy talked about interviewing women who became code breakers in World War II.
The government recruited them from top colleges and universities, looking for women who were gifted in math and music. The women were sworn to secrecy and kept their word, telling people they had been secretaries during the war. They maintained that fiction into their old age or their graves.
Mundy tracked down survivors and showed them documentation that the program had been declassified. They had been released from their vow of silence and could share their stories with her. The book is excellent.
An expert on East European politics and economics analyzes and evaluates Western policies toward the new East European democracies as they struggle to build stable political orders and functioning market economies. He argues that the West must give higher priority to assisting the region and reorient its strategies so as to emphasize the political and administrative dimensions of economic reconstruction. He reviews the economic legacy of past Western policies and of Eastern Europe's previous dependency on the Soviet Union, and then examines in detail the changing East-West trade patterns, the prospect for Western investment and technology transfer, the questions of…
As a child with older sisters, I read their books beyond my age level under the blankets with a flashlight in bed at night. I became a reading addict. Raised in The Netherlands with the Second World War casting its large shadow on our lives, I only became interested, after my parents were gone, in how people survived and had to find their courage under impossible circumstances. They would never talk about those occupation years. My search into history led me to find the answers.
I loved this novel, based on the author’s mother’s life!
It made me aware of American women called Donut Dollies and their roles in WW2
following the troops as they liberated Europe. I imagined being there and how
it would be for the protagonist.
An unusual and heartbreaking story. The events
experienced affected the author’s mother afterward all through her life, and
she died isolated and alone. I recognized how a mother was affected by war, as
my mother also was traumatized.
This "powerful, uplifting, and deeply personal novel" (Kristin Hannah, #1 NYT bestselling author of The Four Winds), at once "a heart-wrenching wartime drama" (Christina Baker Kline, #1 NYT bestselling author of Orphan Train) and "a moving and graceful tribute to heroic women" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), asks the question: What if a friendship forged on the front lines of war defines a life forever?
"Urrea's touch is sure, his exuberance carries you through . . . He is a generous writer, not just in his approach to his craft but in the broader sense…
