Love The Woman Who Saved the Children? Readers share 100 books like The Woman Who Saved the Children...

By Clare Mulley,

Here are 100 books that The Woman Who Saved the Children fans have personally recommended if you like The Woman Who Saved the Children. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of No Man's Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain's Most Extraordinary Military Hospital During World War I

Emily Mayhew Author Of Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I

From my list on human casualties of World War One.

Why am I passionate about this?

Dr. Emily Mayhew is the historian in residence in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. Her primary research interest is the infliction, treatment, and long-term outcomes of complex casualty in contemporary warfare. She is the author of the Wounded trilogy. A Heavy Reckoning, The Guinea Pig Club, and Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize in 2014. She is Imperial College Internal Lead on the Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership and co-edited The Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual.

Emily's book list on human casualties of World War One

Emily Mayhew Why did Emily love this book?

So great was the demand for hospital beds for the wounded, that medical facilities were a feature of most of Britain's cities, part of daily civilian life. At the heart of London's Covent Garden was the Endell Street Hospital, run entirely by women whose medical expertise and skill was matched by their direct experience of the war itself. But their achievements and experience were wasted after the war by a medical profession that reverted all too easily to pre-war prejudice and discrimination. Much was lost, especially to their patients whose recovery prospects were damaged, never to be restored.

By Wendy Moore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked No Man's Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The "absorbing and powerful" (Wall Street Journal) story of two pioneering suffragette doctors who shattered social expectations and transformed modern medicine during World War I. A month after war broke out in 1914, doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson set out for Paris, where they opened a hospital in a luxury hotel and treated hundreds of casualties plucked from France’s battlefields. Although prior to the First World War, female doctors were restricted to treating women and children, Murray and Anderson’s work was so successful that the British Army asked them to run a hospital in the heart of London.…


Book cover of A Whispered Name

Emily Mayhew Author Of Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I

From my list on human casualties of World War One.

Why am I passionate about this?

Dr. Emily Mayhew is the historian in residence in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. Her primary research interest is the infliction, treatment, and long-term outcomes of complex casualty in contemporary warfare. She is the author of the Wounded trilogy. A Heavy Reckoning, The Guinea Pig Club, and Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize in 2014. She is Imperial College Internal Lead on the Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership and co-edited The Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual.

Emily's book list on human casualties of World War One

Emily Mayhew Why did Emily love this book?

A mystery novel, that tells a haunting, captivating story of the cost paid by one individual soldier at the battle of Messines Ridge. Impeccably researched, the reader is given a firm historical grounding of the physical, psychological, and geophysical costs of being at the explosive, bloody cutting edge of warfare on the Western Front.

By William Brodrick,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Whispered Name as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

To keep quiet about something so important . . . well, it's almost a lie, wouldn't you say?'

When Father Anselm meets Kate Seymour in the cemetery at Larkwood, he is dismayed to hear her allegation. Herbert Moore had been one of the founding fathers of the Priory, revered by all who met him, a man who'd shaped Anselm's own vocation. The idea that someone could look on his grave and speak of a lie is inconceivable. But Anselm soon learns that Herbert did indeed have secrets in his past that he kept hidden all his life. In 1917, during…


Book cover of Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital

Emily Mayhew Author Of Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I

From my list on human casualties of World War One.

Why am I passionate about this?

Dr. Emily Mayhew is the historian in residence in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. Her primary research interest is the infliction, treatment, and long-term outcomes of complex casualty in contemporary warfare. She is the author of the Wounded trilogy. A Heavy Reckoning, The Guinea Pig Club, and Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize in 2014. She is Imperial College Internal Lead on the Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership and co-edited The Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual.

Emily's book list on human casualties of World War One

Emily Mayhew Why did Emily love this book?

A biography of an extraordinary building: the biggest hospital ever built, to contain the casualties of Britain's biggest and worst wars from Crimea to World War Two. Perhaps the most original work of medical historical writing in the English language, as the ghosts of the nurses, doctors, and their broken shell-shocked patients haunt its pages and its writer through his family connections.

By Philip Hoare,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Spike Island as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The story of Netley in Southampton - its hospital, its people and the secret history of the 20th-century. Now with a new afterword uncovering astonishing evidence of Netley's links with Porton Down & experiments with LSD in the 1950s.

It was the biggest hospital ever built. Stretching for a quarter of a mile along the banks of Southampton Water, the Royal Victoria Military Hospital at Netley was an expression of Victorian imperialism in a million red bricks, a sprawling behemoth so vast that when the Americans took it over in World War II, GIs drove their jeeps down its corridors.…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of The Whistlers' Room

Emily Mayhew Author Of Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I

From my list on human casualties of World War One.

Why am I passionate about this?

Dr. Emily Mayhew is the historian in residence in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. Her primary research interest is the infliction, treatment, and long-term outcomes of complex casualty in contemporary warfare. She is the author of the Wounded trilogy. A Heavy Reckoning, The Guinea Pig Club, and Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize in 2014. She is Imperial College Internal Lead on the Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership and co-edited The Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual.

Emily's book list on human casualties of World War One

Emily Mayhew Why did Emily love this book?

A small and beautiful story of three young soldier casualties who lie in a German hospital ward as the Great War grinds its way to an end. They've survived the bullet wounds to their throats and faces that have reduced each of their voices to a whispering whistle. But there is little left of their lives beyond survival, despite the efforts of their dedicated surgeon and their devotion to each other. A novella, based on the real-life experiences of the author, his comrades, and the English PoW they met in the Whistlers Room.

By Paul Alverdes, Basil Creighton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Whistlers' Room as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Whistlers' Room is the surprisingly gentle, sensitive story of a section in a German hospital where three soldiers try to recover from battle injuries. They are known as the Whistlers, as all were shot in the throat and their breathing results in a sound "like the squeaking of mice". The author vividly captures the strong young men the soldiers used to be and the battered, wounded people they have become. Pointner, whose obstinacy in holding onto an English sniper's cap means he is mistaken for the enemy, is the worst injured of the trio. Kollin continually dreams that he…


Book cover of The Old Front Line

W.D. Wetherell Author Of A Century of November

From my list on unjustly forgotten books from World War One.

Why am I passionate about this?

Novelist, essayist, and short-story writer W. D. Wetherell is the author of over two dozen books. A visit to the World War One battlefields in Flanders led to his lasting interest in the human tragedies of l914-18, inspiring his novel A Century of November, and his critical study Where Wars Go to Die; The Forgotten Literature of World War One.

W.D.'s book list on unjustly forgotten books from World War One

W.D. Wetherell Why did W.D. love this book?

Masefield, before his 50-year tenure as Britain’s Poet Laureate, spent the war writing dispatches from the front. This slim book from l917 is his honest, soberly graphic description of what the Somme battlefield looked like after the fighting moved on—an approach that conveys war’s horrors without any moralizing or exaggeration.

By John Masefield,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Old Front Line as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.


Book cover of The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War

Ross McMullin Author Of Life So Full of Promise: further biographies of Australia's lost generation

From my list on WWI Australia in the battlefields and home front.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an experienced historian, biographer, and storyteller. I’ve written widely about Australian politics, social history, sport, and World War I. My biography of Australia’s most famous fighting general, Pompey Elliott, won multiple national awards, and I assembled his extraordinary letters and diaries in a separate book, Pompey Elliott at War: In His Own Words. Another biography, Will Dyson: Australia’s Radical Genius, about a remarkably versatile artist–writer who was Australia’s first official war artist, was shortlisted for the National Biography Award. My multi-biography Farewell, Dear People: Biographies of Australia’s Lost Generation won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History, and I’ve written a sequel, Life So Full of Promise.

Ross' book list on WWI Australia in the battlefields and home front

Ross McMullin Why did Ross love this book?

The Broken Years is a wonderful book about what Australian soldiers thought and felt during the war.

It originated in Bill Gammage’s PhD thesis, which was the first systematic study of the soldiers’ letters and diaries collected by the Australian War Memorial. The result is an illuminating and moving masterpiece, which proved transformational.

When he began his thesis he was in unfamiliar territory, as the concentrated use of these sources was unprecedented — in fact, military history itself was not popular. But he persevered, gradually sensing he was on to something, and indeed he was.

The Broken Years became an enduring classic. It was personally very influential for me during the 1970s when I was a dissatisfied, recently graduated lawyer considering a change to something more aligned with my interest in history. I took the plunge, left the law, and I’ve been a historian and biographer ever since.

By Bill Gammage,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Broken Years as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WHEN THE GREAT WAR STARTED, MOST AUSTRALIANS BELIEVED IN THE NOTIONS OF PATRIOTISM, COURAGE AND UNSWERVING LOYALTY TO THE BRITISH EMPIRE. BUT AS THE WAR DRAGGED ON, AS THE HORRORS INTENSIFIED AND THE CASUALTY LISTS GREW, PATRIOTISM GAVE WAY TO CYNICISM AND COURAGE TO DESPAIR. USING THE DIARIES AND LETTERS OF ABOUT ONE THOUSAND FRONT LINE SOLDIERS IN THE FIRST AIF, BILL GAMMAGE SHOWS HOW AND WHY THESE CHANGES TOOK PLACE. THE BROKEN YEARS IS A VIVID, OFTER HORRIFYING AND MOVING PORTRAYAL OF SOLDIERS AT WAR - MEN LOCKED IN A TRAGEDY THAT ENGULFED AN AGE.


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Book cover of Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds

Radical Friend by Nancy A. Hewitt,

Radical Friend highlights the remarkable life of Amy Kirby Post, a nineteenth-century abolitionist and women's rights activist who created deep friendships across the color line to promote social justice. Her relationships with Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, William C. Nell, and other Black activists from the 1840s to the…

Book cover of Standing at the Scratch Line

Deborah Fletcher Mello Author Of Playing with Danger

From my list on the dark and stormy side of the human spirit.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an award-winning, national best-selling author who loves reading as much as I love writing. Combine that with a good, smooth bourbon and it’s a win-win. Like my literary journey, my love for bourbon has been filled with surprises and challenges. Romance writing found me. I didn’t go looking for it. The journey introduced me to great writers and amazing stories and taught me to write better. Distilleries could extol the health benefits of bourbon, but I discovered it can be subtle, soul-searing, and pairs beautifully with a good meal and an even better book. Like my writing, bourbon leaves you feeling like you’ve had a great meal and threw in dessert!

Deborah's book list on the dark and stormy side of the human spirit

Deborah Fletcher Mello Why did Deborah love this book?

This book is the embodiment of great storytelling. Guy Johnson takes us on a journey that is profound and addicting.

The characters are beautifully constructed against a backdrop of historical fiction, adventure, and romance. They are flawed, and you find yourself rooting for them at every turn. This is the first book I read that taught me how to better push the constraints of my own writing and to simply write what might feel personal but is also necessary.

Johnson was also the first author I ever reached out to, to say how much the book meant to me and he responded with the most engaging words of encouragement and advice for my own stories.

I’d highly recommend this book for anyone looking to escape in the pages of an epic tale that reads as if it is on the big screen. It’s masterfully written and makes for a soul-searing…

By Guy Johnson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Standing at the Scratch Line as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Raised in the steamy bayous of New Orleans in the early 1900s, LeRoi "King" Tremain, caught up in his family's ongoing feud with the rival DuMont family, learns to fight. But when the teenage King mistakenly kills two white deputies during a botched raid on the DuMonts, the Tremains' fear of reprisal forces King to flee Louisiana.

King thus embarks on an adventure that first takes him to France, where he fights in World War I as a member of the segregated 369th Battalion—in the bigoted army he finds himself locked in combat with American soldiers as well as with…


Book cover of The General

Richard Vaughan Davies Author Of Fireweed

From my list on books from a pre-internet era, full of action, humour and social comment.

Why am I passionate about this?

The list reflects my interest in history and my own recollections of the days before the current era of mass tourism and online globalisation. I confess to a feeling of painful nostalgia for a time when we all had a very different worldview, and these books are all of that period. They feature temporal grief for an age that has passed. They are all highly readable books by writers at the top of their game.

Richard's book list on books from a pre-internet era, full of action, humour and social comment

Richard Vaughan Davies Why did Richard love this book?

The best novel ever about WWI. I was there with them in the trenches and finally understood how the generals came to have the mentality that allowed the slaughter to continue.

Forester is a superb writer and grossly underrated. He is a model for any aspiring writer. I must have read it four times at least, and each time found some new aspect to enjoy.

By C. S. Forester,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The General as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The book John Kelly reads every time he gets a promotion to remind him of 'the perils of hubris, the pitfalls of patriotism and duty unaccompanied by critical thinking'

The most vivid, moving - and devastating - word-portrait of a World War One British commander ever written, here re-introduced by Max Hastings.

C.S. Forester's 1936 masterpiece follows Lt General Herbert Curzon, who fumbled a fortuitous early step on the path to glory in the Boer War. 1914 finds him an honourable, decent, brave and wholly unimaginative colonel. Survival through the early slaughters in which so many fellow-officers perished then brings…


Book cover of Perilous Love

Estelle Pettersen Author Of Lessons on Seduction

From my list on bad boy romance with a happy ending.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by bad-boy heroes since I started reading romance books in my teenage years. Throw me a story about a rebel, player, a guy who likes living on the edge with a wild streak, and you’ve got me sold. There are a few rules when it comes to what I don’t want in a bad boy – abuse, pedophiles, violent men, and lack of consent. I love happy endings and believe that every bad boy and his lover (or lovers if it’s a consensual polyamorous relationship) deserve their happily ever after endings. I’m an ex-journalist who has published romance stories from erotic to sweet.

Estelle's book list on bad boy romance with a happy ending

Estelle Pettersen Why did Estelle love this book?

Perilous Love by Jan Selbourne is an unforgettable World War I romance novel that pulled my heartstrings and brought me to tears. Adrian Bryce has a hot and steamy affair with his mistress—instead of being with his estranged wife, Gabrielle, and their children. However, circumstances bring Adrian and Gabrielle together, and he must keep his wife safe in the midst of the dangers of war. I was intrigued by the themes of trust and forgiveness, and how Adrian chooses to let go of the past and fall in love again with the person he married. I was glad I gave this bad boy a chance, and I felt emotionally attached to Adrian and Gabrielle’s ‘second chance’ romance story. 

By Jan Selbourne,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Perilous Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Adrian Bryce has led something of a playboy lifestyle, playing fast and hard with a beautiful seductress until the British government sends him on a spying assignment. The deadly mission sees Adrian and his family running for their lives through a war-torn Europe. On the perilous road to home, a web of spies and assassins surround them on all sides. As the danger grows, Adrian finds himself more drawn to the lovely Gabrielle. A nightmare of betrayal and brutality follow them as Adrian risks everything to get his family back home.


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Book cover of Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World

Harry and Arthur by Lawrence J. Haas,

With Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Vice President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican leader on foreign policy, inherited a world in turmoil. With Europe flattened and the Soviets emerging as America’s new adversary, Truman and Vandenberg built a tight, bipartisan partnership at a bitterly partisan time…

Book cover of The Watermelon Boys

Susan Lanigan Author Of White Feathers

From my list on World War One that don’t have the same old story.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer based in Ireland. When I was fifteen, I read about the Battle of Verdun, and the horror and ineptitude of it led me into an obsession with World War I. Visiting the Imperial War Museum, I learned about the white feather of cowardice, bestowed by girls upon men out of uniform. Such a transformation of a symbol of peace to an instrument of stigma and shame made me think of Irish society as well as British. When White Feathers was published, its refusal to follow a sentimental “Tommy in the trenches” line angered some revisionist critics. But in the end, it is a passionate and intense love story with resistance.

Susan's book list on World War One that don’t have the same old story

Susan Lanigan Why did Susan love this book?

Again set in the Middle East, this novel about Ahmad and Carwyn, Arab and Welsh, who are both drawn into the war on its Eastern Front, is an absorbing story from a part of the world that has been neglected in World War I fiction. The two men are both betrayed by the English in different ways, and Izzidien’s Iraqi-Welsh heritage allows her to draw a compassionate picture of both protagonists. It also shows how the rapacious European colonialist mentality that underpinned the entire war created the conditions for terrorism and strife in the region today.

By Ruqaya Izzidien,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Watermelon Boys as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Shortlisted for The Betty Trask Prize

It is the winter of 1915 and Iraq has been engulfed by the First World War. Hungry for independence from Ottoman rule, Ahmad leaves his peaceful family life on the banks of the Tigris to join the British-led revolt. Thousands of miles away, Welsh teenager Carwyn reluctantly enlists and is sent, via Gallipoli and Egypt, to the Mesopotamia campaign.

Carwyn’s and Ahmad’s paths cross, and their fates are bound together. Both are forever changed, not only by their experience of war, but also by the parallel discrimination and betrayal they face.

Ruqaya Izzidien’s evocative…


Book cover of No Man's Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain's Most Extraordinary Military Hospital During World War I
Book cover of A Whispered Name
Book cover of Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital

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