First World War fiction
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Switchboard Soldiers
Book Synopsis
£24.79
Little, Brown & Company The Pull of the Stars
Book SynopsisIn Dublin, 1918, a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu is a small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, in 'Donoghue's best novel since Room' (Kirkus Reviews).In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.
£14.44
The University of Michigan Press A Century of November
Book SynopsisThe tale of Charles Marden, an apple grower and judge who sets off from his Vancouver Island home on an impulsive journey to Belgium, where his son has died in battle. Marden's mission is to find the exact spot where his son was killed. This is a story of the power of death, the pain of loss, and the possibility of hope in a time of war.Trade ReviewGripping, damning, and transfixing. - Entertainment Weekly ""... possesses a time-bending gravity.... [A] small classic of graceful language and earned emotion."" - San Francisco Chronicle ""... a beautifully written novel of war and the wrenching grief and unanswerable questions it leaves in its wake.... A Century of November is full of precise, startling imagery and elegant, richly poetic description - Wetherell seems genuinely incapable of writing a lazy sentence - and this last section of the novel is as surreal, hypnotic and harrowing as any literature in recent memory. The whole thing, in fact, is a jewel, an unforgettable historical novel that Wetherell has carefully (and artfully) seeded with loads of contemporary resonance."" - Minneapolis Star-Tribune
£12.30
Penguin Young Readers The Bridge on the Drina
Book SynopsisIn this masterpiece of historical fiction by the Nobel Prize-winning Yugoslavian author, a stone bridge in a small Bosnian town bears silent witness to three centuries of conflict.The town of Visegrad was long caught between the warring Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, but its sixteenth-century bridge survived unscathed--until 1914 when tensions in the Balkans triggered the first World War. Spanning generations, nationalities, and creeds, The Bridge on the Drina brilliantly illuminates a succession of lives that swirl around the majestic stone arches. Among them is that of the bridge’s builder, a Serb kidnapped as a boy by the Ottomans; years later, as the empire’s Grand Vezir, he decides to construct a bridge at the spot where he was parted from his mother. A workman named Radisav tries to hinder the construction, with horrific consequences. Later, the beautiful young Fata climbs the bridge’s parapet to escape an arranged marriage, and, later still, an inveterate gambler named Milan risks everything on it in one final game with the devil. With humor and compassion, Ivo Andrić chronicles the ordinary Christians, Jews, and Muslims whose lives are connected by the bridge, in a land that has itself been a bridge between East and West for centuries.Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.
£22.50
Penguin Putnam Inc The Kew Gardens Girls
Book SynopsisA heart-warming novel inspired by real life events, about the brave women during WWI who worked in the historic grounds of London's Kew Gardens.Can the women of Kew keep the gardens alive in the midst of war?London, 1916. England is at war. Desperate to help in whatever way they can, Ivy and Louisa enlist as gardeners at Kew, the Royal Botanic Gardens, taking on the jobs of the men who have gone to fight. Under their care, the gardens begin to flourish and become a safe haven for those seeking solace--but not everyone wants women working at Kew. The pair begin to face challenges on the home front. When a tragedy overseas affects the people closest to them, can the women of Kew pull together to support themselves and their country through the darkest of times?
£14.40
Hachette Australia The Desert Nurse
Book Synopsis
£18.04
Sourcebooks, Inc Paris Architect
Book SynopsisCharles Belfoure is the nationally bestselling author of The Paris Architect. An architect by profession, he graduated from the Pratt Institute and Columbia University, and he taught at Pratt as well as Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. His area of specialty is historic preservation, and he has published several architectural histories, one of which won a Graham Foundation national grant for architectural research. He has been a freelance writer for The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times. He lives in Maryland. For more information, visit www.charlesbelfoure.com.
£14.94
Large Print Press The Mystery of Mrs. Christie
Book Synopsis
£19.54
Casemate Publishers Bretherton: Khaki or Field-Grey?
Book SynopsisTowards the end of the war as the Germans are in their final retreat in November 1918, a British raiding party stumbles across a strange and eerie scene in a ruined chateau, under fire. Following the strains of a familiar tune, and understandably perplexed as to who would be playing the piano in the midst of shellfire, they discover a German officer lying dead at the keys, next to a beautiful woman in full evening dress, also deceased. But the officer is the spitting image of G B Bretherton, a British officer missing in action…. So follows a tale of mystery and identity, first published in 1930, which is not only an authentic account of conditions at the Front, but also a remarkable thriller, with a highly unusual plot, which won Bretherton comparisons to John Buchan and the best of the espionage writers. John Squire, the influential editor of the London Mercury said ‘of the English war-books, undoubtedly the best is Bretherton.’ The Morning Post thought it ‘one of the best of the English war novels. I do not expect anything much better.’ The Sunday Times pinpointed its dual attraction: it was both ‘a mystery as exciting as a good detective story and an extraordinarily vivid account of trench-warfare’.
£13.00
Casemate Publishers Pass Guard at Ypres
Book SynopsisA platoon of inexperienced British soldiers crosses to France, in excited and nervous anticipation of what is to come; they find themselves at Ypres where the battle-weary Allied troops are dug in, and slaughter surrounds them. With their young, upright officer Freddy Mann, they are soon in the thick of it, burying the dead, experiencing the terror of bombardment, being picked off by snipers, with some unable to cope and refusing to go over the top. We see the action through their eyes, from privates to the senior officers of the wider battalion, with a focus on Freddy Mann’s journey from idealistic officer barely out of school, to battle-hardened cynic, barely hanging on as those around him are cut down, maimed or crack. Freddy suffers a crisis of faith and loses his belief in the war and everything he once stood for; as he wrestles with his conscience he finds that for all ‘always at the end, is Ypres’.Trade ReviewA classic? Certainly this is a highly rewarding work and a valuable addition to any collection of worthwhile Great War 'fiction'. Highly recommended. * Stand to! *
£13.35
Casemate Publishers Behind the Lines
Book Synopsis‘I never saw the man again, alive or dead. One will say that I saw him only for a moment, that it was misty at the time, and that even I did not recognise the features, covered as they were with grime and stubble. Yet I am sure that the taller of the two ragged civilians I saw in the chalk quarry that misty March morning of 1918 was that Lieutenant Peter Rawley, R. F.A., who the official records stated was killed near Arras the previous autumn.’Behind the Lines is a thriller that follows on from the success of W. F. Morris’s first novel, Bretherton: Khaki or Field-Grey? Morris is again concerned with questions of identity, allegiance, chance, concealment and self-discovery. A subaltern is forced to flee when he accidentally kills an overbearing, taunting fellow officer: appearances are all against him and he does not trust to trench justice. He becomes a fugitive and has to join forces with other deserters, lost soldiers and outlaws in a hand-to-mouth existence in the no man’s land between opposing forces. A series of adventures and disasters ensue, including capture by the Germans and near death by firing squad. Only his own bravery and the devotion of his fiancé can rescue him from his plight.A contemporary commentator noted that ‘in spite of the flood of war books’, Morris was able to achieve ‘a quite different viewpoint from all the others’, and his book was ‘an outstanding success’.
£13.35
Casemate Publishers Roux the Bandit
Book SynopsisSet deep in the mountains of southern France, this charming short novel tells the story of a man from the Cèvennes Mountains called Roux, who refuses to join the army at the outbreak of war in 1914. Instead, he flees and hides in the hills, only returning occasionally to the farm where he left his mother and sisters. The people of the valley condemn his desertion and they hope the police will find his hideout. But as the months and the years go by, and the horrors of the trenches become known, the local people start to understand Roux’s actions. Roux begins to appear in the village more often, helping out and explaining that his decision was taken out of respect for the Bible. His arrest at the end of the War is therefore met with sadness and regret. Chamson explores questions of perception, morality and conscience with a lightness of touch coupled with an atmospheric picture of life in a WWI era rural community.Trade ReviewFor me, Roux is the hero who had the courage to become an outlaw, to oppose the ideas so solidly adhered to by others. He rejected violence only to suffer from the insults of his community… I admire Chamson’s audacity in publishing this advocacy for freedom of choice in the context of the First World War. This is why Roux the Bandit is such an important book – its freedom. * Henri Veyrier, Editor and Bookseller *While Roux the Bandit is a slender work, in its writing, its simplicity of construction and the exposition of the simple philosophy of a conscientious objector and the growing acceptance of his personal philosophy by his fellow villagers is a gem. * Stand to! *
£12.31
Casemate Publishers Riders Upon the Storm
Book SynopsisPhillip Parotti’s new novel chronicles the fast-paced action of a collection of American submarine chasers as they battle to reduce the German U-Boat menace in the English Channel during the last year of World War I. Lieutenant (junior grade) Ben Snow takes a commission in the United States Naval Reserve, and whips a dissolute crew into fighting shape. They then take their little submarine chaser, SC 65X, out into the English Channel to hunt for German U-boats in the midst of the worst winter in more than fifty years. Their achievements climax with the sinking of a German submarine and taking sixteen of her crew prisoner.When the war ends on 11 November 1918, the chaser crews expect to return home, but their exposure to danger is by no means concluded. Instead, the chasers are tasked with exploding the 70,000 dangerous mines planted in the North Sea Mine Barrage. Having survived the war, will Ben and his crew survive the peace?Trade ReviewIt is a tribute to the author’s narrative skill that he holds the reader’s interest to the very last sentence. * ARGunners.com *
£20.25
The New York Review of Books, Inc My Friends
Book Synopsis
£13.99
Nimbus Publishing Limited The History of Rain
Book Synopsis
£16.53
Hesperus Press The Tale
Book Synopsis
£14.36
InkBlots Press War in the Wasteland
Book Synopsis
£14.24
Tin House Books More Miracle Than Bird
£20.76
Tin House Books More Miracle Than Bird
Book Synopsis
£15.26
