79 years after the occupation of the Channel Islands ended, novelist and journalist Kate Thompson writes about visiting Jersey, where she uncovered an island full of stories about wartime resistance. I fell in love with Jersey on a trip to the Jersey Festival of Words in September 2019. I defy anyone who visits not to. […]
The Baker’s Secret by Lelita Baldock
Riga, 1943. Cycling the streets to deliver fresh loaves, Zenta passes empty houses, curtains open, doors unlocked, their occupants forced out by Russian or German hands. Since her brother became a soldier and her sister joined the resistance, Zenta is all her parents have left. Then one morning her sister returns. Tired, worn, with a […]
The German Child by Catherine Hokin
Berlin, 1944. ‘No! Not my child!’ Annaliese screams, her voice breaking as she pounds the window uselessly. But no-one looks up as the man in the SS uniform cradles her precious baby and strides away… She lies unmoving on the threadbare cot, her throat hoarse from long hours of screaming but her tears keep falling. […]
Making room for the master race: the true scope of Himmler’s Lebensborn programme
Catherine Hokin writes about the Nazi Lebensborn programme, the background to her latest novel. What did it involve? And how did the Third Reich plan to make room for the ‘master race’ babies they envisaged being born? “The living space of the Nazis has become the dying space of Europe.” When Karl Frank – an […]
The Austrian Bride by Helen Parusel
Austria, 1938 After years of hardship, Ella is full of hope for a better future for Austrians, and when Hitler marches into Linz, she can’t help but become swept up in the euphoria of her boyfriend, Max. But she soon realises her mistake. When she witnesses a woman being shot in the street and a […]
The Guinea Pig Club – a WWII RAF pilot elite
The Guinea Pig Club was formed in 1941 by a group of remarkable RAF pilots, men who survived both life-altering injuries during action and the surgery, by a charismatic virtuoso doctor, which followed. They were an elite, modest but courageous, whose stories inspired LP Fergusson to write her latest novel. The Fever Box is a […]
The Fever Box by LP Fergusson
When Clara Cooper’s abusive husband is lost in action during the Fall of France, she grabs the opportunity to disappear, secretly returning to nursing. Although Britain is on the brink of invasion, she finds a comforting anonymity working in the vast military hospital on the south coast. However, more than pain and suffering lurk in […]
Rising Tide by Alan Bardos
November 1940, and Lieutenant Daniel Nichols, a former pacifist turned crusader, is wounded taking part in the Royal Navy’s carrier born air raid on the Italian Battle Fleet in Taranto. Six months later Sándor Braun, a British double agent, escorts a Japanese delegation around Taranto and discovers that they are planning a similar attack. But […]