In the city of light, some deals are only made in the shadows. When a corrupt art dealer is killed, Detective Eddie Giral descends into an underground world of stolen paintings, forged identities, and whispered deals with Nazi occupiers. As Eddie discovers links to a wealthy Jewish family’s missing collection, the trail leads him to […]
Book theft in Nazi-occupied Paris
Chris Lloyd, author of the Occupation series of crime novels about Nazi-occupied Paris, argues that the widescale looting of books, now largely forgotten, was more sinister and insidious that the famous book-burnings of the 1930s. Because it wasn’t done for display; it was for a calculated culture war. “You don’t have to burn books to […]
Fables & Lies by Elisabeth Storrs
In WWII Berlin Freyja Bremer, a patriotic museum assistant, marries Kaspar Voigt, an ambitious SS scholar, to protect her father. Yet she is unaware her husband is instrumental in Himmler’s twisted quest for Aryan supremacy. As she strives to safeguard the priceless Priam’s Treasure from air raids, Freyja falls in love with Darien Lessing, an […]
Résistance: The Corps Franc Pommiès by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
The Corps Franc Pommiès (CFP) was founded on 17 November 1942 by its namesake, André Pommiès. It operated in south-western France, becoming one of the largest and most important Resistance units in the south. After initial work in the sabotage of rail and road networks, factories and power plants, on 15 April 1944 it sabotaged […]
A Miracle of Deliverance: A Dunkirk Short Story Anthology by Patrick Larsimont and others
Seven authors. Nine stories. One Dunkirk collection. This anthology commemorates the Dunkirk evacuation in a series of linked short stories. A young girl flees war-ravaged Belgium, while a German tanker progresses closer to the beaches, and a British soldier reflects on the chaos of war as he faces his final battle. A French artilleryman gets […]
The Enemy’s Wife by Deborah Swift
When Zofia’s beloved husband Haru is conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1941, she is left to navigate Japanese-occupied Shanghai alone. Far from home and surrounded by a country at war, Zofia finds unexpected comfort in a bond with Hilly, a spirited young refugee escaping Nazi-occupied Austria. As violence tightens its grip on the […]
Discovering Shanghai’s International Settlement
Shanghai, the ‘Pearl of the Orient’, was invaded by Japanese troops in 1941. The comfortable lives of the Westerners living in the city’s International Settlement were over. Deborah Swift looks back at the history of what happened, and her experiences of researching it for her latest novel, The Enemy’s Wife. At the end of my […]
Woodspring by Elizabeth Buchan
Since the house was built in 1810, the Danes have lived in the elegant, light-filled rooms of Woodspring, and walked in the fields and woods that surround the house. Over the years, and through the changing seasons, it has brought shelter, solace and joy. But now it’s 1940 and Europe is on the brink of […]