By Amanda Hodgkinson

“Leaving Poland for England at the end of World War II, Silvana is accompanied by eight-year-old, near-feral Aurek, with whom she shares traumatic wartime memories that set them apart from her husband, who has remade himself as an Englishman to forget the past (From the Publisher).”

By Frank Miller

An emperor amasses an army of hundreds of thousands, drawn from two continents, to invade a third continent and conquer a tiny, divided nation. Only a few hundred warriors stand against them. Yet the tiny nation is saved. It sounds like the plot of a preposterous fantasy novel. It is historical fact. In 481–480 B.C., King Xerxes of Persia raised forces in Asia and Africa and invaded Greece with an army so huge that it "drank rivers dry." Then they entered the mountain pass of Thermopylae and encountered 300 determined soldiers from Sparta.

By Dinaw Mengestu

Coming of age during an African revolution, a brilliant university student-turned-fighter eventually flees the escalating violence of his country to resettle in America, where he is haunted by his past and the memory of a charismatic leader’s devastating sacrifice.

By Erich Maria Remarque
With Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian, Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, July 8, 2014. 7:30 PM.

The testament of Paul Baumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I, illuminates the savagery and futility of war.

By Nancu Kricorian

After surviving the genocide in their homeland, Maral Pegorian and her family arrive in Paris to start a new life, but they soon realize that the Nazi Occupation is not simply a temporary outrage to be endured.

By Omar El Akkad

Depicts a second American Civil War and devastating plague in the late twenty-first century that forces a family into a camp for displaced people, where a young woman is befriended by a mysterious functionary who transforms her into a living weapon.

By Iain Lawrence

In the spring of 1943, sixteen-year-old Kak, desperate to escape his abusive parents, lies about his age to enlist in the Canadian Air Force and soon finds himself based in England as part of a crew flying bombing raids over Germany.

By Uzodinma Iweala
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Recruited by a unit of guerrilla fighters after the brutal murder of his father by militants, a West African student falls under the spell of his dangerous commander, and finds his new life increasingly contrasting with his former existence.

By Sebastian Faulks

A young English soldier finds a new love interest when he stays with a family in Northern France.

Became the TV Mini-Series: Birdsong

By Kristin Harmel
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

Escaping from Paris in 1942 after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew, a graduate student finds refuge in a small mountain town, where she forges identity documents to help hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis.

By Tariq Ali
Series Islam Quintet

“…Ali's earthy, lusty saga about the fall of Jerusalem to Muslim forces in 1187 rewrites Eurocentric history by focusing on the historical figure Salah al-Din (better known as Saladin), the Kurdish upstart who used his position as sultan of Egypt and Syria to retake the Holy City from Crusaders (Publishers Weekly).”

By Catherine Ryan Hyde

The son of prosperous landowners in rural California befriends the sons of field workers who must contend with the changes that occur after the bombing of Pearl Harbor scatters one each into the army, an internment camp and into hiding.

By Jane Yolen

A retelling of the Sleeping Beauty tale finds Briar Rose living in forests patrolled by the German army during World War II in a dark tale of the Holocaust.

By David L. Robbins

Set against the backdrop of the Los Banos prison raid––one of the most daringepisodes of World War II - Broken Jewel tells a powerful story of war, love, and survival.

By Julie Otsuka
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, August 28, 2012.  1 PM & 7:30 PM.

Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.

By Herman Wouk
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

Herman Wouk's boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life-and mutiny-on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II. In the intervening half century, The Caine Mutiny has become a perennial favorite of readers young and old, has sold millions of copies throughout the world, and has achieved the status of a modern classic.

By Joseph Heller
With Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian

Tuesday, September 29, 2015. 1:30 PM.

Depicts the struggles of a U.S. airman attempting to survive the lunacy and depravity of a World War II base.

Became the movie: Catch 22.

By Steven Galloway

While a cellist plays at the site of a mortar attack to commemorate the deaths of twenty–two friends and neighbors, a woman sniper secretly protects the life of the cellist as her army becomes increasingly threatening.

By Jeff Shaara

Presents a first installment in a trilogy inspired by the Siege of Vicksburg that follows Ulysses S. Grant's successful crossing of the Mississippi in May 1863 and his reluctant decision to surround Confederate soldiers and citizens in a ring of Federal entrenchments to starve them into surrendering.

By Laurie Halse Anderson

After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.

By Heather Morris

A novel based on a true story follows a Russian woman who is forced by a concentration-camp commandant to become his lover and is subsequently sent to Siberia after being found guilty of collaborating with the enemy.

By David Benioff
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Documenting his grandparents' experiences during the siege of Leningrad, a young writer learns his grandfather's story about how a military deserter and he tried to secure pardons by gathering hard–to–find ingredients for a powerful colonel's daughter's wedding cake.

By David R. Gillham
Recommended By Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, January 28, 2014.  1:30 PM.

Hiding her clandestine activities behind the persona of a model Nazi soldier's wife at the height of World War II, Sigrid Schroeder dreams of her former Jewish lover and risks everything to hide a mother and two young children who she believes might be her lover's family. 

By George R.R. Martin
Series Song of Ice and Fire
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Martin, George R.R. – A Clash of Kings* Six separate factions vie for control of the Seven Kingdoms, while an ancient form of magic, an everlasting winter, and an unearthly army threaten to return.

By Elizabeth Wein
Recommended By Sharon Long, Assistant Library Director
With Pam Strudler, Librarian, Sharon Long, Teen Librarian

Tuesday, July 22, 2014. 1:30 PM.

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage and great courage as she relates what she must do to survive.

By Anthony Marra
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, March 11, 2014. 7:30 PM.

“In December 2004 in a rural village in Chechnya, failed doctor Akhmed harbors the traumatized eight-year-old daughter of a man abducted by Russian forces and treats a series of wounded refugees while exploring the shared past that binds him to the child.” (From the Publisher)

By Nick Foulkes

Examines a battle that has become one of the most famous in history, Napoleon's defeat in Waterloo, Belgium.

By Thomas Keneally

Joining the war effort as nurses in 1915, two spirited Australian sisters, carrying a guilty secret, become the friends they never were at home and find themselves courageous in the face of extreme danger as they serve alongside remarkable women during the First World War.

By A. J. Pearce
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Nathalie Levin, Children's Services Librarian

An adventurous young woman takes a typist job to assist the war effort and lands in the employ of a renowned advice columnist before she begins secretly replying to heart – wrenching letters rejected as unsuitable.

By Laura Resnick
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager

“The sequel to In Fire Forged brings to a conclusion Resnick's epic tale. Strong storytelling and a sense of mythic overtones lend depth to a well-developed tale of personal courage and high adventure (From Library Journal).”

By Kate Quinn

Known as Lady Death– –a lethal hunter of Nazis– – Mila Pavlichenko, sent to America on a goodwill tour, forms an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and a connection with a silent fellow sniper, offering her a chance at happiness until her past returns with a vengeance.

By Rick Campbell

Xiang Li Cheng, the President of the People's Republic of China, has both a problem and a plan. The problem is that the limited supply of oil available to China is threatening to derail his country's economic growth and prosperity. But to secure access to those resources, he must contend with the powerful U.S. Navy and the Pacific Fleet. After a decades-long largely secret military build -up, Cheng sets his plan in motion by suddenly invading Taiwan and drawing the Pacific Fleet in to its defense. National Security Advisor Christine O'Connor has critical information, but she's trapped in Beijing; Captain Murray Wilson, C.O. of the submarine USS Georgia must somehow infiltrate the Chinese submarine blockade; and Navy SEAL Jake Harrison must lead a strike team into the most hostile of territories with only hours to implement the most daring plan ever.

By Orson Scott Card
Series Ender Wiggin
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager

An expert at simulated war games, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin believes that he is engaged in one more computer war game when, in truth, he is commanding the last Earth fleet against an alien race seeking Earth’s complete destruction.

Became the movie: Ender's Game.

By Orson Scott Card
Series Shadow Saga
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager

“Follows the life of Ender Wiggin’s comrade Bean, from his escape from the mean streets of Rotterdam, to his student days at the Battle School, and to his role as Ender’s right hand ally, strategist, and friend in the epic struggle to save Earth from alien invaders (From the Publisher).”

By Mohsin Hamid
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Two young lovers engage in a furtive affair shaped by local unrest on the eve of a civil war that erupts in a cataclysmic bombing attack, forcing them to abandon their previous home and lives.

By William Faulkner

An allegorical story of World War I set in the trenches in France and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment.

By Ken Follett
Series Century Trilogy
Recommended By Betty Petreshock, Reference Librarian, John Shea, Library Page

Follows the fates of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.

By Alison Pick

“Holding onto the hope that he and his family will be able to weather the oncoming Nazi occupation, Pavel Bauer, a fiercely patriotic secular Jew, finds his world unraveling as his government, business partners, and neighbors turn their backs on him and his family (From the Publisher).”

By Ernest Hemingway

An American's love for an English nurse during the First World War ends in tragedy.

Became the movie: A Farewell to Arms (original in 1932, remake in 1957)

Became the Mini-Series: A Farewell to Arms (1966)

By Gabriel Chevallier

After being wounded in the trenches of World War I, Jean Dartemont recovers but is sent back to the front lines, as he describes the horrors and futility of war.

By Stephen Coonts
Series Jake Grafton Novels

During the Vietnam War, attack pilot Jake Grafton, struggling with his conscience and trying to find meaning to all the senseless death and destruction, decides to plan an illegal bombing raid into the very heart of Hanoi.

By Amitav Ghosh
Series Ibis Trilogy

A conclusion to the internationally best-selling series that began with Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke follows an East India Company soldier's 1839 journey to Hong Kong to end a costly embargo on the eve of the Opium Wars. Genres: Historical Fiction; Series

By Geling Yan

“Hiding in an American church as the Japanese invade Nanking, Shujuan and a group of terrified schoolgirls find their lives in increasing danger when thirteen courtesans from a nearby brothel seek refuge at the church (From the Publisher).”

By Sherri L. Smith

During World War II, a light–skinned African American girl "passes" for white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

By Danielle Steel
Recommended By Marie McLaughlin, Head of Circulation

After her brother is wounded in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Audrey and her best friend Lizzie enlist in the army as flight nurses.

By David Abrams

A satirical tale set in the chaotic world of Baghdad's Forward Operating Base Triumph traces the daily experiences of men and women soldiers who avoid combat by remaining at the base and spending their days playing video games, watching television and getting acquainted in empty portable toilets.

By Kristin Harmel
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Lisa V., Library Clerk

Raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe after being kidnapped, a young German woman, in 1941, vows to teach a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror how to survive in the forest until she is betrayed as her past and present collide.

By Sophie Littlefield

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Lucy Takeda and her mother, Miyako, are rounded up and taken to the Manzanar prison camp where they endure abuse and harsh living conditions until Miyako makes the ultimate sacrifice.

By Steven Pressfield

Chronicles the battle of three hundred Spartan warriors against a huge force of Persian soldiers in 480 B.C. against the background of life in ancient Sparta and its extraordinary culture.

By Mark Mustian

Seen by those around him as a virtually senile nonagenarian, Emmet Conn is haunted by vivid memories of a past he and others deliberately worked to forget, a situation that compels him to seek out the love of his life to beg her forgiveness.