By Tan Twan Eng

Set in Penang, 1939, this book presents a story of betrayal, barbaric cruelty, steadfast courage and enduring love.

By Sara Nović

When her happy life in 1991 Croatia is shattered by civil war, 10-year-old Ana Juric is embroiled in a world of guerilla warfare and child soldiers before making a daring escape to America, where years later she struggles to hide her past.

By Margaret Mitchell
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

The story of the tempestuous romance between Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara is set amid the drama of the Civil War.

Became the movie: Gone with the Wind.

By Robert Olen Butler
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

“A collection of stories about Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana as they face love, loss, despair, and the challenges and conflicts of a new life (From the Publisher).”

By Elliot Ackerman

An Afghani orphan loses everything when his village is attacked by militants and he must join a U.S.-funded militia to try to save his injured brother, who fell victim to a marketplace bomb.

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Re-creates the 1960s struggle of Biafra to establish an independent republic in Nigeria, following the intertwined lives of the characters through a military coup, the Biafran secession, and the resulting civil war.

By Robert Ferrigno
Series Assassin Trilogy
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

“Set in a future American divided into two major regions, Edgar-finalist Ferrigno’s final entry in his Assassin trilogy nicely ties up the wildly diverse plot lines that have motivated his many characters (Publishers Weekly).”

By Alan Furst

Members of the French Resistance network young and old, aristocrats and schoolteachers, defiant heroes and ordinary people all engaged in clandestine actions in the cause of freedom. From the secret hotels and Nazi-infested nightclubs of Paris to the villages of Rouen and Orleans. An action-packed story of romance, intrigue, spies, bravery, and air battles.

By Jamie Ford
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

When artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered during renovations at a Seattle hotel, Henry Lee embarks on a quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti–Japanese sentiment.

By Catherine Banner
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Four generations of women on a Mediterranean island fight to safeguard their family against the forces of history and bitterness that divide them from World War I through the 2008 recession.

By Kate Quinn

Stranded behind enemy lines, brave bomber pilot Nina Markova becomes the prey of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress and joins forces with a Nazi hunter and British war correspondent to find her before she finds them.

By Mary-Rose MacColl

Traveling to France during World War I to bring home her 15-year-old brother, who ran away to enlist, Iris, a young Australian nurse, decides to stay in Paris to help establish a field hospital staffed entirely by women.

By Richard North Patterson

In this thriller, military lawyer Paul Terry takes on the case of a young lieutenant accused of fatally shooting his commanding officer with the man’s own gun.

By Vaddey Ratner
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, July 9, 2013. 7:30 PM.

Her life of privilege in Cambodia shattered by the outbreak of civil war on the streets of Phnom Penh, young Raami endures four years of loss, starvation, and brutal forced labor while clinging to memories of the legends and poems told to her by her father. 

By Julie Orringer
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

Orringer’s first novel is a grand love story and an epic tale of three brothers whose lives are torn apart by war in 1937 Paris.

By Nayomi Munaweera

Traces the experiences of two women on opposing sides of the Sri Lankan civil war who connect in unexpected ways when a Tamil aspiring teacher is arrested by soldiers and placed in the path of a young woman from a loving Sinhala family.

By Michael Shaara
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
With Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian, Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian

Tuesday, June 25, 2013. 1:30 PM.

This novel reveals more about the Battle of Gettysburg than any piece of learned nonfiction on the same subject. Michael Shaara's account of the three most important days of the Civil War features deft characterizations of all of the main actors, including Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Buford, and Hancock. The most inspiring figure in the book, however, is Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose 20th Maine regiment of volunteers held the Union's left flank on the second day of the battle. This unit's bravery at Little Round Top helped turned the tide of the war against the rebels.

By Biyi Bandele-Thomas

A tale inspired by the service of legendary “Chindit” British-African solider who fought on the Asian front during World War II finds fourteen-year-old Ali Banana, a former blacksmith’s apprentice, struggling to outmaneuver Japanese snipers when he is ordered to cross enemy lines in the Burmese jungle.

By Jennifer Ryan
Recommended By Lisa V., Library Clerk

An indebted young widow, a freedom-seeking kitchen maid, the wife of a wealthy but unkind man and a trained chef navigating sexism compete for a once-in-a-lifetime spot hosting a BBC cooking program during World War II.

By Madeline Martin
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian

Taking a job in a London bookshop just as the Blitz begins, Grace finds comfort in the power of words, storytelling and community as the bookshop becomes one of the only remaining properties to survive the bombings.

By Nathacha Appanah
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Unaware of how World War II is impacting the world outside of his Indian Ocean island home, where oppression and survival are daily struggles, nine–year–old Raj meets a Jewish refugee with whom he flees into further danger.

By Weina Dai Randel
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

In Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1940, when a young heiress and owner of a nightclub meets a penniless Jewish refugee driven out of Germany, they are drawn together by fate and the freedom of music, but their love and survival grow more desperate as the war escalates.

By Chanel Cleeton

A Key West native, a bride fleeing the Cuban Revolution and a Wall Street crash victim meet at a Great War veteran camp before one of the most powerful hurricanes in history indelibly changes their lives.

By Susan Meissner
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian

A German-American teen finds her life and identity turned upside-down when her father is accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, triggering her family's forced relocation into a Texas internment camp.

By Julia Kelly
Recommended By Adrienne Rein, Library Clerk

Unable to confront the challenges in her own life, Cara Hargraves immerses herself in work for her antiques–dealer boss, uncovering relics from the life of World War II British "Gunner Girl" Louise Keene and her complicated relationship with a man named Paul.

By Roberta Gately

In the wake of 9/11, ER nurse Elsa travels to war-torn Afghanistan to run a small medical clinic in Bamiyan.

By Chris Cleave

A confrontation between a sixteen-year-old Nigerian orphan, called Little Bee, and a wealthy British couple on vacation, has life-changing consequences for everyone involved.

By Ellen Feldman

Living and working in a bombed–out Berlin, Millie Mosbach must come to terms with a past decision made in a moment of crisis with the help of a mysterious man who is surprisingly understanding of her.

By Ellen Feldman
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

Millie (Meike) Mosbach and her brother David, manage to escape to the States just before Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister in Berlin. Now they are both back in their former hometown, haunted by ghosts and hoping against hope to find their family.

By Tatjana Soli
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
With Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, August 6, 2013. 7:30 PM.

"A novel that follows an American female combat photographer in the Vietnam War as she captures the wrenching chaos and finds herself torn between the love of two men (From the Publisher)."

By Julie Berry
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

Meeting in a World War II-era Manhattan hotel for a forbidden tryst, immortals Ares and Aphrodite are caught by the latter's jealous husband before she defends her actions by imparting the tale of four young humans who became connected during World War I.

By Debra Dean

In a novel that moves back and forth between the Soviet Union during World War II and modern-day America, Marina, an elderly Russian woman, recalls vivid images of her youth during the height of the siege of Leningrad.

By Geraldine Brooks

In a story inspired by the father character in "Little Women" and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his beliefs challenged by his experiences.

By E.L. Doctorow

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's devastating march through Georgia and the Carolinas during the final years of the Civil War has a profound impact on the outcome of the war.

By Karl Marlantes

In a story by a decorated Marine veteran who fought in the Vietnam War, Lieutenant Waino Mellas and his fellow Marines venture into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and fight their way into manhood, meeting not only external obstacles but also those between each other, including racial tension, competing ambitions and underhanded officers.

By Karl Marlantes

In a story by a decorated Marine veteran who fought in the Vietnam War, Lieutenant Waino Mellas and his fellow Marines venture into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and fight their way into manhood, meeting not only external obstacles but also those between each other, including racial tension, competing ambitions and underhanded officers.

By Nathan Englander
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, August 25, 2015. 1:30 PM.

In 1976 Buenos Aires, Kaddish Poznan, the outcast son of a whore, and his wife, Lillian, are devastated by the disappearance of their own son, Pato, which forces them into the bleak corridors of the Ministry of Special Cases in search of the truth.

By Alan Furst
Series Night Soldiers 109
Recommended By Sue Ann R., Head of Children's Services

"Arriving in Paris on the eve of the Munich Appeasement in 1938, Hollywood star Frederic Stahl is unwittingly entangled in the region's shifting political currents when he discovers that his latest film is linked to the destinies of fascists, German Nazis, and Hollywood publicists (From the Publisher)."

By Melanie Benjamin

The director of the luxurious Hotel Ritz in occupied Paris and his courageous American wife, Blanche Auzello, risk their marriage and lives to support the French Resistance during World War II.

By Sara Young
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

“One of the lesser-known aspects of the Nazi regime was the Lebensborn program, which promoted the expansion of the "master race" by encouraging German women and those who were racially "pure" in its occupied countries to bear as many children as possible. Young explores the experiences of these women in her fictional story of Cyrla… Unbeknown to the officials, Cyrla is half Jewish and must walk a tightrope as she plots her escape (Library Journal).”

By Richard Flanagan

A novel of love and war that traces the life of one man--an Australian surgeon--from a prisoner-of-war camp on the Thai-Burma Death Railway during World War II, up to the present.

By Sarah Waters
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian

A tale set in World War II London finds a rescue worker struggling for composure after a bombing, a young woman longing for her soldier lover, and a convict who watches a battle through the bars of his window.

By Kristin Hannah
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian, Rosalia White, Library Clerk, Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Reunited when the elder's husband is sent to fight in World War II, French sisters Vianne and Isabelle find their bond as well as their respective beliefs tested by a world that changes in horrific ways.

By Michael Lavigne
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

When Michael’s father, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, hands him a box of moldy old journals, an amazing adventure begins – one that takes the reader from the concentration camps of Poland to a love story in Palestine, from a cancer ward in New Jersey to a hopeless marriage in San Francisco. While reading the journals, Michael becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about his father.

By Ronald H. Balson
Recommended By Susan L., Library Page
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, April 25, 2017. 1:30 PM.

Elliot Rosenzweig, a wealthy Chicago philanthropist, is attending opening night at the opera. Ben Solomon, a retired Polish immigrant, makes his way through the crowd and shoves a gun in Rosenzweig's face, denouncing him as former SS officer. Rosenzweig uses his enormous influence to get Solomon released from jail, but Solomon commences a relentless pursuit to bring Rosenzweig before the courts to answer for war crimes.

By Beatriz William

Taken in by a wealthy family friend after surviving an accident that killed his mother, thirteen–year–old Theo Decker tries to adjust to life on Park Avenue.

By Peter Behrens

A family saga spanning half a century in the lives of a restless and ambitious clan starts with the story of backwoods youth-turned-railroad magnate Joe O'Brien, who becomes the patriarch of a family that sees the first airplanes, two world wars, and the election of JFK.

By P.T. Deuterman

Their military careers forever transformed by the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy nurse Glory grieves for the loss of her husband while ship officer Marsh battles his way toward Leyte Gulf and fighter pilot Mick struggles with the drinking problem for which he was grounded.

By Charles Belfoure
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, June 28, 2016. 1:30 PM.

A Parisian architect is paid handsomely to devise secret hiding spaces for Jews in his Nazi-occupied country but struggles with risking his life for a cause he is ambivalent towards, until a personal failure brings home their suffering.

By Daniel Mason

In 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake leaves London for the jungles of Burma, where he has been asked to repair a grand piano belonging to a British army officer who uses the piano and music to help keep the peace among warring local Burmese princes