Good Reads
This is a collection of titles related to world War 2 that I've found to be particularly enjoyable.
Snow Treasure
Marie McSwigan
The invasion of Norway by Nazi troops is not a story well-known, at least by Americans. We found this glimpse into a lesser known facet of the Second World War to be fascinating.
Young Peter Lundstrom and his friends are not especially worried about the war coming to Norway – until Peter’s uncle comes home early from fishing and begins to organize construction of air-raid shelters. More importantly to Peter, his father, a bank employee, wants Peter and his friends to help the adults with a thrilling adventure.
Code Name Verity
Elizabeth Wein Oct. 11th, 1943-A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it’s barely begun. When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she’s sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.
The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah France, 1939 – In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France … but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive. Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can … completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.
Beneath a Scarlet Sky
Mark Sullivan
What makes a hero? If you are Pino Lella, the protagonist in Mark Sullivan’s riveting World War II thriller, you risk everything to save as many souls as you can by sneaking them over the Swiss Alps to safety. You put yourself in harm’s way, enlisting as a German soldier and becoming an Allied spy inside the German High Command. And you forgo the life you thought you’d have to do whatever you can to stop the madness.
It’s not often I get to publish true stories, especially ones that have been crafted into page-turning fiction. But after I picked up Beneath a Scarlet Sky and read into the wee hours, I was absorbed and amazed by the story of Italy’s Pino Lella, a real-life unsung hero of World War II, and felt compelled to publish this one. The tale of a young man, at the tender age of seventeen, pushed headlong into the horrors of war is timeless, relevant, and inspiring.
I’m not sure I would ever be as brave as Pino, and I’m so honored to share his story with you. But ultimately my feelings are superseded by my hope that Beneath a Scarlet Sky will be a “stay up all night to read” book that you will not soon forget.
– Danielle Marshall, Editor
