Search:

All human wisdom / by Lemaitre, Pierre,author.; Wynne, Frank,translator.; translation of:Lemaitre, Pierre.Couleurs de l'incendie.English.;
In 1927, the great and the good of Paris gather at the funeral of the wealthy banker, Marcel Pericourt. His daughter, Madeleine, is poised to take over his financial empire (although, unfortunately, she knows next to nothing about banking). More unfortunately still, when Madeleine's seven-year-old son, Paul, tumbles from a second floor window of the Pericourt mansion on the day of his grandfather's funeral, and suffers life-changing injuries, his fall sets off a chain of events that will reduce Madeleine to destitution and ruin in a matter of months. Using all her reserves of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and a burning desire for retribution, Madeleine sets about rebuilding her life. She will be helped by an ex-Communist fixer, a Polish nurse who doesn't speak a word of French, a brainless petty criminal with a talent for sabotage, an exiled German Jewish chemist, a very expensive forger, an opera singer with a handy flair for theatrics, and her own son with ideas for a creative new business to take Paris by storm.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Corruption; Extortion; Fraud; Revenge;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The elephant of Belfast : a novel / by Walsh, S. Kirk,author.;
"The Elephant of Belfast chronicles a seven-month period of time when the Germans unexpectedly bombed Belfast, Northern Ireland, also known as the Belfast Blitz. Through the lens of the Bellevue Zoo and one of its zookeepers, twenty-year-old Hettie Quin, the novel animates how the war irrevocably impacted-and shaped the lives of Belfast's citizens in broad and intimate ways. In October 1940, Hettie meets Violet, a three-year-old Asian elephant arriving at the Belfast docks from Ceylon. Soon, she becomes Violet's dedicated zookeeper at the Bellevue Zoo. At the same time, Hettie continues to experience the grief related to the recent loss of her beloved older sister, Anna, and the abandonment of her father, Thomas, who left her mother, Rose. On April 15th , 1941, Belfast is attacked for five hours, with 674 bombs falling, and almost a thousand civilians being killed. During the bombings and its aftermath, Hettie does all that she can to save her elephant, and survive the destruction and escalating sectarian unrest of the city. Even though Hettie is still only twenty years old by the novel's end, she's aged at least a decade, her life and perspective transforming in tragic and unexpected ways. Taken altogether, The Elephant of Belfast reflects a complicated portrait of loss, grief, love, and resilience, and how the zoo and the city of Belfast suffered during these catastrophic attacks. At the narrative's heart is a changing relationship between a young woman and an elephant: At first, it seems that Hettie saves Violet, but in the end, Violet saves her"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Elephants; Grief; Human-animal relationships;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Lightning down : a World War II story of survival / by Clavin, Thomas,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The incredible true story of fighter pilot Joe Moser's war in the sky and secret survival at Buchenwald during World War II. On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his 44th combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 150 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's Lightning Down tells this largely untold and riveting true story. Moser was just 22 years old, a farmboy from Washington State who fell in love with flying. During the war he realized his dream of piloting a P-38 Lightning, one of the most effective weapons the Army Air Corps had against the powerful German Luftwaffe. But on that hot August morning he had to bail out of his damaged, burning plane. Captured immediately, Moser's journey into hell began. Joe Moser and his courageous comrades from England, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere endured against impossible odds in the most horrific surroundings ... until the day the orders are issued by Hitler himself to execute them. Only a most desperate plan might save them. The page-turning momentum of Lightning Down is like that of a thriller, but the stories of imprisoned and brutalized airmen are true and told in unforgettable detail, led by the distinctly American voice of Joe Moser, who prays every day to be reunited with his family. Lightning Down is a can't-put-down inspiring saga of brave men confronting great evil and great odds against survival"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Moser, Joseph F.; United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Squadron, 429th; Buchenwald (Concentration camp); Fighter pilots; Prisoners of war; Prisoners of war; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Last Twilight in Paris [electronic resource] : by Jenoff, Pam.aut; Plummer, Thérèse.nrt; Maarleveld, Saskia.nrt; cloudLibrary;
"A fast-paced and vibrant wartime tale of holding on to love against the odds and learning to fight for the truth." ­­–Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Daughter A Parisian department store, a mysterious necklace and a woman’s quest to unlock a decade-old mystery are at the center of this riveting novel of love and survival, from New York Times bestselling author Pam Jenoff London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before, when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe —and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war.    Following the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history.  The necklace leads them to discover the dark history of Lévitan—a once-glamorous department store that served as a Nazi prison, and Helaine, a woman who was imprisoned there, torn apart from her husband when the Germans invaded France.   Louise races to find the connection between the necklace, the department store and Franny’s death. But nothing is as it seems, and there are forces determined to keep the truth buried forever. Inspired by the true story of Lévitan, Last Twilight in Paris is both a gripping mystery and an unforgettable story about sacrifice, resistance and the power of love to transcend in even the darkest hours.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; 20th Century; Contemporary Women;
© 2025., HarperCollins,
unAPI

Mina's matchbox / by Ogawa, Yōko,1962-author.; Snyder, Stephen,1957-translator.; translation of:Ogawa, Yōko,1962-Mīna no kōshin.English.;
"In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt's family. Tomoko's aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home -- and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company -- are symbols of that status. ... The family is just as beguiling as their mansion -- Tomoko's dignified and devoted aunt, her German grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family's patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko's cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko's life, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel's end"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Bildungsromans.; Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Cousins; Families; Friendship; Mansions; Pygmy hippopotamus; Storytelling;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The huntress : a novel / by Quinn, Kate,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.On the icy edge of Soviet Russia, bold and reckless Nina Markova joins the infamous Night Witches - an all-female bomber regiment - wreaking havoc on Hitler's eastern front. But when she is downed behind enemy lines and thrown across the path of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, Nina must use all her wits to survive. British war correspondent Ian Graham has witnessed the horrors of war from Omaha Beach to the Nuremburg Trials. He abandons journalism after the war to become a Nazi hunter, yet one target eludes him: the Huntress. Fierce, disciplined Ian must join forces with reckless, cocksure Nina, the only witness to escape the Huntress alive. In post-war Boston, seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride is delighted when her long-widowed father brings home a fiancee. But Jordan grows increasingly disquieted by the soft-spoken German widow who seems to be hiding something. Delving into her new stepmother's past, Jordan slowly realizes that a Nazi killer may be hiding in plain sight.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Historical fiction.; War fiction.; Bomber pilots; War criminals; Nazi hunters; War correspondents; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

The escape artist : the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world / by Freedland, Jonathan,1967-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became the first Jew to break out of Auschwitz -- one of only four who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world -- and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them at the end of the railway line. Against all odds, he and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen -- a forensically detailed report that would eventually reach Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and the Pope. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba--then just nineteen years old -- had risked everything to deliver. Some could not believe it. Others thought it easier to keep quiet. Vrba helped save 200,000 Jewish lives -- but he never stopped believing it could have been so many more"--
Subjects: Vrba, Rudolf.; Wetzler, Alfréd, 1918-1988.; Auschwitz (Concentration camp); Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Nazi concentration camp escapes; Nazi concentration camp inmates;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Lilac girls : a novel / by Kelly, Martha Hall,author.;
"On a September day in Manhattan in 1939, twenty-something Caroline Ferriday is consumed by her efforts to secure the perfect boutonniere for an important French diplomat and resisting the romantic advances of a married actor. Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish Catholic teenager, is nervously anticipating the changes that are sure to come since Germany has declared war on Poland. As tensions rise abroad - and in her personal life - Caroline's interest in aiding the war effort in France grows and she eventually comes to hear about the dire situation at the Ravensbruck all-female concentration camp. At the same time, Kasia's carefree youth is quickly slipping away, only to be replaced by a fervor for the Polish resistance movement. Through Ravensbruck - and the horrific atrocities taking place there told in part by an infamous German surgeon, Herta Oberheuser - the two women's lives will converge in unprecedented ways and a novel of redemption and hope emerges that is breathtaking in scope and depth"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Ravensbrück (Concentration camp); Nazis; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

The Paris showroom / by Blackwell, Juliet,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."In Nazi-occupied Paris, a talented artisan must fight for her life by designing for her enemies. From New York Times bestselling author Juliet Blackwell comes an extraordinary story about holding on to hope when all seems lost. Capucine Benoit works alongside her father to produce fans of rare feathers, beads, and intricate pleating for the haute couture fashion houses. But after the Germans invade Paris in June 1940, Capucine and her father must focus on mere survival-until they are betrayed to the secret police and arrested for his political beliefs. When Capucine saves herself from deportation to Auschwitz by highlighting her connections to Parisian design houses, she is sent to a little-known prison camp located in the heart of Paris, within the Lévitan department store. There, hundreds of prisoners work to sort through, repair, and put on display the massive quantities of art, furniture, and household goods looted from Jewish homes and businesses. Forced to wait on German officials and their wives and mistresses, Capucine struggles to hold her tongue in order to survive, remembering happier days spent in the art salons, ateliers, and jazz clubs of Montmartre in the 1920s. Capucine's estranged daughter, Mathilde, remains in the care of her conservative paternal grandparents, who are prospering under the Nazi occupation. But after her mother is arrested and then a childhood friend goes missing, the usually obedient Mathilde finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of Paris's Résistance fighters. As her mind opens to new ways of looking at the world, Mathilde also begins to see her unconventional mother in a different light. When an old acquaintance arrives to go "shopping" at the Lévitan department store on the arm of a Nazi officer and secretly offers to help Capucine get in touch with Mathilde, this seeming act of kindness could have dangerous consequences"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Mothers and daughters; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Our narrow hiding places : a novel / by Jansma, Kristopher,author.;
"For fans of All the Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale: an elderly woman recounts her Dutch family's survival during the final years of Nazi occupation, shedding new light on old secrets that rippled through subsequent generations. Eighty-year-old Mieke Geborn's life is one of quiet routine. Widowed for many years, she enjoys the view from her home on the New Jersey shore, visits with friends, and tai chi at the local retirement community. But when her beloved grandson, Will, and his wife, Teru, show up for a visit, things are soon upended. Their marriage is threatening to unravel, and Will has questions for his grandmother-questions about family secrets that have been lost for decades and are now finally rising to the surface. But telling Will the truth involves returning to the past, and to Mieke's childhood in coastal Holland. There, in the last years of World War II, she survived the Hunger Winter, a brutal season when food and heat were cut off and thousands of Dutch citizens starved. Her memories weave together childhood magic and the madness of history, and carry readers from the windy beaches of The Hague to the dark cells of a concentration camp, through the bends of eel-filled rivers, and, finally, to the story of Will's father, absent since Will's childhood. Our Narrow Hiding Places is a sweeping story of survival and of the terrible cost of war-and a reminder that sometimes the traumas we inherit come along with a resilience we never imagined"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Families; Family secrets; Secrecy; Survival; Women; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI