Showing titles in World War I

Peggy and Dar Tenant’s dream for security and respectability has been their driving force since they married. Just as they prepare to buy their own home, tragedy strikes, when Dar is involved in a devastated accident at the docks and Peggy’s world crashes around her. With Dar seriously ill in hospital Peggy’s reduced to scrimping and saving to keep a roof over her family’s head having to revisit the hardships of her youth that she dearly wanted to escape from.

From the highly acclaimed author of The Photographer of the Lost, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick They need him to remember. He wants to forget. 1918. In the last week of the First World War, a uniformed soldier is arrested in Durham Cathedral. When questioned, it becomes clear that he has no...

"An expansive, breathtaking tale . . ." —Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Queen "Readers will race to the end, not wanting to put this book down . . . Highly recommended." —The Historical Novel Society, Marlie Wasserman "Hope Tarr's Irish Eyes is romantic, lyrical...

August 1917. As the Allies launch a massive offensive on the Western front, Captain Richardson, a battlefield veteran of the trenches leads four heavy tanks on an impossible mission against the German front line. A brazen assault through the wasteland battlefield that could shatter the German defences and create an opening for Allied soldiers to pour through and hasten the end of the war. But when tank F41 becomes trapped in no-man-land, that battle is transformed. The men can neither advance nor retreat as the tank sinks deeper into the mud, all while shells rain down all around it.

It is 1916. The world has gone to war, and young Leo Sercombe, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary, is a long way from home. The wild, unchanging West Country roads of his boyhood seem very far away from life aboard a battlecruiser. Skimming through those West Country roads on her motorcycle, Lottie Prideaux defies the expectations of her class and sex as she covertly studies to be a vet. In a world torn asunder by war, everything dances in flux: how can the old ways life survive, and how can the future be imagined, in the face of such unimaginable change?

Fiction to coincide with a three-part historical Emmerdale spin-off show airing on ITV this autumn. The show is billed as a captivating 8 p.m. series in which cast members mark 100 years since the end of the Great War by uncovering the hidden stories of their WW1 counterparts, embarking on an immersive journey to experience a Yorkshire village at war and creating a special Armistice celebration.

A powerful and moving anthology of poems, both familiar and less so, from the eighteenth century to our own days in the long shadow of the bomb. The poets evoke the glory and the horror, the exhilaration and the despair, the humanity and the insanity, of war. The selection of poems, both...

A powerful and gripping novel about love, loyalty and obsession set during World War One and the Irish War of Independence. Francie, Archie and Annie grew up playing together in the hills and rivers of Fermanagh. But in 1914, the boys are seduced by the drama of the war in Europe and leave the village to join up. Before they leave, Francie swears to Annie that he'll keep her little brother safe.

Aggie has tasted freedom working at the local munitions factory. But the Great War is coming to an end, and the men are coming home. Aggie can't bear the idea of going back into service. She wants more from her life - and becoming a Copperette - a member of the Women's Police Service - might help her move up in the world. Mim just wants to do her bit for her country. She's prepared to work hard to help her fellow women and keep up morale. She even takes Aggie in to her house to help with her training.   

Elena Standish, a young English photographer working for British Intelligence, is sent on her latest mission to Berlin, where painful memories of her escape from the Gestapo come flooding back. With the help of another spy, she must rescue a renowned scientist and return to England unscathed. But, as rumours start to spread of germ warfare, Elena and her family know she must act quickly to save lives.

Tasmania, 1874. Growing up in the impoverished tenements along the Hobart Rivulet, Harriet Brown is used to doing whatever it takes to survive. Including, at just twelve years old, shearing off her hair and pretending to be a boy to secure a job as label-paster at the George Peacock and Sons jam factory. Four years later, the deceit becomes too much to bear and Harriet risks everything on the chance at a future with her ambitious friend and workmate Henry Jones. But this decision forces her into a new deception: play the role of expert jam maker, or else be cast out onto the streets.

Blackpool, 1922. Martha and Trisha may have escaped poverty, but their fortunes have yet to turn. Happy on her wedding day, Trisha's new fairy-tale romance soon darkens as her husband, Walter, keeps her at arms length. Between his secrecy, and her mother-in-law's coldness, Trisha feels a stranger in her own home, and lonelier than ever. Meanwhile a spectre from Martha's past threatens the happiness she has found with Joshua and Bonnie. When she is called to help in her past love's hour of need, she must decide whether to risk exposing a secret that could cost her the trust of her daughter.

Caught in the midst of World War I, Lila is a young Polish orphan living with an immortal being known as the Count. After witnessing the tragedies unfolding across Europe with Jörg, a German soldier who serves as her bodyguard, she resolves to use the Count’s powers in a desperate bid to...

1922. Twenty-year-old Eleanor Mackridge is horrified by the future mapped out for her – to serve the upper classes or find a man to marry (preferably kind). She ‘proved useful’ working in a munitions factory during the war – handling explosives – but now, society is returning to normal and women are being put back in their place.

On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna. At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, 17 years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames.

1915. Best friends Irene, Maggie and Annie are proud members of the newly renamed Women's Police Service. While Britain's men are away fighting in France, the girls are doing their bit by keeping the peace at home in London's East End. But out of the blue, Irene is given the opportunity to be stationed near an army barracks in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Having recently experienced some heartbreak and keen for the adventure, she decides to go. What could possibly go wrong?

1916. Young artist Sam Burke is spared death by firing squad on the battlefields of France and brought to a remote castle by the Irish Sea. At the ‘Tin Nose Shop’, he is tasked with creating intricate masks to hide the mutilated faces of his fellow soldiers from the Front. While he tries to come to terms with the death of his best friend and the promise he failed to keep, Sam and the disfigured soldiers struggle to return to their former lives and their loved ones.

Lieutenant Gilbert Maltravers is bored. It is 1912 and he has been promoted as fast as any in his Dartmouth class and is placed in a battleship where he can confidently look forward to promotion to post captain and a battleship of his own by the time he is forty. All he needs to do is keep a smart ship, polish the brass and salute every senior officer, while wearing an expensive uniform that testifies he is one of the right sort. His father is an admiral, so very little can go wrong.

On Halloween night, 1906, young working class Lotta Rae is attacked by a wealthy gentleman. She seeks justice at an Old Bailey trial alongside her barrister, William Linden, who she believes to be her ally. The verdict is devastating and Lotta Rae soon realises the guardians of justice do not support her. But what none could foresee were the shocking consequences. Twelve years later, as the suffragettes rise and the ghost of WW1 looms over London, William is joined again by Lotta Rae. Now they will travel to a fateful destination, where truths must be faced and wrongs will be righted.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE PAGE-TURNING NEW NOVEL FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE WITCHFINDER'S SISTER I still dream, every night, of Polneath on fire. Smoke unravelling from an upper window, and the terrace bathed in a hectic orange light . . . Now I see that the decision I made at...