The story begins one evening in 2016 at a celebration of family and friends in France, people who know each other only because of their connection to an American WWII pilot, Captain Edward Appel. The main event is the presentation of Edward’s parachute to Juliann, his daughter. This recovered parachute had saved the pilot’s life as he jumped from a failing B-24 bomber in the year 1944 near Surbourg, France. Edward enlisted in the army in 1940...

a family flees Paris at the dawn of the Second World War, haunted by secrets that threaten to rip them apart. Seventy years later, Cassie, in modern-day Paris, finds herself alone frantically trying to confront her hostile relatives. Meanwhile, puzzled by the advances of a charming Frenchman, she struggles to cope with the demands of her manipulative ex and gain an understanding of her true self.

Narratives about what it was like to be caught up in the strange and mysterious events of the adult world in World War II, as seen through the eyes of South Dakota children.

Amidst he chaos of the Second World War, and having taken refuge in North Africa, Cassie’s parents and grandparents enter the French Resistance. As the Nazi threat tightens its noose, they find love and risk their lives and one another’s. In modern-day Paris, Cassie, now on the cusp of a surprising and disorienting love interest, has to conquer her fear of failure and success. When the last shocking piece of her family’s puzzle comes into her...

"In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism--but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion....

Hiding from the Nazis in the guise of a Christian farmer's wife, a Jewish woman is met with suspicion by a Nazi official who harbors a vendetta against the former seminary student posing as her husband. Autumn, 1943. Life is becoming increasingly perilous for Italian Jews like the Mazin family. Antonina Mazin has but one hope to survive: to leave Venice and her family, to hide in the countryside with a man she has only just met. Nico Gerardi was...

"In 1918, a fearless twenty-two-year old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange she is soon the celebrated owner of the city's most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon. By the early 1930s, as America's economy collapses, her marriage founders and Dorothea must find ways to support her...

"In 1936, the Nazis are little more than loud, brutish bores to fifteen-year old Stephan Neuman, the son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family and budding playwright whose playground extends from Vienna's streets to its intricate underground tunnels. Stephan's best friend and companion is the brilliant Žofie-Helene, a Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. But the two adolescents' carefree innocence is shattered...

"In 1942, London. Nancy Mitford jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. When a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay. Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of...

"In the spring of 1942, young Elzbieta Rabinek is aware of the swiftly growing discord just beyond the courtyard of her comfortable Warsaw home. She has no fondness for the Germans who patrol her streets and impose their curfews, but has never given much thought to what goes on behind the walls that contain her Jewish neighbors. She knows all too well about German brutality--and that it's the reason she must conceal her true identity. But in befriending...