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The Midwife's Daughter by Patricia Ferguson

A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. The new novel from Orange Prize listed author Patricia Ferguson is a deeply moving tale about two sisters and the young black orphan who changes their lives - for anyone who loves Call the Midwife or Andrea Levy.


Violet Dimond, the Holy Terror, has delivered many of the town children - and often their children - in her capacity as handywoman. But Violet's calling is dying out as, with medicine's advances, the good old ways are no longer good enough.


Grace, Violet's adopted daughter, is a symbol of change herself. In the place where she has grown up and everyone knows her, she is accepted, though most of the locals never before saw a girl with skin that colour. For Violet and Grace the coming war will bring more upheaval into their lives: can they endure it, or will they, like so many, be swept aside by history's tide?


A moving tale of prejudice, struggle, love, tragedy, bravery and the changing lives of women in the twentieth century, The Midwife's Daughter grips the reader all the way to its heartstopping conclusion.

No. 1 Chesterfield Square by Nick Jones

Hardship and excess, determination and greed, power and folly, love and loss combine amidst the beauty of Dartmoor, the squalor of the battlefield and the elegance and excitement of London in this tale of an extraordinary man and his family. Max Chambers was born into servitude on a grand Devonshire estate at the turn of the twentieth century and there he might have remained, trapped by the limitations of class, money and history. Yet, he is a man of ambition and determination - derived from an inherent sense of injustice and a burning desire for personal freedom. The Gordon family - owners of the estate - symbolise, for Max, the worst kind of oppression and snobbery, but their worlds are inextricably linked, and, as he fights to break free and make his way in the world, the Gordon shadow is an ever present reminder of his humble beginnings. As Max's fortunes and position are elevated beyond his wildest imagination, his nemesis, the tenth Earl William Gordon, seems hellbent on destroying his dream. However, as with all families, untold secrets and hidden histories lie just beneath the surface. Secrets that, once discovered, will have seismic repercussions. Spanning the belle époque to the horrors of the First World War and on into the roaring twenties, No.1 Chesterfield Square is a sprawling cross-class family saga with an unspoken, yet pivotal truth at its heart.

Before I Met You by Lisa Jewell

Having grown up on the quiet island of Guernsey, Betty Dean can't wait to start her new life in London. On a mission to find Clara Pickle - the mysterious beneficiary in her grandmother's will - she arrives in grungy, 1990s Soho, ready for whatever life has to throw at her. Or so she thinks...


In 1920s bohemian London, Arlette - Betty's grandmother - is starting her new life in a time of post-war change. Beautiful and charismatic, Arlette is soon drawn into the hedonistic world of the Bright Young People. But less than two years later, tragedy strikes and she flees back to Guernsey for the rest of her life.


As Betty searches for Clara, she is taken on a journey through Arlette's extraordinary time in London, uncovering a tale of love, loss and heartbreak. Will the secrets of Arlette's past help Betty on her path to happiness?

Wow, Ally, you're finding a ton! I just found this one, and if you move quickly, you can enter to win it in a goodreads' giveaway.

Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara

1935: Desdemona Hart Spaulding was an up-and-coming Boston artist when she married in haste and settled in the small, once-fashionable theater town of Cascade to provide a home for her dying father. Now Cascade is on the short list to be flooded to provide water for Boston, and Dez's discontent is complicated by her growing attraction to a fellow artist. When tragic events unfold, Dez is forced to make difficult choices. Must she keep her promises? Is it morally possible to set herself free?

I know Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History has been nominated as a group read before. I just picked it up from a book sale. While checking it out on goodreads, I found a few more disaster tales...

Curse Of The Narrows by Laura M. MacDonald

In 1917, the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was crowded with ships leaving for war-torn Europe. On December 6th, two of them—the Mont Blanc and the Imo—collided in the Narrows, a hard-to-navigate stretch of the harbor. Ablaze, and with explosions on her deck filling the sky, the Mont Blanc grounded against the city’s docks.

As thousands rushed to their windows and into the streets to watch, she exploded with such force that the 3,121 tons of her iron hull vaporized in a cloud that shot up more than 2,000 feet; the explosion was so unusual that Robert Oppenheimer would study its effects to predict the devastation of an atomic bomb. The blast caused a giant wave that swept over parts of the city, followed by a slick, black rain that fell for ten minutes. Much of the city was flattened, and not one in 12,000 buildings within a 16-mile radius left undamaged. More than 1,600 Haligonians were killed and 6,000 injured; and within twenty-four hours, a blizzard had isolated Halifax from the world.

Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938 by R.A. Scotti

On September 21, 1938, the fastest hurricane on record caught the Northeast by surprise and left a wake of death and destruction across seven states. Travelling at record speeds, the storm raced up the Atlantic coast, reaching New York and New England ahead of hurricane warnings and striking with such intensity that seismographs in Alaska registered the impact. Winds clocked at 186 miles per hour stripped cars of their paint. Walls of water fifty feet high swept homes and entire families out to sea.
Drawing upon newspaper accounts, personal testimony of survivors, and archival sources, Sudden Sea recounts that day in terrifying detail. The Moore family climbed up to the attic of their oceanfront home as the waters rose, only to find themselves launched on a roiling ocean. Joseph Matoes watched as the bus carrying his children home from school stalled on the causeway just as the ocean surged into the bay. Three friends, separated in the fury of the storm, found themselves reunited on a beach a state away. These and other tales of heroism, terror, and survival form the heart of this incredible account. At the same time, R. A. Scotti uncovers the unlikely alignment of meteorological conditions that conspired to bring about the unthinkable: a tropical cyclone on the Northeast coast.

And what could be more fun than deadly food...

Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo

Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters was playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window-"Oh my God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!"

A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston's waterfront, disgorging its contents as a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that at its outset traveled at 35 miles an hour. It demolished wooden homes, even the brick fire station. The number of dead wasn't known for days. It would be years before a landmark court battle determined who was responsible for the disaster.

I highly recommend Curse of the Narrows, Sudden Storm and Isaac's Storm. I love a good disaster book.

Curse of the Narrows told an almost unbelievable story of how one disaster can morph into something like three more disasters.

There was an excellent PBS show (possibly American Experience) about the storm of 1938 which affected the entire Eastern seaboard and crossing into Canada. This is the storm that really made people start checking the weather before outside.

I've just started on the kindle sample of Dark Tide after wanting to get it for years.

You'll have to let us know how Dark Tide is. I'm really curious about that one. I'd actually heard of the flood before finding the book. What a way to go. I can see the tombstones, "here lies Bob, drowned in molasses flood".

I think there was a police strike going on at the time. A lot of striking and general unrest going on in 1919.

These Wonderful Rumours!: A Young Schoolteacher's Wartime Diaries by May Smith

Auntie F. came in announcing dramatically that Hitler is coming tomorrow, at which my father remarked that he would, now that he's just finished papering upstairs.


At the outbreak of World War Two, May Smith was twenty-four. She lived in a small village near Derby with her parents, and taught at the local elementary school.


The war brought many changes: evacuees arrived in the village; nights were broken by the wail of the siren as bombers flew overhead; the young men of May's circle donned khaki and disappeared to far-flung places to 'do their bit'. But a great deal remained the same: May still enjoyed tennis parties, holidays to Llandudno and going shopping for new outfits - coupons and funds permitting. And it was during these difficult times that May fell in love.


These Wonderful Rumours! gives a unique and surprising insight into life on the Home Front. Through May Smith's observant, witty and sometimes acerbic diary, we gain a new understanding of how the people of Britain coped with the uncertainty, the heartbreak and the black comedy of life during wartime

Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre

D-Day, 6 June 1944, the turning point of the Second World War, was a victory of arms. But it was also a triumph for a different kind of operation: one of deceit... At the heart of the deception was the 'Double Cross System', a team of double agents whose bravery, treachery, greed and inspiration succeeded in convincing the Nazis that Calais and Norway, not Normandy, were the targets of the 150,000-strong Allied invasion force. These were not conventional warriors, but their masterpiece of deceit saved thousands of lives. Their codenames were Bronx, Brutus, Treasure, Tricycle and Garbo. This is their story.

Destiny in the Desert: The Story Behind El Alamein - the Battle That Turned the Tide by Jonathan Dimbleby

It was the British victory at the Battle of El Alamein in November 1942 that inspired one of Churchill's most famous aphorisms: 'This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning'. And yet the true significance of this iconic episode remains unrecognised. In this thrilling historical account, Jonathan Dimbleby describes the political and strategic realities that lay behind the battle, charting the nail-biting months that led to the victory at El Alamein in November 1942. It is a story of high drama, played out both in the war capitals of London, Washington, Berlin, Rome and Moscow, and at the front, in the command posts and foxholes in the desert. Destiny in the Desert is about politicians and generals, diplomats, civil servants and soldiers. It is about forceful characters and the tensions and rivalries between them. Drawing on official records and the personal insights of those involved at every level, Dimbleby creates a vivid portrait of a struggle which for Churchill marked the turn of the tide - and which for the soldiers on the ground involved fighting and dying in a foreign land

The Wine of Solitude by Irène Némirovsky

Hélène is a troubled young girl. Neglected by her self-absorbed mother and her adored but distant father, she longs for love and for freedom. As first the Great War and then the Russian Revolution rage in the background, she grows from a lonely, unhappy child to an angry young woman intent on destruction. The Wine of Solitude is a powerful tale of an unhappy family in difficult times and a woman prepared to wreak a shattering revenge.

Ally wrote: "Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre

D-Day, 6 June 1944, the turning point of the Second World War, ..."

I've been waiting to finish his Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory. Very interesting. Where the Brits use a corpse to convince the Germans they are going one place when they are actually going to land at another.

Although this one is quite a wide ranging history of Britain it does have a very interesting exploration of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison who 'threw' herself under the King's horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913.

real britannia by Colin Brown

Acclaimed author and veteran political reporter Colin Brown travels to the places where British history was made to unearth what makes this nation truly great.

Was the longbow behind the landmark victory at Azincourt, or was it just that the English are better in mud? Did Queen Elizabeth I, a master of spin, know the Armada had capitulated when she drafted one of history's most inspiring speeches? Who should be given credit - or blame - for today's NHS? Was the Falklands War proof of Mrs Thatcher's steely resolve or a grasping imperial folly? Was David Cameron right in announcing 1940 as Britain's proudest year? Or should we give more due to the suffragette movement, the abolition of slavery, and the sealing of the Great Charter, Magna Carta, and its role in securing the rights of citizens - watershed events for democracy, but all with secret stories to share?

These moments are among the top candidates to be Britain's proudest year, in terms of both their historical legacy and their public following. Yet, befitting the politics of history-making, each was crafted by the propaganda artists of the day. To uncover the truth, it takes an intrepid reporter willing to squeeze around barbed wire, get down in the mud and take tea with a former War Cabinet minister. From the famous Battle of Waterloo to Brixham in Devon (the site of another, somewhat lesser known glorious episode), Colin Brown shows us the events and characters we believe we know so well - but how much of what we know is the truth?

Daughter of empire by Pamela Hicks

Pamela Mountbatten was born at the end of the Twenties into one of Britain's grandest families. The daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten and his glamorous wife Edwina Ashley, she was bought up by nannies and governesses as she was often parted from her parents as they dutifully carried out their public roles. A solitary child, she learned to occupy her days lost in a book, riding or playing with the family's animals (which included at different times a honey bear, chameleons, a bush baby, two wallabies, a lion, a mongoose and a coati mundi). Her parents' vast social circle included royalty, film stars, senior service officers, politicians and celebrities. Noel Coward invited Pamela to watch him filming; Douglas Fairbanks Jr. dropped in for tea and Churchill would call for 'a word with Dickie'.


After the war, Pamela truly came of age in India, while her parents were the Last Viceroy and Vicereine. This introduction to the country would start a life-long love affair with the people and the place.

The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadaré

In September 1943, German soldiers advance on the ancient gates of Gjirokaster, Albania. It is the first step in a carefully planned invasion. But once at the mouth of the city, the troops are taken aback by a surprising act of rebellion that leaves the citizens fearful of a bloody counter-attack. Soon rumours circulate, in cafes, houses and alleyways, that the Nazi Colonel in command of the German Army was once a school acquaintance of a local dignitary, Doctor Gurameto. In the town square, Colonel von Schwabe greets his former classmate warmly; in return, Doctor Gurameto invites him to dinner. The very next day, the Colonel and his army disappear from the city. The dinner at Gurameto's house changes the course of events in twentieth-century Europe. But as the citizens celebrate their hero, a conspiracy surfaces which leads some to place Gurameto - and the stone city - at the heart of a plot to undermine Socialism. Enigmatic and compelling, The Fall of the Stone City displays Ismail Kadare at the height of his considerable powers.

Citadel by Kate Mosse

From the No.1 internationally bestselling author comes the third heart-stopping adventure exploring the incredible history, legends and hidden secrets of Carcassonne and the Languedoc.


Set during World War II in the far south of France, CITADEL is a powerful, action-packed mystery that reveals the secrets of the resistance under Nazi occupation. While war blazed in the trenches at the front, back at home a different battle is waged, full of clandestine bravery, treachery and secrets. And as a cell of resistance fighters, codenamed Citadelle, fight for everything they hold dear, their struggle will reveal an older, darker combat being fought in the shadows.


Combining the rugged action of LABYRINTH with the haunting mystery of SEPULCHRE, CITADEL is a story of daring and courage, of lives risked for beliefs and of astonishing secrets buried in time.

A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks

Terrified, a young prisoner in the Second World War closes his eyes and pictures himself going out to bat on a sunlit cricket ground in Hampshire.


Across the courtyard in a Victorian workhouse, a father too ashamed to acknowledge his son.


A skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar; her voice sends shivers through the skull.


Soldiers and lovers, parents and children, scientists and musicians risk their bodies and hearts in search of connection - some key to understanding what makes us the people we become.


Provocative and profound, Sebastian Faulks's dazzling novel journeys across continents and time to explore the chaos created by love, separation and missed opportunities. From the pain and drama of these highly particular lives emerges a mysterious consolation: the chance to feel your heart beat in someone else's life.

Ally (or others) have you read anything by Kadare before? I read Broken April and it was one of the worst books I've ever read. I have yet to try anything else by him. In fact, I think my eye twitched when I saw that name!

Val, that sounds like a good one, I'll have to look for it.

Jennifer W wrote: "Ally (or others) have you read anything by Kadare before? I read Broken April and it was one of the worst books I've ever read. I have yet to try anything else by him. In fact, I think my eye twitc..."

No, I've never read anything by Kadare...oh dear, so he's not the greatest writer then! Thanks for the tip!

Spencer Tracy by James Curtis

During his lifetime (1900-67), Spencer Tracy was known as Hollywood's 'actor's actor'. Critics wrote that what Olivier was to theatre, Tracy was to film. Over his career he was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and won two.


But there has been no substantial, intimate biography of the man. From his earliest days in stock theatre, Tracy was a publicist's trial, guarding his private life fiercely.


Most of the people associated closely with him also shunned the fanzine limelight - notably his wife, his children and the great actress Katharine Hepburn, with whom he had an affair that lasted over 26 years.


Although his screen roles often depicted a happy, twinkling Irishman, Tracy was a periodic alcoholic and a not very agreeable drunk. But the studios managed to keep him out of the papers.


With the help of Tracy's daughter, Susie, and access to previously unseen papers, James Curtis has now produced the definitive biography of a tortured, complex and immensely talented man.


The book contains 124 integrated photos, many published for the first time.

A Dancer in Wartime by Gillian Lynne

London during the Blitz was a time of hardship, heroism and hope.


For Gillian Lynne - a budding ballerina - it was also a time of great change as she was evacuated from war-torn London to a crumbling mansion, where dance classes took place in the faded ballroom.


Life was hard, but her talent and dedication shone through and an astonishing journey ensued, which saw Gillian dancing a triumphant debut in Swan Lake, performing in the West End with doodlebugs falling and touring a devastated Europe entertaining the troops.


A Dancer in Wartime paints a vivid and moving picture of what life was really like during the hard years of the Blitz and brings to life a lost world.

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally

In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father's dairy farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first in the Dardanelles, then on the Western Front.

Yet amid the carnage, Naomi and Sally Durance become the friends they never were at home and find themselves courageous in the face of extreme danger, as well as the hostility they encounter from some on their own side. There is great bravery, humour and compassion, too, and the inspiring example of some remarkable women. And in France, where Naomi nurses in a hospital set up by the eccentric Lady Tarlton while Sally works in a casualty clearing station, each meets an exceptional man: the kind of men for whom they might give up some of their precious independence - if only they all survive.

At once vast in scope and extraordinarily intimate, The Daughters of Mars brings the First World War to vivid, concrete life from an unusual perspective. A searing and profoundly moving tale, it pays tribute to the men and women who voluntarily risked their lives for peace.

Elephant Moon by John Sweeney

As the Second World War rages, the Japanese Imperial Army enters Burma and the British rulers prepare to flee. But the human legacy of the British Empire will be left behind in the shape of sixty-two Anglo-Burmese children, born to local women after affairs with foreign men. Half-castes, they are not acknowledged by either side and they are to be abandoned with no one to protect them. Their teacher, Grace Collins, a young Englishwoman, refuses to join the European evacuation and instead sets out to deliver the orphans to the safety of India. She faces impossible odds because between her and India lie one thousand miles of jungle, mountains, rivers and the constant, unseen threat of the Japanese. With Japanese soldiers chasing them down, the groups chances of survival shrink - until they come across a herd of fifty-three elephants who, with their awesome strength and kindness, quickly become the orphans only hope of survival. Based on a true story, Elephant Moon is an unforgettable epic tale of courage and compassion in the midst of brutality and destruction.

The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields

She is the darling of Parisian society. A famous author whose novels have captivated readers. He is a charming young journalist with nothing to lose.


While novelist Edith Wharton writes of grand love affairs, she has yet to experience her own. Her marriage is more platonic than passionate and her closest relationship is with her literary secretary, Anna Bahlmann.


Then Edith meets dashing Morton Fullerton, and her life is at last opened to the world of the sensual. But, in giving in to the temptation of their illicit liaison, Edith could lose everything else she holds dear...


Set in the Gilded Age of Paris society, Jennie Field's sumptuous novel retells the true story of a scandal involving one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century.

Live By Night by Dennis Lehane

Joe Coughlin is nineteen when he meets Emma Gould. A smalltime thief in 1920s Boston, he is told to cuff her while his accomplices raid the casino she works for. But Joe falls in love with Emma - and his life changes for ever.


That meeting is the beginning of Joe's journey to becoming one of the nation's most feared and respected gangsters. It is a journey beset by violence, double-crossing, drama and pain. And it is a journey into the soul of prohibition-era America...


A powerful, deeply moving novel, Live By Night is a tour-de-force by Dennis Lehane, writer on The Wire and author of modern classics such as Shutter Island, Gone, Baby, Gone and The Given Day.

...now there must be something for everyone amongst that little lot!

Please feel free to add your own 'new discoveries' - I tend to find then in Newspaper and Magazine review pages but I'm sure I must miss some great finds.

Ally wrote: "Live By Night by Dennis Lehane

Joe Coughlin is nineteen when he meets Emma Gould. A smalltime thief in 1920s Boston, he is told to cuff her while his accomplices ..."

I've been reading the kindle sample of this. So far it looks pretty good.

I've seen 2 books advertised on goodreads:

The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman

A rapturous new novel of first love in a time of war-from the celebrated author of The Last Van Gogh.

In pre-war Prague, the dreams of two young lovers are shattered when they are separated by the Nazi invasion. Then, decades later, thousands of miles away in New York, there's an inescapable glance of recognition between two strangers. Providence is giving Lenka and Josef one more chance. From the glamorous ease of life in Prague before the Occupation, to the horrors of Nazi Europe, The Lost Wife explores the power of first love, the resilience of the human spirit- and the strength of memory

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France by Caroline Moorehead

They were teachers, students, chemists, writers, and housewives; a singer at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled "V" for victory on the walls of her lycée; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.

Eventually, the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, profession, and class, as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie.

In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz.

Women & Children First by Gill Paul

Women and Children First explore the turmoil of the sinking of one of the most famous ships of all time and its aftermath through the eyes of several different characters.

The Titanic was the most magnificent ship ever built, offering every possible luxury to her passengers � yet on the night on the 14th of April, 1912, she sank in the North Atlantic, leaving the lucky ones floating in wooden rowing boats, and the rest struggling for their lives in the icy water.

This novel follows the fortunes of Reg, a handsome young steward who works in the first-class dining room; Annie, a gifted Irishwoman who is travelling to America with her four children; Juliette, a titled English lady who is pregnant and unmarried; an American millionaire and his wife who are trapped in a poisoned marriage; and a mystery passenger who never shows her face in public.

The sinking of the Titanic not only steals lives but blows apart the futures of those who survive. Coming to terms with the shocking events, survivors form new attachments, make decisions with tragic consequences, and watch all their old certainties crumble. How can life ever be the same again when you have heard 1,500 people dying in the water around you?

The Secret Listeners by Sinclair McKay

The follow-up to The Sunday Times bestseller The Secret Life of Bletchley Park.

Behind the celebrated code-breaking at Bletchley Park lies another secret. Before the German war machine’s messages could be decoded thousands more young men and women had to locate and monitor endless streams of radio traffic around the clock, and transcribe its Morse code with a speed few have ever managed since.

They were part of the “Y�- (for “Wireless�) Service: the Listening Service � an organisation just as secret as Bletchley Park but still little-known and unrecognised. Without it, however, the Allies would have known nothing of the enemy’s military intentions. Its listeners might be posted to bustling Cairo to listen in to Rommel’s Eighth Army, or Casablanca in Morocco, or Karachi for the Burma campaign, or in one case even the idyllic Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean to monitor Japan. To men and women often hardly out of school such exotic postings were life-changing adventures.

Now, in the follow-up to his Sunday Times-bestselling The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, through dozens of interviews with surviving veterans, Sinclair McKay chronicles the history and achievements of this remarkable group of people and the Y-Service’s vital contribution to the war effort.

Colossus: Bletchley Park's Last Secret by Paul Gannon

In 1940, almost a year after the outbreak of the Second World War, Allied radio operators at an interception station in South London began picking up messages in a strange new code. Using science, maths, innovation and improvisation Bletchley Park codebreakers worked furiously to invent a machine to decipher what turned out to be the secrets of Nazi high command. It was called Colossus. What these codebreakers didn't realize was that they had fashioned the world's first true computer. When the war ended, this incredible invention was dismantled and hidden away for almost 50 years. Paul Gannon has pieced together the tremendous story of what is now recognized as the greatest secret of Bletchley Park.

Two Brothers: A Novel by Ben Elton

Berlin 1920


Two babies are born.

Two brothers. United and indivisible, sharing everything. Twins in all but blood.


As Germany marches into its Nazi Armageddon, the ties of family, friendship and love are tested to the very limits of endurance. And the brothers are faced with an unimaginable choice....Which one of them will survive?

The Winding Road by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

1925. England is prosperous; the nation has put the war behind it, and hope is in the air. The Jazz Age is in full swing in New York, where Polly Morland is the most feted beauty of the day. But a proposal of marriage from the powerful, enigmatic Ren Alexander takes her by surprise. Her cousin Lennie, expanding his interests from radio to television and talkies, worries that no one knows much about Ren; but his attempts to find out more threaten disaster. In London, the General Strike gives the country another chance to show its stiff upper lip, as everyone turns to and helps out. Emma drives an ambulance again, while Molly runs a canteen, and each unexpectedly finds love, and a new career. But the whirligig is slowing, shadows are gathering over Europe, and the good times are almost over. Morland Place is threatened by the worst disaster of its history, and the Old World reaches out a hand to pluck Polly from the New. The Wall Street Crash brings the fabulous decade to a shattering close, and nothing will ever be quite the same again; but new shoots emerge from the ruins, hope is reborn, and the Morlands prove again that family is everything, and will endure.

Hard Twisted by C. Joseph Greaves

Lucile Garrett is just thirteen when she meets Clint Palmer, a charismatic stranger who will forever change her life. The year is 1934, and as the windblown dust of the Great Depression rakes the Oklahoma plains, Palmer offers Lucile and her father, homeless and hungry, the irresistible promise of a better future. But when they follow Palmer to Texas, Lucile's father mysteriously disappears, launching man and girl on an epic journey through the American Southwest: a spree of violence and murder that culminates in one of the most celebrated criminal trials of the era. Based on a true story, Hard Twisted is a chilling tale of survival and redemption, and a young girl's coming of age in a world as cruel as it is beautiful.

The Charisma of Adolf Hitler by Laurence Rees

Adolf Hitler was an unlikely leader - fuelled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to debate political issues - and yet he commanded enormous support. So how was it possible that Hitler became such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the important question at the core of Laurence Rees' new book.


The Holocaust, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the outbreak of the Second World War - all these cataclysmic events and more can be laid at Hitler's door. Hitler was a war criminal arguably without precedent in the history of the world. Yet, as many who knew him confirm, Hitler was still able to exert a powerful influence over the people who encountered him.


In this fascinating book to accompany his new BBC series, the acclaimed historian and documentary maker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler's appeal, and reveals the role Hitler's supposed 'charisma' played in his success. Rees' previous work has explored the inner workings of the Nazi state in The Nazis: A Warning from History and the crimes they committed in Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution. The Charisma of Adolf Hitler is a natural culmination of twenty years of writing and research on the Third Reich, and a remarkable examination of the man and the mind at the heart of it all.

American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott

America was flying high in the Roaring Twenties. Then, almost overnight, the Great Depression brought it crashing down. When the dust settled, people were primed for a star who could distract them from reality. Enter Gypsy Rose Lee, a strutting, bawdy, erudite stripper who possessed a gift for delivering exactly what America needed. With her superb narrative skills and eye for detail, Karen Abbott brings to life an era of ambition, glamour, struggle, and survival. Using exclusive interviews and never-before-published material, she vividly delves into Gypsy’s world, including her intense triangle relationship with her sister, actress June Havoc, and their formidable mother, Rose, a petite but ferocious woman who literally killed to get her daughters on the stage. Weaving in the compelling saga of the Minskys—four scrappy brothers from New York City who would pave the way for Gypsy Rose Lee’s brand of burlesque and transform the entertainment landscape—Karen Abbott creates a rich account of a legend whose sensational tale of tragedy and triumph embodies the American Dream.

Ally wrote: "American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott

America was flyin..."

I've heard from some people who have read both this and Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul that this was a little disappointing. I think that things that she could get away with in Sin she couldn't get away with when it came to Gypsy. Probably because more people could remember Gypsy than could remember the Everleigh Sisters.

Oh, that's interesting. I really enjoyed Sin in the Second City and have, but haven't read, American Rose. I don't know anything about her, so I wonder if that might help?

I don't know. I was discouraged from reading it by someone whose opinion I respect.

My only knowledge of Gypsy is from the movie and the TV show she had in the '60s(?).

But I think her research may have been sketchy. That is something that would show up more with a subject of more recent vintage.

It was my impression that much of Sin was taken from Irving Stone's book on the Everleighs. I think he's the one who wrote it.

Ah, that I don't know about. I probably looked at the notes for Sin at the time, but I don't remember. And I haven't read enough about the new one to have heard if the research is sketchy. That is definitely worrisome though. :/

The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War by Halik Kochanski

In Halik Kochanski's extraordinary book, the untold story of Poland and the Poles in the Second World War is finally heard


By almost every measure the fate of the inhabitants of Poland was the most terrible of any group in the Second World War. Following the destruction of its armed forces in the autumn of 1939, the Republic of Poland was partitioned between Nazi and Soviet forces and officially ceased to exist. Racial violence and ideological conformity were at the very heart of the new regimes. As the war progressed millions of Poles were killed, with each phase unleashing a further round, from the industrialised genocide of Treblinka to the crushing of the Warsaw Rising. Polish Jews were all to be murdered, Christians reduced to a semi-literate slave class.


In this powerful and original new book Halik Kochanski has written perhaps the most important 'missing' work on the whole conflict: an attempt in a single volume to describe both the fate of those trapped within occupied Poland and of those millions of Poles who were able to escape.

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 Anne Applebaum

From Anne Applebaum, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag, comes a major new work of historical and moral reckoning: the story of life behind the Iron Curtain.


Once the Nazis were defeated in 1945, the people of Central and Eastern Europe expected to recover the lives they had led before 1939. Instead, they found themselves subjected to a tyranny that was in many ways as inhuman as the one which they had just escaped. This book explains how Communism was imposed on these previously free societies in the decade after the end of the Second World War. Applebaum describes, in calm but devastating detail, how political parties, the church, the media, young people's organisations - the institutions of civil society on every level - were all quickly eviscerated. Ranging widely across new archival material and many sources unknown in English, she follows the communists' tactics as they bullied, threatened and murdered their way to power. She also chronicles individual lives to show the rapid choices people had to make - to fight, to flee, or to collaborate.


Within a remarkably short period after the end of the war, Eastern Europe had been ruthlessly Stalinised. Iron Curtain is a brilliant history of a brutal period in European history, but also a reminder of how fragile free societies are, and how vulnerable they can be to the predations of determined and unscrupulous enemies.

Events, Dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain from Woolf to Campbell by Ruth Winstone

Ruth Winstone retells Britain's history through the great diarists of the last century, drawing back the curtain on the lives of political classes, their doubts, ambitions, and emotions. She moves deftly among those in the thick of it, showing the elation, anger, doubts, jealousy, joys and fears of those such as Nicolson, Cooper, Channon, Macmillan, Castle, Clark, Benn, Campbell, Mullin and Ashdown as they record their own and the nation's triumphs and disasters. To this potent mix she adds the mordant perceptions of observers like Virginia Woolf, Cecil Beaton, Peter Hall and Roy Strong, and the vivid records of everyday life found in the diaries of otherwise ordinary men and women. Events, Dear Boy, Events reveals Britain's recent past in the words of the actors who were shaping the events of the day. This is living real-time history.

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

On a summer's day in 1922 Cora Carlisle boards a train from Wichita, Kansas, to New York City, leaving behind a marriage that's not as perfect as it seems and a past that she buried long ago. She is charged with the care of a stunning young girl with a jet-black fringe and eyes wild and wise beyond her fifteen years. This girl is hungry for stardom and Cora for something she doesn't yet know. Cora will be many things in her lifetime - an orphan, a mother, a wife, a mistress - but in New York she is a chaperone and her life is about to change.


It is here under the bright lights of Broadway, in a time when prohibition reigns and speakeasies with their forbidden whispers behind closed doors thrive, that Cora finds what she has been searching for. It is here, in a time when illicit thrills and daring glamour sizzle beneath the laws of propriety that her life truly begins. It is here that Cora and her charge, Louise Brooks, take their first steps towards their dreams.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

The crying persisted. The door of the ligthhouse clanged in the distance, and Tom's tall frame appeared on the gallery as he scanned the island with the binoculars. 'Izzy!' he yelled, 'a boat!' He vanished and re-emerged at ground level. 'It's a boat all right,' Tom declared. 'And - oh cripes! There's a bloke, but -' The figure was motionless, yet the cries still rang out. He hoisted out a woollen bundle: a woman's soft lavender cardigan wrapped around a tiny, screaming infant.


Tom Sherbourne, released from the horrors of the First World War, is now a lighthouse keeper, cocooned on a remote island with his young wife Izzy, who is content in everything but her failure to have a child.


One April morning, a boat washes ashore carrying a dead man - and a crying baby. Safe from the real world, Tom and Izzy break the rules and follow their hearts.


It is a decision with devastating consequences.

(...it doesn't look like this one is out in paperback in the UK until May 2013)

Holy cow, Ally! You've been finding a ton!

I found The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

In 1939, sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton - the half-Chinese, half-English youngest child of the head of one of Penang's great trading families - feels alienated from both the Chinese and British communities. He discovers a sense of belonging in his unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat who rents a nearby island from his father. Philip proudly shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo teaches him about Japanese language and culture and trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. As World War II rages in Europe, the Japanese savagely invade Malaya, and Philip realizes that his mentor and sensei - to whom he owes absolute loyalty - is a Japanese spy. Young Philip has been an unwitting traitor, and he is forced into collaborating with the Japanese to safeguard his family. He becomes the ultimate outsider, trusted by none and hated by many. Tormented by his part in the events, Philip risks everything by working in secret to save as many people as he can from the brutality he has helped bring upon them.

The Ernest Hemingway Audiobook Library

Ernest Hemingway’s classic novels and stories are among the most beloved and influential masterpieces of American literature. THE ERNEST HEMINGWAY AUDIOBOOK LIBRARY is a comprehensive, one-of-a-kind collection of over 130 hours of listening which brings all of Ernest Hemingway’s works–from his most renowned novels to his entire roster of short stories–together on audio for the first time ever.

In addition, this audio library includes an intimate conversation with Hemingway’s last surviving son Patrick, who talks frankly about his childhood in Key West and the life and legacy of his father, offering a unique glimpse into the life of one of America’s greatest writers.

Starting on Friday, Simon & Schuster Audio is offering 40% off the collection .