Here are 88 books that The Lost Girls of Paris fans have personally recommended if you like
The Lost Girls of Paris.
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It’s quite simple, I just love history. I particularly like the dual timeline format because it’s a reminder that what has happened in the past remains relevant to the present. The narratives might be set hundreds of years apart, but there are common themes that continue to shape our lives and define us as human beings–some of them good and others that are potentially more destructive. I now write this sort of fiction, and I continue to devour it as a reader. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have.
At the time of writing, this is the last book I read, in the couple of weeks before the 80th anniversary of VE Day. Powerful is the only way to describe it.
I think it’s the ordinariness of the characters, particularly the main protagonists, that makes it so powerful. None of them had any training or expertise that would have helped them to ‘fight’ back, to resist; they are just ordinary people doing extraordinary things, which is what happened during the Second World War, particularly in occupied France.
It’s a reminder that we should never forget our history—even when it isn’t very palatable—and hope that one day we might start to learn from it.
Soon to be a major motion picture, The Nightingale is a multi-million copy bestseller across the world. It is a heart-breakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the endurance of women.
This story is about what it was like to be a woman during World War II when women's stories were all too often forgotten or overlooked . . . Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac are two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals and passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path towards survival, love and freedom in war-torn France.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I didn’t sit down to write Carried Away with a personal sermon in my back pocket. No buried lessons or hidden curriculum—it was just a story I wanted to tell. But stories have a way of outsmarting you.
So when I chose these books, I wasn’t looking for perfect comparisons—I was looking for echoes. Some of these books will drag you through POW camps or strand you on a lifeboat with a tiger; others will lean in and whisper that you’ve been running a program and calling it personality. A few say the quiet part out loud—about grit, meaning, and purpose. Others ring you up with fable, abstractions, or science, but they leave their mark just the same.
Almost impossible to put down—this was the first book that made me physically feel the words.
I wouldn’t call it enjoyable in the usual sense; the experience was excruciating. But that’s exactly what makes it unforgettable. Hillenbrand’s prose, paired with the true story of Louis Zamperini’s plunge from Olympic track star to the unrelenting hell of a POW camp, smacks you off your cozy little couch and right into a world where Sleepytime tea, candles, and Netflix don’t exist.
What struck me most was how it captured not only the brutality of survival, but the stubborn, almost irrational resolve of the human spirit—and the possibility of forgiveness that would defy logic. This isn’t a book that’s light to hold—it’s grit, torment, and triumph in equal parts. I recommend it because it inspires without sugarcoating—harrowing and uplifting in the same breath.
From the author of the bestselling and much-loved Seabiscuit, an unforgettable story of one man's journey into extremity. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant's name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood,…
I like happy endings. There, I’ve said it. I love books. I’ve written more than sixty to date, and I read all the time in every genre. I also love history, and World War II is a particular passion. It was an era rich with drama, horror, and heroism, with stories begging to be told. So many of those stories, real and fictional, end in heartbreak. But the great thing about being a writer is that I can take the characters I love through hell and back, then, in the end, have them come shining through. That’s what I want as a reader, too.
A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France with two girls on board, Maddie, the pilot, and Verity. Leaving Maddie behind in the wreckage, secret agent Verity is captured by the Nazis and told that she will be executed unless she reveals her mission.
This heart-stopping tale of spies, deception, and true friendship will have you reading through the night—and cheering for Verity.
'I have two weeks. You'll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.'
Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, Code Name Verity is a bestselling tale of friendship and courage set against the backdrop of World War Two.
Only in wartime could a stalwart lass from Manchester rub shoulders with a Scottish aristocrat, one a pilot, the other a special operations executive. When a vital mission goes wrong, and one of the friends has to bail out of a faulty plane over France, she is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war. The story begins in…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I love to read. I always have. I also love to write mysteries that, hopefully, keep my reader guessing until the end of the book. I look for books that not only provide me with a mystery to solve but also inform me of situations and/or places I would otherwise never learn about. I have found all the books on my list to fill that need. They are just an example of the many I have found and read.
This book provided an insight into WWII in Italy. It is captivating and informative.
It tells the story of Pino, a brave 17-year-old who not only spied on the Germans who occupied his homeland but also crossed the Alps many times to save Jewish people. Full of mystery and intrigue, it was hard to put down until the end.
Soon to be a major television event from Pascal Pictures, starring Tom Holland.
Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, the USA Today and #1 Amazon Charts bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man's incredible courage and resilience during one of history's darkest hours.
Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He's a normal Italian teenager-obsessed with music, food, and girls-but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape…
I am Rhys Bowen, New York Times best selling author of two historical mystery series and several Internationally best selling historical novels. Many of these take place in and around World War II. I have particularly focused on the bravery of ordinary women, the unsung heroines who risked their lives against impossible odds. My stories take place in France, Italy, as well as, England so these books resonated with me.
I’m not normally a thriller reader, but I’ve loved Cara Black’s Aimee Leduc mystery series, so I tried this. Oh, my goodness. You will hold your breath from page one until the climax.
A young woman suffers unbearable loss and then trains as a sharpshooter, sent to Paris with the goal of assassinating Hitler.
Based on the knowledge that Hitler only came to Paris for three hours and left abruptly, Cara fills in the why for us.
In June of 1940, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Hitler spent a total of three hours in the City of Light—abruptly leaving, never to return. To this day, no one knows why.
Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris with a dangerous assignment: assassinate the Führer. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta, and a fierce resolve. But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Thrust into the red-hot center of…
I’ve always fallen in love with endearing characters. I want to go home with them. For me, the best characters are as real as any other friends. So many good books start with an idyllic situation. Say, a family or group of friends who have strong bonds. Then, someone is killed, or war breaks out. The idyll is smashed so the adventure can begin. I also like the outsider perspective. The characters have to fight the powers that be. They must have a moral compass. Integrity. Why? I’m a Jewish woman. I was a Girl Scout in the Peace Corps, a poet, a social worker, and a therapist.
This book has so many of my favorite elements: believable friendships among three very different women, Bletchley Park during World War II, with spies, and characters I adored: the debutante, the working-class girl, and the girl we’d now say is “on the spectrum.” I loved this book so much that I read everything Kate Quinn wrote, but this one’s still the best.
When Beth is threatened with a lobotomy, the suspense was terrifying. I kept thinking of my aunt whose existence was a family secret for years. I laughed and cried over this book and the women who helped win the War but had to keep their work a secret, even if it cost them everything and everyone they loved.
The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.
1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything-beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses-but she burns to…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
In 2017, my family was invited to France to retrace my father’s footsteps after his plane was shot down over occupied France in May 1944. During that visit, I realized how many ordinary citizens aided in his evasion. I thought their stories deserved to be preserved. I spent the next five years researching and writing, The Duty of Memory. During four trips to France to visit the actual sites, I interviewed eyewitnesses and became friends with family members of those depicted and learned their stories. I also studied documents from the US National Archives and the French Military Archives, as well as personal documents provided by the families.
I had a plethora of books about Nancy Wake to choose from, including her 1985 autobiography The White Mouse. I decided on Lawhorn’s fictionalization of her exploits partly because of Lawhorn’s large catalog of critically acclaimed historical fiction.
This telling of her story was a welcomed break from the stack of nonfiction WW2 books I had read. I found myself engrossed in the story rather than the history. At the same time, I was confident the story was factually accurate.
Based on the thrilling real-life story of a socialite spy and astonishing woman who killed a Nazi with her bare hands and went on to become one of the most decorated women in WWII—from the New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia
"This fully animated portrait of Nancy Wake...will fascinate readers of World War II history and thrill fans of fierce, brash, independent women, alike." —Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours
Told in interweaving timelines organized around the four code names Nancy used during the war, Code Name Hélène is a…
As an author of a trilogy about the Flying Tigers (a group of American pilots who fought the Japanese valiantly in WWII in China), I love reading wartime stories, especially WWII.
I was very shy and fearful when I was young. It was because of my shyness and fearfulness that I fell in love with wartime stories. I looked up to heroes. I admired their courage and spirits. I read books about those extraordinary people so that I could be inspired by them and hopefully learn from them. Where else can you find more heroic stories than in wartime? As a writer, I write what I love to read: heroic tales with touching love stories.
This is a well-written book about one of America's most famous fighter aces, a Flying Tiger. Flying Tiger is an endearment for the American Volunteer Group—a group of American pilots who fought the Japanese in WWII in China and changed the course of Chinese history through unparalleled valor.
As an author of three historical novels about the Flying Tigers, I read almost all the books on this subject.“Tex” Hill: Flying Tiger touched me the most. It inspired me to write my novels. Danny Hardy, an American pilot, a Flying Tiger, was created because of my love and admiration for Tex Hill, a man of courage and integrity, a true American hero.
2003 new copy, hard bound in dust jacket, 6x9, 318 pages, numerous illustrations & maps, bibliography, index. dust jacket color art work by John Shaw. Born the son of missionary parents in Korea, David "Tex" Hill has become one of America's most famous and beloved fighter aces. "Tex" Hill: Flying Tiger recounts his intriguing early life, standout career, and non-stop adventures of all kinds. Tex's story is inescapably intertwined with those of Claire Chennault, the famed 'Flying Tigers', and the nation of China, and this book weaves all three fascinating storylines into a masterful tapestry, certain to entertain and educate.…
For whatever reason, I have always been interested in sad men. Successful men can be boring. It is failure, and how men manage it when success is the primary marker of masculinity, that I find interesting as a subject for fiction. Even when I was in my 20s, I liked reading novels about men suffering mid-life crisis. And now that I am squarely in middle age, novels that were about the future are now novels about the present.
I have returned to many of these stories over and over again through the years—for Cheever’s prose, for his sense of what makes men tick. On one level, I can’t quite relate to white suburban husbands in upstate New York in the 1950s and 60s. And yet, somehow, they seem profoundly familiar.
John Cheever's Collected Stories explores the delicate psychological frameworks of 20th century suburbia.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HANIF KUREISHI
This outstanding collection by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Cheever shows the power and range of one of the finest short story writers of the last century. Stories of love and of squalor, they include masterpieces such as 'The Swimmer' and 'Goodbye, My Brother' and date from the time of his honourable discharge from the Army at the end of the Second World War.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I’m an emeritus professor of modern American diplomatic history at the University of California, having previously taught at Oberlin, Caltech, and Yale. I’ve also been chairman of the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum, where I was the Curator of Military Space. I’ve been fascinated—and concerned—about nuclear weapons and nuclear war since I was 12, when I saw the movie On the Beach. Then, as now, nuclear weapons and the (currently-increasing) danger of nuclear war are the most important things on the planet.
Most readers interested in the story of the atomic bomb don’t realize that the weapon was primarily an engineering project, not a scientific one. (Why it was called the Manhattan Engineer District).
The man who built the bomb was really Groves, not Oppenheimer, who only helped design it. Norris’s book is fascinating for portraying Groves as a human being, not just a chubby general. Readers will recognize that Matt Damon was actually a pretty good choice to play Groves in the movie “Oppenheimer.”
COLONEL LESLIE R. GROVES was a career officer in the Army Corps of Engineers, fresh from overseeing hundreds of military construction projects, including the Pentagon, when he was given the job in September 1942 of building the atomic bomb. In this full-scale biography Norris places Groves at the center of the amazing Manhattan Project story. Norris contributes much in the way of new information and vital insights to our understanding of how the bomb got built and how the decision was made to drop it on a large population center. Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb,…
