Here are 100 books that Three Ordinary Girls fans have personally recommended if you like
Three Ordinary Girls.
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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 picked this book up on my brother's recommendation. His men’s book club read it, and he said they all liked it. If a bunch of men enjoyed a book about a female spy, well, I took that as high praise.
Because I am a student of WW2 in Europe, I was already familiar with Virginia Hall. Until I read this book, I had no idea of the extent of her bravery and sacrifice. I seldom find myself so engrossed in a biography.
Chosen as a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by NPR, the New York Public Library, Amazon, the Seattle Times, the Washington Independent Review of Books, PopSugar, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, BookBrowse, the Spectator, and the Times of London
Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography
"Excellent...This book is as riveting as any thriller, and as hard to put down." -- The New York Times Book Review
"A compelling biography of a masterful spy, and a reminder of what can be done with a few brave people -- and a little resistance." - NPR
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…
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.
Growing up, I felt both the denial and existential shame in the ether of my family—that something was missing. Decades after my birth, I learned that many of my ancestors died by the Nazis. I’m Jewish, but it was never mentioned; my grandfather and father kept it quiet. In fact, we celebrated Christmas. I started to research my lineage at the same time I was writing a story about a catholic boy who falls in love with a Jewish girl when I stumbled upon a reference to a WWII Nazi slave labor death camp called Berga and was stunned to learn that Jewish POWs were enslaved at a death camp.
I marveled at the human spirit expressed so vividly in this book when it became clear it would be impossible to survive when torture and death swirled about as if the prisoners were held in a wind tunnel when all that was left was to steal personal items off fellow fallen prisoners in order to barter and live another day, I prayed for the sun to rise just one more time for Lale and his love, Gita so that they would one day tear their tattered prison garb off and hold onto each other outside the gates of hell.
How sad, yet miraculous, having the job of tattooing the number on the arms of Jewish prisoners helped to ultimately liberate Lale. I burned through this novel at breakneck speed, all the while soaking in the simple yet utterly visceral prose. This book gave me hope that love will outlast hate…
One of the bestselling books of the 21st century with over 6 million copies sold.
Don't miss the conclusion to The Tattooist of Auschwitz Trilogy, Three Sisters. Available now.
I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart.
In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust.
Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl.…
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…
As a child I grew up listening to my Dutch mother’s stories of life under German occupation and her family’s struggle for survival during the Hunger Winter. Life was hard but exciting for a teenager who thought nothing of delivering anti-Nazi leaflets, chopping down lime trees in front of the house for firewood, and evading the Germans on her ancient bike in her quest for food. It was this unwavering spirit that I wanted to capture in the four novels I’ve written set in wartime Holland. She was the inspiration behind my latest World War 2 novel, The Boy in the Attic.
I love Anita Shreve’s writing style, which is spare and yet conveys so much emotion. Resistance is set during World War 2 in occupied Belgium and tells the story of a downed US air force pilot who is found by a young boy, the son of a Nazi collaborator, before being taken in by a couple who hides him in the attic before he can be discovered by the Germans. This atmospheric story is about love and betrayal, but so powerfully portrays the atrocities of war.
The wife of a Resistance worker in Nazi-occupied Belgium falls in love with a wounded American pilot, forcing her to struggle with trust and betrayal. The wounded pilot becomes the pivot of the young housewife's life and their love affair causes repercussions throughout the small town.
As a child I grew up listening to my Dutch mother’s stories of life under German occupation and her family’s struggle for survival during the Hunger Winter. Life was hard but exciting for a teenager who thought nothing of delivering anti-Nazi leaflets, chopping down lime trees in front of the house for firewood, and evading the Germans on her ancient bike in her quest for food. It was this unwavering spirit that I wanted to capture in the four novels I’ve written set in wartime Holland. She was the inspiration behind my latest World War 2 novel, The Boy in the Attic.
The Gustav Sonata started out as a short story called "A Game of Cards". Long after it appeared, Tremain felt she had wasted a very promising core idea on something essentially too short and too unexamined. The story and novel are set in Switzerland, which seemed safe as a neutral country during World War 2, but the government was torn between compassion for German Jewish refugees and the fear of devastating German reprisals if they took them in. Tremain tackles this dilemma through the stoical character of Gustav, who is Jewish and explores the ambiguities in the relationship between Gustav and his friend Anton, a gifted pianist who is crippled by stage fright. I found the themes sensitively and beautifully described.
Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem only a distant echo. An only child, he lives alone with Emilie, the mother he adores but who treats him with bitter severity. He begins an intense friendship with a Jewish boy his age, talented and mercurial Anton Zweibel, a budding concert pianist. The novel follows Gustav's family, tracing the roots of his mother's anti-Semitism and its impact on her son and his beloved friend. Moving backward to the war years and the painful repercussions of an act of conscience, and…
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…
As a writer of seven historically themed books, fiction and nonfiction, I’ve loved the intense, deep dive into World War I, World War II, the Civil War, and the Paris Commune that researching my books entailed. It’s been particularly fascinating to explore how women, whether on or near the front lines, or on the home front, negotiate life during war and how their behavior illuminates character. My protagonists are all women, and I’ve found that writing their lives offers a sharp opportunity to see the moral ambiguities of war. What’s more, their stories often transcend the personal to symbolize the spirit of a particular time and place at war.
I greatly admire how this book subverts the traditional form of biography in a way that perfectly suits the subject.
Mildred Harnack, the author’s great-great-aunt, was an astoundingly brave young woman from Wisconsin who, starting in the early 1930s, had a central role in Berlin’s homegrown opposition to the Nazis and was eventually beheaded on orders from Hitler.
Drawing on diaries, letters, photographs, interviews, and declassified intelligence documents, Donner tells an extraordinarily intimate story that reads like a literary novel and has the pace of a thriller.
Born and raised in America, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD programme in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment - a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin.
She recruited Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. When the first shots of the Second World…
I’ve been drawn to the Holocaust ever since a school project in the tenth grade. Later, as I worked to become a professional musician, the passion to learn more about the topic never left me. When I was first asked to perform some music of the Holocaust, the reaction of the audience (tears) and my own realization that through the power of this music, I could return a voice to so many who had their own voices so cruelly silenced changed my life. To date, I have interviewed multiple survivors of the Holocaust. Many became very dear friends, and my life has been infinitely enriched by knowing them.
I was immediately captivated by the depth of material and engrossing writing style of this book. Despite being a serious and challenging topic, Helm drew me in from the first page and never let up.
I also learned quite a bit of new information about a topic I thought I knew quite a lot about already.
Months before the outbreak of World War II, Heinrich Himmler—prime architect of the Holocaust—designed a special concentration camp for women, located fifty miles north of Berlin. Only a small number of the prisoners were Jewish. Ravensbrück was primarily a place for the Nazis to hold other inferior beings: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Resistance fighters, lesbians, prostitutes, and aristocrats—even the sister of New York’s Mayor LaGuardia. Over six years the prisoners endured forced labor, torture, starvation, and random execution. In the final months of the war, Ravensbrück became an extermination camp. Estimates of the final death toll have ranged from 30,000 to 90,000.…
In my “day job” I write about architecture, which means I often write about things I see in photos. When I began writing fiction, I continued using photos as inspiration and research. My novels are inspired by my family’s circumstances at the end of World War II and my fascination with the work of the Monuments Men. Photos show me details like a little girl playing with her doll under a sign that declares her building to be at risk of collapse, or a woman using the ruins of a building to hang out the wash. I love finding ways to use these elements in my writing.
This book is the catalog of a 2019 exhibition of the same name. It’s a collection of 440 images that cover all facets of Jewish life in the Netherlands during the German occupation. What’s most interesting and compelling are the rare, so-called bystander photos that show what life under Nazi rule looked like for ordinary people going about their lives, both those who were persecuted and those who committed genocide, as well as those who witnessed it. While we can look into the faces of people knowing the horrors that were to come, seeing these images—weddings, dinners, strolls in the park—as a preface to the more familiar images of round-ups, transports, and concentration camps provides deeper insight into history. I revisit the photos in this book often.
The Persecution of the Jews in Photographs, the Netherlands 1940-1945 is the first book of its kind on the subject. Both the professional photographers commissioned by the occupying forces and amateurs took moving photographs.
On 10 May 1940, the day of the German invasion, there were 140,000 Jewish inhabitants living in the Netherlands. The full extent of their terrible fate only became known after the war: at least 102,000 were murdered, died of mistreatment or were worked to death in the Nazi camps. This tragedy has had a profound effect on Dutch society.
Photographic archives and private collections were consulted…
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…
In Villa Air-Bel, I wrote about an extraordinary man, Varian Fry. A journalist sent to France in 1940 with a list of 200 artists to save, he expected to stay 2 weeks. He stayed 15 months, establishing the Emergency Rescue Committee. By the time the Vichy police expelled him, he’d saved 2,000 people. Who has the courage to put their lives on the line for strangers? In The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation, I recorded how five people risked their lives to hide the Frank family until they were finally betrayed. Two of the helpers were sent to concentration camps. It takes courage to resist Fascism. Would I/ we have that courage?
Bart van Es tells the true story of how his grandparents were one of several families in the Netherlands who hid a young Jewish girl named Lientje during World War II.
It was extremely dangerous to do so. If found out, the Dutch family hiding her would have been arrested and sent off to one of the Nazi concentration camps. Van Es conveys a full sense of the tragedy involved when the girl’s parents give their beloved daughter to their friends as the only way to save her.
What’s unusual about this book is that Van Es tells two stories: his own journey as he tracks down Lientje in Amsterdam and her story of the terrible things she went through in hiding. Dutch “Jew hunting units” roamed the streets. Holland deported over 70% of their Jewish population to the Eastern camps.
"The hidden gem of the year . . . Sensational and gripping, and shedding light on some of the most urgent issues of our time, this was our unanimous winner." -Judges of the 2018 Costa Award
The extraordinary true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland during World War II, who hides from the Nazis in the homes of an underground network of foster families, one of them the author's grandparents
Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It…
