The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel (2020)

 

Inspired by an amazing true story, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis during World War II. Eva Traube Abrams is that woman.  When we meet Eve, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, she happens across an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the Nazis’ looting of libraries across Europe during World War II and the search to reunite the true owner with these stolen texts. The book in question is an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France near the end of the war.

The book is now housed in Berlin’s Berlin Central and Regional Library and appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer, but it will mean confronting her buried past, a past not even her son knows about.

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. She finds refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone and begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But changing a person’s identity comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva finds a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

The Book of Lost Names is an utterly captivating read.

4.36 stars on Goodreads, 4.7 stars on Amazon.

Winter Garden by Kristen Hannah (2010)

 

“Mesmerizing from the first page to the last, Kristin Hannah's Winter Garden is one woman’s sweeping, heartbreaking story of love, loss, and redemption. At once an epic love story set in World War II Russia and an intimate portrait of contemporary mothers and daughters poised at the crossroads of their lives, it explores the heartbreak of war, the cost of survival and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. It is a novel that will haunt the reader long after the last page is turned.” So starts the Amazon review and I couldn’t agree more.

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family business while the other followed her dream and traveled the world becoming a famous photojournalist. The sisters find themselves reunited when their beloved father turns ill. They are also reunited with their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection with their mother was the Russian fairy tale she sometimes told them at bedtime about a beautiful Russian girl who lived in Leningrad a lifetime ago….

On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women: the fairy tale will be told one last time— and all the way to the end. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina hear the harrowing story of their mother’s life, beginning in World War II Leningrad and spanning more than sixty years to modern day Alaska. The story will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.

Kristin Hannah, the author of more than twenty books, started out writing romances but has since changed her focus to stories of women's lives and relationships, particularly in families. Her character-driven novels wrestle with universal issues surrounding parenthood, marriage, infidelity, and loss. Many of Hannah’s books can be found on the libraries’ shelves.

4.18 stars on Goodreads, 4.6 on Amazon

Karolina's Twins (Liam Taggart & Catherine Lockhart #3) by Ronald H. Balson (2016)

 

This is the third of five books (thus far) featuring private investigator Liam Taggart and attorney Catherine Lockhart. At the beginning of each of the books the reader meets the couple's newest client and follow the case/investigation to its conclusion. In Karolina’s Twins, the client is Auschwitz survivor Lena Woodward. Lena is looking for help in keeping a promise she made to her childhood friend to find her twin girls after the war. Lena is determined to do so before she dies.

Throughout the course of the book Lena tells her story of being a Polish Jewish at the beginning of the German occupation, through the Jewish ghettos and work camps, and ending with the death march from Auschwitz. At the same time, Lena’s son Arthur, who is convinced the twins do not exist, files a lawsuit against his mother to have her declared incompetent and placed in a home. Something doesn’t ring true about this whole affair but who’s hiding what?

4.32 stars on Goodreads, 4.7 on Amazon

Spitfire (Livy Nash Mystery #1) by M.L. Huie (2020)

 

How far would you go for vengeance?

World War II is over, and former spy Livy Nash spends her days proofreading an advice column for little ladies at home, and her nights getting drunk on black market vodka. During the war Livy was one of the toughest agents in France but everything ended when her cell was betrayed and the man she loved executed. When Livy meets the infamous Ian Fleming, she has the chance to go back to Paris as a journalist and track down the man who betrayed them all. She jumps at the opportunity. Once in Paris Livy realizes just how much the game has changed. With enemies on every corner and constantly shifting alliances, Livy must learn how to fight in this new war so she can conquer the past once and for all.

The second Livy Nash novel, Nightshade, will be available soon.

3.72 stars at Goodreads, 4.6 on Amazon