The WWII Home Front: EuropeJump to: Britain, Ireland and British and Irish Travelers and Expatriates For novels about German civilians during WWII, see the Nazi Germany page. 
For European civilians, World War II was an ever-present part of their lives. London and other European cities suffered terrifying bombing raids. Civilians in Japanese-occupied Singapore and elsewhere were forced into prisoner-of-war camps, while people living near prisoner-of-war camps had mixed feelings, from fear to curiosity and even affection, about the captured foreign soldiers in their midst. Civilians supported the war effort in a variety of ways, large and small: knitting socks for soldiers, growing vegetable gardens, working in aircraft and bomb factories, making patriotic films. People living in occupied territory in France, Poland and elsewhere, or in the war zone itself, like the unfortunate citizens of Leningrad, often risked losing their lives and sometimes displayed remarkable heroism. After the war ended, it continued to affect people's lives as war-weary soldiers returned home, Jewish refugees tried to find new lives in new countries, and professionals traveled to Germany and Japan to prosecute war crimes and help rebuild shattered civilizations. Britain, Ireland and British and Irish Travelers and Expatriates
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Joan Bakewell, All the Nice Girls (2009), about the headmistress of a school who arranges for her girls to "adopt" a Liverpool merchant ship and then embarks on affair with the married ship captain; a frame story concerns a woman in 2003 as the Iraq War is about to begin, who discovers a box of newspaper clippings about the 1942 ship adoption. Lily Baxter, Poppy's War (2010), about a girl evacuated to a village in Dorset as a thirteen-year-old in 1939, later moves again after learning her parents have been killed in the Blitz, and begins training as a nurse. Lily Baxter, Spitfire Girl (2011), historical romance about an eighteen-year-old London girl in 1940 who wants to learn to fly so she can help defend her country and the flying instructor she falls in love with before she discovers he is missing in action. Charlotte Bingham, The Daisy Club Chris Bohjalian, Skeletons at the Feast, about an escaped Scottish prisoner of war in love with a German farmer's daughter as they flee from the advancing Russian army during the last days of World War II. Michael Cannon, Lachlan's War Amelia Carr, A Song at Sunset (2010), about a woman trapped in a loveless marriage who defies her husband to go to work at a hospital during World War II, where she falls in love with a doctor. Peter Ho Davies, The Welsh Girl (2007), about the daughter of a Welsh sheep farmer and a German soldier in a prisoner-of-war camp during the last months of World War II. Robert Dinsdale, Three Miles (2011), about a police captain in Leeds who finally captures the leader of a gang of thieves on the night of a German bombing raid and must escort him to the station while evading both the bombs and the rest of the gang. Lissa Evans, Their Finest Hour and a Half (2009), about a London film company and the making of a heart-warming and not exactly accurate war movie about Dunkirk. Patricia Falvey, The Linen Queen (2011), historical romance about an Irish mill girl who plans to win a beauty contest and use the prize money to leave her home town, a plan complicated by the Belfast blitz. Katie Flynn, A Mistletoe Kiss (2010), about a librarian who befriends a girl with a longing to read on the eve of World War II. Ken Follett, Night Over Water (1991), a thriller about the passengers on a luxury airliner sabotaged while on its way to New York from Southampton in 1939 as World War II rages. Iris Gower, Bombers' Moon Linda Grant, The Cast Iron Shore (1996), about a young Jewish woman who leaves her home in Liverpool for America after she uncovers a devastating secret during the Blitz.
Hilary Green, They Also Serve (2007), about four friends who used to work in the theatre business and their experiences in 1941 as World War II brings each of them different challenges; #2 in the Fairbourne Follies series. Hilary Green, Theatre of War Hilary Green, The Final Act (2009), about four friends who used to work in the theatre business and their experiences in 1944 as they hope for the end of the war; #4 in the Fairbourne Follies series.
Ruth Hamilton, Sugar and Spice (2010), about a girl who is orphaned in 1940 at age five when her mother dies in childbirth, leaving twin babies who become a challenge to their elder sister's warm heart as they grow up. Ruth Hamilton, That Liverpool Girl Charlotte Hardy, Meg (2007), about a woman who discovers a painting that belonged to her dead mother which tells the story of her 1938 love affair with an Austrian intellectual. Sherrie Hewson, The Tannery (2009), about a girl whose father leaves his tannery job and enlists in the military at the beginning of World War II, leaving his family in desperate straits. Christine Dwyer Hickey, Last Train from Liguria (2011), about a London woman who moves to Italy in 1933 to tutor the child of a Jewish heiress and an Italian aristocrat and, as the fascism overtakes the country, must try to smuggle the child to safety. Helen Humphreys, The Lost Garden (2002), about a London woman who goes to the countryside during the Blitz to take charge of a crew of young women who will plant vegetables in the ruined gardens of an old country estate. Review Angela Huth, Land Girls (1993), about three young women who become fast friends after volunteering to help raise vegetables as part of the Women's Land Army during the war. Article in the Telegraph about the controversy over this novel and the film Angela Huth, Once a Land Girl (2010), follows the lives after the war of three women who became friends after they volunteered for the Women's Land Army; sequel to Land Girls. Janice Y.K. Lee, The Piano Teacher (2009), about a love affair between an English woman who teaches piano in Hong Kong after World War II and a man who had an earlier affair during the war with a Eurasian woman. Maureen Lee, Au Revoir Liverpool (2011), about a Liverpool woman abandoned by her jealous husband, who finds herself stranded in Paris during the German occupation. Judith Lennox, In the Heart of the Night (2009), about a young British woman and the young Russian woman for whom she is hired as a companion.
Olivia Manning, The Spoilt City (1962), about a young married couple in the English colony in Bucharest, Romania, as the threat of German invasion looms; #2 in the Balkan Trilogy (technically not historical fiction, as it was based on the author's own experiences as a civilian during the war). Olivia Manning, Friends and Heroes (1965), about a young married couple who are separated when the wife flees to Athens while the husband is trapped in Nazi-occupied Bucharest, Romania; #3 in the Balkan Trilogy (technically not historical fiction, as it was based on the author's own experiences as a civilian during the war). Olivia Manning, The Danger Tree (1977), about an English couple in Egypt during the Second World War; #1 in the Levant Trilogy, which continues the story in the Balkan Trilogy (technically not historical fiction, as it was based on the author's own experiences as a civilian during the war). Olivia Manning, The Battle Lost and Won (1977), about an English couple in Egypt during the Second World War; #2 in the Levant Trilogy (technically not historical fiction, as it was based on the author's own experiences as a civilian during the war). Olivia Manning, The Sum of Things (1977), about an English couple in Egypt during the Second World War; #3 in the Levant Trilogy (technically not historical fiction, as it was based on the author's own experiences as a civilian during the war). Anthony Masters, Tenko (1981), about British women, wives of officials in the British colony of Singapore, in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp after the fall of Singapore to Japan; based on a BBC television series; difficult to obtain outside the U.K. Beryl Matthews, The Uncertain Years Ian McEwan, Atonement, a literary novel about the children in an upper-middle-class British family during the years from 1935 through World War II and beyond. Connie Monk, When the Bough Breaks (2011), about a woman whose husband is called up to fight when the war begins in 1939, leaving her to run their market garden. Kate Morton, The Distant Hours (2010), about a present-day woman who sets out to unravel the mystery of her mother's experience as a girl during World War II when she was evacuated to stay with an eccentric family in their castle in the country. Robert Radcliffe, Under an English Heaven (2002), about an American pilot, a schoolteacher whose husband is missing in the war, and a fourteen-year-old boy evacuated from London, and the turmoil of their lives in a Suffolk village after an American military base locates nearby. Anna Richards, Little Gods (2009), a comic novel about a tall young woman freed of her hateful mother by a bombing raid on London who finds, then loses, love with a short American GI who admires her size. Review at The Guardian Carol Rivers, East End Angel (2010), about a young bride who becomes pregnant after being raped while her hot-tempered husband is away serving in the military. Judith Saxton, You Are My Sunshine (2011), about four young British women who become friends while serving their country as balloon operatives during World War II. Natasha Solomons, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English (2010; titled Mr. Rosenblum's List in the U.K.), about a Jewish man who relocates his family from Germany to England and sets out to become perfectly assimilated, to his wife's dismay. Julia Stoneham, Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings Julia Stoneham, The Girl at the Farmhouse Gate (2010), about a young woman recovering from family troubles while taking charge of a group of Land Girls and wondering how to respond to her employer's growing interest in her; #2 in the Land Girls trilogy. Julia Stoneham, Alice’s Girls (2011), about three women who became friends while doing farm work as Land Girls and their experiences as the war comes to an end; #3 in the Land Girls trilogy. Leslie Thomas, Dover Beach (2005), a comic novel set in Dover, England, in May 1940 as some 338,000 soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk passed through the town. Anne Valery, Tenko Reunion Sarah Waters, The Night Watch, about two women falling in love in World War London. Robert Ryan, Night Crossing (2003), a love triangle about a German violinist who flees to England and the Scotland Yard policeman and German POW who both love her; #3 in the Morning, Noon and Night series. Alexander McCall Smith, La's Orchestra Saves the World (2008), about a London widow who moves to the countryside during World War I, organizes an orchestra, and finds love. Dee Williams, This Time for Keeps (2009), about a young London woman who joins the Land Army after her parents are killed in an air raid, the Italian POW who breaks her heart, and the violent man she marries. Connie Willis, Blackout (2010), about time-traveling historians who become stranded in England during the Blitz. Review Connie Willis, All Clear (2010), about time-traveling historians stranded in England during World War II who suspect that, contrary to the conclusions of experts about the nature of time travel, their actions may have affected events sufficiently to alter the outcome of the war; sequel to Blackout. Russia and Russian Travelers and Expatriates
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David Benioff, City of Thieves, about a man who tells his grandson the story of his experiences during the siege of Leningrad, when to save his life he had to find a dozen eggs in the starving city for a wedding cake for a military official's daughter. Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad, about a woman with Alzheimer's who cherishes the memory of the paintings she helped preserve during the siege of Leningrad. Review Helen Dunmore, The Siege, about a woman in Leningrad and her struggle for survival when it is besieged by the Germans during World War II. Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Anya, about Russian Jews in Poland in the years leading up to World War II. Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman, a love story set in World War II Leningrad; #1 in the Tatiana and Alexander series. Paullina Simons, The Bridge to Holy Cross (also titled Tatiana and Alexander), about a young Russian woman who flees to New York, believing herself widowed, while her husband is being held by Stalin's secret police; #2 in the Tatiana and Alexander series. Paullina Simons, The Summer Garden, about Russian lovers who have been reunited in the U.S. only to find their happiness threatened by the Cold War atmosphere and their memories of the past; #3 in the Tatiana and Alexander series. Italy and Spain under Fascism
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Emilio Calderon, The Creator's Map, about a Spanish architect in Rome during the fascist period from 1937-1952, and a mysterious, occult map sought by the Nazis. Ellen Cooney, Lambrusco, about an woman in German-occupied Italy who sets out to find her son, who has disappeared after blowing up a German truck. Anthony Capella, The Wedding Officer (2006), a comic love story about a beautiful Italian cook and a British officer responsible for preventing wartime marriages between British soldiers and Italian civilians. Elsa Morante, History (1974), about an Italian widow and her sons during World War II and its aftermath; written by an author alive during the war, so not technically historical fiction. Occupied Europe
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Louis De Bernieres, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, about a doctor on a small Greek island occupied by Mussolini's army, his daughter, the fisherman and resistance fighter to whom the daughter is engaged, and the charming and cultured commander of the Italian garrison who becomes the daughter's lover. Mykola Dementiuk, Vienna Dolorosa Sarah Gainham, Night Falls on the City Lucretia Grindle, The Villa Triste (2010), about two sisters in Nazi-occupied Florence, Italy, as bands of partisans work to undermine the occupation; and about a present-day policeman who investigates the death of one of the partisans who helped liberate the city in 1944. Review at the Daily Express Douglas Jacobson, Night of Flames (2007), about the World War II experiences of a Polish couple, she in Krakow and he in a Polish cavalry unit, during the German invasion of Poland; self-published. Brief critique Joseph Kertes, Gratitude (2009), about a family of wealthy Hungarian Jews and their efforts to survive during the World War II years. Jean-Marie Le Clézio, Wandering Star Margaret Leroy, The Soldier's Wife (2011), about an unhappily married Guernsey woman who falls in love with a German officer during the German occupation of Guernsey. Julie Orringer, The Invisible Bridge (2010), about a Jewish architecture student from Budapest who arrives in Paris in 1937 where he falls in love with a ballet teacher as the rising anti-Semitism across Europe builds toward World War II. Review at the San Francisco Chronicle Alison Pick, Far to Go (2011), about a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia who struggle for survival during the Nazi invasion of 1938-39, and a present-day historian who takes an interest in them while working on the history of the Kindertransport, which helped Czechoslovakian children escape. Alyson Richman, The Lost Wife (2011), about young lovers separated when the Nazis invade Prague, but who meet again decades later in New York. Steve Sem-Sandberg, The Emperor of Lies (2011), about Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the Jewish businessman and orphanage director the Nazis put in charge of the Jewish ghetto in Lódz, Poland, in 1940. Elena Mauli Shapiro, 13, Rue Therese (2011), about an American man who discovers a box of artifacts in Paris dating to World War II and imagines the life of the French woman whose story they tell. Kevin Vennemann, Close to Jedenew, about children in the small, Nazi-occupied Polish town of Jedenew whose Jewish playmates are disappearing one by one. Charles Weinblatt, Jacob's Courage: A Holocaust Love Story (2007), a coming of age story about two young Jewish lovers in Salzburg at the time of the Nazi takeover; self-published. Sara Young, My Enemy's Cradle, about a pregnant, half-Jewish woman in German-occupied Holland who masquerades as her cousin in a German-run maternity home in order to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews. Review Simone Zelitch, Louisa (2000), about a Hungarian Jew and her widowed German Christian daughter-in-law, who insists on accompanying her to Israel in 1949; flashbacks show their lives during the war. The Aftermath
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Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk, Ciao Bella (2009), about a woman living on the farm near Venice belonging to the family of her husband, missing since since he joined the Resistance during the war, who meets an attractive American soldier stranded in Italy after the war. Erri DeLuca, The Day Before Happiness (2011), about an apartment building superintendent in Naples who has the gift of reading people's thoughts and takes an orphaned boy under his wing in the aftermath of World War II. Anita Diamant, Day After Night (2009), about four young Jewish women, each from a different place in Europe and with a different story, who meet and become friends in a British detention center where they are being held as illegal immigrants to Palestine. Robert Edric, The Kingdom of Ashes, a literary novel about a British officer involved in the interrogation of German war criminals in 1946 and his love for a German interpreter. Robert Edric, Peacetime, a literary novel about an engineer involved in demolishing gun emplacements in the British fenlands in the late summer of 1946 after World War II. Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire, about a British war hero working in Hiroshima in the aftermath of World War II, who becomes involved with the ailing twenty-year-old son and the attractive teenage daughter of an Australian medical administrator. Amanda Hodgkinson, 22 Britannia Road (2011), about a Polish woman and her young son who lived in hiding in the forests during the war and go to England when it ends to join her husband. James Holland, A Pair of Silver Wings (2006), about an aging man who recalls his days as a fighter pilot in World War II and travels to Malta and Italy in a quest for emotional healing. Sara Houghteling, Pictures at an Exhibition (2009), about a Jewish art dealer's son who returns to Paris at the end of World War II and begins an obsessive search for the paintings looted from his father's shop by the Nazis. Review from The New York Times Rosalind Laker, The House by the Fjord (2011), about an English war widow who visits a friend in Norway in 1946, where she discovers family and love. Andrea Levy, Small Island (2004), about four Londoners, a Jamaican woman, her white landlady, and their husbands, newly returned veterans of World War II. Tom Macaulay, The Warning Bell (2009), about a man who goes to Brittany to try to find out what traumatized his father so badly during World War II that he could never speak about it. Annie Murray, All The Days of Our Lives (2011), about three young Englishwomen who find in 1946 that peacetime is as challenging, in its own way, as wartime. Robert Ryan, After Midnight W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz (2001), about a man adopted as a child by Welsh parents after he was evacuated from Czechoslovakia before Hitler's invasion in 1939, and his efforts to learn more about his mother, who was sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants, about Jewish emigrés in the years following World War II. Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger (2009), about a country doctor with a working class background who, called upon to treat the maladies of an upper class family fallen on hard times after the war, is reluctant to agree with the servants that there is a supernatural cause for the family's mental decline. Review at the Library Journal Mysteries
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Tim Binding, Lying with the Enemy Michael Chabon, The Final Solution (2005), a mystery featuring the 89-year-old Sherlock Holmes, a nine-year-old boy who has escaped from Nazi Germany, and a parrot who utters strings of numbers in German. David Stuart Davies, Forests of the Night (2007), about a one-eyed private investigator in wartime London hired to find a couple's missing daughter, who worked as a high-class prostitute; #1 in the Johnny Hawke mystery series David Stuart Davies, Without Conscience (2008), about a one-eyed private investigator in wartime London whose work sets him on a collision course with an unscrupulous deserter; #2 in the Johnny Hawke mystery series Gordon Ferris, The Hanging Shed (2011), about a former paratrooper who returns to Glasgow in 1946 to try to clear an old friend, horribly changed by his WWII experiences, from an accusation of murder. Elizabeth Ironside, A Good Death (2000), a mystery about a French resistance fighter who returns home for a visit and discovers his wife took a German SS officer as a lover while he was gone and the SS officer has been murdered
Kate Kingsbury, Death is in the Air (2001), a cozy mystery featuring the lady of an English manor who must cope with numerous wartime difficulties and investigate a murder after a German pilot crash-lands in the local woods; #2 in the Manor House series. Kate Kingsbury, For Whom Death Tolls Kate Kingsbury, Dig Deep for Murder (2002), a cozy mystery featuring the lady of an English manor who must cope with numerous wartime difficulties and investigate a murder when a corpse is discovered in a victory garden; #4 in the Manor House series. Kate Kingsbury, Paint by Murder Kate Kingsbury, Berried Alive Kate Kingsbury, Fire When Ready Kate Kingsbury, Wedding Rows (2006), a cozy mystery featuring the lady of an English manor who must cope with numerous wartime difficulties and investigate the murder of a stranger at a local wedding; #8 in the Manor House series. Kate Kingsbury, An Unmentionable Murder (2006), a cozy mystery featuring the lady of an English manor who must cope with numerous wartime difficulties and investigate the death of an unpopular man; #9 in the Manor House series.
Dan Vyleta, Pavel and I (2008), a thriller about an American soldier and a German orphan who become friends in the aftermath of World War II and land in trouble when a dead Russian spy turns up at the boy's apartment. Richard Zimler, The Warsaw Anagrams (2011), about a psychiatrist in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1940 who tries to find out who murdered his nephew and why. Top of Page
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(2009), about a group of young women defending an English country house from a closer threat than Germany as World War II breaks out.
(2009), historical romance about a young woman evacuated to Wales when her home town of Swansea is bombed, who falls in love with a half-German man.
(2006), about four friends who work in the theatre business and are forced to part at the beginning of World War II to face dangers in the service and on the home front; #1 in the Fairbourne Follies series.
(2008), about four friends who used to work in the theatre business and their experiences in 1942 as the war is fought in North Africa and Italy; #3 in the Fairbourne Follies series.
(2011), about a Liverpool woman separated from the rest of her family when her daughter refuses to be evacuated after Britain declares war on Germany in 1939.
(2010), about four London friends and their different experiences during World War II.
(2008), about a young woman who works as a warden for a group of Land Girls growing food in Devonshire as part of home front efforts to support the war; #1 in the Land Girls trilogy.
(1985), about British women, wives of officials in the British colony of Singapore, in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp after the fall of Singapore to Japan.
(2005), about a Frenchwoman whose success as a singer is disrupted by the German occupation of Paris during World War II.
, about the patrons, employees and residents of a Viennese transvestite brothel/hotel on the day in 1938 that Hitler invades Austria. 
(2003), about a young woman in 1964 who decides to find out what happened to her father, a bomber pilot in World War II, who disappeared on a mission in Italy in 1944 when she was a year old; #4 in the Morning, Noon and Night series.
(1999), about a police inspector on Guernsey Island investigating the murder of a woman he had been fond of who had been having an affair with the commander of the German occupying forces.
(2001), a cozy mystery featuring the lady of an English manor who must cope with numerous wartime difficulties and investigate a murder, as well; #1 in the Manor House series.
(2002), a cozy mystery featuring the lady of an English manor who must cope with numerous wartime difficulties and investigate the death of an American G.I. found hanging from the bell rope in the local church tower; #3 in the Manor House series.
(2003), a cozy mystery featuring the lady of an English manor who must cope with numerous wartime difficulties and investigate the murder of one of her tenants; #5 in the Manor House series.
(2004), a cozy mystery featuring the lady of an English manor who must cope with numerous wartime difficulties and find out who has been poisoning American G.I.s; #6 in the Manor House series.
(2004), a cozy mystery featuring the lady of an English manor who must cope with numerous wartime difficulties and find out who sabotaged the local munitions factory; #7 in the Manor House series.