France, 1939 - In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France ... but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything....

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it's 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 looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II--an experience Eva remembers well--and the search to reunite people...

"Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence. Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It's a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those...

Set against the backdrop of World War II, a novel inspired by the true story of the Council of Books in Wartime follows three women whose fates become intertwined by their belief in the power and goodness of the written word to triumph over the very darkest moments of war. Berlin 1933. Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program...

France, 1914. Aurelie becomes trapped on the wrong side of the front with her father, Comte Sigismund de Courcelles. When the Germans move into their family's ancestral estate, Aurelie discovers she knows the German Major's aide de camp, Maximilian Von Sternburg. Betrayal will shatter them both. France, 1942. Raised by her American grandmother in the Hotel Ritz, Marguerite "Daisy" Villon remains in Paris with her daughter and husband, a Nazi collaborator,...

Paris, July 1942: Ten year-old Sarah is brutally arrested with her family in the Vel d'Hiv roundup, the most notorious act of French collaboration with the Nazis. But Sarah has locked her brother in their favorite hiding place and kept the key, thinking she will return soon. Paris, May 2002: On Vel d'Hiv's sixtieth anniversary, American journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write about this black day in France's past. In the course of her investigation,...

In 1937, young Lisette Roux and her husband, André, move from Paris to a village in Provence to care for André's grandfather Pascal. Lisette regrets having to give up her dream of becoming a gallery apprentice and longs for the comforts and sophistication of Paris. But as she soon discovers, the hilltop town is rich with unexpected pleasures. Pascal once worked in the nearby ochre mines and later became a pigment salesman and frame maker; while...

"Based on true accounts of how Parisiennes resisted the Nazi occupation in World War II--from fashion houses to the city streets--comes a story of two courageous women who risked everything to fight an evil they couldn't abide. Paris, 1939. Maison Chanel has closed, thrusting haute couture dressmaker Lila de Laurent out of the world of high fashion as Nazi soldiers invade the streets and the City of Lights slips into darkness. Lila's life is now a...

On June 5, 1944, as dawn rises over a small town on the Normandy coast of France, Emmanuelle is making the bread that has sustained her fellow villagers in the dark days since the Germans invaded her country. Only twenty-two, Emma learned to bake at the side of a master, Ezra Kuchen, the village baker since before she was born. Apprenticed to Ezra at thirteen, Emma watched with shame and anger as her kind mentor was forced to wear the six-pointed...

"Through letters with a famous author, one French librarian tells her love story and describes the brutal Nazi occupation of her small coastal village"-- Saint-Malo, France: August 1939. Jocelyn's husband Antoine is drafted to fight against Germany. As World War II rages, Jocelyn uses her position as a librarian to comfort and encourage her community with books. When the Nazis occupy Saint-Malo it is turned into a fortress, and the German commander...