World War II Fiction

Tim Binding, Lying with the Enemy.
In the Nazi-occupied Channel Islands, a British detective reluctantly joins forces with a German officer to investigate a young woman’s death.

Bill Boyd, A Rendezvous with Death.
A lieutenant is assigned to investigate when his platoon discovers a German girl and an American G.I. murdered in a barn.

James Brady, A Warning of War.
As war brews between the U.S. and Japan, a Marine Captain in China is charged with rounding up the remaining U.S. troops and leading them across the Great Wall to Siberia.

Harry Brown, A Walk in the Sun.
A corporal assumes command of his platoon after the ranking officers are killed during a single day’s combat in Italy.

Monique Charlesworth, The Children’s War.
A woman working as a nanny for privileged German children sends her own half-Jewish daughter out of the country.

Robert Daley, The Innocents Within.
An American pilot is shot down near a French village where the pastor is hiding Jewish refugees.

Len Deighton, Goodbye, Mickey Mouse.
A group of young, untested American fighter pilots are sent on a mission deep into German territory.

Robert Denny, Aces.
Flying Fortress bomber pilots feel confident they’ve won the air war until they encounter the Messer-schmidt jet fighter in the skies over Germany.

Kenneth Dodson, Away All Boats.
The story of transport ship Belinda and her crew of ordinary men from their maiden voyage through the war in the Pacific theater.

Sebastian Faulks, Charlotte Gray.
When the pilot she loves is shot down over France, an Englishwoman decides to join the Resistance.

Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices.
In London during the Blitz, workers at the BBC try to keep the populace calm yet informed while struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy.

Thomas Fleming, Time and Tide.
The new captain of the U.S.S. Jefferson City is determined to redeem his ship after she deserted during the crushing defeat at Savo Island.

Ken Follett, The Eye of the Needle.
A German spy with information that could halt the Normandy invasion is sidetracked from his mission by an Englishwoman dedicated to the Allied cause.

C. S. Forester, The Good Shepherd.
The commander of an American destroyer remains on his bridge for 48 hours to protect a convoy in the North Atlantic from a U-boat attack.

Alexander Fullerton, Storm Force to Narvik.
A British captain struggles to repair his damaged destroyer during the German invasion of Norway.

Alan Furst, Red Gold.
An impoverished French film producer on the run from the Gestapo agrees to arrange an arms deal in order to convince a group of communists to help De Gaulle.

John Gobbell, The Last Lieutenant.
After the fall of Corregidor, a Navy lieutenant leads his men to safety and prevents a Nazi mole from revealing Allied plans for the Japanese at Midway.

W. E. B. Griffin, Semper Fi.
A Marine private is sent to the Shanghai consulate in 1941 in this first book of a series chronicling the exploits of the Corps in WWII.

Robert Harris, Enigma.
A brilliant British mathematician working to break the Nazi Enigma code fears treachery when some cryptograms are stolen.

Thomas Heggen, Mister Roberts.
A cargo officer in the Pacific feels the war is passing him by, but his tyrannical captain won’t sign his transfer requests.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
A satirical tale of an American airman deter-mined to stay alive in an inescapable situation.

Jack Higgins, The Eagle Has Landed.
A team of German paratroopers are sent to England to kidnap Winston Churchill.

Harry Homewood, Silent Sea.
A submarine crew made up of draftees and reservists are determined to prove themselves after witnessing the sinking of their sister ship.

Greg Iles, Black Cross.
An American physician and a German Jew infiltrate a concentration camp to destroy a cache of Sarin gas, but risk killing hundreds of prisoners.

James Jones, The Thin Red Line.
The men of Charlie Company struggle to hold onto their sanity and their lives at Guadalcanal.

Joseph Kanon, Los Alamos.
An intelligence officer is called to the Los Alamos atomic research facility to investigate an apparent sex crime that may conceal something more sinister.

Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s List.
Powerful novel based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved over 1,000 Jews from the gas chambers by employing and hiding them in his factory.

John Lawton, Bluffing Mr. Churchill.
When an American spy operating undercover as an SS agent flees from Germany to Britain, a diplomat and an MI5 agent try to bring him in safely.

Alistair MacLean, The Guns of Navarone.
A team must scale the cliffs of a Greek island to destroy German guns threatening a planned invasion.

Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.
An indepth look inside the minds of thirteen Marines from varying backgrounds stationed on an island in the Pacific.

Olivia Manning, The Levant Trilogy.
The war in North Africa is seen through the eyes of an expatriate British couple and their friends.

James McBride, Miracle at St. Anna.
Four African-American soldiers are trapped behind enemy lines in an Italian mountain village.

Philip McCutchan, Orders for Cameron.
An officer of the Royal Navy takes part in Operation Torch, the 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa. Part of a series.

Nicholas Monsarrat, The Cruel Sea.
The crew of the H.M.S. Compass Rose battle the harsh North Atlantic weather and the predatory U-boats below as they try to protect convoys bringing much-needed goods to Great Britain.

E. M. Nathanson, The Dirty Dozen.
An OSS Captain selects 12 soldiers who have been court-martialed for a covert operation in enemy territory on the eve of the Normandy invasion.

Philip Purser, Lights in the Sky.
An RAF pilot is sent to Sweden to retrieve two refugees who have evidence of the horrors being committed by the Nazis.

Douglas Reeman, In Danger’s Hour.
A battle-scarred minesweeper is sent to the Mediterranean to help clear the way for the Allied invasion of Italy.

David Robbins, War of the Rats.
During the siege of Stalingrad, the SS sends a master sniper to eliminate a Russian sniper who single-handedly shot over 200 Germans.

Derek Robinson, A Piece of Cake.
A realistic portrayal of an RAF squadron in the early days of World War II, their camaraderie and tensions, and their love of flying and fear of death.

Mary Doria Russell, Thread of Grace.
A girl and her father flee across the Alps into Italy with other Jews seeking refuge, only to find fighting among the Nazis, Allied forces, resistance fighters, and ordinary Italians.

Daniel Silva, The Unlikely Spy.
A British professor is asked to find a ruthless German spy to prevent the Nazis from learning of the planned D-Day invasion.

Martin Cruz Smith, December 6.
A man who runs a nightclub in Tokyo has one chance to escape before the war breaks out but he has trouble extricating himself.

Scott Turow, Ordinary Heroes.
Family secrets come to light when a man discovers letters written by his father during World War II.

William Wharton, A Midnight Clear.
A group of college army reservists are mistakenly sent to the front where they ‘play soldier’ while awaiting their fate.

Tom Willard, Wings of Honor.
An African-American man whose family has a tradition of military service joins the Tuskegee airmen, one of the most successful and highly decorated flying units of the war.

Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny.
Officers on a minesweeper in the Pacific who fear for the safety of their ship in the hands of an erratic captain relieve him of command and are court-martialed for mutiny.

Herman Wouk, The Winds of War; War and Remembrance.
A sweeping saga of World War II that moves from the battlefields to the White House, from the home front to the Polish ghettos in the footsteps of one American family.