Books Set In WW2

The sequel to The Machine Gunners, Fathom Five, is excellent too - more adult themes, e.g. prostitution, so one for teens rather than young DC.

Hitlers canary by sandy toksvig it’s based on her dads childhood experiences in Denmark . Iv dug it out to give to my grandson , lovely book . He will be 3rd child to read , it will come back for the next !

Really enjoyed The Night Watch, Charlotte Grey and A Town Like Alice.

I really enjoyed a tv show called Housewife 49 and have always meant to find the book on which it’s based.

A slightly biased recommendation as I was the editor: The Price of Freedom - CF Fairthorne

Tatiana & Alexander by Paullina Simons is set in Russia during WW2 and is one of my all time favourite books. There are several sequels to their love story which i equally enjoyed .

I have read many of the ones already mentioned and particularly loved:
the Lissa Evans trilogy,
the A J Pearce books (I think a 3rd one has just come out),
the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society,
anything by Delderfield,
Captain Corellis Mandolin

But another delightful pair not mentioned so far are Henriettas War and Henrietta Sees it Through. They are a collection of letters from doctors wife Henrietta who lives on the south coast to her childhood friend and describe life at hone in a small town through the war. Very amusing. They were actually written at the time they were set as they were a regular column in a magazine

Ship of brides by jo jo moyes. It's about war brides being brought to the uk at the end of ww2. Really good.

A town like alice by nevil chute is brilliant and horrifying.

Coming home as others have said.

Nigel Balchin's The Small Back Room and Darkness Falls From the Air are both terrific wartime novels, set in London. Proper, tense, gritted-teeth stuff.

Oh yes I read that too!

I got a bit stuck on that theme and read Stephen Ambrose's books, David Webster's autobiography Parachute Infantry and Currahee!: A Screaming Eagle at Normandy by Donald Burgett. 😬

Check out Kate Quinn. All set during WW2 from varying angles. I really enjoyed The Rose Code.

Murder by Matchlight, set in wartime London, by E.C.R. Lorac, a forgotten Golden Age crime writer whose books are being republished in the British Library Crime Classics series.

If you’ve ever watched band of brothers, Major Dick Winters also wrote his memoirs which fill in many details not included in the series called “Beyond Band of Brothers” - I’m reading it just now. It’s incredibly interesting.

nThe Few by Cathy McSporran

Lots of my favourites have already been mentioned but Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T Sullivan is based on a true story of a young Italian man who helped Jews escape across the Alps.

Spike Milligan
David Niven

Casualties by Lynne Reid Banks - about two Dutch children affected by the war in very different ways.

The Diary of Anne Frank.

When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea set in wartime Jersey
We Must be Brave by Frances Liardet

Yes!

The Cazalet Chronicles. The Machine Gunners.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is a wonderful book, as is it's companion novel A God In Ruins.

Charlotte Grey by Sebastian Faulks

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, which won the Booker in 1987. The main character, Claudia, is looking back at her life which includes her experiences in WW2 in Egypt.

Similarly, the Balkan Trilogy & the Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning (filmed in the 80s with Ken Branagh & Emma Thompson as Fortunes of War), which follows Guy & Harriet Pringle from being in eastern Europe when WW2 breaks out over to the Middle East. It's thinly disguised autobiography.

I love the Lissa Evans trilogy mentioned upthread and would also thoroughly recommend it. And Sarah Waters' The Night Watch.

The Sword of Honour Trilogy - starting with Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh. Probably one of my favourite ever books.

I think that the Angela Thirkell books set during and before WWII are her best ones, and if we're going old-fashioned, the C P Snow Strangers & Brothers books set during the war are good reading - he was in the civil service as a scientist during the war and was on the list of people to be arrested if the nazis invaded Britain.

Set in Berlin during the war, the David Downing "Station" books are spy(ish) novels and give a good idea of what it was like in Germany.

The Nightingale, The Book Thief and All The Light We Cannot See as mentioned above. Also:

The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford - about a dr in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer - an absolute favourite of mine, about a Hungarian Jewish family. A slightly different take on WW2.

Back Home by Michelle Magorian - an older readers book, about the end of the war and a girl who had been sent to Canada for safety during the war. It’s about her return after 5 years away and getting to know her family again, and also there’s a subplot about her mum finding her feet again when her husband returns from war. Really loved it.

The Undertaking by Audrey Magee - set on the eastern front from a German soldier’s POV.

The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield - about a Jewish Austrian family

Tamar by Mal Peet - another older readers type book but tbh I read it again recently as an adult and I’m not sure I’d let my older reader read it if I had one! About two Dutch resistance fighters. Really shows how the paranoia and pressure can get to you. The story is intertwined with one of the characters’ modern day granddaughter in the U.K. Another favourite.

There’s a book set in the Blitz that I loved but I can’t think of the name. Had a red cover, anyone any ideas? Possibly featured a girl who had a typist job?