DAMIEN LEWIS The Flame of Resistance: The untold story of Josephine Baker’s secret war. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
Josephine Baker, the most glamorous and highly paid female entertainer of her time, was also an Allied spy in World War II. In The Flame of Resistance Damien Lewis has drawn on a profusion of new historical material, including previously undisclosed letters and...
DOMINIC SMITH Return to Valetto. Reviewed by Ann Skea
The new novel from the author of The Electric Hotel uncovers wartime secrets in an Italian village. Hugh Fraser is an American academic whose Italian mother, Hazel, used to take him to her home village in Italy for their summer holidays. He has fond memories of...
CATHERINE CHIDGEY Remote Sympathy. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
Catherine Chidgey’s latest novel has been shortlisted for the 2022 Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Buchenwald Concentration Camp was liberated by US Forces on 11 April 1945. In the days immediately following, the Americans...
JOHN HUGHES The Dogs. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
The new novel from award-winning writer John Hughes explores the transmission of trauma down the generations. Memory is a major theme in John Hughes’s corpus. The Dogs, his seventh book and fourth novel, reverberates with intergenerational family trauma and the ghosts...
ROBERT GOTT The Orchard Murders. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The fourth book in Robert Gott’s ‘Murders’ series frees its cast from the constraints of the newly formed Homicide Squad and plunges them straight into a baffling case that threatens many of their number. Readers who are new to this series might be fine starting...
SUZANNE LEAL The Deceptions. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
The deceptions in Suzanne Leal’s third novel span World War II Czechoslovakia and the Holocaust to present-day Sydney. The genesis of this novel was the story of a Czech gendarme who had formed a relationship with a young Jewish woman he was guarding. Leal had...
REBECCA STARFORD The Imitator. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Set in wartime London, Rebecca Starford’s debut novel brings a true story of espionage to life. When I was halfway through this book I discovered, by accident, that it is based on real wartime espionage that occurred in London between 1939 and 1940. Evelyn, the...
CATRINE CLAY The Good Germans: Resisting the Nazis 1933–1945. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
In telling their personal stories, Catrine Clay brings to life the Germans who resisted Nazism, reminding us that the Fuhrer’s cheering crowds did not represent everyone. Catrine Clay is an award-winning BBC documentary-maker and author of three previous works...
STEVEN CONTE The Tolstoy Estate. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
You don’t need to have read War and Peace to enjoy Steven Conte’s second novel. Steven Conte returns to World War II as the mise en scène for his accomplished second novel, The Tolstoy Estate. His first, The Zookeeper’s War, won the 2008 Prime...
STEPHEN GARTON The Cost of War. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
This revised edition of Stephen Garton’s The Cost of War, on the impact of war on individuals and society, remains all too relevant. Let us begin with the proposition that war is hell; that those who become involved in it become agents of terror, or victims, or...
EMUNA ELON House on Endless Waters. Reviewed by Ann Skea
A successful Israeli writer unexpectedly finds himself dealing with his family’s wartime past in Emuna Elon’s new novel. The image flickered on the wall for just a heartbeat, but even in that fleeting second, Yoel managed to discern that the woman in the...
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