February 18
The Nightingale
by Kristin Hanah

FRANCE, 1939
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye 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. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.

– from Goodreads.com.

March 18
When We Were Shadows
by Janet Wees

The true story of Walter and his Jewish family, who were hidden from capture in the Netherlands throughout the Second World War. The story spans Walter's life from six to fourteen years of age and is accented by Walter's letters, first as a child to his grandparents and later, looking back, to his grandson. We learn of the strangers who shelter Walter and his family, the members of the Resistance who risked their lives to see them to safety again and again, and of the Hidden Village, a community in the forests of Holland that hid more than 100 people. Throughout, we see the courage and resilience of a boy faced with unimaginable hatred and terror.

– from Goodreads.com.

April 15
Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the
Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit.

Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to
recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

– from Goodreads.com.