Showing titles in Military & Wars

1944, and London is under attack. Young mouse Pip Hanway's safe and quiet world is turned upside down when her home, umbrella shop James Smith & Sons, is destroyed by a bomb. Orphaned and alone, she must begin a perilous quest to find a new home. But the only way to get there is by joining Noah’s Ark, a secret gang of animals fighting with the resistance in France, operating beneath the feet of the human soldiers. Danger is everywhere, and as the enemy closes in, Pip must risk everything to save her new friends.

Mary has a gift for languages and codes that has brought her to the attention of the adults working at Bletchley Park. She finds herself drawn into their undercover operations, learning Japanese in order to decode enemy messages - but the operation she's a part of remains cloaked in mystery. As tensions on the Home Front escalate, Mary is forced to face the realities of warfare - the enemy is operating amongst them. Posing as a waitress amidst the glamour and bustle of the Ritz Hotel, Mary uncovers secrets and lies amongst the people she's working mostly closely with.

In 1917 sixteen-year-old Jean McLain is working as a post-office assistant in England. But when she wins a national Morse code competition, the British army makes a request Jean cannot refuse – to take a secret position as a signaller in France. If Jean can keep the signals flowing between headquarters and the soldiers at the Front, Britain might possibly win the war.

Civil War, 1863. Virginia. Union soldiers Colonel Thomas Rose and Major A. G. Hamilton were captured by the Confederate Army and taken to Libby Prison - one of the most horrific prisons ever run. Few ever made it out of the overcrowded, vermin-infested prison alive. But neither fear, nor darkness, nor squealing rats could keep Rose and Hamilton from freedom. They and other POWs would fight against the odds to attempt the largest prison escape in American history.

Joanna can't get over how her brother broke his promise never to leave like their dad did. Sam is thousands of miles away on a navy ship, and no matter how often he sends letters, Joanna refuses to write back. But then President Kennedy comes on TV with frightening news about Soviet missiles in Cuba - and that's where Sam's heading. Suddenly Joanna's worries about being home alone, building up the courage to talk to a cute boy, and not being allowed to go to the first boy-girl party in her grade don't seem so important.

Anne wonders what secret her three older brothers are hiding. When she finds out they joined to fight with the Union Army and would leave the next day, she give them each one of her favorite two-cent pieces, and says, “I want you to take one of my new two-cent pieces. I learned these coins are the first with the word 'In God We Trust.' I just memorized Psalm 91:2. ‘I will say to the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: My God, in him will I trust.’” Out of a heart of love, Ann gives six of her special coins away hoping the message on the two-cent piece will strengthen each person’s faith.

This is a story of friendship. This is a story of hope. It’s the story of an era that helped shape our country and define our times, told through one boy’s extraordinary journey through his own small patch of America. And it’s the story of a debt he can never repay to someone he knows only as The Bicycle Man.

When Col's childhood imaginary friends come to life, he discovers a world where myths and legends are real. Accompanied by his guardians - a six-foot tiger, a badger in a waistcoat and a miniature knight - Col must race to Blitz-bombed London to save his sister. But there are darker forces at work, even more than the Nazi bombings. Soon Col is pursued by the terrifying Midwinter King, who is determined to bring an eternal darkness down over everything.

The tide of war has turned against the Nazis, but desperation has made them more brutal than ever. After the Gestapo hung members of the White Rose for distributing leaflets. Their father solicits the help from the Edelweiss Pirates to save a Jewish girl in hiding.

Vlad the flea and Loxton the rat are perfectly at home in the dirt and filth of Scutari Hospital. But the arrival of Florence Nightingale and her strange companion changes everything. Will the friends be driven out or can they save the day? Find out about Florence, her nurses and Scutari Hospital through the eyes of Vlad the flea and Loxton the rat.

Liverpool, 1940: 13 year old Joan's home is under threat from the Nazi's terrifying nightly air-raids. It is not an easy time to be a teenager, especially with the sweet rationing, strict curfews and blackouts. Joan and best friend Doreen love going to the cinema until the bombings intensify and then even that becomes too dangerous, especially when an army deserter is found lurking near their home. Who is he and why does he think Joan can help him?

April 1941. Britain is at war, and a secret agency called the Ministry of Unladylike Activity is training up children as spies - because grown-ups always underestimate them. Enter May, Eric and Nuala: courageous, smart, and the Ministry's newest recruits. They have travelled to London for spy training, and are staying on a quiet street close to the Ministry, home to an unlikely collection of people thrown together by the war.

There's great excitement when an unexpected parcel arrives for Selina. A beautiful long evening dress and shiny satin party shoes - the best present a girl could ever wish for! She can hardly wait for a special occasion to wear them, but there's still a war on and all the grown-ups are far too busy to arrange a party. So Selina and her cousins decide to organise a pageant with acting, singing, dancing and dressing-up. Will Selina find the perfect role in which to put on her amazing new clothes?

At the outbreak of World War 1, Joey, young Albert's beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. He's soon caught up in enemy fire and fate takes him on an extraordinary odyssey, serving on both sides before finding himself alone in no man's land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to the trenches to find him and bring him home....

When Ada’s clubfoot is surgically fixed at last, she knows for certain that she’s not what her mother said she was—damaged, deranged, crippled mentally as well as physically. She’s not a daughter anymore, either. Who is she now? World War II rages on, and Ada and her brother, Jamie, move with their guardian, Susan, into a cottage with the iron-faced Lady Thorton and her daughter, Maggie. Life in the crowded home is tense. Then Ruth moves in. Ruth, a Jewish girl, from Germany.

Eli dresses up in his best clothes, Mama gathers the mayflowers, Papa straightens his hat, and together they join the crowds filling the streets of Charleston with bouquets, crosses, and wreaths. Joined by abolitionists, missionaries, teachers, military officers, and a sea of faces black, brown, and white, they march as one and sing for all those who gave their lives fighting for freedom during the Civil War.

Written in 1940 in Yiddish, this heart-wrenching story of two nine-year-old friends caught up in the earliest tremors of anti-Semitic hatred in Vienna is all the more shocking because its author had no idea of what was still to come. Despite the casual violence done to their families - Karl's parents were socialists and Emil is Jewish - the boys find moments of kindness, courage and hope along their painful journey.

Know your enemy. Liam Scott is back in Afghanistan, this time with 4 Rifles. No longer the new guy, it's his chance to prove himself and take the lead. But the warzone has changed dramatically, and so have the rules. Working alongside the Afghan National Army, Liam and his new patrol face daily attacks from Taliban insurgents. But the real threat seems to be coming from within his unit. It looks like there's a traitor in their midst.

World War II has begun. Brigit has been evacuated to Wales from her home near the aeroplane factories of Coventry. But when it's revealed that her father is German, Brigit runs away to join her mother in a very special training camp, where Churchill is building a secret army of spies and saboteurs known as the Special Operations Executive. Brigit and her mother soon find themselves on the front line in Nazi-occupied France, where they search for double agents and meet with danger at every turn in their efforts to support the French resistance.

Sixteen-year-old Nipper and his Gallipoli mates Lanky, Spud, Bluey and Wallaby Joe are starving, freezing and ill-equipped. By November 1915 they know that that there is more to winning a war than courage. The Gallipoli campaign has been lost. Nipper has played cricket with the Turks in the opposing dugout, dodged rocket fire and rescued drowning, freezing men when the blizzard snow melted. He is one of the few trusted with the secret kept from even most of the officers: how an entire army will vanish from the Peninsula over three impeccably planned nights.