The Plot Against America

In July 1942 Paris, ten-year-old Sarah Starzynski is arrested with her parents in the Vél' d'Hiv roundup—but not before she locks her little brother in a cupboard, promising to come back. In 2002, American journalist Julia Jarmond, assigned to the sixtieth anniversary, traces Sarah’s apartment into her own French in-laws’ history. Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel is WWII dual-timeline historical fiction of occupied Paris, a child’s promise, and a family secret that will not stay buried.

Ursula Todd is born in 1910 and dies—then is born again, and again—through the Spanish flu, a London Blitz that may or may not kill her, and lives that reach as far as Hitler’s Germany. Kate Atkinson’s Costa-winning novel is WWII time-slip historical fiction of one Englishwoman’s many lives, and the question of whether a second chance can change the war.

Four generations of a Korean family navigate life under Japanese rule and in Japan.

In 1939 Navy commander Victor “Pug” Henry is posted to Berlin as the American naval attaché, and the war pulls his wife Rhoda, their children, and a Jewish daughter-in-law through Germany, Britain, and Russia until Pearl Harbor, where the battleship he was about to command is hit before he can go aboard. Herman Wouk’s 1971 novel is World War II saga historical fiction of one navy family from the invasion of Poland to the day the United States enters the war.

In February 1941 Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt reports to G Company at Schofield Barracks and refuses to box for the company, while First Sergeant Milt Warden risks his career with the commanding officer’s wife, and both are still in Hawaii when the attack hits Pearl Harbor. James Jones’s 1951 novel is World War II military historical fiction of the Regular Army in the last months before the United States enters the war.

A Trinidadian epic of hunger, ambition, and a missing boy (Walter Scott Prize 2024).