Central Skagit Library District

This New York Times bestselling account of books parachuted to soldiers during WWII is a “cultural history that does much to explain modern America” (USA Today).
When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops, gathering 20 million hardcover donations. Two years later, the

...

"In 1942, London. Nancy Mitford jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. When a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay. Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of...

"From author Rachel McMillan comes a richly researched historical romance that takes place in post-World War II Europe and features espionage and a strong female lead"-- "From author Rachel McMillan comes a richly researched historical romance that takes place in post-World War II Europe and features espionage and a strong female lead.Lady Sophia Huntington Villiers is no stranger to intrigue, as her work with Alan Turing's Bombe Machines at Bletchley...

"Bridey Kelly has come to Greenway House--the beloved holiday home of Agatha Christie--in disgrace. A terrible mistake at St. Prisca's Hospital in London has led to her dismissal as a nurse trainee, and her only chance for redemption is a position in the countryside caring for children evacuated to safety from the Blitz. Greenway is a beautiful home full of riddles: wondrous curios not to be touched, restrictions on rooms not to be entered, and a...

The New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives and A Certain Age creates a dazzling epic of World War II-era Nassau-a hotbed of spies, traitors, and the most infamous couple of the age, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The Bahamas, 1941. Newly-widowed Leonora Lulu Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke...

Weaving together interviews, official photos and documents, home movies, and archival film, this 90-minute film explores the complex social and political factors that shaped America's response to the Holocaust. The story of Kurt Klein, who struggled with State Department red tape to free his parents from Europe, represents America's reaction to European Jews clamoring for rescue.

France, 1914. Aurelie becomes trapped on the wrong side of the front with her father, Comte Sigismund de Courcelles. When the Germans move into their family's ancestral estate, Aurelie discovers she knows the German Major's aide de camp, Maximilian Von Sternburg. Betrayal will shatter them both. France, 1942. Raised by her American grandmother in the Hotel Ritz, Marguerite 'Daisy' Villon remains in Paris with her daughter and husband, a Nazi collaborator,...

A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich" (Washington Post).
The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers...

The Dambusters were the go-to forces for dangerous precision attacks: They bombed Hitler's prize battleship, Tirpitz, as well as rocket sites, weapon strongholds, and the dams at the heart of the industrial Ruhr; they targeted enemy leaders including Hitler and Mussolini; and they created a false fleet on D-Day, which fooled the Germans. But they also suffered brutal losses, with 75 percent of 617 Squadron killed in action by the end of the war. In...

In 1946, as London emerges from the shadow of World War II, author Juliet Ashton is having a terrible time finding inspiration for her next book. Then she receives a letter from Guernsey Island, and learns of a unique book club formed on the spur of the moment as an alibi to protect its members from arrest by the occupying Germans during the war. Captivated, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds there will change her life forever.