The fallen queen

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Gavin Mortimer

"Part walk through a moment in history, part chronicle of Armageddon, The Longest Night has lessons for today." - Washington PostThe Longest Night reveals the untold story of the horrific bombing raid that almost brought Britain to military collapse - using extensive survivors' testimony and previously classified documents to reveal just how close the Luftwaffe came to total victory. This vivid, dramatically told account depicts how fate shifted based on Hitler's mistaken belief that he'd actually lost the air war over Britain - and portrays the unsurpassed, "we-can-take-it" bravery of the British people when they'd been pushed beyond all human endurance.

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Leslie Mann

In June 1941, Flight Sergeant Leslie Mann, a tail gunner in a British bomber, was shot down over Germany and taken into captivity. After the war, wanting to record the experiences of the RAF's 'Bomber Boys', he wrote down his inner thoughts and feelings as a fictional narrative, recently brought to the attention of Imperial War Museums. Visceral, shocking and unglamorous, it transmits as rarely before the horrors of aerial warfare, the corrosive effects of fear, and the psychological torment of the young men involved. Although presented as fiction, the book's solid basis in lived experience makes it ring true - the sights, sounds, smells, and above all the emotional strain are intensely evoked with a novelist's skill.

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Joyce Dennys

The sequel to *Henrietta's War*, in the form of letters from doctor's wife Henrietta to her soldier cousin. Henrietta and her neighbors in their quiet village cope with shortages, air raids, sons and brothers in harm's way, and a war that shows no sign of ending. Candid, gently funny, with moments of deep pathos.

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Knut Hamsun

First published in Norway in 1890, Hunger probes into the depths of consciousness with frightening and gripping power. Like the works of Dostoyevsky, it marks an extraordinary break with Western literary and humanistic traditions. Also contained in: - Ernest Hemingway / Knut Hamsun / Hermann Hesse