Books like Stella Bain by Anita Shreve

A 1930s wartime tale of a blind French girl and a German boy whose lives intersect in occupied France, weaving themes of survival, friendship, and the moral choices people make amid World War II.

In 1935 England, a young woman’s allegation of a crime sets off a chain of events that devastates families, alters lives during the Second World War, and echoes into a later life of remorse and reflection.

Sisters Vianne and Isabelle are pulled into the turmoil of World War II, each forging a path of courage and resistance against the Nazi occupation of France.

The final volume of Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy, *The Ghost Road* follows the psychological toll of World War I on soldiers and their healers, and was awarded the 1995 Booker Prize.

When ex‑soldier Hugh Stanton wakes on 1 June 1914, he knows the coming war will devour Europe. Determined to alter history, he must prevent the first fatal bullet and change the course of a continent.

Monsieur Perdu, a literary apothecary aboard a Seine barge, prescribes novels to heal broken hearts. When his own love remains a mystery, he journeys south of France to find closure and prove stories can mend souls.

Regeneration follows two real soldiers at Craiglockhart Hospital during World War I, exploring their shell‑shock, rehabilitation, and the intellectual debates that shaped postwar Britain.

In The Last Flight of Poxl West, Elijah Goldstein follows his uncle Poxl into wartime RAF, only to confront the hero’s buried trauma and the cost of war on family and identity.

In 1914 Vienna, medical student Lucius enlists in World War I, only to find himself in a frozen field hospital amid a typhus outbreak, where he must learn brutal makeshift medicine from a lone nurse and confront the war’s harsh realities.

A post‑war Viennese drama that follows several exiles returning to a shattered city as Austria rebuilds its identity after the 1945 war.

Three women in post‑World War I Britain grapple with loss, trauma, and longing as their intertwined lives uncover the fate of an unknown soldier and the silent grief of veterans.

A woman’s Indian family navigates marriage, identity, and belonging across generations, tracing the parents’ arrival in the U.S., the daughter’s wedding, and the estranged son’s return.

A poignant WWII tale of an Irish writer who travels to Paris, forging deep friendships, engaging in the French Resistance, and navigating the horrors of Nazi occupation, all while chronicling the turbulent era with literary grace.

Five American mothers travel to France after World War I to visit the graves of their sons, forming a pilgrimage that reshapes their lives and bonds them in unexpected ways.

Brought to Kenya from England as a child and then abandoned by her mother, Beryl Markham is raised by both her father and the native Kipsigis tribe who share his estate. Her unconventional upbringing transforms Beryl into a bold young woman with a fierce love of all things wild and an inherent understanding of nature's delicate balance. But even the wild child must grow up, and when everything Beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships. Beryl forges her own path as a horse trainer, and her uncommon style attracts the eye of the Happy Valley set, a decadent, bohemian community of European expats who also live and love by their own set of rules. But it's the safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton who ultimately helps Beryl navigate the uncharted territory of her own heart. The intensity of their love reveals Beryl's truest self and her fate: to fly.

Two generations intersect: a Flemish painter‑soldier’s life, captured in war‑scarred notebooks, is revived by his grandson, a writer, who seeks to understand both his ancestor’s legacy and his own place in history.

A World War II teleprinter operator in Liverpool falls in love, but the war tests their romance.