Adult Fiction--Gainham to Gobbell

Gainham, Sarah.  Night Falls on the City (Avon, Re-issue, 1975).

To the fabled city of Vienna, the shadow of war has come. Once colourful and gay, a city of music and light, Vienna slowly slips into an atmosphere of intrigue, violence, fear, and treachery as German occupation forces first threaten, then subjugate, the city.  For Julia Homburg-Wedeker, the leading actress of the Viennese theatre, the coming war means that her career can continue - but that her husband, a Jew, must be hidden. Thus to Julia's seemingly glamorous life an element of fear and danger is added - and against the sweeping backdrop of an entire city gripped by the claws of war, the searing human drama of Julia Homburg-Wedeker and her battle of survival is etched on the reader's consciousness with the epic power of history re-created.  (www.bookcrossing.com)

Gallagher, Nora.  Changing Light (Knopf Publishing Group, 2007).

Nora Gallagher's elegant debut novel, Changing Light, is a love story set in Los Alamos during the summer of 1945, in the shadow of the creation of the first atomic bomb. During the last summer of the war, in the beautiful New Mexico desert, a man and a woman come together: Eleanor Garrigue, a young painter from New York, and Leo Kavan, a neutron physicist. The story begins when Eleanor finds a delirious man lying by the river near her house. She takes him in and cares for him. In this novel of secrets, we learn before Eleanor does that Leo is AWOL from Los Alamos after witnessing a fatal radiation accident that has forced him to confront the moral implications of his work on the bomb. And we know, too, what Leo does not know: Eleanor is married, and has fled to New Mexico to escape her husband. As Eleanor and Leo slowly reveal themselves to each other, their pasts and the present unfold in tandem, taking us from the heady art world in New York to Einstein's Berlin, from the bomb labs in the English countryside to the hidden city of Los Alamos. Nora Gallagher perfectly evokes the veil of secrecy and tension surrounding the Manhattan Project, the constant hum of fear alongside the remarkable fearlessness of the scientists in the laboratories.

As Leo and Eleanor privately struggle with the losses the war has pitched into their lives, the two find unexpected solace in each other. Their story is all the more poignant because it can only flourish in a brief interlude-an interlude of brilliant madness and irrevocable change. As the scientists engage in literally "changing light," Leo and Eleanor are connected and changed in unexpected ways by the brutal radiance of the war andtheir fierce love.

Gamble, Terry.  The Water Dancers (HarperCollins, 2004).

Rachel is assigned the task of caring for Woody, a young man whose life has been changed utterly by his experience as a soldier in WWII. The war has cost Woody not only his leg, but, worse, the older brother he loved and admired. Now back at home, Woody cannot bear to face the obligations of his future - especially when it comes to his bride-to-be Elizabeth. Woody finds himself drawn to Rachel, who is like no one he's ever known. The love affair that unites these two lost souls in this Great Gatsby-esque portrait of class division will alter the course of their lives in ways both heartbreaking and profound.

Gautreau, Norman G.  Sea Room (MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 2003).

A thoughtful generational family drama set in the seaside village of Buck Harbor, Maine, Gautreau's debut explores WWII's effects on the Dupuy family and their saltwater farm. For 10-year-old Jordi Dupuy, life is simple, filled with days of lobster trapping and sailing excursions with his father, Gil, and grandfather, Pip. But when President Roosevelt's yacht arrives with a battalion of U.S. warships close behind, Jordi braces for the "far different life" ahead of him, as Gil enlists to fight in the war and temporarily shelves their plan to build a new sailboat. Jordi is ecstatic when his father's letters from abroad arrive, but furious when the sinister Virgil Blount is smitten with Jordi's mother, Lydie. Pip and wealthy Uncle Chr tien are there to pick up the pieces when the war intensifies and claims Gil's life, leaving the women to mourn and the men to build Jordi's boat without Gil. Years later, accusations fly against Virgil when the barn containing the nearly finished boat is torched, as well as against Jordi when another family member dies; not even approaching Hurricane Clara can squelch the melodrama of the courtroom conclusion. Gautreau's prose, accented with charmingly distinctive New England vernacular, demonstrates a strong eye for detailed atmosphere, which nicely counterbalances a few mawkish moments, and the characters are wonderfully rendered.

Gershon, Karen.  The Bread of Exile (Victor Gollancz, 1986).

A curious distance marks these memories of 13-year-old Inge's transition (with her brother Dolph) from Germany to England just before the outbreak of World War II. Though strongly autobiographical, this remains a tale told rather than evoked, as Inge is introduced to English ways and English speech, is given a home by a couple in Leeds and learns to love their young son Georgie. She goes to live with one of her teachers when Georgie and his mother leave for the country after war is declared, but is unhappy there and runs away. Inge finds a job as a servant in a household whose only son, Sebastian, an arrogant, blond group-captain, she can't help loving. Oddly, considering her youth and his station, his feelings seem to match hers. In a barely credible scene, Sebastian, wounded and about to die, asks Inge to marry him. But when he dies, Inge's thoughts return to Rudi, the boy who befriended her on the ship from Germany. She is not, however, aware of Rudi's homosexuality or of his frustrated love for her brother, a dilemma not altogether resolved when, in the novel's final pages, Inge and Rudi become engaged. Despite Inge's courage and intelligence, she is never fully brought to life, which makes it difficult to involve oneself in her problems.  (Publisher’s Weekly)

Giardina, Denise.  Saints and Villains (Random House, 1999).

In the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War, there were few instances of shining moral courage, let alone secular sainthood. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Nazi resister was the exception. This emblematic figure risked his life - and finally lost it - through his participation in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler and topple his regime. Here is Bonhoeffer experiencing the awakening of his social conscience while witnessing racism in the United States during his studies at Union Theological Seminary; leading a breakaway church in Germany as the Nazis rise to power; entering a dangerous liaison with a Jewish woman; undertaking perilous clandestine meetings abroad under cover of official church and intelligence business; and living the dark night of the soul in prison after the plotters fail in their assassination attempt. Saints and Villains is a gripping and resonant novel that confronts the painful dilemmas that beset righteous men in times of great evil, when sin and necessity seem entwined.

Gobbell, John J.  A Call to Colors (Presidio Press, 2006).

“I shall return” is General Douglas MacArthur’s promise to the Filipinos. It will take 165,000 troops and 700 ships in the bloody battle of Leyte Gulf to do it. Among them is the destroyer USS Matthew and her skipper, Commander Mike Donovan, a veteran haunted by earlier savage battles. What Donovan doesn’t know is that Vice Admiral Takao Kurita of Japan has laid an ingenious trap as the Matthew heads for the treacherous waters of Leyte Gulf. But Donovan faces something even deadlier than Kurita’s battleships: Explosives secretly slipped on board American ships by saboteurs are set to detonate at any time. Now the Matthew’s survival hinges on the ability of Donovan and his men to dismantle a bomb in the midst of the panic and the chaos of history’s greatest naval battle.

Gobbell, John J.  The Neptune Strategy (St. Martin’s Press, 2005).

A secret U.S. Naval Signal Intelligence Service station in Australia intercepts a situation report from the Commander of the submarine to his superiors in Tokyo--they have an American prisoner, Alton C. Ingram. A strategy is developed by the U.S. Navy and a classified plan put in motion: ensure that the I-57 escapes a net of ASW HUK groups (anti-submarine hunter killer) laying across the sub's path to Lorient, France and ambush it when it reaches shore. But the I-57 has other plans as it dodges depth charges and Allied ships in a deadly game whose outcome may effect the balance of power in a war that threatens to consume them all...

From the Philippine Sea to the Nazi U-boat pens in Lorient, France, The Neptune Strategy is a complex cat and mouse game between the Japanese submarine 1-57 and a U.S. Navy determined to save one of their own and is the mostthrilling novel yet by a master of the WWII thriller.

Gobbell, John J.  When Duty Whispers Low (St. Martin’s Press, 2004).

It's 1943, and the U.S. Navy is caught in a fierce battle against the Japanese in the South Pacific. At stake, is the Allies' newly won Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. But Isoroku Yamamoto, admiral of the Combined Fleet and architect of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, desperately wants Guadalcanal back and prepares to launch a series of bombing raids in the Solomons.In response, the Allies introduce the proximity fuse to the fleet-a top-secret antiaircraft detonator that can greatly assist the U.S. Navy in their fight against Japanese dive-bombers and torpedo planes. But in the heat of combat, Commander Jerry Landa refuses to use the fuse, and the USS Howell is torn in half. Lieutenant Commander Todd Ingram confronts Landa, questioning his authority. As the two become enemies in the midst of war, Yamamoto directs the raids that will return him to the glory of December 7, 1941—raids that will facilitate the recapture of Guadalcanal and will cripple the U.S. Navy forever.

Gobbell, John J.  A Code for Tomorrow (St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

Fresh from his exploits in Corregidor, Navy lieutenant Todd Ingram is back in this sequel to John J. Gobbell's The Last Lieutenant. As the war in the South Pacific heats up, Lieutenant Ingram gets a new assignment to the destroyer U.S.S. Howell, on which he will serve as executive officer. Thrown into two epic naval battles of World War II, the battle of Cape Esperance and the battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, a young but already battle-weary Todd Ingram is also in the middle of a personal nightmare: his girlfriend, Army nurse Helen Durand, is trapped behind enemy lines, fighting for the resistance on Mindanao. With Soviet espionage activity hindering his attempted rescue of Helen, Lieutenant Ingram is at an impasse. In danger of losing both the woman he loves and a war in which he has fought so valiantly, Ingram puts his life on the line for world perilously close to collapse.

Gobbell, John J.  The Last Lieutenant (St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

Gobbell (The Brutus Lie), a former Navy lieutenant who served in the South China Sea in the 1960s, has fashioned a complex WWII thriller about events surrounding the American defeat at Corregidor and the subsequent victory at Midway, which turned the tide of the war against Japan. The tale is loosely based on South From Corregidor, Lt. Commander John H. Morrill II's 1943 factual account of his escape from the ill-fated island the night it fell to the Japanese. In June 1941, after murdering a U.S. Navy bugler named Walter A. Radtke in El Paso, a Nazi spy assumes the dead man's identity and winds up, nearly a year later, as an American cryptologist on the war-ravaged island of Corregidor. Because they hold crucial information about the American plan to defeat the Japanese at Midway Island, Radtke and his American superior, Lt. Epperson, are ordered to evacuate. Lt. Todd Ingram, skipper of the USS Pelican, which has been assigned to effect their rendezvous with a submarine, comes upon a mortally wounded Epperson and learns that Radtke has disappeared. As the Japanese overrun the island, Ingram takes 17 survivors on a desperate dash for freedom in a battered 36-foot launch. A subplot about war-thwarted musical careers and a miraculous reunion between Ingram and an Army nurse brutalized by a bestial, American-educated Japanese officer provides plenty of thrills and a poignant romantic twist. Gobbell's thickly inhabited page-turner successfully melds elements of espionage, classic combat heroism and carefully reconstructed historical fiction.  (Publisher’s Weekly)