Maggie Brookes
All Books By Maggie Brookes
Acts of Love and War
- By: Maggie Brookes
- Narrator: Avita Jay
- Length: 11 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Canada
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
A remarkable story of love and sacrifice centred on three young English volunteers in the bloody Spanish Civil War, from the author of The Prisoner’s Wife.
1936. Civil war is tearing Spain apart, and the world is on the brink of chaos…
Twenty-one-year-old Lucy is frustrated with her constrained life in Hertfordshire, teaching and keeping house for her domineering father. But she is happy to be living next door to Tom and Jamie, two brothers she has known since childhood, and whom she loves equally.
But everyone’s lives are turned upside down when Tom, the younger, decides to join the Republican cause in the bloody war in Spain. His older, fervently Catholic brother Jamie soon follows–but as a reporter for the opposing forces that support General Franco in keeping Spain rigidly authoritarian, with the help of both Hitler and Mussolini.
Lucy decides the only way to ensure the brothers’ safety is to defy her father and travel to Spain herself and persuade them to come home. Yet when she sees the horrific effects of the war on the people–especially the children–she quickly joins the lifesaving work of the Quaker volunteers who have arrived from almost as many countries as have the International Brigades of fighters. Lucy knows that both brothers are in love with her; she herself is deeply torn between them.
The atrocities and casualties mount and Lucy knows that the question of which man she might spend her life with might be irrelevent, as the chances of either of them surviving diminish with every passing day.
This meticulously researched, deeply affecting novel is based on real memoirs of the Spanish Civil War. It is both a love story and a tribute to the remarkable women who fought with compassion and bravery to save the innocent victims of a war that was a foretaste of the carnage soon to come in World War II.
The Prisoner’s Wife
- By: Maggie Brookes
- Narrator: Alicia Suszka-Fielder
- Length: 12 hours 50 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
Inspired by the true story of a daring deception that plunges a courageous young woman deep into the horrors of a Nazi POW camp to be with the man she loves.
In the dead of night, a Czech farm girl and a British soldier travel through the countryside. Izabela and prisoner of war Bill have secretly married and are on the run, with Izzy dressed as a man. The young husband and wife evade capture for as long as possible—until they are cornered by Nazi soldiers with tracking dogs.
Izzy’s disguise works. The couple are assumed to be escaped British soldiers and transported to a POW camp. However, their ordeal has just begun, as they face appalling living conditions and the constant fear of Izzy’s exposure. But in the midst of danger and deprivation comes hope, for the young couple are befriended by a small group of fellow prisoners. These men become their new family, willing to jeopardize their lives to save Izzy from being discovered and shot.
The Prisoner’s Wife tells of an incredible risk, and of how our deepest bonds are tested in desperate times. Bill and Izzy’s story is one of love and survival against the darkest odds.
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