1940s-set Novels

[Miss sofia]

Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate are great, both tragic and funny.

 

[Miss sofia]

That's a lovely little book!

Most of Mary Wesley's books - I'd start with The Chamomile Lawn.
Rosamunde Pilcher's The Shell Seekers (moves around a bit, but there is a good chunk of the action set in the 40s) and Coming Home.
Elizabeth Jane Howard's The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off
And to keep you busy for quite some time, Anthony Powell's 12 volume Dance to the Music of Time, which goes from the early 30s to the mid 60s but spends most time in the 40s.

Excellent choices i'll second those, might have to dig out my Mary Wesley's again!

 

[Patrick Murtha]

R.F. Delderfield's two-volume The Avenue has been recommended to me in an Upstairs, Downstairs forum, although I have not read it yet. It covers life on a middle-class English suburban road between the late Teens and the late Forties.

 

[Mario]

The early books by Eric Ambler:

The Dark Frontier (1936)
Uncommon Danger (1937)
Epitaph for a Spy (1938)
Cause for Alarm (1938)
The Mask of Dimitrios (1939)
Journey into Fear (1940)

Ok, ok...so most of them are actually pre-40's...

 

[Story]

I strongly recommend this novel. I've read it myself several times. It's an excellent WWII homefront spy/espionage book and thrilling to read.

Just a note - It may be tricky to find. I'm not sure if it's still in print.

Also a Donald Sutherland movie.
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[cycle1667]

Phillip Kerr has some interesting, revisionist, nazi era hard boiled detective novels in the spirit of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett.
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5.11 Tactical

 

[BogartsHat]

Just finished reading Agatha Christie's They Came To Baghdad (1951). Now I'm reading Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks by John Curran. It's non-fiction, about the notebooks she used when plotting her novels, short stories and plays. Last week, I read two earlier Christie books but can't remember the titles! :eusa_doh: