The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008)

A second-hand book starts a correspondence that gradually opens an island community to an outsider. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows give the letters different rhythms, from literary enthusiasm to reluctant accounts of occupation. The delayed disclosures make the warmth carry historical weight. This is a welcoming route into a many-writer novel, though its wartime losses prevent it from being uncomplicated comfort.