The Ghost Village of Tyneham, UK

They call it the Ghost Village. World War Two caused tremendous disruption in Britain—a kind we didn’t see in the States. Several ancient villages were used by the army as training zones for target practice. They included Balsdean in East Sussex, which had a Norman church dating back to the 11th century and was bombed … Read more

My Favorite WW2 Novels

War, Spies and Bobby Sox by Libby Fischer Hellmann

It may have ended more than seventy years ago. But WW2 still fascinates authors from every corner of the world. While we haven’t seen such a widespread and horrific conflict since, and I hope we never do, it’s a unique period in history that fascinates me too. Following the launch of my WW2 trilogy, I … Read more

The Manhattan Project – The Early Years

The Manhattan Project, featured in War, Spies, and Bobby Sox, was a key WW2 research and development project tasked with creating the world’s first nuclear weapon. Led by the US and supported by the United Kingdom and Canada, it ran between 1942 and 1946, directed by Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps … Read more

(Mostly) Unsuccessful WW2 Espionage on the Home Front

Europe, the main theater of World War Two, was thousands of miles across the Atlantic. But Nazi intelligence inserted German operatives into American cities and tried to convert German-Americans to Nazism well before the war broke out. During the war itself America saw plenty of espionage incidents and there was probably much more spy activity … Read more

The Winston Churchill War Rooms

I spent a week across the pond over the holidays, and one of my must-see visits was to the Churchill War Rooms. What are they? Glad you asked. Follow me back in time to World War Two.  Britain was facing dark days, embroiled in a conflict that would kill millions of civilians and soldiers and ultimately … Read more

Still Star-Struck After All These Years

This is a reprint of a blogpost originally published on The Lipstick Chronicles, which is sadly gone now. Given the day, I thought you’d appreciate it.   One of the nice things about being an author is that people don’t usually recognize you when you break out of the cage and go outside. Which means … Read more

Nazis in America? Meet The German American Bund

My upcoming WW2 book, War, Spies and Bobby Sox, includes three stories about World War Two on the homefront. Obviously, Hitler’s Germany never actually invaded our shores or blitzed us as they did our UK cousins. But, in fact, Nazism was alive and well in the US during the 1930s, just as it was in … Read more

World War Two: German POWs Incarcerated in the US

My latest book, War, Spies, and Bobby Sox, comes out February 28th. (but it’s on preorder now… see below) It’s a trio of stories set during World War Two. One of the stories, P.O.W., took me down a rabbit hole of fascinating research into the era and our involvement in the conflict. So of course, … Read more

Evil Kin – The Tragedy of Chicago’s Suh Family

About 8 months ago I was interviewed as a neutral 3rd party for a tabloid TV show about a gruesome murder in Chicago. The case involved a sister who convinced her brother to kill her boyfriend, and her boyfriend to (probably) kill her mother. It happened years ago, but Investigation Discovery decided to explore it … Read more