WWI commemoration - fiction recommendations

I quite often point out good WWI related non-fiction works when I do my commemoration posts, but this time I'm going down the fiction line, mainly because I just finished jaylewistaylor's Across Your Dreams.

And that's my first recommendation. Beautifully bitter sweet, pulling no punches, it's a story of loss, hope, pride and pain.

Strange Meeting, by Susan Hill, was one of the first books I read that was set in this era, and it's haunted me ever since. The same themes of loss and hope are there (they're clearly going to be an ever present for any books set 1914 to 1918) although if you expect a happy ending this may not be the book for you. Wonderfully written, nonetheless.

I couldn't not mention A Pride of Poppies, even if I have a story in the anthology, not least because it introduced me to Jay's work and to other authors I'd not come across before. Some of the stories would grace any volume of war related shorts.

Rainbow snippet - Wild Bells

A light hearted moment from The Angel in the Window, one of the two Wild Bells novellas.

Tom lay on the sofa, his leg bandaged and his pride bruised. They had followed the hunt in a splendid open carriage; when it had stopped to view the kill, instead of opening the little door, he had leapt theatrically over it, misjudging the height and ending up in a heap on the ground.
The injury, while bloody and painful, was insufficient either to threaten his return to his ship or to engender sympathy from anyone except Alexander, who had fussed over him like a mother hen, to the point of nearly being thrown out of the room by the patient’s actual mother.
She had eventually left them alone with Tom’s medicine (a bottle of excellent wine and two glasses) and a piece of her mind. “If you’re ever going to learn your lesson, then an hour or two of being fussed over might prove an excellent tutor. How you two ever acquired your reputations in battle is a complete mystery to me.”

More excerpts at the Rainbow snippets group.