With two brothers fighting in the Great War, Gemma Dorgan's life is filled with worries. But when the Spanish Flu hits Philadelphia, the Dorgan family faces their own battle at home. Gemma's mother is desperate to keep the family safe from influenza, but her father feels he must help provide care to the sick. Meanwhile, Gemma misses her friends terribly. Will Gemma and everyone she loves survive the great flu? Part of the Girls Survive Graphic Novel series, Gemma and the Great Flu brings a defining historical event to life.

With two brothers fighting in the Great War, Gemma Dorgan's life is filled with worries. But when the Spanish Flu hits Philadelphia, the Dorgan family faces their own battle of sorts at home.

Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced. Like everyone else, he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose, his identity. But why has Emil’s life turned out so different from his parents’, who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it? Prize-winning novelist Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu traces Emil’s life from boyhood to manhood – from his days at a privileged boarding school with the motto ‘It is here that boys become the men of history’, to his falling in love with the ever-elusive Marion, whose free-spirited nature has dire consequences for his heart – all the while showing how Emil becomes a man apart. Set in a southern African country that is never named, this powerful tale of human fallibility – told with empathy, generosity and a light touch – is an excursion into the interiority of the coloniser.

Veteran journalist Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It presents a fascinating look at true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it.

Gemma Goodeve, a young actress with a promising career, is involved in a terrible train crash in which many lives are lost and many people are injured. Gemma herself has to have her lower leg amputated before she can be freed from the wreckage. When she wakes from the anaesthesia she has to face the difficult truth, deal with a long and painful recovery and accept that she will not be able to act anymore. Her young doctor, Nick Quennell, becomes more than professionally involved in Gemma's care as he tries to protect her from the media circus that surrounds the rail accident and her own mother, who is far from being supportive. But is his care and romantic feeling really what Gemma needs and wants in this terrible moment in her life? In Gemma's Journey, first published in 1997, Beryl Kingston sets the romantic plot against the difficult issues of recovering from a life changing accident and with her characteristic interest in social problems she also explores the breakup of the rail network and gaps in the NHS system.

"Amid the turmoil of the Great War, this historical novel explores a young woman's struggle to discover the truth surrounding her childhood abandonment." Even after twelve years, Gemma Enman can still remember her amazement and pride at being singled out from among her siblings by her father to travel with him by train from Prince Edward Island all the way to Brookfield, New Hampshire. But seven year old Gemma had no way of knowing how long and tedious a trip it would be or that her father planned to return to their island home without her. Though she has enjoyed a loving home with her grandparents, she remains deeply wounded by her childhood abandonment and haunted by the fear that a shameful secret surrounded the circumstances of her birth. Now a young woman, Gemma has met and fallen in love with Lionel Maines, a man of honor, integrity, and prospects. As Gemma and Lionel plan for their future together, Gemma continues to be haunted by her past. She knows that before she can fulfill her pledge to Lionel, she must keep a promise she made to herself.

A killer flu is changing Larry and Gloria Allerton's lives. School has been canceled. Larry and Gloria hardly see their father anymore because he's a doctor. And they can't play with their friends because so many of them are sick. Larry's father forbids the children to visit the train station to see the returning soldiers, because they might catch the flu there. But Larry sneaks off to the train station anyway. A few days later, his family has the flu. Larry and Gloria recover, but their mother and younger brother are deathly ill. Larry wonders, 'Will my mother and brother die because I disobeyed?'