A family torn apart by tragedy At the top of Lester Road in London’s East End stands ‘Paddy’s Castle’, the three-storey, red-bricked Georgian house that is home to Grace Donnelly and her family.Life may be hard in the late 1930s, but it is nothing compared with what is about to follow. Grace’s beloved fiancé Stanley decides to enlist in the fight against Nazi Germany. And as the sirens signal blitz after blitz of bombers, the family can only hide in the cellar and hope they will survive.But Grace has more than just the Germans to worry about. The good-looking Nobby Clark is keen to do more than just look out for his best friend’s fiancée. And scheming barmaid Beryl Lovesett is determined to worm her way into the family home, seducing Grace’s uncle with her fur coat, no knickers… A classic World War Two saga, Fur Coat, No Knickers is a perfect read for fans of Carol Rivers, Sally Warboyes, and Annie Murray. Praise for Fur Coat, No Knickers 'A gripping wartime novel, with strong female characters... full of courage, hope, and heartbreak.' Alina's Reading Corner'Any book written by Anna King is always a great read!' Reader review'I couldn't put it down... a must read.' Reader review'The late Anna King can hold a candle to [Catherine] Cookson. Her characters are flawlessly portrayed.' Reader review

    These beautifully rendered tales reveal Trevor's compassion for the human condition and confirm once again his position as one of the premier writers of the short story.

    At the same time, Berlin has also been a dynamic center of artistic and intellectual innovation. If Paris was the "Capital of the Nineteenth Century," Berlin was to become the signature city for the next hundred years. Once a symbol of modernity, in the Thirties it became associated with injustice and the abuse of power. After 1945, it became the iconic City of the Cold War. Since the fall of the Wall, Berlin has again come to represent humanity's aspirations for a new beginning, tempered by caution deriving from the traumas of the recent past. David Clay Large's definitive history of Berlin is framed by the two German unifications of 1871 and 1990. Between these two events several themes run like a thread through the city's history: a persistent inferiority complex; a distrust among many ordinary Germans, and the national leadership of the "unloved city's" electric atmosphere, fast tempo, and tradition of unruliness; its status as a magnet for immigrants, artists, intellectuals, and the young; the opening up of social, economic, and ethnic divisions as sharp as the one created by the Wall.

    This book recounts one of the largest rescues of Jews during the Holocaust.

    She lived through the war in Germany, as a German citizen under the horrors of Nazi rule and Allied bombings. The Past is Myself is her story of that experience - and an unforgettable portrait of an evil time.The Road AheadFollowing the extraordinary success of her wartime memoir, The Past is Myself, Christabel Bielenberg received thousands of letters from readers begging her to describe what happened next. In The Road Ahead she continues her story with the outbreak of peace - a time of struggle for reconciliation with, and the rebuilding of, a defeated nation. She also tells of life in her newly adopted country, Ireland, her involvement with the Peace Women of Northern Ireland, and with characteristic modesty and gratitude, looks back on a rich, full life.

    In Fontamara, Bread and Wine, and The Seed Beneath the Snow - presented together for the first time in English to mark the centenary of the author's birth - Silone narrates the struggles of the cafoni, the farmers and peasants of his native Abruzzo, against poverty, natural disasters, and totalitarianism. The first novel in the series, Fontamara, is a political fable that portrays the bitter trials of the villagers of Pescina as they battle with landowners who have appropriated their only source of water. First published from his exile in Zurich in 1933, and banned in his own country, the novel was translated into twenty languages and won Silone instant international literary fame. Silone's masterpiece, Bread and Wine, introduces the semi-autobiographical character Pietro Spina, an anti-Fascist revolutionary who returns to his homeland after fifteen years in exile. He seeks refuge among the Abruzzo peasants by posing as the priest Don Paolo Spada. Pietro's story continues in The Seed Beneath the Snow, Silone's personal favorite in the trilogy. Pietro Spina flees again and, with the police in close pursuit, is taken in by his grandmother Donna Maria Vincenza. Though comfortably settled in Italian bourgeois society, she jeopardizes her own life in order to protect him.

    Framed by the 9-day Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of 1994, this novel contains a story weaved from historical narration and tales - tales of war and tales of women - as two men talk.

    Last year, I was seven years old. This year, I’m eight and so many years separate these two ages. I have learned that I am Jewish, that I am a monster, and that I must hide myself. I’m frightened all the time.”—Francine Christophe. Francine Christophe’s account begins in 1939, when her father was called up to fight with the French army. A year later he was taken prisoner by the Germans. Hearing of the Jewish arrests in France from his prison camp, he begged his wife and daughter to flee Paris for the unoccupied southern zone. They were arrested during the attempted escape and subsequently interned in the French camps of Poitiers, Drancy, and Beaune-la-Rolande. In 1944 they were deported to Bergen-Belsen in Germany.In short, seemingly neutral paragraphs, Christophe relates the trials that she and her mother underwent. Writing in the present tense, she tells her story without passion, without judgment, without complaint. Yet from these unpretentious, staccato sentences surges a well of tenderness and human warmth. We live through the child’s experiences, as if we had gone hand-in-hand with her through the death camps.

    Tim Supple is Artistic Director of the Young Vic. He has already adapted Grimm and Rushdie, and worked with Hughes on Spring Awakening and Blood Wedding.

    Armed with false papers identifying them as aristocratic Gentiles, this Jewish family took shelter in the very shadow of the Nazi machine.

    Jean Medawar and David Pyke describe the wartime internment and deportation of many refugee scientists who, although implacably opposed to the Nazis, were classed as enemy aliens by the countries to which they escaped. The invention of the atomic bomb is told in the context of the refugees' crucial contribution. Also covered is the curious postwar Farm Hall episode, when scientists who had remained in Germany during the war were later interned in England, where their conversations were bugged by British intelligence. The authors draw much of their material from interviews with more than twenty surviving refugee scholars to document a moving diaspora that resulted from Hitler's policy. As one refugee scholar wrote, "Far from destroying the spirit of German scholarship, the Nazis had spread it all over the world. Only Germany was to be the loser."