Newly-edited corrected version. Danzig is a gripping historical novel in the grand tradition. It has generated rave reviews (90% 4 and 5 stars) for its authenticity and its realistic portrayal of high pressure diplomatic clashes between Hitler and Western nations in the 1930s. The story encompasses fast-paced events in Geneva, Berlin, Warsaw and London, as well as Danzig itself, capturing the drama of unfolding crisis that engulfed Europe on what we now know was the path to war. * "A smartly written, engrossing read. * “Channeling the best of Alan Furst, Danzig, is a must read for the any lover of well written historical fiction. * “Mr. Walker's descriptions made this reader feel as if she were in the middle of the historic drama. The novel builds in intensity until the dramatic ending. It's a terrific read.” * “Danzig is a must read for any lover of riveting historical fiction dealing with Hitler’s rise. Walker makes the saga of the city and the Polish Corridor come alive. The tensions of the time are vividly described in human terms, making for gripping reading.” * “Danzig is an amazing book, putting the reader in the middle of pre WW II in Europe. The time and scene were painted in detail and to perfection. The characters were presented in such a way I felt I knew them and worried for them throughout.” * “Superb historical fiction; good story, good atmospherics. Danzig is a sophisticated journey into European power politics during a time of high drama. I think it bears comparison to the best authors in the popular interwar historical fiction genre and I rate it a very successful effort.” * “The author does a great job of making the reader feel what it was like to be in the center of pre-WWII Europe, with Germany flouting the Treaty of Versailles, England following an ill-fated policy of appeasement and the League of Nations powerless and ineffective in dealing with Hitler and his aggression. For anyone interested in WWII history, especially the lead-up to the war and the dysfunction among the European Allies, this is a great read! The website www.authorwilliamwalker.com offers a link to Amazon Kindle as well as a synopsis, photos and more information.

    If finding her mother Nellie in hospital after a savage beating from her husband wasn’t enough, Emily’s plight deepens when she yields to the advances of Tommy, a young soldier, and becomes pregnant with his child.Not for nothing is Victoria station nicknamed the ‘palace of tears’. As trainloads of men leave for the Western Front, and Emily says goodbye to Tommy, she is left contemplating the life of a single mother. Yet amidst the devastation, happiness still lies within her grasp… A classic saga of World War One, Palace of Tears is a perfect read for fans of Carol Rivers, Sally Warboyes, and Annie Murray.

    Emma cares for them through their perilous first days and when the government decides to remove the babies from their francophone parents, making them wards of the British king, Emma signs on as their nurse.Over 6,000 daily visitors come to ogle the identical “Quints” playing in their custom-built playground; at the height of the Great Depression, the tourism and advertising dollars pour in. While the rest of the world delights in their sameness, Emma sees each girl as unique: Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Marie, and Émilie. With her quirky eye for detail, Emma records every strange twist of events in her private journals.As the fight over custody and revenues turns increasingly explosive, Emma is torn between the fishbowl sanctuary of Quintland and the wider world, now teetering on the brink of war. Steeped in research, Quintland™ is a novel of love, heartache, resilience, and enduring sisterhood—a fictional, coming-of-age story bound up in one of the strangest true tales of the past century.

    When she wins a coveted overseas post with the Red Cross, she focuses on her war service. Falling hard for a sexy pilot wasn't part of her plan. Jack Nielsen has a mission. Motivated by patriotic duty and desire to avenge the death of his best friend, Jack commands a ten-man B-17 crew. Keeping himself and his men alive in the fire-filled skies over Europe will require Jack's full focus. Romancing a headstrong Red Cross Girl is a distraction he knows he shouldn't indulge. While Vivian's work takes her across France and into the heart of Nazi Germany, mounting casualties drive Jack to confront his dwindling odds of survival. As Allied forces converge on all fronts, can Vivian and Jack's relationship withstand an excruciating battle between love and duty?Courage to be Counted is the first book in the Clubmobile Girls series of thrilling historical romances. If you like brave military heroes, trailblazing heroines, and romance under fire, then you'll love Eleri Grace's page-turning tale. Buy Courage to be Counted and soar into this historical romance today!

    Born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1882 to immigrant parents, Frances Frankowski covets the life of her best friend, Rosalie Mendel, who has everything Fanny could wish for—money, parents who value education, and an effervescent and winning personality. When, at age fifteen, Rosalie decides they should run away to Chicago, Fanny jumps at the chance to escape her unexceptional life. But, within a year, Rosalie commits an unforgivable betrayal, inciting Frances to strike out on her own.Decades later, the women reconnect in San Francisco and realize how widely their lives have diverged. While Rosalie is a housewife and mother, Frances works as a secretary for the Office of Naval Intelligence. There she is introduced to Ainslie Conway, an intelligence operator ten years her junior. When it’s arranged for Frances and Ainslie to marry and carry out a mission on the Galápagos Islands, the couple’s identities—already hidden from each other—are further buried under their new cover stories. No longer a lonely spinster, Frances is about to begin the most fascinating and intrigue-filled years of her life.Amid active volcanoes, forbidding wildlife and flora, and unfriendly neighbors, Ainslie and Frances carve out a life for themselves. But the secrets they harbor from their enemies and from each other may be their undoing.Drawing on the rich history of the early twentieth century and set against a large, colorful canvas, Enchanted Islands boldly examines the complexity of female friendship, the universal pursuit of a place to call home, and the reverberations of secrets we keep from others and from ourselves.

    A hard-working bank clerk, Gustad Noble is a devoted family man who gradually sees his modest life unravelling. His young daughter falls ill; his promising son defies his father’s ambitions for him. He is the one reasonable voice amidst the ongoing dramas of his neighbours. One day, he receives a letter from an old friend, asking him to help in what at first seems like an heroic mission. But he soon finds himself unwittingly drawn into a dangerous network of deception. Compassionate, and rich in details of character and place, this unforgettable novel charts the journey of a moral heart in a turbulent world of change.From the Trade Paperback edition.

     May 1940: Royal Air Force pilot Harry Fitzgerald is one of millions of heroic Allied troops fighting against Nazi Germany. In the pitched heat of battle over the skies of Northern France, Fitzgerald is shot down by an enemy plane and captured. Miraculously, he escapes certain death but must make his way back to the Allied evacuation at Dunkirk to get back home. However, Fitzgerald is in the middle of a warzone. At a chateau turned hospital, he encounters two of his wounded comrades. Too sick to reach Dunkirk by themselves, they helplessly lie in wait as the German army advances. Fitzgerald knows he must save them, and with the assistance of the French nurse Solange, the refugees attempt to reach Dunkirk-before the Nazis can reach them. It’s a life-or-death mission through dangerous territory where nothing is guaranteed. In Dash for Dunkirk, authors Denis Caron and Fran Connor explore a world where loyalty and bravery face off against an unforgiving enemy. Bound together by duty and honor, war heroes push themselves to the limit through refugee-crowded streets, mechanical setbacks and enemy attacks. Will they reach safe harbor, or will the ultimate evil finally prevail? Praise for Dash for Dunkirk > "A wildly entertaining, action packed story not only about the reality of war, but also of loyalty, friendship, and romance. A must read! - Jordan Ebare, Avid Reader & Historical Fiction Enthusiast

    But she's still uneasy at Khattak's tight-lipped secrecy when he asks her to look into Christopher Drayton's death. Drayton's apparently accidental fall from a cliff doesn't seem to warrant a police investigation, particularly not from Rachel and Khattak's team, which handles minority-sensitive cases. But when she learns that Drayton may have been living under an assumed name, Rachel begins to understand why Khattak is tip-toeing around this case. It soon comes to light that Drayton may have been a war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.If that's true, any number of people might have had reason to help Drayton to his death, and a murder investigation could have far-reaching ripples throughout the community. But as Rachel and Khattak dig deeper into the life and death of Christopher Drayton, every question seems to lead only to more questions, with no easy answers. Had the specters of Srebrenica returned to haunt Drayton at the end, or had he been keeping secrets of an entirely different nature? Or, after all, did a man just fall to his death from the Bluffs?In her spellbinding debut, Ausma Zehanat Khan has written a complex and provocative story of loss, redemption, and the cost of justice that will linger with readers long after turning the final page.

    For the Appleton sisters, life had unravelled many times before. This time it explodes.Eight-year-old Hariet, known to all as Ari, is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary, who is purported to eat little girls . . . With Ari on the journey is her steadfast companion, Jasper, an imaginary seahorse. But when they arrive in Pleasant Cove, they instead find refuge with Mary and her partner Nia.As the tumultuous ’60s ramp up in Toronto, Ari is torn from her aunts and forced back to her twisted mother and fractured sisters. Her new stepfather Len and his family offer hope, but as Ari grows to adore them, she’s severed violently from them too, when her mother moves in with the brutal Dick Irwin.Through the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s, Ari struggles with her father’s legacy and her mother’s addictions — testing limits with substances that numb and men who show her kindness. She spins through a chaotic decade of loss and love, the devilish and divine, with wit, tenacity, and the astonishing balance unique to seahorses.The Clay Girl is a beautiful tour de force that traces the story of a child, sculpted by kindness, cruelty and the extraordinary power of imagination, and her families — the one she’s born in to and the one she creates.

    Desperate to escape, the two teenagers embark on a perilous journey back to England to the safety of their grandparents.But there are eyes everywhere.Luke and Christine band together with fugitive Allied airmen, thinking they will keep them safe and help them on their treacherous journey.But their new partnership could be putting them in more danger than they realize. Especially when there are hostile forces at work determined to scupper any plans to get the teenagers and airmen safely back to England.With secret operations mounting against the enemy, there is one path which remains unguarded: a risky escape route via the canals.Luke and Christine take refuge on a canal barge and find themselves immersed in the complex Operation Kingfisher.Can two teenagers make it across occupied France in one piece? Or will betrayal put them and the lives of others at great risk?

    But as young men, the boys couldn’t be more different — where seventeen-year-old Will is headstrong and rugged, able to hold his own in the woods or in a fight, Owen, three years his junior, is literary and sensitive. What worries their mother Mary, however, is the prophecy told to her by a local woman upon Will’s birth: “that her first-born would be a powerful man and have much respect — but his brother would be even greater, yet destroy the legacy by rashness, and the Jameson dynasty [would] not go beyond that second boy.” She tries to laugh it off, but the prophecy becomes a part of local legend and hangs over the heads of the boys like a dark cloud.When their father dies in a freak accident and the management of the Jameson tracts and company falters, Will, as the true inheritor of his father’s “shrewd mind and fists to match,” quits school to take over. He’s a strong leader of men, but perhaps too strong at times, and dies while clearing a log jam during a run. Reggie Glidden, Will’s best friend and the Push of the Jameson team, takes Owen under his wing, searching for any small sign that the younger boy has his brother’s qualities. But Owen knows his limitations and, after his brother’s death and then rejection by the girl of his dreams, Lula Brower, he joins the army and heads off to war hoping to get himself killed. Instead, he returns a decorated war hero.Then he falls in love with the beautiful, childlike Camellia — the wife of Reggie Glidden — and soon Owen and Camellia find themselves watched on all sides, caught in the teeth of an entire town’s gossip and hypocrisy despite the innocence of their relationship. But for the community, it’s as if taking Owen Jameson — and therefore the whole Jameson family — down a peg or two will give them control over their changing world. Inexorably, Owen and Camellia are pulled into a chain of events that will end with death, disappearance, and a sensational trial.At the same time, realizing his destiny, Owen takes over the family business and begins what will become the greatest cut in New Brunswick history, his men setting up camp on the notoriously dangerous Good Friday Mountain. The teamsters spend months in fierce ice and snow, daily pitting themselves against nature and risking their lives for scant reward, in the last moments before the coming of mechanization that will make them obsolete. This heroic, brutal life is all Meager Fortune, the camp keeper, knows. A good and innocent man, he shows unexpected resolution in the face of the betrayals of the more worldly men around him.With The Friends of Meager Fortune, award-winning author David Adams Richards continues his exploration of New Brunswick’s Miramichi Valley, both the hard lives and experiences that emerge from that particular soil and the universal human matters that concern us all: the work of the hands and the heart; the nature of true greatness and true weakness; the relentlessness of fate and the good and evil that men and women do. It is a devastating portrait of a society, but it is also a brilliant commemoration of the passing of a world — one that cements David Adams Richards’ place as the finest novelist at work in Canada today.

    The name meant untold riches and promise to Jutka, a young Hungarian girl who was captivated by stories of a vast, majestic country where people were able to breathe free of hatred and prejudice. Freedom was in short supply, but hatred was everywhere in Hungary as hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported to concentration camps during the last year of WWII. Jutka, her friends, and her family are sent to Auschwitz.In that hellish place, there was another Kanada. It was the ironic name given to the storehouse at Auschwitz where the possessions, clothing and jewelry stripped from the victims were deposited, and where Jutka was put to work. The war may have ended, but it did not end the suffering of many of the inmates of concentration camps. Many had no homes to go to, and if they did, they were not welcome. Hundreds went back to Poland and were murdered. Famished, diseased, and homeless, they lived in the hopelessness of camps, wondering if they could ever find a home in the world. Some went to Israel, but for Jutka there was only one dream left her: the dream of a country full of hope, where she would no longer have to live in fear.Eva Wiseman's powerful novel describes the war and its long, difficult aftermath with compassion and tenderness.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Nikolai ran aground off the Olympic Peninsula; this novel is based on this astounding historical event and the lives of the people affected. In 1808, eighteen-year-old Anna Petrovna Bulygina is aboard the Russian ship St. Nikolai when it runs aground off on the west coast of Washington State on the Olympic Peninsula. The crew, tasked with trading for sea otter pelts and exploring the coast, are forced to shore into Indigenous territory, where they are captured, enslaved, and then traded among three different Indigenous communities. Terrified at first, Anna soon discovers that nothing—including slavery—is what she expected. She begins to question Russian imperialist aspirations, the conduct of the crew, and her own beliefs and values as she experiences a way of life she never could have imagined.Based on historical record, Anna, Like Thunder blends fact and fiction to explore the early days of contact between Indigenous people and Europeans off the west coast of North America and offers a fresh interpretation of history.

    As Emily becomes closer to her closeted Uncle Tyler, she begins to challenge her upbringing. Her questions about the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ insular lifestyle, rigid codes of conduct, and tenets of their faith haunt her older sister Lenora too. When Lenora disappears, everything changes and Emily becomes obsessed with taking on her sister’s identity, believing that Lenora is controlling her actions. Ultimately, Emily finds release through self-mutilation. The narrative offers a haunting, cutting exploration of the Jehovah’s Witness practice and practical impact of “disfellowshipping,” proselytization, and cultural abstinence, as well as their attitude toward the “worldlings” outside of their faith. Sparse, vivid, menacingly suspenseful, and darkly humorous, Watch How We Walk simultaneously engages on emotional, visceral, and intellectual levels.

    It is a rich and compassionate debut, a novel that encourages us to explore the depths of love and memory, of life and of art.Unable to escape the pain of her unrequited love for Max Segal, Marie Prévost travels to Paris in order to study the writing of her other great amour: the novelist Marcel Proust. Marie is bilingual and works as a simultaneous translator in Montreal, and believes that reading Proust’s original papers will give her insights into love and loss that just may mend her broken heart. But when Marie arrives in Paris, Marcel remains as elusive as Max: the strict officials at the Bibliotèque Nationale only allow her access to the peripheral papers of File 263 -- a much ignored and poorly catalogued collection of the diaries kept by Jeanne Proust, Marcel’s mother. Despite the head librarian’s opinion that they contain only the “natterings of a housewife,” Marie begins to translate them, and discovers that Jean Proust’s diary is as illuminating for what is not said as what is there.Entwined with Marie’s story are the diary entries that she has translated: Jeanne Proust’s records of day-to-day life in her Paris household, which make up the second strand of this novel. Jeanne’s diary includes all aspects of life at 9 Boulevard Malesherbes, everything from the difficulties of cutting rich desserts from the dinner menu to the latest Parisian headlines to her fears for the health and literary ambitions of Marcel. She’s a worrier, Madame Proust, but also ferociously protective and supportive of her frail son, and the trials of her small world come across as powerfully as the goings-on outside her doors. Madame Proust’s diary entries, particularly those from the height of the Dreyfus Affair, also convey her experiences as a Jewish woman within a prominent Catholic family and a privileged social class. And it is this thread that makes Marie recognize the difficulties of finding the woman’s true voice, given the atrocities to come during the Second World War.As she continues her work, Marie increasingly explores the devastation of the Holocaust and wonders about our collective responsibility to remembering -- and recording -- it’s truths. Her explorations of Paris, first limited to the Proustian tour, begin to include memorial sites such as the one at Drancy, a transit camp on the route to Auschwitz. During her travels she comes across references to Max’s mother’s family, the Bensimons, and begins to make connections between the overbearing mother Max so often complains about and Madame Proust. She also starts to recognize the horrible burden Sarah Segal must carry.Sarah’s story is the third strand of this novel. Sarah Segal -- née Bensimon, then Simon -- was sent to Canada from France at age twelve, just as the Nazis were beginning to round up Parisian Jews. Growing up with her foster family in Toronto, she is never able to escape the loss of her parents, and as a young woman she travels back to Paris to discover that they did, in fact, die at Auschwitz. But despite -- and perhaps due to -- finding out what happened to them, Sarah is unable to fully adjust to her life in Canada. She doesn’t know how to communicate with her son or her husband, and finds even the most mundane domestic events overwhelming. It is only when she retreats to her kitchen, determined to fuse her French and Jewish histories by mastering a kosher version of classic French cuisine, that she begins to face her sorrow head on. Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen is Kate Taylor’s first novel, and has been highly praised by reviewers. Most comment on Taylor’s wonderful ability to weave together three distinct stories in such a way that the larger truths emerge from among their combined details, and on the subtle way she is able to meld history and fiction. As one literary critic has stated, “Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen marks the stunning emergence of a writer from whom we can expect much in the future.”