What would you sacrifice for love? Your home? Your material possessions? Your family and friends? Your principles? Your life?PrologueDetrick, a seven-year-old Aryan boy, with blonde hair that shines like the rays of the sun rides his brand new bicycle down a main street of Berlin in 1923. Young and carefree, he’s fully experiencing freedom for the first time. It is mid-day and the street is filled with humanity. Vendors hawk their wares and haggle with potential shoppers, while a few of the new inventions called automoblies honk as make their way through the crowded roads. There is so much to look at, to smell, and to take in, the fresh baked bread, the chocolate candy, the fresh fruit. Detrick is swept away by all of the activities surrounding him, so he is not paying attention when suddenly a horse drawn cart appears causing him to fall. Embarrassed and upset he decides to walk his damaged bicycle home by a different path, one where he is unlikely to be forced to face his friends. A path through the Jewish sector of town. It is here that he meets Jacob Abdenstern, a lovable Jewish bicycle repair man who offers to help the little boy. Detrick having an alcoholic, anti-Semitic father finds a friend and much-needed paternal figure in Jacob. A relationship flourishes between the two of them that will alter both of their lives forever.

    Hanneke spends her days procuring and delivering sought-after black market goods to paying customers, her nights hiding the true nature of her work from her concerned parents, and every waking moment mourning her boyfriend, who was killed on the Dutch front lines when the Germans invaded. She likes to think of her illegal work as a small act of rebellion.On a routine delivery, a client asks Hanneke for help. Expecting to hear that Mrs. Janssen wants meat or kerosene, Hanneke is shocked by the older woman's frantic plea to find a person - a Jewish teenager Mrs. Janssen had been hiding, who has vanished without a trace from a secret room. Hanneke initially wants nothing to do with such dangerous work, but is ultimately drawn into a web of mysteries and stunning revelations that lead her into the heart of the resistance, open her eyes to the horrors of the Nazi war machine, and compel her to take desperate action. Beautifully written, intricately plotted, and meticulously researched, Girl in the Blue Coat is an extraordinary, gripping novel from a bright new voice.

    Rachel is sent to Auschwitz, unaware that her husband has been shot. Priska and her husband travel there together, but are immediately separated. Also at Auschwitz, Anka hopes in vain to be reunited with her husband. With the rest of their families gassed, these young wives are determined to hold on to all they have left—their lives, and those of their unborn babies. Having concealed their condition from infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, they are forced to work and almost starved to death, living in daily fear of their pregnancies being detected by the SS. In April 1945, as the Allies close in, the inmates are sent to Mauthausen concentration camp on a hellish seventeen-day train journey. On the seventieth anniversary of Mauthausen’s liberation from the Nazis by American soldiers, renowned biographer Wendy Holden recounts this extraordinary story of three children united by their mothers’ unbelievable—yet ultimately successful—fight for survival.