The Baker's Secret


Stephen P. Kiernan - 2017
    Only twenty-two, Emma learned to bake at the side of a master, Ezra Kuchen, the village baker since before she was born. Apprenticed to Ezra at thirteen, Emma watched with shame and anger as her kind mentor was forced to wear the six-pointed yellow star on his clothing. She was likewise powerless to help when they pulled Ezra from his shop at gunpoint, the first of many villagers stolen away and never seen again.But in the years that her sleepy coastal village has suffered under the enemy, Emma has silently, stealthily fought back. Each day, she receives an extra ration of flour to bake a dozen baguettes for the occupying troops. And each day, she mixes that precious flour with ground straw to create enough dough for two extra loaves—contraband bread she shares with the hungry villagers. Under the cold, watchful eyes of armed soldiers, she builds a clandestine network of barter and trade that she and the villagers use to thwart their occupiers. But her gift to the village is more than these few crusty loaves. Emma gives the people a taste of hope—the faith that one day the Allies will arrive to save them.

The Zone of Interest


Martin Amis - 2014
    This mirror didn't show you your reflection. It showed you your soul - it showed you who you really were. The wizard couldn't look at it without turning away. The king couldn't look at it. The courtiers couldn't look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.The Zone of Interest is a love story with a violently unromantic setting. Can love survive the mirror? Can we even meet each other's eye, after we have seen who we really are?In a novel powered by both wit and pathos, Martin Amis excavates the depths and contradictions of the human soul.

Sarah's Key


Tatiana de Rosnay - 2006
    but before the police come to take them, Sarah locks her younger brother, Michel, in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard in the family's apartment. She keeps the key, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's sixtieth anniversary, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked by her Paris-based American magazine to write an article about this black day in France's past. Julia has lived in Paris for nearly twenty-five years, married a Frenchman, and she is shocked both by her ignorance about the event and the silence that still surrounds it. In the course of her investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connects her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from the terrible days spent shut in at the Vel' d'Hiv' to the camps and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.Writing about the fate of her country with a pitiless clarity, Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and denial surrounding this painful episode in French history.(front flap)

The Ragged Edge of Night


Olivia Hawker - 2018
    Franciscan friar Anton Starzmann is stripped of his place in the world when his school is seized by the Nazis. He relocates to a small German hamlet to wed Elisabeth Herter, a widow who seeks a marriage—in name only—to a man who can help raise her three children. Anton seeks something too—atonement for failing to protect his young students from the wrath of the Nazis. But neither he nor Elisabeth expects their lives to be shaken once again by the inescapable rumble of war. As Anton struggles to adapt to the roles of husband and father, he learns of the Red Orchestra, an underground network of resisters plotting to assassinate Hitler. Despite Elisabeth’s reservations, Anton joins this army of shadows. But when the SS discovers his schemes, Anton will embark on a final act of defiance that may cost him his life—even if it means saying goodbye to the family he has come to love more than he ever believed possible.

Restless


William Boyd - 2006
    Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone.Three decades later the secrets of Sally’s past still haunt her. Someone is trying to kill her and at last she has decided to trust Ruth with her story. Ruth, meanwhile, is struggling to make sense of her own life as a young single mother with an unfinished graduate degree and escalating dependence on alcohol. She is drawn deeper and deeper into the astonishing events of her mother’s past—the mysterious death of Eva’s beloved brother, her work in New York City manipulating the press in order to shift public sentiment toward American involvement in the war, and her dangerous romantic entanglement. Now Sally wants to find the man who recruited her for the secret service, and she needs Ruth’s help.Restless is a brilliant espionage book and a vivid portrait of the life of a female spy. Full of tension and drama, and based on a remarkable chapter of Anglo-American history, this is fiction at its finest.

The Illusion of Separateness


Simon Van Booy - 2013
    The same world moves beneath each of them, and one by one, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, they discover the vital parts they have played in each other's lives, a realization that shatters the illusion of their separateness. Moving back and forth in time and across continents, The Illusion of Separateness displays the breathtaking skill of, "a truly special writer who does things with abstract language that is so evocative and original your breath literally catches in your chest" (Andre Dubus III).

Lilac Girls


Martha Hall Kelly - 2016
    But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.   An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.   For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.   The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

Out Stealing Horses


Per Petterson - 2003
    That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first days of July.Trond’s friend Jon often appeared at his doorstep with an adventure in mind for the two of them. But this morning would turn out to be different. What began as a joy ride on “borrowed” horses ends with Jon falling into a strange trance of grief. Trond soon learns what befell Jon earlier that day—an incident that marks the beginning of a series of vital losses for both boys. Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.

The Invisible Bridge


Julie Orringer - 2010
    Andras Lévi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he promised to deliver. But when he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter's recipient, he becomes privy to a secret that will alter the course of his—and his family’s—history. From the small Hungarian town of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in labor camps, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour.

The Auschwitz Chapter (Under Total Eclipse We Will Tremble Like Birds Without Song)


Lee Vidor - 2011
    And all humanity.This Auschwitz Chapter is taken from Lee Vidor's novel, Under Total Eclipse We Will Tremble Like Birds Without Song, which is an historically accurate fictional account of Europe under Nazi Occupation. Even though The Auschwitz Chapter is only a concise single chapter in the novel, more than 2 years were spent researching every existing published eyewitness account of imprisonment at Auschwitz, in order to ensure complete accuracy. Lee Vidor states: ‘I believe I missed no eyewitness testimonies and that the account here given is absolutely accurate in every detail. It is the most specific and accurate description of events and processes at Auschwitz which exists. Every single detail in The Auschwitz Chapter has been confirmed from more than one eyewitness source, from photographic evidence and court documents.I believe it is the single most reliable and harrowing piece of literary writing ever done on the subject of the events which took place in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II.’Although fictional, the piece contains many precise facts which are extremely difficult to uncover and which are coherently gathered together nowhere else with such accuracy and completeness. Herein lies its enduring value.This work is not suitable for reading by anyone under 18 years of age.Please Note: This book is subject to attacks by holocaust deniers. A careful reading of any peculiar review for hidden motive is recommended. About The Auschwitz Chapter:If Holocaust deniers have somehow begun to lead you to question that what took place in Auschwitz concentration camp may be in any possible way a part myth, then this is the book for you. This is the concise and authentic story of what happened in Auschwitz, and in other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The Auschwitz Chapter will inform you precisely of what was done, how it was done, where it was done, and precisely by whom. And it will give your their reasons for doing it. It will also tell you what it means to the world. You will read the absolute and specific truth. Every detail of the process. You won't have to doubt or wonder about it any longer. It will be the most valuable time you have ever spent on the subject because you will have learned not only about Auschwitz and about human nature, but also about the true nature of Holocaust deniers and revisionists. About Lee Vidor:Lee Vidor is the original source of the astonishing Shakespeare-X Message.She is the author of the novel cycle, 20th Century Bohemians and Angels, which is an expansive cycle of literary novels which follows and dramatizes the development of Modernism among the great writers, artists and bohemians of the 20th Century. It is a story of artistic obsession and bohemian madness.It is Lee Vidor’s original theory that the 20th Century has been a Modernist Renaissance for mankind, which is greater and more essential for our development than the Italian Renaissance of c1500.The Shakespeare-X Message is a definitive statement of authorship sent to the world by the authentic William Shakespeare. A mathematically verifiable statement.Lee Vidor has that message. The only person in 400 years to receive it.

Winter Men


Jesper Bugge Kold - 2014
    Karl, a former soldier and successful businessman, dutifully answers the call to defend his country, while contemplative academic Gerhard is coerced into informing for the Gestapo. Soon the brothers are serving in the SS, and as Hitler’s hateful agenda brings about unspeakable atrocities, they find themselves with innocent blood on their hands.Following Germany’s eventual defeat, Karl and Gerhard are haunted by their insurmountable guilt, and each seeks a way to escape from wounds that will never heal. They survived the war and its revelation of systematic horrors, but can they survive the unshakable knowledge of their own culpability?

The Race for Paris


Meg Waite Clayton - 2015
    To cover the fighting in France, Jane, a reporter for the Nashville Banner, and Liv, an Associated Press photographer, have already had to endure enormous danger and frustrating obstacles—including strict military regulations limiting what women correspondents can do. Even so, Liv wants more. Encouraged by her husband, the editor of a New York newspaper, she’s determined to be the first photographer to reach Paris with the Allies, and capture its freedom from the Nazis.However, her Commanding Officer has other ideas about the role of women in the press corps. To fulfill her ambitions, Liv must go AWOL. She persuades Jane to join her, and the two women find a guardian angel in Fletcher, a British military photographer who reluctantly agrees to escort them. As they race for Paris across the perilous French countryside, Liv, Jane, and Fletcher forge an indelible emotional bond that will transform them and reverberate long after the war is over. Based on daring, real-life female reporters on the front lines of history like Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Miller, and Martha Gellhorn—and with cameos by other famous faces of the time—The Race for Paris is an absorbing, atmospheric saga full of drama, adventure, and passion. Combining riveting storytelling with expert literary craftsmanship and thorough research, Meg Waite Clayton crafts a compelling, resonant read.

Across the Winding River


Aimie K. Runyan - 2020
    His only request of his daughter is to go through the long-forgotten box of memorabilia from his days as a medic on the western front. Then, among his wartime souvenirs, Beth finds a photograph of her father with an adoring and beautiful stranger—a photograph worth a thousand questions.It was 1944 when Max was drawn into the underground resistance by the fearless German wife of a Nazi officer. Together, she and Max were willing to risk everything for what they believed was right. Ahead of them lay a dangerous romance, a dream of escape, and a destiny over which neither had control.But Max isn’t alone in his haunting remembrances of war. In a nearby private care home is a fragile German-born woman with her own past to share. Only when the two women meet does Beth realize how much more to her father there is to know, all the ways in which his heart still breaks, and the closure he needs to heal it.

The Locket


Mike Evans - 2012
    That teenage boy was Adolf Eichmann. It all seemed innocent and nice until Sarah’s grandmother died, and then nothing was ever the same again.Set in Europe during World War II, The Locket follows Sarah’s journey from adolescence to adulthood, as she and her family endure the horrors of the Final Solution. Forced from their home into a Vienna ghetto, and later to the Nazi death camps, Sarah watches helplessly as her family and friends are murdered. She is marked for death, too, until Eichmann intervenes. When Sarah rebuffs Eich- mann’s romantic advances, she is arrested and sent to the camps. Can Sarah escape and survive long enough to find justice for the atrocities she was forced to endure? Will evil prevail and consign her to a life of fear and terror? Observe Sarah on her journey from the darkest days of the Holocaust to the day she enters a Jerusalem courtroom to face Adolf Eichmann.The Locket by Mike Evans is a suspense-filled and captivating novel. It will keep you on the edge of your seat. It is a book you will not be able to put down. Dr. Evans’ great-grandfather, a rabbi, perished in Minsk, Russia, during the pogroms. He and his congregation were boarded up in their synagogue and burned to death by Orthodox Christians who cried, “Christ killers” as the fire consumed the building. Others of his family perished at Auschwitz. More than twenty-five million copies of Dr. Evans’ books are in print, and he is the award-winning producer of nine documentaries based on his books. Dr. Evans is considered one of the world’s leading experts on Israel and the Middle East, and is one of the most sought-after speakers on that

L'Art de perdre


Alice Zeniter - 2017
    Naïma's father claims to remember nothing; he has made himself French. Her grandfather died before he could tell her his side of the story. But now Naïma will travel to Algeria to see for herself what was left behind--including their secrets.The Algerian War for Independence sent Naïma's grandfather on a journey of his own, from wealthy olive grove owner and respected veteran of the First World War, to refugee spurned as a harki by his fellow Algerians in the transit camps of southern France, to immigrant barely scratching out a living in the north. The long battle against colonial rule broke apart communities, opened deep rifts within families, and saw the whims of those in even temporary power instantly overturn the lives of ordinary people. Where does Naïma's family fit into this history? How do they fit into France's future?Alice Zeniter's The Art of Losing is a powerful, moving family novel that spans three generations across seventy years and two shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a resonant people's history of Algeria and its diaspora. It is a story of how we carry on in the face of loss: loss of country, identity, language, connection. Most of all, it is an immersive, riveting excavation of the inescapable legacies of colonialism, immigration, family, and war.