A Jewish rebel. A little girl. Each one will fight for freedom—or die trying. Imprisoned in the Lodz Ghetto, Elsi discovers her mother’s desperate attempt to end her pregnancy and comes face-to-face with the impossibility of their situation. Risking her own life, Elsi joins a resistance group to sabotage the regime.Blonde, blue-eyed Matilda is wrenched from her family in Romania and taken to Germany, where her captors attempt to mold her into the perfect Aryan child. Spirited and brave, she must inspire hope in the other stolen children to make her dreams of escape a reality.Willem, a high-ranking Nazi doctor, plans to save lives when he takes posts in both the ghetto and Auschwitz. After witnessing unimaginable cruelties, he begins to question his role and the future of those he is ordered to destroy.While Hitler ransacks Europe in pursuit of a pure German race, the lives of three broken souls—thrown together by chance—intertwine. Only love and sacrifice might make them whole again.

    In this newly updated edition of the skiing classic, W. Timothy Gallwey and Robert Kriegel offer advice on and examples of how to gain the "inner" self-confidence needed to ski well and have fun on the slopes.Inner Skiing will help you:Focus on each step of a particular technique (like the parallel turn), then put it  all together so that the motion seems effortlessAnalyze your fears to distinguish between healthy fear and unnecessary fear that you can overcomeAchieve "breakthrough" runs in which you experience natural and coordinated  movementsMove to the next level in your skiing ability and feel in controlGallwey and Kriegel are two of the leading innovators in sports, and this new edition refines the techniques they have perfected over their long careers. Their easy-to-follow examples and anecdotes will help skiers of all abilities--from beginner to expert. Inner Skiing will change the way you ski.

    In this poignant and insightful account, he gives an insider’s view of a country set on a path of wrenching change while simultaneously confronting ghosts from the wartime and communist past. In chronicling the resurrection of the nation from war and the Holocaust, Moran paints a portrait of cities lost and gained, monumental castles, primeval forests, and picturesque landscape gardens among the finest yet least-known in Europe. This captivating journey into the heart of Poland is a timely and brilliant celebration of the return to the European fold of a valiant and richly cultured nation.

    They hid, waging their own private war against Hitler’s tyrannical, and murderous reign. Among these Resistance Fighters, there were groups of Romany people (gypsies).“The Heart of A Gypsy” is a spellbinding love story filled with Romance, and spiced with the magic of the Gypsy culture. It takes place in Poland during the time of the Third Reich, while World War Two was raging. This is a tale of a people who would rather die, than surrender their freedom.Enter into a little known world, where only a few have traveled before… The world of the Romany.If you enjoy romance, secret magical traditions, riveting action, and steamy sex….you will love “The Heart of A Gypsy.”

    A mother's silence, a village with a terrible secret, and an Australian woman who travels to Poland to uncover the truth ... When forensic dentist Halina Shore arrives in Nowa Kalwaria to take part in a war crimes investigation, she finds herself at the centre of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. What she does not realise is that she has also embarked on a confronting personal journey. Inspired by a true incident that took place in Poland in 1941, Diane Armstrong's powerful novel is part mystery, part forensic investigation, and a moving and confronting story of love, loss and sacrifice. 'A deeply moving and inspiring novel' GOOD READING 'A bold adventure of a novel ... Here is a consummate writer at the top of her form. A fine fictional debut from a writer who's already made her mark' CANBERRA TIMES 'Profoundly moving, compelling and superbly written' AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY

    Just when Jason thinks he's golden, he's attacked—by a crossbow-wielding lunatic whose next victim is found with a bolt through the heart.  And the killer is threatening to shoot Sienna next...There is a solution—a way for Jason and Sienna to be together forever.  Now Jason just needs to decide: Would he die to be with the girl he loves?

    . .Camden mortuary assistant Cassie Raven has pretty much seen it all. But this is the first time she's come face to face with someone she knows on the slab. Someone she cared about. Her friend and mentor, Mrs E.Deeply intuitive and convinced that she can pick up the last thoughts of the dead, Cassie senses that there must be more to the ruling of an accidental death. Is her grief making her see things that aren't there, or is her intuition right, and there's something more sinister to her friend's death than the ME thinks? Harbouring an innate distrust of the police, Cassie sets out to investigate and deliver justice to the woman who saved her life.For fans of Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway series and Kathy Reichs' Temperance Brennan, Cassie Raven is the edgy new forensic sleuth on the block.

    Written in France in 1968, this personal testimony is more than just a life history or a critique of his work. A Kind of Testament stands as a testament to how Gombrowicz came to be the person and writer that he was and overlap between the two.

    Petersburg for accompanying her husband Alexander on shooting and riding trips and for being outstandingly accurate with her gun. She was the daughter of a high-ranking Russian diplomat, and the mother of three young sons, destined to join the social and intellectual elite of imperial Russia. The Revolution of 1917 changed the course of these lives. By December 1918 her husband was dead, her children separated from her by the closing of the frontiers, and her own life was in danger. This is her account of how she faced these traumatic events, revealing the courage and determination she had shown in earlier times that helped her endure hunger, imprisonment, and loneliness. Her reunion with her sons in 1921 makes the months of danger and deprivation worthwhile. Illustrated with original family photographs this account will interest the serious academic and general reader alike.

    Through the narrator we are told of what happens among those standing in line outside this store, what happens as the narrator's mind thinks and rants about the current state of Poland, and what happens as he imagines the failed Polish rebellion of 1863. The novel's form allows Konwicki (both character and author) to roam around and through Poland's past and present, and to range freely through whatever comes to his attention. By turns comic, lyrical, despairing, and liberating, The Polish Complex stands as one of the most important novels to have come out of Poland since World War II.

    Communists, socialists, and nationalists; thieves and black marketeers; servants and fading aristocrats; veteran terrorists and bands of murderous children bewitched by the lure of crime and adventure--all of these converge on a provincial town's chief hotel, a microcosm of an uprooted world.

    A masterpiece of post-war Polish literature, Stone Upon Stone is Wiesław Myśliwski’s grand epic in the rural tradition—a profound and irreverent stream of memory cutting through the rich and varied terrain of one man’s connection to the land, to his family and community, to women, to tradition, to God, to death, and to what it means to be alive.Wise and impetuous, plainspoken and compassionate Szymek, recalls his youth in their village, his time as a guerrilla soldier, as a wedding official, barber, policeman, lover, drinker, and caretaker for his invalid brother.Filled with interwoven stories and voices, by turns hilarious and moving, Szymek’s narrative exudes the profound wisdom of one who has suffered, yet who loves life to the very core.

    in the 1980s when she is just a girl. They are granted political asylum because of her father's role in the Solidarity movement that brings an end to the Communist regime. Anna never quite feels like she belongs until the summer she is 12, when she returns to Kielce, Poland, to visit her grandmother. She develops an intense friendship with two local girls-brash and beautiful Justyna and desperate, awkward Bronka. Despite the very different paths their lives take, they maintain their connection. Over a decade later, a scandalous murder leads them back to the place where their unlikely friendship began. Dominczyk's assured narrative flashes from the wild teenage summers of their past to the years of self-discovery in New York, and Europe. The Lullaby of Polish Girls captures the passion and drama of youthful friendship, the immigrant's yearning to fit in, and the exquisite and wistful transformation of young women coming of age.

     Based on a true story, MY MOTHER'S SECRET is a profound, captivating, and ultimately uplifting tale intertwining the lives of two Jewish families in hiding from the Nazis, a fleeing German soldier, and the clever and "righteous" mother and daughter who teamed up to save them. Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, are unlikely heroines. They are simple people who mind their own business and don't stand out from the crowd. Until 1939, when crisis strikes. The Nazis have invaded Poland and they are starting to persecute the Jews. Providing shelter to a Jew has become a death sentence. And yet, Franciszka and Helena decide to do just that. In their tiny, two-bedroom home in Sokal, Poland, they cleverly hide a Jewish family of two brothers and their wives in their pigsty out back, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a makeshift cellar under the kitchen floorboards, and a defecting German soldier in the attic--each group completely unbeknownst to the others. For everyone to survive, Franciszka will have to outsmart her neighbors and the German commanders standing guard right outside her yard. Told simply and succinctly from four different perspectives, MY MOTHER'S SECRET is a reminder that there are, in fact, no profiles of courage and each individual's character is a personal choice. This book was inspired by the true story of Franciszka Halamajowa, who, with her daughter, saved the lives of fifteen Jews in Poland during the Second World War. She also hid a young German soldier in her attic at the same time. Before the war, there were six thousand Jews in Sokal, Poland. Only thirty survived the war and half of those did so because of Franciszka.

    Set during one of the 20th century's most tumultuous decades, it tells the story of Anna, a lecturer in English from the University of Wroclaw, who arrives in Montreal in the fall of 1981. When martial law is declared in Poland, she chooses to remain in Canada, although emigration means abandoning her husband, an activist in the political opposition, and deserting her homeland as it reels from the shock of being betrayed by its own people. What follows is a bittersweet tale of Anna's marriage to a German émigré, a composer, and her journey back to Europe 10 years later--after his death and the fall of Communism--to come to terms with her own departure and her second husband's past. Necessary Lies, which won the Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Award, tackles an intriguingly volatile period of repression, recrimination, and reconciliation in central and eastern Europe (and in Canada's separatist Quebec as well). Stachniak is a lucid lecturer who deftly makes fiction from events that have been fodder for recent travel literature, such as Eva Hoffman's Exit into History: A Journey Through the New Eastern Europe and Irena Karafilly's Ashes and Miracles: A Polish Journey. Stachniak's strength as a writer lies in her skill in invoking place--its sights and smells and energy--and in juxtaposing a city's present with its complex past. Like an archaeologist or archivist, she delves into the layers of history to reveal the collective source of personal tragedy. But these strengths ultimately prove to be the novel's shortcoming as a work of fiction. Stachniak has a faintly irritating tendency (right from page 1) to engage in irresolvable arguments about whether Poland is part of central or eastern Europe. More significantly, she fails to render psychologically compelling characters, despite the potentially fascinating figures she draws upon. Furthermore, central confrontation scenes with Anna's Polish ex-husband and her second husband's longtime German lover miss the opportunity to sound the depths of betrayal. How unsatisfactory for the reader when the collision of two world views gets reduced to the banality of a co-owned apartment buyout. --Diana Kuprel