The Children of Berlin

The Children of Berlin
Author: Sharon Maas
Publisher: Bookouture
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2023-06-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 183790510X

‘I will never forgive you! You had a choice. You could have listened to your mother, your brother, your father, but you chose to listen to those monsters. And that choice remains with you. Forever.’ Leah and Magda are like sisters. In their block of flats in Berlin, they have only ever had each other to rely on. Each other, and Magda’s brother Markus. Nothing could have torn them apart. Until Hitler gains power… Leah could never imagine either of her best friends supporting the Nazis. Because Leah is Jewish. And she has heard the whispers of what’s been happening to her people. The threats. The disappearances. Rumours of deportation to dark places no one returns from… But then Magda does the unthinkable. She joins the Hitler Youth. Leah’s blood runs cold – how could someone she loves so much do this to her? Leah tries desperately to make her best friend see sense, but Magda is blinded by the promises of a great and powerful Germany. Leah realises that her once sister, is now her deadliest enemy. With people vanishing around her, Leah is terrified she’s next. How far will Magda go to prove her loyalty to her Führer? But Magda always underestimated her brother, and Markus has sworn he’ll do anything to save Leah and her family. Even risk his own life. And he knows infiltrating the party is the only way… But will Magda see through his lie? Is he already far too late to stop her? A powerful and heartbreaking novel about love, family, betrayal and sacrifice perfect for fans of The Alice Network, The White Rose Network, The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Nightingale. Readers love The Children of Berlin: ‘Phenomenal… I almost don’t know where to begin… left me speechless. I loved everything about this heartbreaking and powerfully intense book… unputdownable… had me reaching for the tissue box over and over… heart wrenching… needs to be at the very top of your 'to be read pile’. I highly recommend this ten star read.’ Page Turners, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘I couldn't put it down and finished it in a day… What an absolute cracker of a book!!!… Sucked me straight in… absolutely addictive page turner… absolutely absorbed me… compelling, page-turning… will keep you up late at night.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘A masterpiece told so beautifully it had me enthralled reading late into the night… The story was gripping and terrifying… I went on a rollercoaster ride of emotions and I feel that the ending though heartbreaking was the perfect conclusion.’ @leannebookstagram, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Had me glued to my kindle from the moment I started it and I devoured every chapter… this book had everything I love about this genre… brought tears to my eyes… A heartbreaking read… I 100% recommend this book for fans of historical fiction.’ @leonaomahony, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Powerful and heartbreaking… sure to leave readers with a deep appreciation for the resilience of the human spirit… a must-read for anyone who loves WWII historical fiction… I’ve read many novels in this genre, and this one is right at the top!’ Rachel Bustin, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘I couldn't put this book aside. I read it holding my breath, I cried, I hated, I loved, I understood… I think I have gone through every emotion there is… swept me away and even writing this review I'm overwhelmed with emotions. If I could I would give it 10 stars.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Completely gripped by this remarkable and addictive page-turner… so beautiful and wonderful. I was totally immersed… masterfully done. Crafting of the characters was so deftly done that I will always carry them with me… powerful and heartbreaking.’ @rubie_reads, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Oh, my, where to begin?… I have never read a book quite like this one… a very powerful, tense, and heart-rending novel. A must for readers of historical fiction.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Touched my heart… wonderful… one that will stay with me!... Held my attention right to the end. The book took me through quite few emotions… heart-wrenching at times but so well done.’ Donna’s Book Blog, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Powerful and gut-wrenching.’ @stamperlady50, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Of Marriageable Age

Of Marriageable Age
Author: Sharon Maas
Publisher: Bookouture
Total Pages: 675
Release: 2014-03-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1909490237

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica; min-height: 16.0px} ‘It’s a wonderful panoramic story and conveys such vivid pictures of the countries it portrays. I was immediately transported and completely captivated. A terrific writer.’ Barbara Erskine ‘A vast canvas of memorable characters across a kaleidoscope of cultures… her epic story feels like an authentic reflection of a world full of sadness, joy and surprise.’ The Observer A spellbinding story of forbidden love. Three continents, three decades, three very disparate lives: Savitri, intuitive and charismatic, grows up among the servants of a pre-war English household in Madras. But the traditional customs of her Brahmin family clash against English upper-class prejudice, threatening her love for the privileged son of the house. Nataraj, raised as the son of an idealistic doctor in rural South India, finds life in London heady, with girls and grass easily available… until he is summoned back home to face raw reality. Saroj, her fire hidden by outward reserve, comes of age in Guyana, South America. When her strict, orthodox Hindu father goes one step too far she finally rebels against him... and even against her gentle, apparently docile Ma. But Ma harbours a deep secret… one that binds these three so disparate lives and hurtles them towards a truth that could destroy their world. Praise for Of Marriageable Age: ‘A big book, big themes, an exotic background and characters that will live with you forever.’ Katie Fforde ‘Beautifully and cleverly written. A wondrous, spellbinding story which grips you from the first to the last page… I can't recall when I last enjoyed a book so much.’ Lesley Pearse ‘From the first page I was hooked with this enchanting book… unputdownable.’ Audrey Howard

Exit Berlin

Exit Berlin
Author: Charlotte R. Bonelli
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2014-04-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300197527

"This remarkable collection of letters between German Jews trapped in Nazi Germany and their relatives in the United States offers rare insights into the challenges of an average American family responding to desperate requests for refuge and aid"--

Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot

Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot
Author: Margot Theis Raven
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1627531262

A True Story of the Berlin Airlift and the Candy that Dropped from the Sky. Life was grim in 1948 West Berlin, Germany. Josef Stalin blockaded all ground routes coming in and out of Berlin to cut off West Berliners from all food and essential supplies. Without outside help, over 2.2 million people would die. Thus began the Berlin Airlift, a humanitarian rescue mission that utilized British and American airplanes and pilots to fly in needed supplies. As one of the American pilots participating in the Airlift mission, Lt. Gail S. Halvorsen helped to provide not only nourishment to the children but also gave them a reason to hope for a better world. From one thoughtful, generous act came a lifelong relationship between Lt. Gail and the children of Berlin. This is the true story of a seven-year-old girl named Mercedes who lived in West Berlin during the Airlift and of the American who came to be known as the Chocolate Pilot. Artist Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen's evocative paintings illuminate Margot Theis Raven's powerful story of hope, friendship and remembrance. About the Author: Margot Theis Raven has been a professional writer working in the fields of radio, television, magazines, newspapers, and children's books for thirty years. She has won five national awards, including an IRA Teacher's Choice award. Ms. Raven earned her degree in English from Rosemont College and attended Villanova University for theater study, and Kent State University for German language. Ms. Raven splits her time living in Concord, MA, Charleston, SC and West Chesterfield, NH. About the Illustrator: Born in the Netherlands, Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Holland. He immigrated to the United States in 1976, and years later he became a children's book illustrator. Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot is Nick's ninth children's book with Sleeping Bear Press.

Berlin

Berlin
Author: Jason Lutes
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2020-05-20
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1770463828

Twenty years in the making, this sweeping masterpiece charts Berlin through the rise of Nazism. During the past two decades, Jason Lutes has quietly created one of the masterworks of the graphic novel golden age. Berlin is one of the high-water marks of the medium: rich in its well-researched historical detail, compassionate in its character studies, and as timely as ever in its depiction of a society slowly awakening to the stranglehold of fascism. Berlin is an intricate look at the fall of the Weimar Republic through the eyes of its citizens—Marthe Müller, a young woman escaping the memory of a brother killed in World War I, Kurt Severing, an idealistic journalist losing faith in the printed word as fascism and extremism take hold; the Brauns, a family torn apart by poverty and politics. Lutes weaves these characters’ lives into the larger fabric of a city slowly ripping apart. The city itself is the central protagonist in this historical fiction. Lavish salons, crumbling sidewalks, dusty attics, and train stations: all these places come alive in Lutes’ masterful hand. Weimar Berlin was the world’s metropolis, where intellectualism, creativity, and sensuous liberal values thrived, and Lutes maps its tragic, inevitable decline. Devastatingly relevant and beautifully told, Berlin is one of the great epics of the comics medium.

In the Garden of Beasts

In the Garden of Beasts
Author: Erik Larson
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2012-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 030740885X

Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Devil in the White City, delivers a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition. Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

The Berlin Shadow

The Berlin Shadow
Author: Jonathan Lichtenstein
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0316540994

A deeply moving memoir that confronts the defining trauma of the twentieth century, and its effects on a father and son. In 1939, Jonathan Lichtenstein's father Hans escaped Nazi-occupied Berlin as a child refugee on the Kindertransport. Almost every member of his family died after Kristallnacht, and, upon arriving in England to make his way in the world alone, Hans turned his back on his German Jewish culture. Growing up in post-war rural Wales where the conflict was never spoken of, Jonathan and his siblings were at a loss to understand their father's relentless drive and sometimes eccentric behavior. As Hans enters old age, he and Jonathan set out to retrace his journey back to Berlin. Written with tenderness and grace, The Berlin Shadow is a highly compelling story about time, trauma, family, and a father and son's attempt to emerge from the shadows of history.

Zoo Station

Zoo Station
Author: Christiane F.
Publisher: Zest Books ™
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2019-08-01
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1541582187

This incredible autobiography of Christiane F. provides a vivid portrait of teen friendship, drug abuse, and alienation in and around Berlin's notorious Zoo Station. Christiane's rapid descent into heroin abuse and prostitution is shocking, but the boredom, longing for acceptance, thrilling risks, and even her musical obsessions are familiar to everyone. Previously published in Germany and the US to critical acclaim, Zest's new translation includes original photographs of Christiane and her friends.

The Girl from Berlin

The Girl from Berlin
Author: Ronald H. Balson
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250195268

In the newest novel from internationally-bestselling author Ronald. H. Balson, Liam and Catherine come to the aid of an old friend and are drawn into a property dispute in Tuscany that unearths long-buried secrets An old friend calls Catherine Lockhart and Liam Taggart to his famous Italian restaurant to enlist their help. His aunt is being evicted from her home in the Tuscan hills by a powerful corporation claiming they own the deeds, even though she can produce her own set of deeds to her land. Catherine and Liam’s only clue is a bound handwritten manuscript, entirely in German, and hidden in its pages is a story long-forgotten... Ada Baumgarten was born in Berlin in 1918, at the end of the war. The daughter of an accomplished first-chair violinist in the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic, and herself a violin prodigy, Ada’s life was full of the rich culture of Berlin’s interwar society. She formed a deep attachment to her childhood friend Kurt, but they were torn apart by the growing unrest as her Jewish family came under suspicion. As the tides of history turned, it was her extraordinary talent that would carry her through an unraveling society turned to war, and make her a target even as it saved her, allowing her to move to Bologna—though Italy was not the haven her family had hoped, and further heartache awaited. What became of Ada? How is she connected to the conflicting land deeds of a small Italian villa? As they dig through the layers of lies, corruption, and human evil, Catherine and Liam uncover an unfinished story of heart, redemption, and hope—the ending of which is yet to be written. Don't miss Liam and Catherine's lastest adventures in The Girl from Berlin!

Shadows of Berlin

Shadows of Berlin
Author: David R. Gillham
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1728250463

"Reminding us that history is made up of infinite individual choices, Shadows of Berlin is a masterful story of survival and redemption." — Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman with the Blue Star A captivating novel of a Berlin girl on the run from the guilt of her past and the boy from Brooklyn who loves her 1955 in New York City: the city of instant coffee, bagels at Katz's Deli, ultra-modern TVs. But in the Perlman's walk-up in Chelsea, the past is as close as the present. Rachel came to Manhattan in a wave of displaced Jews who managed to survive the horrors of war. Her Uncle Fritz fleeing with her, Rachel hoped to find freedom from her pain in New York and in the arms of her new American husband, Aaron. But this child of Berlin and daughter of an artist cannot seem to outrun her guilt in the role of American housewife, not until she can shed the ghosts of her past. And when Uncle Fritz discovers, in a dreary midtown pawn shop, the most shocking portrait that her mother had ever painted, Rachel's memories begin to terrorize her, forcing her to face the choices she made to stay alive?choices that might be her undoing. From the cafes of war-torn Germany to the frantic drumbeat of 1950's Manhattan, Shadows of Berlin dramatically explores survival, redemption and the way we learn to love and forgive across impossible divides. "A tribute to resilience and starting over. This is heart-wrenching and memorable." — Publishers Weekly, STARRED review