Marianne Jerke-Hofmann was born in May, 1917 in Berlin, Germany during the height of World War I. Perhaps her birth at such a tumultuous time, prior to the new birth of Berlin, played an important role in shaping her equally tumultuous personality.Marianne survived the First World War and struggled through the Second, even finding employment that benefitted the rise of the Third Reich. After a brief internment in a Russian prison camp, she gathered up her daughter and few belongings...

Executive Moves is a captivating account of the life of Mobil Corporation executive Peter Hoverkamp and his wife, Christel. During a career with Mobil that spanned over thirty years, Peter and his wife moved around the northeast and then from the U.S. to live in England, Indonesia, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and provided the opportunity to reconnect with her lifelong friends in Germany. During their travels, the family of two expanded with the birth of three children then the children'...

The Last Train from Berlin is an account of the life of Marianne Hofmann, born May 28th, 1917 in Berlin Germany during the height of World War l. Perhaps her birth at such a tumultuous time, prior to the new birth of Berlin, played an important role in shaping her equally tumultuous personality.Marianne struggled through World War ll finding employment for the German military, then an internment in a Russian prison camp. After escaping from that camp, she gathered up her daughter an...

A rapturous novel of star-crossed love in a time of war—from the international bestselling author of The Secret of Clouds.During the last moments of calm in prewar Prague, Lenka, a young art student, and Josef, who is studying medicine, fall in love. With the promise of a better future, they marry—only to have their dreams shattered by the imminent Nazi invasion. Like so many others, they are torn apart by the currents of war.Now a successful obste...

What are the lies we tell ourselves and others that get us through our lives?In the summer of 1981 Anna is suddenly offered the opportunity to study English at McGill University in Montreal. She jumps at the chance, leaving behind her job, her husband, and her country - Poland. She meets William, a music professor, and falls in love. Back home, martial law is declared.After almost ten years of marriage, William dies suddenly of a heart attack, and Anna is left to pick up th...

This polyphonic novel of an S.S. officer, his ailing wife, and a concentration camp survivor "marks a vital turn in Holocaust literature" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).Being appointed administrator of the Buchenwald work camp is a major advancement for SS Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn. But as the prison population begins to rise, his job becomes ever more consuming. His wife, Frau Greta Hahn, finds their new home even lovelier than their apartment in...

“ FOR EVEN IN NAZI VIENNA, Trudi realized, women still looked in the mirror. . . . She knows that even in the bleak darkness, we feel, love, desire. She left no child (she and Walter tried, with no success); her hats are long lost, but her book is her legacy, discovered once again.” —From the introduction by Linda Grant, a uthor of The Clothes on Their Backs, The Thoughtful Dresser and We Had It So GoodIn 1938 Trudi Kanter, stunn...

Based on a true story, a gripping historical novel about a German immigrant who becomes embroiled in a Nazi spy ring operating in New York City in the early days of World War II.At the end of the 1930s, Europe is engulfed in war. Though America is far from the fighting, the streets of New York have become a battlefield. Anti-Semitic and racist groups spread hate, while German nationalists celebrate Hitler’s strength and power. Josef Klein, a German immigrant, remai...

Combining the authenticity of reportage with the emotional intensity of an extraordinary imagination, The Inventory is a profoundly unsettling account of the effects of Nazi paranoia upon every segment of German society. Writing with piercing clarity and searing irony, Gila Lustiger weaves together the tales of ordinary people swept up in a society where brutal oppression and extermination are everyday events.Amid the routine of daily life-with its flirtations and quarrels...

A black musician arrested by Nazis in 1930s Germany endures the horrors of the Dachau death camp in this harrowing novel based on historical factA self-proclaimed "gay negro" from New Orleans, Clifford Pepperidge made his name in the smoky nightclubs of Harlem in the 1920s, playing piano alongside Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and other jazz greats. A decade later, he thrills crowds nightly in the cabarets of Weimar Berlin. But dark days are on the horizon as the Na...

Before Sex and the City there was Bridget Jones. And before Bridget Jones was The Artificial Silk Girl.In 1931, a young woman writer living in Germany was inspired by Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to describe pre-war Berlin and the age of cinematic glamour through the eyes of a woman. The resulting novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, became an acclaimed bestseller and a masterwork of German literature, in the tradition of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and Bertolt Brec...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE $60,000 HILARY WESTON WRITERS TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTIONWhat the hell kind of great escape is this? No one escapes!”-L.B. Mayer, on the 1963 filmHe had fifty-seven seconds of screen time in the most lavish POW film Hollywood ever produced. He was blond. A Gestapo agent. Sauntering down the aisles of a speeding train, he speaks in terse German to Richard Attenborough, Gordon Jackson, David McCallum. The film is The Great Escap...