The first major biography of the author of Suite FrançaiseThe posthumous publication of Suite Française won Irène Némirovsky international acclaim and brought millions of readers to her work. But the story of her own life was no less dramatic and moving than her most powerful fiction.With her family, she escaped Russia in 1919 and settled in Paris, where she met and married fellow Jewish émigré Michel Epstein. In 1929 she published her hig...

"Absorbing . . . a testament to the ways in which narrative truth-telling—from the greatest works of literature to the most intimate family stories—sustains and strengthens us.”—O: The Oprah MagazineIn this stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, Azar Nafisi shares her memories of living in thrall to a powerful and complex mother against the backdrop of a country’s political revolution. A girl’s pain over family secrets, a young woman’s discovery of...

Set in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul, this extraordinary novel "puts a human face on the suffering inflicted by the Taliban" (San Francisco Chronicle), taking readers into the seemingly divergent lives of two couples—and depicting with compassion and exquisite details the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world.Mohsen comes from a family of wealthy shopkeepers whom the Taliban has destroyed; Zunaira, hi...

**A heartbreaking affair, an unsolved murder, an explosive romance: welcome to summer on the Cape in this powerful debut.**Seven summers ago, Marcella Atkinson fell in love with Cecil McClatchey, a married father of two. But on the same night their romance abruptly ended, Cecil's wife was found murdered—and their lives changed forever. The case was never solved, and Cecil died soon after, an uncharged suspect. Now divorced and estranged from her only daughter, Marcella lives alone, mired i...

All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty.From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops--including the man who was to become her husband--in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey.Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when Nazis march into...

Trapped in the horrors of World War II, a woman and a child embark on a journey of survival in this page-turning true story that recalls the power and the poignancy of Schindler’s List.Michael Stolowitzky, the only son of a wealthy Jewish family in Poland, was just three years old when war broke out and the family lost everything. His father, desperate to settle his business affairs, travels to France, leaving Michael in the care of his mother and Gertruda...

The book that helped inspire Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot SeeAn updated edition of this classic World War II memoir, chosen as one of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century, with a new photo insert and restored passages from the original French editionWhen Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the wo...

I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and i...

The personal story of a young Jewish girl trapped in Nazi Germany. Separated from her younger sister, Edith and her mother witness the farce of the Red Cross visit to Terezin, escape the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and survive the labor camps of the Russian Front. This is a story of horror and miracles, and of triumph against all odds.

In this "amazing WWII survival-and-rescue story," U.S. Army medical personnel fight to survive after their plane crashes in Nazi-occupied Albania ( Booklist ).A Wall Street Journal BestsellerWhen twenty-six Army nurses and medics—part of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron—boarded a cargo plane for transport in November 1943, they never anticipated the crash landing in Nazi-occupied Albania that wou...

He evaded death so many times it seemed it would never take him. The only man in history to go to Auschwitz as a volunteer, to form a resistance movement and document German atrocities. One of the few who succeeded in escaping. He sent drawings from there to his children and wrote letters to his wife, delivering them via the underground conspiracy along with reports. The British historian Michael Foot included him among the six most courageous people of the Second World War. After the war ...

At the tender age of 16, Klara Wizel had a picturesque life with a loving and supportive family. There was no way to know that the Holocaust was creeping toward her and that soon this young Hungarian Jew would be fighting for her life due to the most notorious doctor of the 20th century, Dr. Josef Mengele.Swept up in a week long deportation process along with fifteen thousand other Hungarian Jews, Klara and her family arrive on cold night at the infamous Auschwitz - Birkenau concent...