TRIGGER WARNING: Nazi brutality and Holocaust detail
Author Etty Weil is prevented from publishing any more books after the anti Jewish laws in France are revealed. She is determined that her voice won’t be silenced but a stay in Drancy leads to deportation to Auschwitz…
The Storyteller of Auschwitz is an historical novel which begins in France in the early 1940s and then follows Etty’s journey as the Nazi ideology is enforced.
Etty is a brave young woman who has abandoned her Jewish faith due to her unhappy childhood. But now she finds herself ostracised for being Jewish and meets others of her faith who restore her belief in the good in the world despite the evil of the Nazi doctrine. Her safety is endangered at every turn and she is eventually captured and sent via Drancy to Auschwitz.
The book is written in the first peron from Etty’s perspective. It is hugely emotive and deeply personal. Etty’s life almost leaps from the page, vividly described and graphically detailed about her experiences and feelings. Amongst the horror of her experience, Etty learns about the strength of human spirit. This book is incredibly powerful and I was swept up in her life. She maintains her hope and therefore so did I, despite the awful things she witnesses and endures.
The strength of friendship, community and faith are important themes in the book. I liked the inclusion of traditional stories to inspire and console. Forgiveness is also crucial to the plot as Etty and Tomasz meet sporadically throughout the book, misunderstanding each other.
The Storyteller of Auschwitz is both beautiful and terrible, full of the brilliant light of spirit whilst not shying away from the hideous depravity of the Holocaust.
Book Description:
Auschwitz, 1942: The Nazis have already cut so many lives short, but can a person truly die if their story survives? I have to make it out. The world needs to know what’s happening here…
Stumbling through the terrifying wrought iron gates of Auschwitz, Jewish author Etty Weil longs for her apartment overlooking the Seine, where she used to laugh with friends, her shelves full of records and her beloved typewriter by the wide window.
Now she looks on in horror as a young girl, Danielle, is ruthlessly torn from her sobbing mother. Etty does the only thing she can to help: trapped inside the maze of barbed wire, she befriends fourteen-year-old Danielle and promises to cherish her like a sister.
Every evening, Etty tells Danielle stories, building a beautiful world of imagination and hope to escape into. Soon, Etty realises that the other women in their cramped hut are listening too. She encourages them to share their lives, to talk about their darling children, their love affairs and the beloved family they’ve already lost. Etty knows she must survive this terrible place: if only to keep her promise to these brave women that their stories will not be forgotten.
But the more hope Etty gives Danielle, the more chances the young girl begins to take, rebelling against the brutal SS guards. Etty tries to protect her, risking her own life and the stories she promised to save. But one day, Danielle goes too far… Will Etty stop her in time to save her? Or will Etty pay the ultimate price for the only thing truly worth dying for: love?
Fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Nightingale and The Choice will lose their hearts to this devastatingly beautiful and hopeful novel. The Storyteller of Auschwitz is a heartbreaking read about finding something to live for when all seems lost.
Author Bio:
Siobhan Curham is an award-winning author, ghost writer, editor and writing coach. She has also written for many newspapers, magazines and websites, including The Guardian, Breathe magazine, Cosmopolitan, Writers’ Forum, DatingAdvice.com, and Spirit & Destiny. Siobhan has been a guest on various radio and TV shows, including Woman’s Hour, BBC News, GMTV and BBC Breakfast. And she has spoken at businesses, schools, universities and literary festivals around the world, including the BBC, Hay Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Bath Festival, Ilkley Festival, London Book Fair and Sharjah Reading Festival.
Fiona, Daisy and Sue volunteer in a charity shop together. One of their regular customers is murdered and the police are struggling to find the culprit or even any motive. The three charity shop workers decide to launch their own investigation…
The Charity Shop Detective Agency is a wonderfully warm and amusing cosy murder mystery set on the south coast of England.
Fiona finds a bloody knife amongst the donations left outside the chairty shop. Later she discovers that one of their elderly customers has been stabbed to death. The police are stumped and there seems to be a serial killer on the loose.
The style of writing is full of gentle humour. I loved the animosity between Fiona and the owner of the rival charity shop across the street. The main characters are easy to like, written in an engaging way with their little quirks.
I found the murder mystery intriguing and was led down several dead ends along with the amateur sleuths, convinced I had guessed the killer before being proved wrong.
The Charity Shop Detective Agency is delightful and I look forward to meeting these lovely ladies for their next case.
THE CHARITY SHOP DETECTIVE AGENCY by Peter Boland
PUT THE KETTLE ON AND DISCOVER AN UTTERLY CHARMING NEW COZY MURDER MYSTERY SET IN A SLEEPY SEASIDE TOWN.
A serial killer is stalking the elderly of Southbourne. The only clue left behind is a domino in the hand of each victim — with a name scratched on the back.
Eighty-six-year-old Sarah Brown is found dead in her hallway one morning by her delivery man. She was stabbed in the back.
Fiona, Sue and Daisy, volunteers at the local charity shop, Dogs Need Nice Homes, can’t believe their favourite customer is dead. The ladies vow to bring the killer to justice.
With plenty of tea and cake along the way, and despite squabbles with their rivals, the Cats Alliance across the street, the Charity Shop Detective Agency is born.
Fans of The Thursday Murder Club, Janice Hallett, Simon Brett, Ian Moore and Sarah Yarwood-Lovett will adore this exciting new voice in cozy crime.
THE DETECTIVE
Level-headed Fiona has found a quiet sanctuary volunteering at the local charity shop, Dogs Need Nice Homes. And she’s found firm friendship with the strong-willed Partial Sue (she’s ever so partial to a cup of tea) and the kindly — and surprisingly tech-savvy — Daisy. Together, these ladies, with Simon Le Bon, Fiona’s scruffy haired terrier cross, investigate murders as the utterly charming Charity Shop Detective Agency.
PETER BOLAND
After studying to be an architect, Pete realised he wasn’t very good at it. He liked designing buildings, he just couldn’t make them stand up — a big handicap in an industry that’s partial to keeping things upright. So he became an advertising copywriter, the highlight of which was creating an ad featuring Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman. He then tried his hand at writing his own stories and quickly realised there’s no magic formula. You just have to put one word in front of the other (and keep doing that for about six months). It also helps if you can resist the lure of surfing and drinking beer in a garden chair.
Megan’s best friend and business partner has just died and her relationship has reached crisis point. She packs the car and runs away with no money and no idea what to do. She is invited to work for famous film star Ross Huston to investigate the ghostly happenings at his home. But Megan keeps seeing a spectral black dog: could she be the next to die…?
Blind House is a spooky ghost story set in the UK.
Megan is at her lowest, grieving for her best friend, scared of her abusive boyfriend, no work and nowhere to live. She had planned to go into ghost hunting with Christina but is not sure she can go it alone. When Ross Huston asks her to advise on strange events, she can’t turn down the opportunity. Moving objects, odd noises, terrifying nightmares, a black dog that she has seen since the accident that killed her friend. It is spooky!
The book is mostly written in the present day but there are some chapters that show Megan’s recent past and others from 1878 which show a victim being tortured by a doctor. The physical and emotional torture is very unpleasant to read due to the graphic descriptions. However, this is in keeping with the horror genre and relevant to the plot.
As readers, we are fully supportive and hopeful for Megan as she faces the future and tries to put the past behind her. She has had a lot of suffering and now she has a new threat from a supernatural source. Meanwhile, in the present day the police are investigating missing women and suspect a link to the current occupants of the house. I was eager to see how the two timelines would converge and enjoyed trying to predict the plot.
Blind House is very sinister and atmospheric. I’d advise reading in daylight!
Fame is about to get deadly in this terrifying, fresh take on a haunted house thriller.
Set in an idyllic Cotswolds village, rookie paranormal investigator, Megan Forrest, is roped into investigating the strange goings-on at the home of Hollywood actor, Ross Huston.
Ross and his wife Deborah are convinced that their Victorian mansion is being haunted by the mentally ill patients who resided there in the late nineteenth century.
Patients who were brutally treated and murdered at the hands of a cruel doctor.
As Megan investigates ghosts from the past, two women from the present go missing- women who were last seen at the Huston’s property. Who was the doctor and how is everything connected?
When Megan finds herself swept up in a dangerous game, she can’t escape.
Who was the Doctor?
One thing she knows for sure, is that there is something watching her…
Author Bio
Jamie-Lee Brooke is the pen name of Brooke Venables who lives with her twin sons in the Worcestershire area. She is an author of both horror and thrillers and works as a dental nurse which gives her plenty of scope to imagine putting people in uncomfortable situations. She loves her job and takes great satisfaction in helping people to smile.
Jamie-Lee’s biggest achievement to date is graduating after studying with the Open University for six years, achieving a BA Honours in Humanities with classical studies and creative writing. It was no mean feat whilst working and being a mum to twins who both have autism and learning difficulties.
Sarah Shaw is a nurse on duty when the police arrive to tell her that her husband is dead. They had only been married a few months and had met while she was nursing his dying first wife. It appears that William has been murdered and the investigating police officer is Sarah’s ex…
The Nurse’s Secret is a mix of crime/police procedural and psychological thriller set in the UK.
Sarah is newly widowed and her husband died in suspicious circumstances. She moves in with a colleague but is unsettled by Kathleen’s overbearing attitude. However, she shows little emotion as she is numb from the devastating news and the worry about the police investigation. The couple had not been married long and his first wife had only died a few months earlier.
The book is written from three third person perspectives: Sarah, Nick and Charlie. The latter two are detectives and Nick was formerly in a relationship with Sarah which was kept a secret from his friend and mentor Charlie.
Secrets are hinted at throughout the book and gradually revealed. I had forgotten the prologue for the first third of the book and then my brain started racing trying to work out how the events and characters link together. Charlie and Nick have been keeping secrets from each other and this threatens the whole investigation.
I really enjoyed the police procedural elements of the book and felt included in the case thanks to two of the perspectives. There is the forensic detail of the post mortem which is very graphic and may upset some readers. The detectives are affected by this experience which shows us their softer side. In contrast, Sarah’s viewpoint focuses more on the psychological elements as she evaluates her relationships.
The Nurse’s Secret is a well plotted novel with plenty of secrets to reveal.
You trust her with your life… She has a deadly secret.
In hospital, lives begin and end every day.
The doctors and nurses work round the clock to keep their patients breathing, yet death is part of their routine.
When the police arrive in the brightly lit corridors, asking for pretty, young, Nurse Shaw, staff and patients start talking.
The say Sarah Shaw’s husband has been murdered. They’d only been married for a few short months.
The police want to know where Sarah was that night. And why the medicine went missing from the hospital a few days before.
As William Shaw’s complicated past unravels it’s clear that Sarah has secrets of her own. But as she delivers pills in paper cups with a stiff smile and shaking hands, her patients want to know, is she a killer, or is her life in danger too?
An addictive psychological thriller that will have you glued to the pages until the final shocking twist. Perfect for fans of K.L. Slater, Shari Lapena and Clare Mackintosh.
Author Bio:
Liz Lawler grew up sharing pants, socks, occasionally a toothbrush, sleeping four to a bed. Born in Chatham and partly raised in Dublin, she is one of fourteen children. She spent over twenty years as a nurse and has since fitted in working as a flight attendant, a general manager of a five star hotel, and is now working with trains. She became an author in 2017 when her debut novel Don’t Wake Up was published by Twenty7.
1944, the Second World War continues and Jewish Margarete is still pretending to be Annegret Gruber, an Aryan German. But her true identity is threatened to be revealed by a high ranking Nazi and danger finally catches up with her…
Daughter of the Dawn is the fourth book to feature the story of Margarete, a Jewish woman living under an assumed identity in Nazi Germany. We are quickly caught up on the plotline from previous books in the opening chapter so it would work as a stand alone novel if necessary,
The tension which has been explicit through the previous books continues as Margarete attempts to protect others from their fate in the extermination camps. Her own position is precarious as she struggles to maintain her secret identity yet she constantly puts herself at risk for the sake of others.
I genuinely cared about Margarete’s character and wanted to beg her to stay safe for a few more months until the end of the war. She has finally found some happiness and love which offers a glimmer of hope during the dark times described in the book. The emotional side of the characters balances against the fear and tension that Margarete and her friends experience as a result of the brutal Nazi ideology.
Daughter of the Dawn is a fine ending to this historical saga and I enjoyed following Margarete’s journey.
1944, Germany: The war is still raging, as a young woman named Margarete hides from the Nazis in plain sight. With each day that passes, she takes more risks. But will one of those risks ultimately take her to the most evil place on earth?
After a bombing led to her identity being mistaken, Margarete Rosenbaum has been living disguised as one of the Nazis themselves, for almost the entire war.
But secretly—aided by Stefan, a resistance fighter she’s becoming impossibly drawn to—she is trying to liberate the Jewish workers sent to work on the land she’s inherited, and to sabotage the work of the factory she’s meant to be in charge of.
She knows that every day she is risking her life. But she also knows what she has to do. Because it could be her on the other side of the barbed wire fence. And for every person she saves from the Nazis, it’s worth it.
Until she is discovered. And to protect the people she had been helping, she knows she must accept her fate. Even when they send her to the very place she’s hoped to save her prisoners from: Auschwitz… Where no one comes out alive. As the war moves towards its brutal end, will she survive to see Stefan again?
A totally heartbreaking story about courage, love and betrayal, perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Beneath a Scarlet Sky and All the Light We Cannot See.
Author Bio:
Marion Kummerow was born and raised in Germany, before she set out to “discover the world” and lived in various countries. In 1999 she returned to Germany and settled down in Munich where she’s now living with her family.
Inspired by the true story about her grandparents, who belonged to the German resistance and fought against the Nazi regime, she started writing historical fiction, set during World War II. Her books are filled with raw emotions, fierce loyalty and resilience. She loves to put her characters through the mangle, making them reach deep within to find the strength to face moral dilemma, take difficult decisions or fight for what is right. And she never forgets to include humor and undying love in her books, because ultimately love is what makes the world go round.
