Seamlessly moving back and forth in time between the Soviet Union in the 1940s and contemporary America, The Madonnas of Leningrad is a searing portrait of war and remembrance, of the power of love, memory, and art to offer hope in the face of overwhelming despair. It is the story of Marina, an aging Russian woman caught in the grips of Alzheimer’s. While she cannot retain fresh memories, vivid images of her youth in Leningrad and the toturous German siege are preserved. To hold on to sanity when the Luftwaffe’s bombing began, she burned to memory the exquisite artworks of the Hermitage where she worked as a guide using them to furnish a “memory palace”
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Good-bye to the Mermaids conveys the horrors of war as seen through the innocent eyes of a child. It is the story of World War II as it affected three generations of middle-class German women: Karin, six years old when the war began, who was taken in by Hitler’s lies; her mother, Astrid, a rebellious artist who occasionally spoke out against the Nazis; and her grandmother Oma, a generous and strong-willed woman who, having spent her own childhood in America, brought a different perspective to the events of the time. Finell depicts the lives of people tainted by Hitler’s influence: her half-Jewish relatives who gave in to the strain of trying to remain unnoticed;
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In this riveting novel, bestselling author John Darnton transports us to Victorian England and around the world to reveal the secrets of a legendary nineteenth-century figure. What led Darwin to the theory of evolution? Why did he wait twenty-two years to write On the Origin of Species? The story shifts among Darwin’s adventures as he sails around the world on the Beagle, his daughter Lizzie’s journals recording his subsequent ailments and strange behavior, and the research of present-day anthropologist Hugh Kellem and Darwin scholar Beth Dulicmer, whose obsession with Darwin (and with each other) drives them beyond the accepted boundaries of scholarly research.
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In a story about love, independence, and the power of women, renowned author Faith Sullivan captures World War II on the home front. It is 1942, only a month after the United States has joined the war, and everything is in upheaval—including the Erhardt family. Arlene has left her husband to pursue a new life in California, taking her sister, Betty, and nine-year-old Lark with her.
Betty and Arlene quickly find jobs in the booming San Diego wartime industry, and a small house to rent in a housing project. In a community full of people with similarly uprooted lives,
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Sitting beneath a tree in ancient Bethlehem, Osnath, niece of the prophet Samuel, examines a dusty scrap of parchment she found hidden in her relative’s scroll room. Scrawled on the decaying page is an intriguing message addressed to Ruth the Moabite—great-grandmother of David, the future king of Israel. Compelled to discover the truth about Ruth’s life, Osnath begins searching for the identity of Ruth’s nameless lover and the secret that is still cloaked behind his anonymity. But as she digs deeper into the past, she finds her inquiries blocked by David’s brother Eliab. What is the long-buried truth he fears will come to light?
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Set in Viking Greenland in AD 985, this dramatic novel focuses on the intertwined lives of three women—Katla, who was born into slavery when Vikings seized her Irish mother; Thorbjorg, a seeress steeped in the pagan Norse religion; and Bibrau, the strange silent child Katla bears after she is brutally raped by her master’s son, Torvard. Together these women recount the hardship and wonder of the first years of the Norse colony and the great change that comes to the settlers after Leif, son of Eirik the Red, brings Christianity to Greenland. For Katla, who has long whispered her mother’s Christian blessings in secret,
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