Mozart's Wife, Canadian Edition
Giddy sugarplum or calculating bitch? Pretty Konstanze aroused strong feelings among her contemporaries. Her in-law's loathed her. Mozart's friends, more than forty years after his death, remained eager to gossip about her "failures" as wife to the world's first superstar. Maturing from child, to wife, to hard-headed widow, Konstanze would pay Moza …
Across the Rivers of Memory
Transnistria, Romania, did not exist on a map. Yet that is where ten-year-old Felicia Steigman and her parents arrived in 1941, after a cruel deportation and death march overseen by Romanian Nazi collaborators. After surviving three years amid squalor, devastation and death, they finally returned to their pre-war idyllic hometown, Vatra Dornei, onl …
Never Far Apart
Kati and her younger sister, Ilonka, arrived in Canada with painful memories from the Holocaust, which took both of their parents. Their harrowing time alone in the Budapest ghetto was fresh in their minds, as were their fragile hopes to be adopted. But their lives in Toronto were far from what they expected, and full of broken promises. As the sis …
Hope's Reprise
David Newman’s gifts as a musician and a teacher carried him through years of brutality during the war. Torn from his family in Poland and deported for forced labour at Skarzysko- Kamienna, David battled desperation and the mounting death toll by writing songs, poems and satires about life in the camp. Later, in the infamous Buchenwald camp, the …
A Name Unbroken
When Germany occupied Hungary in 1944, fifteen-year-old Miklos Friedman drew on his wits to survive. Recruited into forced labour, sent to a ghetto and, ultimately, to the Nazi camps of Auschwitz and Mühldorf, Miklos never stopped fighting to change his fate. After the war, he risked everything in order to leave his past behind. Decades later, a c …
Where Courage Lives
From the bustling city of Paris to the quaint, countryside village of Champlost, France, Where Courage Lives follows ten-year-old Muguette Szpajzer and her family as they sought refuge from the war. Written in vignettes with child-like charm and innocence, Muguette’s memoir provides rich insight into rural life during wartime upheaval, honouring …
The Amazing Travels of Ibn Battuta
In 1325, when Ibn Battuta was just twenty-one, he bid farewell to his parents in Tangier, Morocco, and embarked on a pilgrimage to Mecca. It was thirty years before he returned home, having seen much of the world. In this book he recalls his amazing journey and the fascinating people, cultures and places he encountered.
After his pilgrimage to Mecca …
The Amazing Discoveries of Ibn Sina
Born in Persia more than a thousand years ago, Ibn Sina was one of the greatest thinkers of his time — a philosopher, scientist and physician who made significant discoveries, especially in the field of medicine, and wrote more than one hundred books.
As a child, Ibn Sina was extremely bright, a voracious reader who loved to learn and was fortunat …
The Lost Knight of Arabia
To whoever finds this journal:I started out this rainy November morning in 1988 as an archeology intern uncovering sunken treasure from the Steamboat Arabia, but due to circumstances I don’t understand, at the end of the day I found myself on board the Arabia, back in 1856, the year she sank. Thus Brianna begins her journal, finding herself rescu …
Prospecting for Love
Take two old prospectors, one modern day writer/photographer, and one handsome, if somewhat absent-minded mine owner and mix them up with an explosion gone awry in the Nevada mining town of Peavine. Add to that a time difference of over 145 years, and the chances for mishaps, mayhem and romance are as abundant as the gold mines scattered in the hil …
Dancing Fawn
Grace Cummings’ family is killed and she’s taken captive by a war party of young Lakota’s hungry to fight the white men encroaching on their sacred black hill; land granted them in a treaty with the government. The brave responsible for leading the war party and Grace’s captor is shunned by the tribe for drawing attention to their band and …
Spinning Through Time
Jaci Eastman believes only reality can be photographed. So how can she photograph a man who doesn’t exist in her time beside a carousel horse that doesn’t exist in his? When Jaci is inadvertently drawn through time to 1874 while photographing a restored carousel from that period, she lands at Wildwood horse farm and must reply on the good grace …
Arizona Sky
The wagon carrying Odessa Clay and her father overturns, killing him. Alone and scared in the middle of the desert, she faces finding her way to Phoenix and her Aunt Susan. Food and water run out, and Odessa is near death when Zach Johnson finds her. Squinting up into his tanned and handsome face, Dessie believes she's died and gone to heaven. Woul …
The Emperor of Lies
Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
In February 1940, the Nazis established what would become the second-largest Jewish ghetto in the Polish city of Lódz. Its chosen leader: Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a sixty-three-year-old Jewish businessman and orphanage director -- and the elusive, authoritarian power sustaining the ghetto’s v …
Notorious
She came walking out of the desert, just as the famous poet Rimbaud had centuries before. Now the nameless woman lies horribly scarred and close to death in an asylum deep in the North African desert. An Australian official, a man code-named John Devlin, has come to question her. It is clear that the woman and Devlin share some kind of past, and al …
The Violin/A Child's Testimony
Rachel Milbauer, a vivacious and outgoing music lover, hid silently in an underground bunker in Nazi-occupied Poland for nearly two years. After the war, a recovered violin, case and photos hidden away by Rachel’s beloved Uncle Velvel became cherished symbols of survival and continuity. Saved by inner fortitude, luck and the courage and caring of …
Traces of What Was
Ten-year-old Steve Rotschild learns to hide, to be silent, to be still – and to wait. He knows the sound of the Nazis’ army boots and knows to hold his breath until their footsteps recede. Rotschild takes us on a captivating journey through his wartime childhood in Vilna, eloquently juxtaposing his past, furtive walks outside the ghetto with hi …
Getting Out Alive
Nineteen-year-old Tommy Dick was killed, only to resurface. Born into a Hungarian family who had converted from Judaism, Tommy soon found out that in the eyes of the Nazis, he was still a Jew, still a target for murder. On the run and in disguise, Tommy was chased by death as much as he was by luck. Getting Out Alive is a vivid and gripping account …
W Hour
Arthur Ney, a twelve-year-old smuggler outside the Warsaw ghetto walls when the ghetto uprising began in the spring of 1943, fled to the countryside with false papers to work on a farm. Almost a year later, he returned to Warsaw and faced the realization that his family was gone. Under the protection of the Salesian Fathers as a “Christian” boy …
We Sang in Hushed Voices
When the Nazis invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944, elementary school teacher Helena Jockel thought only about how to save “her” children as she accompanied them all the way to Auschwitz. Her account of living and surviving in the camp is clear-eyed and poignant, sometimes recording the too-brief moments of beauty and kindness that accompany the …
My Heart is At Ease
In June 1942, when twelve-year-old Gerta is deported with her parents to the Theresienstadt ghetto – the Nazis' deceptive "model Jewish settlement" – her family helps her cope with the surrounding devastation. Later, alone in Auschwitz, Gerta is determined to survive the unbearable. Her intrepid spirit and keen observation guides her anew throu …
Suddenly the Shadow Fell
When 17-year-old Leslie Meisels insisted that his mother and two brothers join a transport leaving Debrecen, Hungary, to go who knows where, that decision luckily put them among the roughly 20,000 “exchange Jews” whose lives had been bartered for cash and military equipment in a secret deal with Adolf Eichmann.
Spring's End
A young boy who loved soccer as much as he loved to write, John Freund found his joyful childhood shattered by the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. John’s family suffered through the systematic erosion of their rights only to be deported to Theresienstadt – en route to the Auschwitz death camp.
Bits and Pieces
Lodz, Poland, 1944. Teenaged Henia Rosenfarb sat with her family in a small, secret room, hiding from Nazi soldiers who were looking for them. Little could the fiery redhead have imagined that her path would take her from wartime Poland to faraway Canada.
Hand Me Down Bride
To help her impoverished family, Sophie agrees to marry a wealthy older in far off America. Less than twenty-four hours after she arrives in German’s Mill, Pennsylvania, events have taken a far stranger turn than anything she could have imagined. Set in Post-Civil-War Pennsylvania, this tale of an arranged marriage is as much family saga as roman …
Winter Fire, Canadian Edition
When Ethan Caine pulled the unconscious woman from the half-frozen creek, he had no idea that his world was about to explode. Dressed in quilled doeskin of Iroquois design, she stirred up dark secrets from his past. At the same time, she was everything he desired. But she was more Indian than white, and on the run for murder. He needed to know the …
All Monsters Must Die
In 1948, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is founded by General Kim Il-sung.
In 1978, North Korea celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of its founding, and Kim Jong-il, who at the time is the head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, orders the kidnapping of the greatest South Korean movie star, the actress Madame Choi, and her ex- …
One Night, Markovitch
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin meets The Marrying of Chani Kaufman in this cinematic novel about the birth of Israel and the true story of the marriages of convenience that were arranged to smuggle Jewish women out of Nazi-occupied Europe.
On the eve of World War II, a ship bearing twenty young men sets sail from the Palestine Territory toward Europe …
Titanic Lives
The sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage in 1912 captured the world's attention a hundred years ago and still holds it today.
Although it was bound for New York, more than 100 passengers aboard the ocean-liner were headed for Canada. Titanic Lives delves into the unique stories of ten of those passengers. Some were rich -- like railroad tyco …
Fire and Air
Told from the points of view of a mother and daughter, Fire and Air tells the story of a Belgian and Dutch family who flee to Canada to escape the Second World War, only to have the past catch up to them.
Ten-year-old Elly Verkest is a first-generation immigrant to Canada. Her father, Gaston, is one of the many Belgians who moved to the country afte …
Little Girl Lost
When the Nazis invaded her small town of Zdun´ska Wola, Poland, in 1939, sixteen-year-old Basia Kohn (later Betty Rich) escaped into Soviet-occupied Poland. Over the next five years, her journey took her thousands of kilometres from a forced labour camp in the far north of the USSR to the subtropical Soviet Georgian region and back to Poland. Afte …
Survival Kit
An only child, fifteen-year-old Zuzana Sermer did what she could to protect her father and ailing mother when the Nazis set up a fascist regime in her native Slovakia in 1939. Four years later, after fleeing to the supposed safety of Budapest, Zuzana and her fiancé, Arthur, instead navigated one treacherous situation after another. Survival Kit is …
Joy Runs Deeper
Bronia and Josio (Joseph) grew up in Kozowa, a shtetl filled with lively culture, eccentric characters and extended family. When Bronia met Josio, she was charmed by his confidence and fearlessness. Separated when Josio was drafted into the army, reunited amid the chaos of war, their connection endured as their persecution intensified. When everyth …
If, By Miracle
Nearly buried alive, ten-year-old Michael Kutz narrowly escaped the Nazi death squad that killed 4,000 Jews, including his own family, in his hometown of Nies´wiez?. Guided by his mother’s last words and determined to survive, he became the youngest member of a partisan resistance group in the dense Belorussian forest, and took part in daring op …
Vanished Boyhood
A month before George Stern’s thirteenth birthday, Germany invaded his native Hungary, anti-Jewish edicts were passed and a ghetto was established. A rebel even then, George refused to wear the Jewish star. “Passing” as a Christian boy, he survived the siege of Budapest as the Soviet Red Army pressed closer, strafing the city while the fascis …
In Hiding
With these last words from their mother, two little girls, Marguerite and her older sister, Henriette, started a long and wandering journey that lasted three years. Given new identities, they had to forget everything about their former, familiar lives. Taken from farms to convents, they learned how to remain silent, to pretend, to lie in order to s …
If Only It Were Fiction
Elsa Thon was a sixteen-year-old photographer's apprentice when the Nazis occupied her town of Pruszków, Poland. When her family was sent to the Warsaw ghetto, Elsa joined a community farm and was recruited by the Underground. Despite her deep belief in destiny, Elsa refused to bow to her fate as a Jew in war-torn Poland.
The Hidden Package
Almost forty years after the end of the end of the war, Claire Baum opens a package from a stranger in Rotterdam, unleashing a flood of repressed memories from her childhood. As Claire delves into her past, she uncovers the personal sacrifice and bravery of her parents, the Dutch resistance and the families that selflessly gave shelter to her and h …
When the Doves Disappeared
From the internationally acclaimed author of Purge comes a chillingly suspenseful, deftly woven new novel that opens up a little-known yet still controversial chapter of history: the occupation, resistance, and collaboration in Estonia during and after World War II.
1941: In Communist-ruled, war-ravaged Estonia, two men are fleeing from the Red Army …
The Return of Tachlanad
Once upon a time in the beleaguered land of Lothria… A princess under a magical aura, her absent-minded sorcerer grandfather; a conflicted warrior prince; a young ne’er-do-well who finds an unlikely friend while on an impossible quest; an imprisoned queen, her betrayed king, their enchanted son and his beautiful enchantress; half-human man-eati …
A Master Passion, the story of Elizabeth and Alexander Hamilton
A Master Passion is the story of our brilliant first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, and his wife, Betsy Schuyler. It begins with their Revolutionary War courtship. Although born poor and illegitimate, as an Aide de Camp to General George Washington, Hamilton dares to reach, boldly pursuing Betsy, daughter of a wealthy and prominent …
Memories from the Abyss/But I Had a Happy Childhood
William Tannenzapf never wavered in his determination to survive and save his wife and baby girl from the evil that gripped his home town of Stanislawów. Blond, cherubic, Renate Krakauer was a “miracle baby” born as the world descended into war and soon surrounded by misery and death. Starved and enslaved, Tannenzapf entrusted his daughter to …
The Shadows Behind Me
For six desperate years, Willie Sterner’s skill as a painter saved him from death at the hands of the Nazis. Faced with inhumane conditions in slave labour camps and grieving the loss of his close-knit family, Sterner relied on courage and ingenuity to hold onto his dignity. Through almost random luck, he came under the protection of the famed Os …
Knocking on Every Door
As Hitler’s army swept into Czechoslovakia in 1939, Anka Voticky, a twenty-five-year-old mother of two, her husband, Arnold, and her family fled halfway around the world to an unlikely refuge – the Chinese port of Shanghai. Estranged from all that was familiar, their security was threatened yet again when the Japanese occupying the city forced …
From Generation to Generation
Hiding from the Nazis in the forests of Slovakia’s Low Tatra Mountains in the fall of 1944, in constant danger from the Germans occupying nearby villages, fourteen-year-old Agnes Grossmann and her family made the daring decision to escape high into the mountains and hike along treacherous ice-covered peaks to safety. Twenty-four years later, Agne …
Tenuous Threads / One of the Lucky Ones
Two Jewish girls born six months apart – Judit Grünfeld (Judy Abrams) in Hungary and Eva Felsenburg (Marx) in Czechoslovakia – are separated from their parents and forced to "pass" as Christian children. Theirs are the amazingly parallel but unique stories of two children who were able to survive when so many others perished.
Fleeing from the Hunter
On the run in Nazi-occupied Poland, thirteen-year-old orphan Marian Finkelman — later Domanski — was forced to grow up much too early. When he finally escaped the ghetto in his hometown, Marian’s perfect Polish and fair complexion helped him narrowly escape death as he travelled through the Polish countryside.
E96: Fate Undecided
The son of an Antwerp diamond merchant, Paul-Henri Rips was ten when the Nazis invaded Belgium and ended his “golden childhood” forever. Guided by his father’s admonition to “Sei a mensch” (Be a decent person), Rips managed to hold onto his humanity in the face of unfathomable inhumanity.
If Home is Not Here
Not quite two when he immigrated to Canada, Max Bornstein returned to Europe in 1933, the year that Adolf Hitler came to power. Barely surviving as a stateless refugee in 1930s Paris, he escaped France when it fell to the Nazis only to be interned in a Spanish concentration camp.
Gatehouse to Hell
At fifteen, Felix Opatowski begins smuggling goods out of the Lodz ghetto in exchange for food. In 1943 he is deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he is recruited as a runner for the Polish Underground and implicated in the plot to blow up the crematoria.