The Last Bookshop in Prague

The Last Bookshop in Prague PDF Author: Helen Parusel
Publisher: Boldwood Books Ltd
ISBN: 1837515530
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
An utterly breathtaking historical novel, perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah Was she incredibly brave or incredibly stupid? Neither. Just a bookshop girl doing what she could against her country’s oppressors. The banned books club was only the beginning; a place for the women of Prague to come together and share the tales the Germans wanted to silence. For bookshop owner, Jana, doing the right thing was never a question. So when opportunity comes to help the resistance, she offers herself – and her bookshop. Using her window displays as covert signals and hiding secret codes in book marks, she’ll do all in her power to help. But the arrival of two people in her bookshop will change everything: a young Jewish boy with nowhere else to turn, and a fascist police captain Jana can’t read at all. In a time where secrets are currency and stories can be fatal, will she know who to trust? A heart-wrenching and powerful story of courage, tenacity and love. Fans of Suzanne Goldring, Mandy Robotham and Debbie Rix will devour this unforgettable novel. Praise for Helen Parusel: 'This debut shines a light on a little known, but no less vital, corner of the war - events we should all know about. Fascinating.' Mandy Robotham 'The story is poignant and compelling - and what an ending: wow! ... A brilliant story with a powerful message. I wholeheartedly recommend it.' Gill Thompson ‘This novel is a true page turner, as well as being a heart-wrenching, emotional story of one of the darkest chapters of history ...first class research and captivating story-telling!' Louise Fein 'Pacy, twisty and emotional... a beautiful page-turner ... I highly recommended it.' Amanda Geard 'The layers of deception Laila encounters at the Lebensborn home were masterfully done and had me glued to the pages. A powerful debut, and a must-read for fans of historical fiction.' Andie Newton 'Atmospheric and gripping.' Jacquie Bloese 'A heartbreaking tale of love, loss and overwhelming courage. I was captivated, and couldn't turn the pages fast enough.' Siobhan Daiko 'The compelling story of Laila - a woman of great hope and courage - who showed how love, loyalty and compassion can endure despite the evils of war.' Catherine Law

The Last Bookshop in Prague

The Last Bookshop in Prague PDF Author: Helen Parusel
Publisher: Boldwood Books Ltd
ISBN: 1837515530
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book Here

Book Description
An utterly breathtaking historical novel, perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah Was she incredibly brave or incredibly stupid? Neither. Just a bookshop girl doing what she could against her country’s oppressors. The banned books club was only the beginning; a place for the women of Prague to come together and share the tales the Germans wanted to silence. For bookshop owner, Jana, doing the right thing was never a question. So when opportunity comes to help the resistance, she offers herself – and her bookshop. Using her window displays as covert signals and hiding secret codes in book marks, she’ll do all in her power to help. But the arrival of two people in her bookshop will change everything: a young Jewish boy with nowhere else to turn, and a fascist police captain Jana can’t read at all. In a time where secrets are currency and stories can be fatal, will she know who to trust? A heart-wrenching and powerful story of courage, tenacity and love. Fans of Suzanne Goldring, Mandy Robotham and Debbie Rix will devour this unforgettable novel. Praise for Helen Parusel: 'This debut shines a light on a little known, but no less vital, corner of the war - events we should all know about. Fascinating.' Mandy Robotham 'The story is poignant and compelling - and what an ending: wow! ... A brilliant story with a powerful message. I wholeheartedly recommend it.' Gill Thompson ‘This novel is a true page turner, as well as being a heart-wrenching, emotional story of one of the darkest chapters of history ...first class research and captivating story-telling!' Louise Fein 'Pacy, twisty and emotional... a beautiful page-turner ... I highly recommended it.' Amanda Geard 'The layers of deception Laila encounters at the Lebensborn home were masterfully done and had me glued to the pages. A powerful debut, and a must-read for fans of historical fiction.' Andie Newton 'Atmospheric and gripping.' Jacquie Bloese 'A heartbreaking tale of love, loss and overwhelming courage. I was captivated, and couldn't turn the pages fast enough.' Siobhan Daiko 'The compelling story of Laila - a woman of great hope and courage - who showed how love, loyalty and compassion can endure despite the evils of war.' Catherine Law

The Last Palace

The Last Palace PDF Author: Norman Eisen
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0451495799
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
A sweeping yet intimate narrative about the last hundred years of turbulent European history, as seen through one of Mitteleuropa’s greatest houses—and the lives of its occupants When Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence’s forgotten history, and evidence that we never live far from the past. From that discovery unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of four of the remarkable people who had called this palace home. Their story is Europe’s, and The Last Palace chronicles the upheavals that transformed the continent over the past century. There was the optimistic Jewish financial baron, Otto Petschek, who built the palace after World War I as a statement of his faith in democracy, only to have that faith shattered; Rudolf Toussaint, the cultured, compromised German general who occupied the palace during World War II, ultimately putting his life at risk to save the house and Prague itself from destruction; Laurence Steinhardt, the first postwar US ambassador whose quixotic struggle to keep the palace out of Communist hands was paired with his pitched efforts to rescue the country from Soviet domination; and Shirley Temple Black, an eyewitness to the crushing of the 1968 Prague Spring by Soviet tanks, who determined to return to Prague and help end totalitarianism—and did just that as US ambassador in 1989. Weaving in the life of Eisen’s own mother to demonstrate how those without power and privilege moved through history, The Last Palace tells the dramatic and surprisingly cyclical tale of the triumph of liberal democracy.

The Lights of Prague

The Lights of Prague PDF Author: Nicole Jarvis
Publisher: Titan Books
ISBN: 1789093961
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
For readers of VE Schwab and The Witcher, science and magic clash in atmospheric gaslight-era Prague. In the quiet streets of Prague all manner of otherworldly creatures lurk in the shadows. Unbeknownst to its citizens, their only hope against the tide of predators are the dauntless lamplighters - a secret elite of monster hunters whose light staves off the darkness each night. Domek Myska leads a life teeming with fraught encounters with the worst kind of evil: pijavica, bloodthirsty and soulless vampiric creatures. Despite this, Domek find solace in his moments spent in the company of his friend, the clever and beautiful Lady Ora Fischer - a widow with secrets of her own. When Domek finds himself stalked by the spirit of the White Lady - a ghost who haunts the baroque halls of Prague castle – he stumbles across the sentient essence of a will-o'-the-wisp captured in a mysterious container. Now, as it's bearer, Domek wields its power, but the wisp, known for leading travellers to their deaths, will not be so easily controlled. After discovering a conspiracy amongst the pijavice that could see them unleash terror on the daylight world, Domek finds himself in a race against those who aim to twist alchemical science for their own dangerous gain.

The Prague Cemetery

The Prague Cemetery PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547577613
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
The Prague Cemetery is the #1 international bestselling historical novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco. Nineteenth-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man? “Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale... Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life.” —The New York Times

Midnight Train to Prague

Midnight Train to Prague PDF Author: Carol Windley
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
ISBN: 0802146503
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The acclaimed author of Home Schooling returns with a timeless tale of friendship, romance, betrayal, and survival that spans two world wars. In 1927, as Natalia Faber travels from Berlin to Prague with her mother, their train is delayed in Saxon Switzerland. In the brief time the train is idle, Natalia learns the truth about her father—who she believed died during her infancy—and meets a remarkable woman named Dr. Magdalena Schaeffer, whose family will become a significant part of her future. Shaken by these events, Natalia arrives at a spa on the shore of Lake Hevíz in Hungary. Here, she meets Count Miklós Andorján, a journalist and adventurer. The following year, they will marry. Years later, Germany has invaded Russia. When Miklós fails to return from the eastern front, Natalia goes to Prague to wait for him. With a pack of tarot cards, she sets up shop as a fortune teller, and she meets Anna Schaeffer, the daughter of the woman she met decades earlier on that stalled train. The Nazis accuse Natalia of spying, and she is sent to a concentration camp. Though they are separated, her friendship with Anna grows as they fight to survive and to be reunited with their families. “An original and compelling story, told with vivid detail and a richness in setting that I absorbed in one sitting.”—Ellen Keith, bestselling author of The Dutch Wife Praise for Homeschooling “Carol Windley’s writing has a unique power, a perfect combination of delicacy, intensity, and fearless imagination.”—Alice Munro “Startlingly lovely.”—Seattle Times

Last Looks, Last Books

Last Looks, Last Books PDF Author: Helen Vendler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400834325
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
Modern American poets writing in the face of death In Last Looks, Last Books, the eminent critic Helen Vendler examines the ways in which five great modern American poets, writing their final books, try to find a style that does justice to life and death alike. With traditional religious consolations no longer available to them, these poets must invent new ways to express the crisis of death, as well as the paradoxical coexistence of a declining body and an undiminished consciousness. In The Rock, Wallace Stevens writes simultaneous narratives of winter and spring; in Ariel, Sylvia Plath sustains melodrama in cool formality; and in Day by Day, Robert Lowell subtracts from plenitude. In Geography III, Elizabeth Bishop is both caught and freed, while James Merrill, in A Scattering of Salts, creates a series of self-portraits as he dies, representing himself by such things as a Christmas tree, human tissue on a laboratory slide, and the evening/morning star. The solution for one poet will not serve for another; each must invent a bridge from an old style to a new one. Casting a last look at life as they contemplate death, these modern writers enrich the resources of lyric poetry.

Last Days in Old Europe

Last Days in Old Europe PDF Author: Richard Bassett
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241014875
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Selected as a Book of the Year in the TLS and Spectator The final decade of the Cold War, through the eyes of a laconic and elegant observer In 1979 Richard Bassett set out on a series of adventures and encounters in central Europe which allowed him to savour the last embers of the cosmopolitan old Hapsburg lands and gave him a ringside seat at the fall of another ancien regime, that of communist rule. From Trieste to Prague and Vienna to Warsaw, fading aristocrats, charming gangsters, fractious diplomats and glamorous informants provided him with an unexpected counterpoint to the austerities of life along the Iron Curtain, first as a professional musician and then as a foreign correspondent. The book shows us familiar events and places from unusual vantage points: dilapidated mansions and boarding-houses, train carriages and cafes, where the game of espionage between east and west is often set. There are unexpected encounters with Shirley Temple, Fitzroy Maclean, Lech Walesa and the last Empress of Austria. Bassett finds himself at the funeral of King Nicola of Montenegro in Cetinje, plays bridge with the last man alive to have been decorated by the Austrian Emperor Franz-Josef and watches the KGB representative in Prague bestowing the last rites on the Soviet empire in Europe. Music and painting, architecture and landscape, food and wine, friendship and history run through the book. The author is lucky, observant and leans romantically towards the values of an older age. He brilliantly conjures the time, the people he meets, and Mitteleuropa in one of the pivotal decades of its history.

Prague in Danger

Prague in Danger PDF Author: Peter Demetz
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429930357
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakia's great capital during the Nazi Protectorate With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold, his account of more than a thousand years of Central European history, the great scholar Peter Demetz focuses on just six short years—a tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time. He was living in Prague then—a "first-degree half-Jew," according to the Nazis' terrible categories—and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain. Demetz expertly interweaves a superb account of the German authorities' diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Prague's evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. This complex, continually surprising book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.

Prague Spring

Prague Spring PDF Author: Simon Mawer
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590519671
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Room Simon Mawer returns to Czechoslovakia, this time during the turbulent 1960s, with a suspenseful story that mixes sex, politics, and betrayal. In the summer of 1968--a year of love and hate, of Prague Spring and Cold War winter--Oxford students James Borthwick and Eleanor Pike set out to hitchhike across Europe, complicating a budding friendship that could be something more. Having reached southern Germany, they decide on a whim to visit Czechoslovakia, where Alexander Dubček's "socialism with a human face" is smiling on the world. Meanwhile, Sam Wareham, First Secretary at the British embassy in Prague, is observing developments in the country with both a diplomat's cynicism and a young man's passion. In the company of Czech student Lenka Konečková, he finds a way into the world of Czechoslovak youth, its hopes and its ideas. For the first time, nothing seems off limits behind the Iron Curtain. Yet the wheels of politics are grinding in the background. The Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev is making demands of Dubček, and the Red Army is amassed on the borders. How will the looming disaster affect those fragile lives caught up in the invasion? With this shrewd, engrossing, and sensual novel, Simon Mawer cements his status as one of the most talented writers of historical spy fiction today.

Farewell to Prague

Farewell to Prague PDF Author: Miriam Darvas
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing
ISBN: 9780967370149
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Farewell to Prague is a memoir set against the turbulent events of the Nazi era in Germany and World War II England. It is the story of a girl who, at the age of six, witnesses a murder being committed by German Storm Troopers. From that moment, the happy life she has known disintegrates. Her family escapes to Prague, where they create a new life. Six years later, the Germans march into Prague. Now she has to escape to England alone and on foot. She walks across the snow-covered Tatar Mountains. By train, fishing boat, and ship, she finally manages to get to England. She comes of age there during the bombing of London. When the war ends, she immediately returns to the Continent to discover the fate of her family. Farewell to Prague is a gripping true story that will fascinate and inspire readers of all ages.