Experience Holy Week as if for the first time... first hand.Bestselling novelist and broadcaster Rhidian Brook invites you to step back into the story of Holy Week and see it unfold as if you were there.Told as a series of vivid, real-time eyewitness reports, Notes on an Execution takes you from Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem to his execution and beyond, without the cushion of hindsight. You stand among the crowds and disciples, experiencing each moment with a...

‘The problem with Rhidian’s Thoughts is how often I find myself agreeing with him. Most annoying!’ John HumphrysWhy bother with God?Do you know what matters in life?What are the limits of kindness?Why doesn’t God intervene?What are you worth?For twenty years, bestselling novelist Rhidian Brook has pondered such questions on Radio 4's Thought for the Day, encouraging, nudging, sometimes ...

Sent by the Salvation Army to bear witness to the work they were doing in response to the Aids pandemic, Rhidian Brook, his wife and two children, follow a tril of devastation through communities still shattered and being broken by the disease. He met truck stop workers in Kenya, victims of rape in Rwanda, child-headed families in Soweto, children of prostitutes in India. A remarkable journey amongst the infected and the affected through a world that, despite seeming on the brink of collap...

1946, post-World War II Hamburg. While thousands wander the rubble, lost and homeless, Colonel Lewis Morgan, charged with overseeing the rebuilding of this devastated city and the denazification of its defeated people, is stationed in a grand house on the River Elbe. He is awaiting the arrival of his wife, Rachael—still grieving for their eldest son—and their only surviving son, Edmund. But rather than force the owners of the house, a German widower and his rebellious daughter, out onto th...

1946, post-World War II Hamburg. While thousands wander the rubble, lost and homeless, Colonel Lewis Morgan, charged with overseeing the rebuilding of this devastated city and the denazification of its defeated people, is stationed in a grand house on the River Elbe. He is awaiting the arrival of his wife, Rachael—still grieving for their eldest son—and their only surviving son, Edmund. But rather than force the owners of the house, a German widower and his rebellious daughter, out onto th...

Graham Greene meets Dostoevsky in a thrilling and atmospheric story of guilt and restitution set in postwar Vienna.Vienna, 1948. The war is over, and as the initial phase of de-Nazification winds down, the citizens of Vienna struggle to rebuild their lives amid the rubble.Anna Beer returns to the city she fled nine years earlier after discovering her husband's infidelity. She has come back to find him and, perhaps, to forgive him. Traveling on the same train from Switzerlan...

Alternating between a woman' s childhood in a small town and as an adult in the city, this novel traces a Jehovah Witness family' s splintering belief system, their isolation, and the erosion of their relationships. As Emily becomes closer to her closeted Uncle Tyler, she begins to challenge her upbringing. Her questions about the Jehovah' s Witnesses' insular lifestyle, rigid codes of conduct, and tenets of their faith haunt her older sister Lenora too. When Lenora disappears, everything ...

"Bloom where you're planted," is the advice Christine Bolz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It's a world she's begun to glimpse through music, books—and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for.Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is c...

In 1920, in small-town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as "the Jew store." That's how Stella Suberman's father's store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee, was known locally. The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one barber shop, one beauty parlor, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches. Aaron...

It’s 1956, and working-mother Ava Lark and her son, Lewis, have rented a house in a less-than-welcoming Boston suburb. There, Lewis finds he is only able to befriend the other fatherless kids on the block, Jimmy and Rose. But when Jimmy goes missing, neighborhood paranoia ramps to new heights, further ostracizing Ava and Lewis.Lewis never recovers from the loss of his childhood friend. In his twenties, he is a failure in love, living without direction, estranged from his mother. Wh...

“A soaring debut novel. An elegant, compelling puzzle of family, memory and solitude that brings to life modern-day Boston and postwar Russia through a profound love story. Graceful, moving, and unexpected.” —Matthew Pearl, New York Times bestselling author of The Dante ClubIn Russian Winter, a famed ballerina’s jewelry auction in Boston reveals long-held secrets of love and family, friendship and rivalry, harkening back to Stalin...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls comes a spellbinding novel of love, despair, and revenge—set in war-ravaged Tuscany.1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills south of Florence, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. Eighteen-year-old Cristina spends her days swimming in the pool, playing with her young...