By the late 1930s, Europe sat on the brink of a world war. As the holocaust approached, many Jewish families in Germany fled to one of the only open port available to them: Shanghai. Once called "the armpit of the world," Shanghai ultimately served as the last resort for tens of thousands of Jews desperate to escape Hitler's "Final Solution." Against this backdrop, 11-year-old Ursula Bacon and her family made the difficult 8,000-mile voyage to Shanghai, with its promise of safety. But inst...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Two million copies sold! Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this remarkable debut novel reveals the power of unsung women to change history in their quest for love, freedom, and second chances.“Extremely moving and memorable . . . This impressive debut should appeal strongly to historical fiction readers and to book clubs that adored Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Anthony Doerr’s All ...

THE FIRST NOVEL IN PHILIP KERR’S ACCLAIMED HISTORICAL MYSTERY SERIESWhen private investigator Bernie Gunther agrees to track down some stolen jewels, his search takes him down the dangerous streets of pre-World War 2 Berlin and into the path of the most influential players in Nazi Germany…Wisecracking cop turned private investigator Bernie Gunther specializes in missing persons, and as the Third Reich’s power has grown, Bernie has become a ...

Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin’s purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-createsthe European world of 1934–45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 P...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “[Furst] glides gracefully into an urbane pre–World War II Europe and describes that milieu with superb precision.” —Janet Maslin, The New York TimesIn the autumn of 1940, Russian émigré journalist I. A. Serebin is recruited in Istanbul by an agent of the British secret services for a clandestine operation to stop German importation of Romanian oil—a last desperate attempt to block Hitl...

Suppose Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, Hitler, and Hirohito had united to conquer an even greater foe?No one could top their power—not the Germans, not the Japanese, not the Russians, not the United States.From Pearl Harbor to panzers rolling through Paris to the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle of Midway, war seethed across the planet as flames of destruction rose higher and hotter.And then, suddenly, the real enemy came.The invade...

IRENE GUT WAS just 17 in 1939, when the Germans and Russians devoured her native Poland. Just a girl, really. But a girl who saw evil and chose to defy it.“No matter how many Holocaust stories one has read, this one is a must, for its impact is so powerful.”—School Library Journal, StarredA Book Sense Top Ten PickA Publisher’s Weekly Choice of the Year’s Best BooksA

"Explores the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear explosion in Chernobyl through the lives of inhabitants of a tiny Ukrainian village . . . poignant and inspiring." — Library JournalEarly on an April Saturday in 1986 in a farm village in Ukraine, widow Marusia Petrenko and her family awake to a day of traditional wedding preparations. Marusia bakes her famous wedding bread—a korovai—in the communal village oven to take to her neighbor's...

WORLDWAR: BOOK 4At the bloody height of World War II, the deadliest enemies in all of human history were forced to put aside their hatreds and unite against an even fiercer foe: a seemingly invincible power bent on world domination.With awesome technology, the aggressors swept across the planet, sowing destruction as Tokyo, Berlin, and Washington, D.C., were A-bombed into submission. Russia, Nazi Germany, Japan and the U.S. were not easily cowed, however. With cunning and inc...

One of the greatest modern novels, The Tin Drum is the story of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath, who has lived through the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Matzerath provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition in the modern world.In this edition, Breon Mitchell, acclaimed translator and scholar, draws from a wealth of detailed scholarship to produce a tr...

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • National Book Award Winner • Pulitzer Prize Finalist • A New York Times Notable BookFrom the widely acclaimed author—a rich and atmospheric novel about a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women.The demands of human longing contend with the weight of centuries of custom in acclaimed author Ha Jin’s Waiting, a novel of unexpected richn...

**Originally banned in China but later named one of that nation’s most influential books, a searing novel that portrays one man’s transformation from the spoiled son of a landlord to a kindhearted peasant.“A work of astounding emotional power.” —Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress**From the author of Brothers and China in Ten Words: this celebrated contemporary classic of Chinese literature was also adapted for film by Zh...