Sign up
Search
Advanced search settings

Search only in certain items:

Search results
All (1599)
Content
People
Apps
Books
Orbs
Movies
Music
Podcasts
Shows
Tabletop Games
Tech
TV
Video Games
YouTube Channels
Videos
40x40

ClareR (5726 KP) rated Friedrichstrasse 19 in Books

Jun 11, 2023  
Friedrichstrasse 19
Friedrichstrasse 19
Emma Harding | 2022 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Friedrichstrasse 19 is 6 stories set in the same building over its lifetime. We see Berlin through the eyes of those that lived in the building between 1906 and 2019, and there are some serious historical moments as well as cultural highlights: a woman in the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) in 1986; a photographers apprentice in 1906; an unhappily married Jewish woman who meets an actress pre-WW2; the Berlin Airlift post WW2 era, when the actress is trying to find her Jewish lover (she knows there’s little chance); 1969 and a photographer finds a young GDR escapee and decides to help her; 2019, a divorcee originally from the East, who met her ex-husband on the night that the Wall fell.

All intriguing characters and stories that give a glimpse into urban life in Berlin, as well as its history. It probably helped that I was familiar with the history of Germany generally (thanks to a German degree many years ago!), and I make a point of reading fiction set in Germany when/ if I come across it. And this is a pleasure when I come across books like Friedrichstrasse 19!
  
40x40

Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated The German Nurse in Books

Apr 1, 2024  
TG
The German Nurse
M.J. Hollows | 2024
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
62 of 220
Book
The German Nurse
By M.J. Hollows
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Her past could kill you.
Guernsey, 1940. As war storms through Europe, Churchill orders the evacuation of all military personnel from the island. Boats ferry soldiers and vulnerable young children to England, leaving their parents and loved ones behind to face the invading German army on their own.
 
Her love could save you.
One of the few remaining policemen on the island, Jack must protect not only his friends and family, but also the woman he loves: Johanna, a Jewish nurse from Germany, whose secret faith could prove fatal to them both.
 
Her fate is in your hands.
When the Nazis arrive, everything changes. Jack is forced to come to terms with the pain and loss of a world re-making itself around him. And then a list of Jews on the island is drawn up, and he must make an awful choice: write down Johanna’s name and condemn her, or resist and put his family in immediate danger…

A good read for those who love historical fiction. This was definitely a heartbreaking story.
Set during German occupation of Gernsey.
  
40x40

ClareR (5726 KP) rated The Beasts of Paris in Books

Oct 1, 2024  
The Beasts of Paris
The Beasts of Paris
Stef Penney | 2023 | Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
What I love most about historical fiction, is that I get to learn something new about the history of a place or a time I didn’t know about. I mean, I’d never heard of the Siege of Paris in 1870, and yet I now know a lot more about it through the characters in The Beasts of Paris.

There’s Victor, the assistant vet at the Menagerie; Anne has been an inmate at the women’s Salpetriere asylum for many years, provided entertainment for paying Parisians thanks to the immoral Dr. Jospin, and now comes to work as the Chief Vet’s maid at the Menagerie; Ellis is hiding his trauma from the American Civil War where he was a doctor, and is attempting to become a poet; and Lawrence is a Canadian Photographer.

We learn of the horrors of the siege and the further horrors of its aftermath. The descriptions of these events and how the Parisians both live through and cope with deprivation and fear, are emotional and engaging.

I was left wondering who exactly the Parisian beasts were; those inside or outside the menagerie?

Just an excellent story.