The Secret of the Grand Hôtel Du Lac
The Secret of the Grand Hôtel Du Lac

Author: Kathryn Gauci

Publisher:

Published: 2020-12-04

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9780648714415

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From USA TODAY Bestselling Author, Kathryn Gauci, comes an unforgettable story of love, hope and betrayal, and of the power of human endurance during history's darkest days. Inspired by true events, The Secret of the Grand Hôtel du Lac is a gripping and emotional portrait of wartime France... a true-page-turner. "Sometime during the early hours of the morning, he awoke again, this time with a start. He was sure he heard a noise outside. It sounded like a twig snapping. Under normal circumstances it would have meant nothing, but in the silence of the forest every sound was magnified. There it was again. This time it was closer and his instinct told him it wasn't the wolves. He reached for his gun and quietly looked out through the window. The moon was on the wane, wrapped in the soft gauze of snowfall and it wasn't easy to see. Maybe it was a fox, or even a deer. Then he heard it again, right outside the door. He cocked his gun, pressed his body flat against the wall next to the door, and waited. The room was in total darkness and his senses were heightened. After a few minutes, he heard the soft click of the door latch." February 1944. Preparations for the D-Day invasion are well advanced. When contact with Belvedere, one of the Resistance networks in the Jura region of Eastern France, is lost, Elizabeth Maxwell, is sent back to the region to find the head of the network, her husband Guy Maxwell. It soon becomes clear that the network has been betrayed. An RAF airdrop of supplies was ambushed by the Gestapo, and many members of the Resistance have been killed. Surrounded on all sides by the brutal Gestapo and the French Milice, and under constant danger of betrayal, Elizabeth must unmask the traitor in their midst, find her husband, and help him to rebuild Belvedere in time for SOE operations in support of D-Day.

Hotel Du Lac
Hotel Du Lac

Author: Anita Brookner

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-07-25

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0307826228

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BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • When romance writer Edith Hope’s life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, she flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to restore her to her senses. "Brookner's most absorbing novel ... wryly realistic ... graceful and attractive." —Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive. In the novel that won her the Booker Prize and established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new vocabulary for framing the eternal question "Why love?"

The Desire of Life
The Desire of Life

Author: Matilde Serao

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-07-21

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13:

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"The Desire of Life" by Matilde Serao is an early 20th century book that aims to give insight into the author's perspective. Life and what the meaning of it is has been a topic of discussion since the dawn of time. Thus, whenever a thoughtful book related to this area of intrigue is written, especially when written as well as Serao's, it's important to preserve it for future readers to enjoy.

The Blue Dolphin
The Blue Dolphin

Author: Kathryn Gauci

Publisher:

Published: 2021-06-06

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9780648714422

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From USA TODAY Bestselling author, Kathryn Gauci, comes a powerful and unforgettable portrayal of the hardships of war combined with the darker forces of village life. 'I saw him everywhere: in the brightest star, in the birds that came to my window - he was there. After a love like that, you can endure anything life throws at you.' Set on a Greek island in the Aegean during the German Occupation of Greece, The Blue Dolphin reads like a Greek tragedy. Rich with loyalties and betrayals, it is a harrowing, yet ultimately uplifting story of endurance and love. 1944 Greece: After Nefeli loses her husband during the Italian invasion of Greece in 1940, she ekes out a meager living from her Blue Dolphin taverna with the help of her eight-year-old-daughter, Georgia, their small garden, and Agamemnon the mule. Four of Nefeli's close friends, who belong to the Greek Resistance, ask her to hide a cache of weapons, placing her in mortal danger from the enemy. When the Resistance blows up a German naval vessel filled with troops, three of them are killed, and the Germans start to make regular visits to the island. With the loss of her friends, Nefeli's dire circumstances force her to accept a marriage proposal arranged by the village-matchmakers, but what happens next throws everyone on the island into turmoil and changes the course of Nefeli's and Georgia's lives forever. Extravagant, inventive, and emotionally sweeping, this is a novel that lovers of Nikos Kazantzakis, Louis de Bernieres and Victoria Hislop will not want to miss.

Car Wars
Car Wars

Author: Jonathan Mantle

Publisher: Arcade Publishing

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 872

ISBN-13: 9781559704007

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Ferdinand Porsche, widely revered as the inventor of the VW Beetle, stole the plans for the "people's car" from a Czech designer with Hitler's help. General Motors manufactured jet engines for Hitler's army, then got $33 million in tax exemptions from the U.S. government for damages sustained by Allied bombing of its German factories. Packed with these and other tales of greed and treachery, Car Wars is a must-read lesson in industrial strategy and a fascinating, behind-the-scenes history of the world's best-known automobiles.

Car Wars: Fifty Years of Backstabbing, Infighting, And Industrial Espionage in the Global Market
Car Wars: Fifty Years of Backstabbing, Infighting, And Industrial Espionage in the Global Market

Author: Mantle Jonathan

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-01-05

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1611459559

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An "astonishing...eye-opening chronicle" (Publisher's Weekly) of backstabbing, infighting, and industrial theft and espionage in the world's biggest business. It makes empires; it destroys economies; it shapes history. Welcome to the world's biggest business--the automobile industry. A hundred years ago there were six highly experimental cars. Today there are close to 400 million cars on the planet: set bumper to bumper on a six-lane highway, they would stretch well over 200,000 miles, more than eight times around the earth. With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, is it any wonder that the major car companies wage a relentless war against one another, where (almost) anything goes? Here is the story of all the schemes and deceits, treacheries and shady deals in the battle for the world's car markets since the dawn of the global economy fifty years ago. The first true biography of the automobile, Car Wars gives us the automotive history as seen through the windshield of the car--with stories so spectacular they are often hard to believe. From Gianni Agnelli's deal to make Fiats in the USSR at the height of the cold war and Jose Ignacio Lopez's defection from GM to VW, through Pehr Gyllenhammar's foiled attempt to merge Volvo and Renault, and on to Nicolas Hayek's deal with Mercedes-Benz to build the Swatchcar in 1997, Car Wars is a roller coaster ride down the freeways and the back roads of the world's premier business, and an eye-opening history of the world's best-known and most-loved cars.

Sacred Hunger
Sacred Hunger

Author: Barry Unsworth

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2012-01-10

Total Pages: 647

ISBN-13: 0307948447

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Winner of the Booker Prize A historical novel set in the eighteenth century, Sacred Hunger is a stunning, engrossing exploration of power, domination, and greed in the British Empire as it entered fully into the slave trade and spread it throughout its colonies. Barry Unsworth follows the failing fortunes of William Kemp, a merchant pinning his last chance to a slave ship; his son who needs a fortune because he is in love with an upper-class woman; and his nephew who sails on the ship as its doctor because he has lost all he has loved. The voyage meets its demise when disease spreads among the slaves and the captain's drastic response provokes a mutiny. Joining together, the sailors and the slaves set up a secret, utopian society in the wilderness of Florida, only to await the vengeance of the single-minded, young Kemp.

Moon Tiger
Moon Tiger

Author: Penelope Lively

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 080219737X

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“A powerful, moving and beautifully wrought novel about the ways in which lives are molded by personal memory and the collective past.” —The Boston Globe Winner of the Man Booker Prize Elderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she’s carrying out her last project: a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt. Always the independent woman, often with contentious relationships, Claudia’s personal history is complex and fascinating. As people visit Claudia, they shake and twist the mosaic, changing speed, movement, and voice, to reveal themselves and Claudia’s impact on their world. “Emotionally, Moon Tiger is kaleidoscopic, deeply satisfying. The all too brief encounter between Claudia and Tom will surely rate as one of the most memorable of contemporary fictional affairs. This is one of the best novels I have read for years.” —The London Sunday Telegraph “It pulls us in; it engages us and saddens us. It is also unexpectedly funny . . . It leaves its traces in the air long after you’ve put it away.” —The New York Times Book Review “One of the very best Booker winners . . . it asks hard questions about memory and history and personal legacy; it’s stylistically demanding and inventive . . . a wonderful book.” —The Guardian