Long ago in Germany, an old woman cleans her house and decorates her Christmas tree, hoping that this year she will witness some special Christmas Eve magic.

"In April 1938, a man calling himself Josef Hofmann arrives at a boarding house in Hamm, Germany, and lets a room from the widow who owns it. Fifty years later, Walter Gersdorff, the widow's son, who was eleven years old in the spring of 1938, discovers the carefully hidden diary the boarder had kept during his stay, even though he should never have written any of its contents down. What Walter finds is a scathing chronicle of one the most tumultuous...

"By April 1916, the fervor that accompanied war's outbreak has faded. In its place is a grim reality. Throughout Germany, essentials are rationed. Hope, too, is in short supply. Anna Zeller, whose fiancé, Bruno, is fighting on the western front, works as a nurse at an overcrowded hospital in Oldenburg, trying to comfort men broken in body and spirit. But during a visit from Dr. Stalling, the director of the Red Cross Ambulance Dogs Association, she...

Tapped by President Franklin Roosevelt to travel to Europe and learn what the Nazis are actually planning, 22-year-old John F. Kennedy, a sickly and unpromising second son of Roosevelt's Ambassador to Britain, becomes embroiled in the President's high-stakes effort to stop the flow of German money that is influencing the 1940 U.S. election.

"For fans of Meg Wolitzer and Maggie Shipstead: a sweeping debut novel following an American artist who returns to Germany--where she fell in love and had a child decades earlier--to confront her past at her former mother-in-law's funeral. It's 1971 when Louise leaves Oregon for Düsseldorf, a city grappling with its nation's horrific recent history, to study art. Soon she's embroiled in a scene dramatically different from the one at home, thanks...

"Germany, 1933. The world is not yet at war, but the influence of the Nazi party is spreading like wildfire through Berlin. The prequel to the bestselling Station series introduces us to John Russell, an Englishman with a political past who must keep his head down as the Nazis solidify their power. The Reichstag parliament building has burned down, just four weeks after Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor. The torching will be used to justify...

Just before his death, Sanford Friedman completed this, his final novel, something entirely different from anything he, or for that matter anyone, had written before - Conversations with Beethoven, a moving meditation on greatness and pettiness, vulnerability and genius, that is as elegiac as it is witty and engaging.

After reading the writings of Martin Luther, sixteenth-century nun Katharina von Bora is awakened to her attraction for the religious reformer, and in spite of their differences and convictions, she and Luther begin to form a profound bond.

"King Ludwig II of Bavaria was an enigmatic figure who was deposed in 1886, mysteriously drowning three days later. Eccentric to the point of madness, history tells us that in the years before he died Ludwig engaged in a worldwide search for a new kingdom, one separate, apart, and in lieu of Bavaria. A place he could retreat into and rule as he wished. But a question remains: did he succeed? Enter Cotton Malone. After many months, Malone's protégé,...

As New England swelters in the summer of 1914, Detective Isaac Bell is asked to investigate a cache of missing rifles -- only to discover something much more sinister involving a transistor radio set to summon German U-Boats.