BRILLIANT, YOUNG AND AMBITIOUS, Annika Tritzchler defies the norms of 1930s Berlin by pursuing medical training in a venue traditionally dominated by men. Facing contempt from her counterparts is minor compared to the massive upheaval in a city transitioning to dictatorship while brutally persecuting its enemies.
Annika’s career takes a decisive turn when, early in her psychiatric residency, she is expected to participate in applied eugenics- the roguish trend within Nazi medicine. Sterilizing patients deemed racially inferior and euthanizing the handicapped (including patients that she, herself, has been treating) works against everything she holds sacred. Acquiescence means choosing survival over morality, the antithesis to the spirituality nurtured by her Lutheran mother and Jewish stepfather.
Brimming with historical detail, Fräulein is less a story of Nazism than a woman’s attempt to rediscover meaning after her sense of self was shattered by unimaginable trauma. Recapturing identity is central, but only if she comes to terms with guilt.
★★★★★
“There’s so much to love about this novel. It’s a fantastic historical fiction piece that explores a full life heading into the Holocaust and even a bit afterwards, and I love the texture and established setting within the timeline most of all. Leonards’ knowledge of the war accents the plot and allows the gritty realism to feel that much more sound. Annika’s character is quite accessible and well rounded. Her growth from beginning to end is remarkable to witness.”
-Writer’s Digest
“Leonards successfully blends the horrific events of early 20th century Germany with the life story of Annika, whose search for meaning in life leads her into a career in medicine and beyond that into psychiatry and treatment of mental illness. The novel breathes life into many of the key issues of the era, including anti-Semitism, the mass hysteria of Fascism, and the totalitarian regime’s iconic institutions, the concentration camps and the euthanasia programs. Experiencing all of this, Annika tries valiantly to maintain her sanity as well as her sense of morality, and in describing her struggles Leonards has created one of the most unforgettable characters in modern literature.”
-Jack Morrison, Ph.D. Author of Ravensbrück: Everyday Life in a Women’s Concentration Camp 1939-45
“Amazing really what you have done… Ambitious and panoramic!”
-Charles Rotmil one of Maine’s few living survivors of the Holocaust
“Fraulein is a masterfully written, psychologically astute portrayal of a young woman living and practicing psychiatry in a country descending into political and moral insanity, a chaos that consumes its intelligentsia and decent people, and that threatens to consume her own integrity. Filled with lyrical, almost transcendental beauty, and etched depictions of evil, Fraulein is both a gripping story and an unforgettable lesson from history that the gift of a civilized society cannot be taken for granted, but must be nurtured at every turn – it is the only thing saving humanity from the abyss.”
-Jonathan Borkum, Ph.D. Psychologist and Author of Chronic Headaches: Biology, Psychology, and Behavioral Treatment
“Your fictional character, Annika, sounds like my kind of person…”
-Tony Campolo, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Eastern University; public speaker; author of over 35 books; and former spiritual advisor to US President Bill Clinton.
Theophano is a young woman living a peaceful and sheltered life among people who love her. Her father raises her as an equal to his sons and his only ambition for her is to be happy. However, everything will suddenly change when she is forced to move to a distant and inhospitable foreign land where she will have to face insults, challenges, and grave dangers. Will she find the strength to survive, or will she be lost in the darkness of the Middle Ages among people who hate her?
This novel is set in the second half of the tenth century (950-999) and moves between history and myth. It follows a basic historical framework, but most of it is fiction. My inspiration was the life of a great Greek Byzantine woman who became queen of a big Western Empire and managed to influence European civilization like no other. She was the woman that became the Queen of chess.
Rosey had a front-row seat in a changing world, but she soon left her seat to push for change, real change. In doing this, Rosey showed her son, the author, the courage needed to fight the obstacles holding him back in his own life. Her life became his greatest story, the story he had to tell.
As she told her soldier husband, the man who broke her heart, “the point is, husband of mine, I never cheated on you, even though you and the Army left me alone for all those years. I spent more than half our marriage being more married to an idea than a man. I think you should say to me, thank you for your service, isn’t that what some people say to you, who respect what you went through in Vietnam? Well, I went through a lot here at home, and I think I deserve the same consideration.”
See history through a new set of eyes in The Rosey View Of The World, the new historical drama written by Andrew Scott Bassett. It’s a history lesson for our time as we witness the events of the twentieth century that shaped our world today. From the beginning of World War II, the Cold War that soon followed, and the war that tore our nation apart, the Vietnam War, it’s all here in this exciting new tale of one woman’s journey to empowerment. Rosey lived the civil rights movement of the 50s and ’60s, as well as the battle for women’s equality that came next, she did this all with her moral compass intact and her stiff British upper lip for the world to see. From the birth of Beatlemania to the king of rock and roll, to the dignity of Martin Luther King Jr., and even the hope of Kennedy’s Camelot, it’s all here in one amazing story.
Anna Dahlberg grew up eating dinner under her father’s war-trophy portrait of Eva Braun.
Fifty years after the war, she discovers what he never did—that her mother and Hitler’s mistress were friends.
The secret surfaces with a mysterious monogrammed handkerchief, and a man, Hannes Ritter, whose Third Reich family history is entwined with Anna’s.
Plunged into the world of the “ordinary” Munich girl who was her mother’s confidante—and a tyrant’s lover—Anna finds her every belief about right and wrong challenged. With Hannes’s help, she retraces the path of two women who met as teenagers, shared a friendship that spanned the years that Eva Braun was Hitler’s mistress, yet never knew that the men they loved had opposing ambitions.
Eva’s story reveals that she never joined the Nazi party, had Jewish friends, and was credited at the Nuremberg Trials with saving 35,000 Allied lives. As Anna’s journey leads back through the treacherous years in wartime Germany, it uncovers long-buried secrets and unknown reaches of her heart to reveal the enduring power of love in the legacies that always outlast war.
Phyllis Edgerly Ring’s novel, The Munich Girl: A Novel of the Legacies
That Outlast War, explores the enduring effects of a woman’s secret
friendship with Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun. Phyllis is also the author
of the novel, Snow Fence Road, and of the nonfiction works, Life at
First Sight: Finding the Divine in the Details and With Thine Own Eyes:
Why Imitate the Past When We Can Investigate Reality? She studied plant
sciences and ecology, worked as a nurse, taught English to
kindergartners in China, coordinated programs at a Baha’i conference
center, and returns as often as she can to her childhood home of
Germany.
Everything had been planned and executed to perfection. Where was the satisfaction, then? Why was happiness always so elusive?
Zenon McClow, a businessman with a checkered past, flees the United States, hiding first in Ecuador and then in the tropical paradise of New Caledonia. Plagued by burning existential questions, he begins to write down his life story while on the remote Isle of Pines. After failing to find relief, he turns to penning The Mask, a historical novel set in the mysterious land of ancient Thrace.
Zenon’s fiction endeavor is inspired by Evmondia, a kind-hearted Bulgarian girl living in New York who introduced him to the colorful world of the Thracians. He bases his story on events from the 4th century BCE, a time when Philip II of Macedonia, the father of Alexander ‘the Great,’ endangered Thrace. In Zenon’s tale, a young Greek scholar, Trysimachus, sets out on a perilous quest to the court of the Thracian king Ketriporis. As Trysimachus is forced to confront his own prejudices and fears, Ketriporis must deal with the increasing threats to his rule…
Beset by perils of his own—amidst ill health—Zenon re-examines The Mask, convinced it contains clues to help him resolve his troubled past. What will The Mask reveal to Zenon?
An epic tale of adventure, battles, and political intrigues—but also of self-discovery, transformation, and personal healing—Cracking of the Mask brings together two worlds and two eras that, at first glance, have little in common. Readers will experience the revival of an intriguing ancient culture as they embark on a journey in which they will face the everlasting conflict between our personas and who we are beneath the masks.
A broken man will be forged in the flames of war…
It is late 1862, and the United States has been ripped apart by civil war for over a year with no end in sight. The war is a distant thought to Johannes Wolf, a young German immigrant with a crippled leg keeping him off the muster lists.
Desperately dredging the gutters for recruits, Wolf cons his way into the depleted, demoralized, and poorly run Union army, and is promptly placed in the undesirable F Company of the 13th Michigan Cavalry.
Wolf’s company find themselves riding with Custer and the Michigan Brigade on a collision course with master horseman J.E.B. Stuart and the Army of Northern Virginia in a small town in Pennsylvania, called Gettysburg.
Will they stand tall against the knights of the South and prove themselves worthy? Or will they fall beneath screaming bullets and sweeping blades, becoming more bloody fodder for a lost cause?
Northern Wolf is a thrilling, historical page-turner packed with detailed passages of battle, the horrors of war, and the struggle to discover oneself. Fans of Bernard Cornwell, Jeff Shaara, Simon Scarrow, and Steven Pressfield will be captivated by this powerful new series. Start the adventure today!
“McVeigh’s plotting and prose are pitch-perfect” (Publishers Weekly)
Harriet is an intriguing and original ‘take’ on Jane Austen’s immortal Emma, by Publishers Weekly’s 2021 BookLife Prize quarterfinalist, Alice McVeigh.
Emma, a privileged young heiress, decides to mentor Harriet Smith, a pretty boarding-school pupil, and to matchmake her as eligibly as she can… But how is she to guess that Harriet has a secret?
Meanwhile, the brilliant, penniless Jane Fairfax consents to a clandestine engagement with Frank Churchill – though not daring to confess, even to him, that she is being relentlessly pursued by her best friend’s husband.
Harriet sidelines Emma herself in favour of the ingenious Harriet and the fascinating Jane Fairfax. It is Emma – but an Emma with a surprisingly believable twist in its tail.
“A dynamic take on a revered classic. This is still Austen’s Emma—but the story that unfolds through the recollections of these two ‘side’ characters feels remarkably fresh… With or without an understanding of Emma, Harriet contains a fully formed narrative that should satisfy even the choosiest Austen fans… Readers will rarely find the words ‘page-turner’ and ‘Jane Austen’ in the same sentence, but McVeigh’s impeccably written Harriet certainly fits the bill.” (IndieReader editorial review)
“A highly engrossing novel that captures the spirit of Austen and celebrates all the best qualities of her work from new and innovative angles… The characters are vibrant and full of life – McVeigh hits the mark spot-on.” (Readers Favorite editorial review)
“An enchanting recreation of Austen’s world” (author James Conroyd Martin)
Alice McVeigh has had contemporary fiction published by Orion/Hachette, speculative thriller published by Unbound, and historical fiction published by Warleigh Hall Press. Her books have won gold medals in the Pencraft, eLit and Global Book Awards, and been finalists in – among others – the International Book Awards, the Eric Hoffer, the Wishing Shelf, Chanticleer’s Goethe Book Awards, the Indie Excellence Book Awards. They have also IndieBRAG medallions, Kirkus stars, and and placed in the BookLife.