Frank Carlson Library

From the New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker, an enthralling historical saga that recreates the danger, romance, and sacrifice of an era and brings to life one courageous, passionate American--Mildred Fish Harnack--and her circle of women friends who waged a clandestine battle against Hitler in Nazi Berlin. After Wisconsin graduate student Mildred Fish marries brilliant German economist Arvid Harnack, she accompanies him...

Publisher Annotation: History comes home in a deeply moving, exquisitely illustrated tale of a small house, taken by the Nazis, that harbors a succession of families-and becomes a quiet witness to a tumultuous century.

With the rise of the Berlin Wall, twelve-year-old Gerta finds her family suddenly divided. She, her mother, and her brother Fritz live on the eastern side, controlled by the Soviets. Her father and middle brother, who had gone west in search of work, cannot return home. Gerta knows it is dangerous to watch the wall, to think forbidden thoughts of freedom, yet she can't help herself. She sees the East German soldiers with their guns trained on their...

Takes place in the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, where U.S. Army war correspondent Jake Geismar becomes involved with Lena Brandt, a former lover whose missing husband is the object of a manhunt led by both the American and Russian armies. Intrigue mounts as Jake tries to uncover the secrets Lena may be hiding in her desperation to get herself and her husband out of Berlin. Tully is an American soldier working in the U.S. army motor pool who is assigned...

Friday, 11 pm, by the light of an oil lamp, my notebook on my knees. Around 10 pm there was a series of bombs. The siren started right in screaming. Apparently it has to be worked by hand now. No light. Running downstairs in the dark, we slip and stumble. Finally we're in our cellar, behind an iron door that weighs a hundred pounds. The official term is air-raid shelter. We call it cave, underworld, catacomb of fear.

"Berlin 1939. The city is blanketed by snow and ice. In the distance, the rumble of war grows louder. In the shadows, a serial killer rises . . . As the Nazis tighten their chokehold on the capital, panic and paranoia fester as blackout is rigidly enforced. Every night the city is plunged into an oppressive, suffocating darkness - pitch perfect conditions for unspeakable acts. When a young woman is found brutally murdered, it's up to Criminal Inspector...

A thrilling piece of undiscovered history, this is the true account of a young Jewish woman who survived World War II in Berlin. In 1942, Marie Jalowicz, a twenty-year-old Jewish Berliner, made the extraordinary decision to do everything in her power to avoid the concentration camps. She removed her yellow star, took on an assumed identity, and disappeared into the city. In the years that followed, Marie took shelter wherever it was offered, living...

In the early 1980s Ada and Stefan are young, would-be lovers living on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall--Ada lives with her mother and grandmother and paints graffiti on the Wall, and Stefan lives with his grandmother in the East and dreams of escaping to the West.

Discusses why the Berlin Wall was built, what life was like in a divided city, and why it was torn down, and explores the political context behind the wall.

"After her mother’s death, Gabrielle Robinson found two diaries her grandfather had kept while serving as doctor during the fall of Berlin 1945. He recorded his daily struggle to survive in the ruined city where little could be done for the wounded without water, light, and medications. But then the diaries revealed something that hit Robinson like a punch to the gut: Api, her beloved grandfather, had been a Nazi. Robinson juxtaposes her grandfather’s...