Village of Secrets

Author: Caroline Moorehead
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473513030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP FIVE BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2014 From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Train in Winter comes the extraordinary story of a French village that helped save thousands who were pursued by the Gestapo during World War II. High up in the mountains of the southern Massif Central in France lies a cluster of tiny, remote villages united by a long and particular history. During the Nazi occupation, the inhabitants of the Plateau Vivarais Lignon saved several thousand people from the concentration camps. As the victims of Nazi persecution flooded in – resisters, freemasons, communists and Jews, many of them children – the villagers united to keep them safe. The story of why and how these villages came to save so many people has never been fully told. But several of the remarkable architects of the mission are still alive, as are a number of those they saved. Caroline Moorehead has sought out and interviewed many of the people involved in this extraordinary undertaking, and brings us their unforgettable testimonies. It is a story of courage and determination, of a small number of heroic individuals who risked their lives to save others, and of what can be done when people come together to oppose tyranny.

The Black Book of Secrets

Author: F. E. Higgins
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429930802
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Book Description
A boy arrives at a remote village in the dead of night. His name is Ludlow Fitch—and he is running from a most terrible past. What he is about to learn is that in this village is the life he has dreamed of—a safe place to live, and a job, as the assistant to a mysterious pawnbroker who trades people's deepest, darkest secrets for cash. Ludlow's job is to neatly transcribe the confessions in an ancient leather-bound tome: The Black Book of Secrets. Ludlow yearns to trust his mentor, who refuses to disclose any information on his past experiences or future intentions. What the pawnbroker does not know is, in a town brimming with secrets, the most troubling may be held by his new apprentice.

Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed

Author: Philip P. Hallie
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060925175
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description
During the most terrible years of World War II, when inhumanity and political insanity held most of the world in their grip and the Nazi domination of Europe seemed irrevocable and unchallenged, a miraculous event took place in a small Protestant town in southern France called Le Chambon. There, quietly, peacefully, and in full view of the Vichy government and a nearby division of the Nazi SS, Le Chambon's villagers and their clergy organized to save thousands of Jewish children and adults from certain death.

Village of Scoundrels

Author: Margi Preus
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1613125070
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
Based on the true story of the French villagers in WWII who saved thousands of Jews, this novel tells how a group of young teenagers stood up for what is right. Among them is a young Jewish boy who learns to forge documents to save his mother and later goes on to save hundreds of lives with his forgery skills. There is also a girl who overcomes her fear to carry messages for the Resistance. And a boy who smuggles people into Switzerland. But there is always the threat that they will be caught: A policeman is sent to keep an eye on them, German soldiers reside in a local hotel, and eventually the Gestapo arrives, armed with guns and a list of names. As the knot tightens, the young people must race against time to bring their friends to safety.

The Best Loved Villages of France

Author: Stéphane Bern
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
ISBN: 2080201832
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
An insider’s tour of France’s most beloved and beautiful villages uncovers the country’s hidden treasures. The Best Loved Villages of France brings the reader on a tour of forty-four of the country’s most treasured destinations. Always picturesque, but often well-kept secrets, the book offers insight into village life and local history. Take a tour of a crumbling medieval fortress with the mayor of Lavardin or peruse the maritime objects found at sea by a mustached fisherman in Saint-Suliac. Stroll along the coast of the Wissant bay windsurfer’s paradise or promenade through the manicured grounds of Vaux-le-Vicomte. Watch the sunrise over the fairy-tale castle in Montsoreau or enjoy a fresh langoustine dinner in Piana, Corsica. This book offers an illustrated tour around all twenty-two regions of France, from Provence and the Alps, to Normandy and the Loire. Aerial and intimate photographs invite the reader to explore these splendid locales, while the descriptions, anecdotes, and interviews with local village-dwellers plunge you into the individual history and character of France’s diverse regions. The villages featured in the book were selected in a popular vote by the French public and they represent an authentic journey into the heart of France.

A Village Scandal (The Village Secrets, Book 2)

Author: Dilly Court
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0008287805
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
The No.1 Sunday Times bestselling book! The second book in the dramatic new Village Secrets trilogy from the Sunday Times bestselling author – the perfect, uplifting book to curl up with.

Chateau of Secrets

Author: Melanie Dobson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476746125
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
A courageous young noblewoman risks her life to hide French resistance fighters; seventy years later, her granddaughter visits the family’s abandoned chateau and uncovers shocking secrets from the past. Gisèle Duchant guards a secret that could cost her life. Tunnels snake through the hill under her family’s medieval chateau in Normandy. Now, with Hitler’s army bearing down, her brother and several friends are hiding in the tunnels, resisting the German occupation of France. But when German soldiers take over the family’s château, Gisèle is forced to host them as well—while harboring the resistance fighters right below their feet. Taking in a Jewish friend’s baby, she convinces the Nazis that it is her child, ultimately risking everything for the future of the child. When the German officers begin to suspect her deception, an unlikely hero rescues both her and the child. A present day story weaves through the past one as Chloe Sauver, Gisèle’s granddaughter, arrives in Normandy. After calling off her engagement with a political candidate, Chloe pays a visit to the chateau to escape publicity and work with a documentary filmmaker, Riley, who has uncovered a fascinating story about Jews serving in Hitler’s army. Riley wants to research Chloe’s family history and the lives that were saved in the tunnels under their house in Normandy. Chloe is floored—her family isn’t Jewish, for one thing, and she doesn’t know anything about tunnels or the history of the house. But as she begins to explore the dark and winding passageways beneath the chateau, nothing can prepare her for the shock of what she and Riley discover… With emotion and intrigue, Melanie Dobson brings World War II France to life in this beautiful novel about war, family, sacrifice, and the secrets of the past.

Santa Claus: The Book of Secrets

Author: Russell Ince
Publisher: Russell Ince
ISBN: 1545743010
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Book Description
After centuries of closely guarding ancient secrets, Santa Claus has decided that the time has come to share the magical mysteries behind Christmas. All of the miraculous happenings that contribute towards making Christmas the most remarkable time of the year are finally to be revealed to the world.

A House in the Mountains

Author: Caroline Moorehead
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062686380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Book Description
"Dramatic, heartbreaking and sweeping in scope." —Wall Street Journal The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter returns with the "moving finale" (The Economist) of her Resistance Quartet—the powerful and inspiring true story of the women of the partisan resistance who fought against Italy’s fascist regime during World War II. In the late summer of 1943, when Italy broke with the Germans and joined the Allies after suffering catastrophic military losses, an Italian Resistance was born. Four young Piedmontese women—Ada, Frida, Silvia and Bianca—living secretly in the mountains surrounding Turin, risked their lives to overthrow Italy’s authoritarian government. They were among the thousands of Italians who joined the Partisan effort to help the Allies liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators. What made this partisan war all the more extraordinary was the number of women—like this brave quartet—who swelled its ranks. The bloody civil war that ensued pitted neighbor against neighbor, and revealed the best and worst in Italian society. The courage shown by the partisans was exemplary, and eventually bound them together into a coherent fighting force. But the death rattle of Mussolini’s two decades of Fascist rule—with its corruption, greed, and anti-Semitism—was unrelentingly violent and brutal. Drawing on a rich cache of previously untranslated sources, prize-winning historian Caroline Moorehead illuminates the experiences of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca to tell the little-known story of the women of the Italian partisan movement fighting for freedom against fascism in all its forms, while Europe collapsed in smoldering ruins around them.

A Train in Winter

Author: Caroline Moorehead
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448156785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
A moving and extraordinary book about courage and survival, friendship and endurance – a portrait of ordinary women who faced the horror of the holocaust together. On an icy morning in Paris in January 1943, a group of 230 French women resisters were rounded up from the Gestapo detention camps and sent on a train to Auschwitz – the only train, in the four years of German occupation, to take women of the resistance to a death camp. Of the group, only 49 survivors would return to France. Here is the story of these women – told for the first time. A Train in Winter is a portrait of ordinary people, of their bravery and endurance, and of the friendships that kept so many of them alive. ‘A story of stunning courage, generosity and hope’ Mail on Sunday ‘Serious and heartfelt...profound’ Sunday Times