Buried deep within the shadows of a twelfth-century Saxon castle lie secrets so disturbing they are best left unearthed. Only the inmates of Frauengefängnis Hoheneck [Hoheneck Women’s Prison] know the full story—but none of them are talking. Janek Dabrowski, scarred by war, grapples with an allconsuming obsession for revenge. And as the tides of oppression shift from fascism to communism, so the Polish resistance fighter transforms his ardour into a thirst for power within the East German secret police [the Stasi]. His son Karl, raised under the stifling grip of communism, rejects his father’s ideology, and plans to escape with Anja Bach, the love of his life. This lays the groundwork for a conflict of monstrous betrayal, extraordinary courage, and enduring love. Half a world away, James Llewelyn, disillusioned by personal tragedy, reignites his passion after a chance encounter with the beautiful but elusive Kimberly Wagner. Propelled into a frantic pursuit of love, he unwittingly finds himself entangled in a web of broken lives from which there is no escape but to face his ghosts of the past. What is it that binds these characters together? Who will rise, and who will fall? And what is the secret that both horrifies and inspires? Set against the backdrops of snow-covered Polish fields and Cold War checkpoints, through to the beaches and boardrooms of Australia, The Angel of Hoheneck weaves a gripping tale of one man’s stark choices that impact generations and reverberate around the globe.

Buried deep within the shadows of a twelfth-century Saxon castle lie secrets so disturbing they are best left unearthed. Only the inmates of Frauengefängnis Hoheneck [Hoheneck Women's Prison] know the full story-but none of them are talking. Janek Dabrowski, scarred by war, grapples with an allconsuming obsession for revenge. And as the tides of oppression shift from fascism to communism, so the Polish resistance fighter transforms his ardour into a thirst for power within the East German secret police [the Stasi]. His son Karl, raised under the stifling grip of communism, rejects his father's ideology, and plans to escape with Anja Bach, the love of his life. This lays the groundwork for a conflict of monstrous betrayal, extraordinary courage, and enduring love. Half a world away, James Llewelyn, disillusioned by personal tragedy, reignites his passion after a chance encounter with the beautiful but elusive Kimberly Wagner. Propelled into a frantic pursuit of love, he unwittingly finds himself entangled in a web of broken lives from which there is no escape but to face his ghosts of the past. What is it that binds these characters together? Who will rise, and who will fall? And what is the secret that both horrifies and inspires? Set against the backdrops of snow-covered Polish fields and Cold War checkpoints, through to the beaches and boardrooms of Australia, The Angel of Hoheneck weaves a gripping tale of one man's stark choices that impact generations and reverberate around the globe.

Part visceral dream-memoir, part fictive journey through a hallucinatory Bucharest, Mircea Cărtărescu’s Blinding was one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a bestseller from the day of its release. Riddled with hidden passageways, mesmerizing tapestries, and whispering butterflies, Blinding takes us on a mystical trip into the protagonist’s childhood, his memories of hospitalization as a teenager, the prehistory of his family, a traveling circus, Secret police, zombie armies, American fighter pilots, the underground jazz scene of New Orleans, and the installation of the communist regime. This kaleidoscopic world is both eerily familiar and profoundly new. Readers of Blinding will emerge from this strange pilgrimage shaken, and entirely transformed. From the Trade Paperback edition.

In Belles and Poets, Julia Nitz analyzes the Civil War diary writing of eight white women from the U.S. South, focusing specifically on how they made sense of the world around them through references to literary texts. Nitz finds that many diarists incorporated allusions to poems, plays, and novels, especially works by Shakespeare and the British Romantic poets, in moments of uncertainty and crisis. While previous studies have overlooked or neglected such literary allusions in personal writings, regarding them as mere embellishments or signs of elite social status, Nitz reveals that these references functioned as codes through which women diarists contemplated their roles in society and addressed topics related to slavery, Confederate politics, gender, and personal identity. Nitz’s innovative study of identity construction and literary intertextuality focuses on diaries written by the following women: Eliza Frances (Fanny) Andrews of Georgia (1840–1931), Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut of South Carolina (1823–1886), Malvina Sara Black Gist of South Carolina (1842–1930), Sarah Ida Fowler Morgan of Louisiana (1842–1909), Cornelia Peake McDonald of Virginia (1822–1909), Judith White Brockenbrough McGuire of Virginia (1813–1897), Sarah Katherine (Kate) Stone of Louisiana (1841–1907), and Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas of Georgia (1843–1907). These women’s diaries circulated in postwar commemoration associations, and several saw publication. The public acclaim they received helped shape the collective memory of the war and, according to Nitz, further legitimized notions of racial supremacy and segregation. Comparing and contrasting their own lives to literary precedents and fictional role models allowed the diarists to process the privations of war, the loss of family members, and the looming defeat of the Confederacy. Belles and Poets establishes the extent to which literature offered a means of exploring ideas and convictions about class, gender, and racial hierarchies in the Civil War–era South. Nitz’s work shows that literary allusions in wartime diaries expose the ways in which some white southern women coped with the war and its potential threats to their way of life.