Central Kansas Library System

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph; a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuehrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of...

"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six,...

New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good, but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love, or pity, and remain good "patriots" -- this is the fabric of John le Carré's fiercely compelling and current novel A Most Wanted Man. A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled...

The first novel in The Century Trilogy, FALL OF GIANTS follows the fates of five interrelated families as they move through history. Ken Follett's masterful World Without End was a global phenomenon, beloved by millions and acclaimed by critics as "beautifully detailed [with] a terrifically compelling plot" (The Washington Post) and "wonderful history wrapped around a gripping story" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). FALL OF GIANTS is his new historical...

"As World War II draws to a close, refugees try to escape the war's final dangers, only to find themselves aboard a ship with a target on its hull"-- World War II is drawing to a close in East Prussia, and thousands of refugees are on a desperate trek toward freedom. When their paths converge in route to the ship that promises salvation, Joana, Emilia, and Florian find their strength, courage, and trust in one another tested with each step closer...

A remarkable tale, spanning three decades from the eve of WWII in Germany to the United States of today. Grand in scope, emotionally powerful.

Angry at being forced to keep her promise to a frog, the princess finally resorts to violent action, with unexpected results.

It's spring, 1939, and the prospect of war in Europe looms large. The United States has no intelligence service. President Franklin Roosevelt may run for an unprecedented third term, and he needs someone he can trust to find out what the Nazis are up to. His choice: John F. Kennedy, the attractive but unpromising second son of Roosevelt's ambassador to Britain, who is traveling through Europe to gather research for his Harvard senior thesis.

"In 1945, as the war in Germany nears its violent end, the Huber family is not yet free of its dangers or its insidious demands. Etta, a mother from a small, rural town, has two sons serving their home country: her elder, Max, on the Eastern front, and her younger, Georg, at a school for Hitler Youth. When Max returns from the front, Etta quickly realizes that something is not right. He is thin, almost ghostly, and behaving very strangely. Etta strives...