Showing results by narrator "Christa Lewis" in All Categories

When the director, Monsieur Achille Formentin, walks in one beautiful April morning, he is shocked to find the whole museum emptied of its contents - only a bench, the reception desk, and a lowly fern remain. Distressed, he calls the local police, and Aix's examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque sets out to discover the thief's identity. But it's the most baffling case Verlaque has ever encountered. Why would someone want to steal porcelain dessert plates, some old documents, and a few small paintings?

The internationally acclaimed actress Patricia Neal (1926-2010) was a star on stage, film, and television for more than 60 years. She is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Alma Brown in Hud, which earned her the 1963 Academy Award for Best Actress.

This enchanting and atmospheric fantasy brings listeners to a Paris breathless with excitement at the dawn of the twentieth century. But for a select few there is a second, secret Paris where the magic of the City of Light is very real.

Cora Bender killed a man. But why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of proof or witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and began his own maverick investigation.

Mary Fulbrook's encompassing book explores the lives of individuals across a full spectrum of suffering and guilt, each one capturing one small part of the greater story. Using "reckoning" in the widest possible sense to evoke how the consequences of violence have expanded almost infinitely through time. Fulbrook exposes the disjuncture between official myths about "dealing with the past" and the extent to which the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators evaded responsibility.

Berlin. August 1961. The Cold War. When the Berlin Wall brutally divides East from West, Sabine is separated from her beloved brother, Dieter. Escape to the West is the only option if the family is to be reunited. But the Wall is guarded by soldiers operating a shoot-to-kill policy. And Sabine finds herself at the mercy of the Stasi and their brutal interrogation techniques. She must fight to escape. She must fight to survive.

The gripping story of the author's aunt, a Jewish dance instructor who was betrayed to the Nazis by the two men she loved, yet managed to survive WWII by teaching dance lessons to the SS at Auschwitz. Her epic life becomes a window into the author's own past and the key to discovering his Jewish roots.

It's lights, camera, action at Castleton Manor, the exclusive literary retreat in Lighthouse Bay, Massachusetts. Faith Newberry's role as librarian expands to include assisting the producer in filming a remake of Alice in Wonderland. Faith and her friends in the Candle House Book Club thrill in the behind-the-scenes drama, and even Faith's loyal cat, Watson, eagerly pursues his big-screen debut. But the production falls down the rabbit hole when the star playing Alice enters the maze to shoot a scene, then vanishes.

She was Tarma. Born to the Clan of the Hawk of the nomadic Shin'a'in people, she saw her entire clan slain by brigands. Vowing revenge upon the murderers, she became one of the sword-sworn, the most elite of all warriors. She was Kethry. Born to a noble house, sold into a hateful "marriage", she fled life's harshness for the sanctuary of the White Winds, a powerful school of sorcery. United by sword-spell and the will of the goddess, Tarma and Kethry swore a blood oath to carry on their mutual fight against evil. Together, sword master and sorceress set forth to fulfill their destiny.

Some women capture our attention like no others. Faith Bacon and Sally Rand were beautiful blondes from humble backgrounds who shot to fame behind a pair of oversize ostrich fans, but with very different outcomes. It was the golden age of American entertainment, and Bacon and Rand fought their way through the competitive showgirl scene of New York with grit and perseverance. They played peek-a-boo with their lives, allowing their audiences to see only slivers of themselves. Little is known about who they really were, until now.

It's Gatsby Week at Castleton Manor, the elegant retreat for booklovers in Lighthouse Bay, Massachusetts, and the roaring '20s are in full swing. Charlotte Jaxon, owner of the manor, arrives to put on the ritz and oversee the festivities celebrating the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Faith Newberry is sitting pretty when she receives a brief respite from her duties in the library to assist Charlotte in organizing the events that have everyone jazzed up, including a fashion show, an antique car race, and a Gatsby Ball.

Gisela Kreglinger, the daughter of a vintner and trained as theologian, invites us to discover wine as part of a more full-bodied Christian spirituality. She shows us how the soulful savoring of wine is God's way of wooing us back into a great love affair. Indeed, Jesus's first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding. Along with bread, wine is the gift we receive at the table of communion. Through these gifts we experience God's glorious and loving presence among us, feeding and nurturing us in body, soul, and spirit.

Born a German Jew in 1915, Rudy Baum was 86 years old when he sealed the garage door of his Dallas home, turned on the car ignition, and tried to end his life. After confronting her father's attempted suicide, Karen Baum Gordon, Rudy's daughter, began a sincere effort to understand the sequence of events that led her father to that dreadful day in 2002. What she found were hidden scars of generational struggles reaching back to the camps and ghettos of the Third Reich.

Edith is a widowed landlady who rents apartments in her Brooklyn brownstone to an unlikely collection of humans, all deeply in need of shelter. Crippled in various ways - in spirit, in mind, in body, in heart - the renters struggle to navigate daily existence and soon come to realize that Edith's deteriorating mind and the menacing presence of her estranged, unscrupulous son, Owen, are the greatest challenges they must confront together.

In order to save her sister, Zuretta takes a job at an infamous house of horrors—but she might never escape. Zuretta never thought she'd encounter a monster. She had resigned herself to a quiet life in Utah. But when her younger sister, Ruby, travels to Chicago during the World's Fair, and disappears, Zuretta leaves home to find her. But 1890s Chicago is more dangerous and chaotic than she imagined. She doesn't know where to start until she learns of her sister's last place of employment . . . a mysterious hotel known as The Castle.

Set against the backdrop of the construction of the Berlin Wall, The Last Secret Kept explores the beauty of individualism while demolishing the invisible walls built between ourselves and our loved ones.

Growing up under Fascist censorship in Nazi Germany, Ruth Rappaport absorbed a forbidden community of ideas in banned books. After fleeing her home in Leipzig at fifteen and losing both parents to the Holocaust, Ruth drifted between vocations, relationships, and countries, searching for belonging and purpose. When she found her calling in librarianship, Ruth became not only a witness to history but an agent for change as well. This epic true story reveals a driven woman who survived persecution, political unrest, and personal trauma through a love of books....

Freemasonry is one of the oldest and most widespread voluntary organizations in the world. Over the course of three centuries, men (and women) have organized themselves socially and voluntarily under its name. This Very Short Introduction introduces the inner activities of freemasonry, and the rituals, symbols, and practices. Looking at the development of the organizational structure of masonry from the local to the global level, Andreas Önnerfors considers perceptions of freemasonry from the outside world and navigates through the prevalent fictions and conspiracy theories.

Schadenfreude is the story of a teenage Jewish intellectual who falls in love - in love with a boy (who breaks her heart), a language (that's nearly impossible to master), a culture (that's nihilistic but punctual), and a landscape (that's breathtaking when there's not a wall in the way). Rebecca is an everyday, misunderstood '90s teenager with a passion for Pearl Jam and Ethan Hawke circa Reality Bites until two men walk into her high school civics class: Dylan Gellner and Franz Kafka, hitching a ride in Dylan's backpack.

Three young Jewish sisters from Leipzig, Germany huddle together in the cold darkness of night waiting for their smugglers to rescue them and bring them to freedom in Belgium. Their mother, in a state of shock following Kristallnacht, is left behind, sedated in a psychiatric hospital. November 1938 begins the four year ordeal of the seven member Kroch family who endure unfathomable conditions in their fight for survival: imprisonment in French internment camps, hiding in a tiny tool shed, and adapting to the deplorable conditions of a Nazi prison.