by Alex Gerlis
It looked as if she had landed in an Impressionist painting: the golden yellow of the corn, the blue of the sky unbroken by cloud and ahead the dark green of the wood. A timely breeze had picked up and the corn was swaying slowly. It would disguise her moving through it. If she could make it to the wood she would have a good chance of reaching the town under the cover of the trees and the fading light.
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ALSO AVAILABLE FROM STUDIO 28
BERLIN: DAY ZERO – GREGORY LEE
Berlin, 1947. The first stirrings of the Cold War begin as the liberating armies of the West and the Soviet Union lock horns over territory and resources amid the ashes of the Third Reich. Into this edgy world of ruined buildings and shattered lives arrives Mitchell Delaney, an American newspaper reporter with an agenda that has nothing to do with ideology. To reclaim the love he lost at the outbreak of war and find the truth behind a series of murders, he must negotiate the checkpoints and twitchy military presence of a city in the collective throes of paranoia – not to mention a sinister menace from the past that creeps ever closer. A taut, tense thriller from Gregory Lee, the bestselling author of The Nero Decree, Berlin: Day Zero is a very human tale of survival and resourcefulness in the shadow of a fast-closing Iron Curtain. It's also a chilling portrait of a seminal moment in time, the repercussions of which we still feel today.
To buy the UK version of Berlin: Day Zero, click here.
To buy the US version of Berlin: Day Zero, click here.
LONDON 1945: LIFE IN THE DEBRIS OF WAR – MAUREEN WALLER
Seventy years has passed since London celebrated the end of World War Two. But 1945 wasn’t all about flag-waving on the Mall and Churchill’s V for Victory; in the months before the ceasefire, the city had been peppered with German rockets and nearly brought to its knees by death, destruction, food shortages and homelessness. Yet through it all, the city coped with the horrors, and Londoners kept calm and carried on.
London 1945 is their story. In this fascinating history of one of the capital’s most momentous years, Maureen Waller looks at how ordinary people from all over London coped with crisis; and she pays tribute to their spirit, courage and resilience. In a city where receiving an egg a month was a luxury and families were divided for years at a time, often never to come together again, it was the little pleasures that sustained morale: It’s That Man Again on the wireless, Hollywood movies, black-market oranges, American GIs…
And if Londoners thought the end of hostilities would improve their lot, they were in for a shock. Demobbed soldiers returned to a city of bombed-out houses, mass unemployment, continued rationing, not to mention a newly-independent female population changed beyond recognition.
A colourful and very human history of a changing city, London 1945 reveals how, in the bomb-shattered streets of the capital, the foundations of our modern society were laid.
To buy the UK version of London 1945: Life in the Debris of War, click here.
To buy the US version of London 1945: Life in the Debris of War, click here.
