Like Thomas Jefferson, I cannot live without books. And, while I read in a variety of genres, from early childhood on, my favorite stories were the ones that began with “once upon a time.” My fascination with historicals started with one of my father’s few books from his childhood, The Cave Twins, which introduced me to a world far different from suburban America. For me, the appeal of historicals is the opportunity to learn about another era and to escape from the modern world. And so, if you want to escape from what seems like an endless pandemic, I invite you to explore the worlds six talented authors have created.
There were so many things that I loved about this book, starting with its riveting first scene. When I teach classes about great beginnings, I stress the need to hook a reader in the first three pages. Goyer and Yorkey did that and more. They kept me hooked until the surprising denouement. Make no mistake. I would not have wanted to live in Europe during World War II, but Goyer and Yorkey’s collaboration is filled with so many fascinating details of life during that tumultuous and dangerous time along with an introduction to the fine art of safe cracking that I couldn’t put it down.
It is August 1944 and the Gestapo is mercilessly rounding up suspected enemies of the Third Reich. When Joseph Engel, a German physicist working on the atomic bomb, finds that he is actually a Jew, adopted by Christian parents, he must flee for his life to neutral Switzerland. Gabi Mueller is a young Swiss-American woman working for the newly formed American Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner to the CIA) close to Nazi Germany. When she is asked to risk her life to safely "courier" Engel out of Germany, the fate of the world rests in her hands. If she…
I’m American but I’ve been a Francophile for ages. I didn’t get a chance to visit France until well into adulthood. So much history lives in France and it’s been my joy to illuminate it for readers who tell me they feel transported. There is no higher compliment, in my mind. I’ve been writing novels for thirty years, set in the Rocky Mountains, America’s heartland, and the scenic villages of France. The Bennett Sisters Mysteries are now up 18 books in the series, featuring settings from Paris to Champagne to the Dordogne, with more in the works. I must go back to France to research, oui?
Browsing at Shakespeare and Company in Paris last fall I picked up this book in translation by Guillaume Musso, touted as the ‘French Suspense King.’ Set on an isolated island off the Côte d’Azur, this moody thriller is unpredictable and twisty, as all good mysteries should be. A reclusive author, his strange past, a relentless fan: what could go wrong?
'It's no wonder that Musso is one of France's most loved, bestselling authors' Harlan Coben
In 1999, after publishing three cult novels, celebrated author Nathan Fawles announces the end of his writing career and withdraws to Beaumont, a wild and beautiful island off the Mediterranean coast.
Autumn 2018. As Fawles' novels continue to captivate readers, Mathilde Monney, a young Swiss journalist, arrives on the island, determined to unlock the writer's secrets and secure his first interview in twenty years.
That same day, a woman's body is discovered on the beach and the island…
Mike Thorn is the author ofShelter for the Damned,Darkest Hours, andPeel Back and See. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, and podcasts, includingVastarien,Dark Moon Digest, andThe NoSleep Podcast. His books have earned praise from Jamie Blanks (director ofUrban LegendandValentine), Jeffrey Reddick (creator ofFinal Destination), and Daniel Goldhaber (director ofCam). His essays and articles have been published inAmerican Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper(University of Texas Press),Beyond Empowertainment: Exploring Feminist Horror(Seventh Row),The Film Stage, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick.
Anna Kavan’s Asylum Piecepresents exciting stylistic possibilities for the world of “personal fiction.”The book defies easy genre categorization, but one might describe it as an experimental, thematically connected collection of autofiction. Drawing on her own experiences in a Swiss sanitarium (from which she was dispatched in 1938), Kavan excavates her psychological traumas and filters them through sequences of vignettes and short stories, conveying states of extreme emotional distress through a restrained, intensely lucid form. An unblinking study of alienation, mental disarray, and feelings of helplessness under bureaucratic control, Asylum Piecetakes up a lot of space in my mind.
This collection of stories, mostly interlinked and largely autobiographical, chart the descent of the narrator from the onset of neurosis to final incarceration in a Swiss clinic. The sense of paranoia, of persecution by a foe or force that is never given a name, evokes The Trial by Kafka, a writer with whom Kavan is often compared, although her deeply personal, restrained, and almost foreign —accented style has no true model. The same characters who recur throughout—the protagonist's unhelpful "adviser," the friend and lover who abandons her at the clinic, and an assortment of deluded companions—are sketched without a trace…
I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories, and this one’s beautifully told.
In The Last, the big event just happened, and Jon’s struggling with being half a world away from his family after all the bombs drop. He’s torn between what he has to do for survival, stuck at this Swiss hotel with others from around the world, and how he might be able to get back to – or even simply contact – his wife. Their last conversation didn’t end well, and it’s haunting him on a personal level as he tries to keep up with the changing world and simple survival.
You care just as much about Jon’s internal struggle as the external, so he takes center stage even as a murder mystery unfolds around him.
This propulsive post-apocalyptic thriller “in which Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None collides with Stephen King’s The Shining” (NPR) follows a group of survivors stranded at a hotel as the world descends into nuclear war and the body of a young girl is discovered in one of the hotel’s water tanks.
Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of the L’Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland after an academic…
I'm an art, performance, and music junkie. I love spectacle. My writing career began with articles in the political underground press of the 1970s and I've always seen art and entertainment as ‘political’ in their messages and in the emotions they incite. Tennis for me is part of a cultural spectrum embracing fashion, city and recreational life, film and artistic counter cultures, all creating a world of excitement and passion, so my writing on tennis is part of a wider project: to try to answer the questions of why these performances are so much more than ‘just’ entertainment, why they give passion and meaning to life, and why they are inspirational.
Finally, this is one for the fans, who are so important in sport. The blurb tells us, "For much of the past decade, William Skidelsky has not been able to stop thinking about Roger Federer, the greatest and most graceful player of all time. It’s a devotion that has been all-consuming." An obsession it certainly is and Skidellsky looks at it from all angles: his own emotional problems, the way the game of tennis has developed (not always for the better), and what Federer signifies as a sports and cultural icon. Why fans cared so passionately about Federer and more than about any other player tells us much about our culture of spectacle and consumption and our longing in a secular and cynical world for heroes to capture our imagination and to inspire.
For much of the past decade, William Skidelsky has not been able to stop thinking about Roger Federer, the greatest and most graceful tennis player of all time. It's a devotion that has been all-consuming.
In Federer and Me, Skidelsky asks what it is about the Swiss star that transfixes him, and countless others. He dissects the wonders of his forehand, reflects on his rivalry with Nadal, revels in his victories and relives his most crushing defeats.
But this is more than just a book about Federer. In charting his obsession, Skidelsky explores the evolution of modern tennis, the role…
Hilarious, engaging, weird, and the most fun I had all year reading, Big Swiss quickly became the actual talk of my actual town as everyone who liked to read passed it along to their friend. There's nothing specific to say to recommend this book except for that it deserves to be experienced, and as a writer I will steadfastly refuse to go back and read it to mine all its tricks, because I enjoyed the experience of reading too much to sully it with an investigation of craft.
** SOON TO BE A MAJOR HBO SERIES STARRING JODIE COMER **
'Made me laugh and think too much (the right amount?) about sex and death and honesty.' MONICA HEISEY 'Utterly addictive. . . I laughed so hard it ached.' GILLIAN ANDERSON 'Juicy, salacious and compelling. Trauma shouldn't be this fun.' SARA PASCOE
Greta liked knowing people's secrets. That wasn't a problem. Until she met Big Swiss.
Big Swiss. That's Greta's nickname for her - she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two…
I'm the founder of Life Organized Inc, a firm specializing in the organization of people, their lives, and physical spaces. Known for creating solutions that are as aesthetically appealing as they are practical, I transform spaces from the inside out. My areas of expertise include home and office organization, time management, digital decluttering, organizing for academic success, maximizing productivity while working from home, and management of everyday chaos. I'm a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the NYU Stern School of Business.
Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli reorganizes what he sees through humorous photos that categorize everyday objects by color, size, and shape. The letters in alphabet soup are arranged alphabetically, the cars in a parking lot are organized by color, and a fruit salad is separated into its individual fruits. The colorful before and after photos are fun for all ages.
Swiss comedian and cabaret artist Ursus Wehrli loves organisation in the extreme. In The Art of Clean Up, Wehrli arranges a bowl of alphabet soup, a group of pool-goers, a spruce branch and other elements of our chaotic world into neat rows sorted by colour, size, shape or type.
As a child I grew up listening to my Dutch mother’s stories of life under German occupation and her family’s struggle for survival during the Hunger Winter. Life was hard but exciting for a teenager who thought nothing of delivering anti-Nazi leaflets, chopping down lime trees in front of the house for firewood, and evading the Germans on her ancient bike in her quest for food. It was this unwavering spirit that I wanted to capture in the four novels I’ve written set in wartime Holland. She was the inspiration behind my latest World War 2 novel, The Boy in the Attic.
The Gustav Sonata started out as a short story called "A Game of Cards". Long after it appeared, Tremain felt she had wasted a very promising core idea on something essentially too short and too unexamined. The story and novel are set in Switzerland, which seemed safe as a neutral country during World War 2, but the government was torn between compassion for German Jewish refugees and the fear of devastating German reprisals if they took them in. Tremain tackles this dilemma through the stoical character of Gustav, who is Jewish and explores the ambiguities in the relationship between Gustav and his friend Anton, a gifted pianist who is crippled by stage fright. I found the themes sensitively and beautifully described.
Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem only a distant echo. An only child, he lives alone with Emilie, the mother he adores but who treats him with bitter severity. He begins an intense friendship with a Jewish boy his age, talented and mercurial Anton Zweibel, a budding concert pianist. The novel follows Gustav's family, tracing the roots of his mother's anti-Semitism and its impact on her son and his beloved friend. Moving backward to the war years and the painful repercussions of an act of conscience, and…
I’ve been writing for a long time and reading even longer. I enjoy intelligent books that are well written—not overwritten or over punctuated—and as we all do both of those, I mean that it’s been well edited. And I understand the struggle which is why four of my five choices are from indie authors like myself.
Winner of the Spotlight First Novel Prize. The first thing to mention is that this is a debut novel. I tend to avoid them, the writing is usually sloppy, and it takes a few books for authors to learn the craft and get a feel for their style and voice.
That is not the case with this book. The writing is excellent. This writing is up there at bestseller standard. I didn’t find a single typo or error in the book, not something I can say for most of the top names. I found half a dozen in the last King book I read. Browne is already at the top of his game. The story is sweet, the central character is an absolute tool, but you can’t help but love him, and you want the book to end well for him. He’s a character to root for.
Winner of the Spotlight First Novel prize, Philip Bowne's debut novel is an explosive coming-of-age odyssey. 18-year-old Billy is desperate to leave home. He's working the ultimate dead-end job as a grave-digger. His Grandad's engaged to a woman half his age, his Dad's become obsessed with boxing, and his Mum's certainly having an affair. Everything is changing, and Billy hates it.
Meeting the older, mysterious Eva, though, changes everything. She's passionate about Russian literature, Gary Numan, windfarms and chai tea, and Billy gambles everything for a chance to be with her. His scramble…
I'm a poet and creative mentor, and it’s the intensity of poetic language – its expansiveness and limitations – that shows up in my fiction and in the novels I love. Quinnis an exploration of male violence, incarceration, and radical forgiveness. I’ve spent a decade working with long-term prisoners in Scotland, trying to understand and come to terms with notions of justice and responsibility: does guilt begin and end with the perpetrator of a violent act or are we all in some way culpable? How can literary form dig into this question aslant? Can the unsettled mind be a space for innovative thinking?
Kristóf (1935-2011) was a Hungarian writer who fled to Switzerland during the war and wrote in French.
The Notebook (the first in the trilogy) is currently number one on my list of all-time favourites. It has all the elements of storytelling that I love: deep, psychological insight into the human heart; adroit use of archetypes, which give the book a timeless, folkloric feel; concision (no waffling) and a poetic, pared-back language that creates a sense of startling immediacy.
Kristóf writes about World War II through the eyes of two young brothers in a Nazi-occupied country (unnamed), and she shocks us awake not through sensationalised violence but through matter-of-fact narration.
It reads like a cross-between dramatic monologue and biblical parable – she stretches the novel form and opens up new possibilities for writing.
