Inspired by a true story and based on a wealth of family documents, this elegant and compelling novel chronicles the lives of two families from the 1930s through the coming of the Nazis and World War II, and the long, difficult post-War period to the present. A must-read for fans of Irene Nemirovsky, Hans Fallada, and Bernhard Schlink's The Reader.This vividly realized, masterfully executed novel is a window into a little-explored corner of history. Patient Number 7 is a story of love between an aristocratic young woman and the cavalry officer -- later Panzer officer in the German army -- she marries; between friends who help each other through the Nazi takeover of Austria, the war, and what was sometimes worse, the "liberation"; between a mother and her two very different daughters. But it is also the story of a nation's darkest days, and its slow recovery during one of the most convulsive, violent periods of human history. Beautifully written, haunting,...

The suspenseful, emotionally resonant, and utterly compelling story of what brings an enigmatic French woman to a small Canadian town in the 1930s, a woman who has found depths of strength in dark times and comes to discover sanctuary at last. For readers of The Imposter Bride, The Cellist of Sarajevo, Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay, and The Red Violin. Helene Giroux arrives alone in St. Homais on a winter day. She wears good city clothes and drives an elegant car, and everything she owns is in a small trunk in the back seat. In the local church she finds a fine old piano, a Molnar, and she knows just how fine it is, for her family had manufactured these pianos before the Great War. Then her mother's death and war forces her to abandon her former life. The story moves back and forth in time as Helene, settling into a simple life, playing the piano for church choir, recalls the extraordinary events that brought her to this...

From the bestselling author of The Piano Maker comes a stunning, profoundly moving story about motherhood, grief, marriage, and friendship. For fans of M. L. Stedman's The Light Between Two Oceans.Margaret Bradley is the most senior associate at her prestigious law firm, and on track to make partner. It's the late 1970s, and since her days at law school she has been fighting to prove herself in a male-dominated field. Though her climb up the professional ladder hasn't been an easy one, she feels passion and purpose in her job. That is, until her entire world is shattered by one event: the sudden death of her son Andrew, a military pilot. Now, Margaret lives with a heavy, all-encompassing sense of loss and regret, and it is pushing her further and further away from her husband, Jack, a successful geologist and a loving and loyal partner. Margaret is drawn back to Sweetbarry, a small town on the coast of the North Atlantic, where she spent much of her...