A New Yorker staff writer, investigates his grandfather, a Nazi Party Chief, in this "unflinching, gorgeously written, and deeply moving exploration of morality, family, and war” (Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain)

‘The book we need right now’ Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal 

 What do we owe the past? How to make peace with a dark family history? Burkhard Bilger hardly knew his grandfather growing up. His parents immigrated to Oklahoma from Germany after World War II, and though his mother was an historian, she rarely talked about her father or what he did during the war. Then one day a packet of letters arrived from Germany, yellowing with age, and a secret history began to unfold.

Karl Gönner was a schoolteacher and Nazi party member from the Black Forest. In 1940, he was sent to a village in occupied France and tasked with turning its children into proper Germans. A fervent Nazi when the war began, he grew close to the villagers over the next four years, till he came to think of himself as their protector, shielding them from his own party’s brutality. Yet he was arrested in 1946 and accused of war crimes. Was he guilty or innocent? A vicious collaborator or just an ordinary man, struggling to atone for his country’s crimes? Bilger goes to Germany to find out.

What follows is a literary suspense story: a tale of chance encounters and serendipitous discoveries in villages and dusty archives across Germany and France. Intimate and far-reaching, Fatherland is an extraordinary odyssey through the great upheavals of the past century, tracing one family’s path through history’s wreckage.

For readers of Bart van Es’s The Cut Out Girl or Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with the Amber Eyes, this is a story of middle lands, torn allegiances and loaded family inheritance.

Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets, By Burkhard Bilger, Read by Burkhard Bilger

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*A stunning new unabridged recording, available on audio download*

The acclaimed international bestseller of the Tudor court, during the years of Henry VIII’s pursuit of Anne Boleyn – and the revolutionary sequence of events that followed.


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1521. Young Mary Boleyn arrives at court, maid in waiting and favourite to Queen Katherine of Aragon.

Yet Mary catches the eye of the capricious king and – propelled by the ambitions of the powerful Boleyn family – she betrays her queen, and takes her place as Henry VIII’s new mistress.

But while Mary is in childbed, a rival comes to court – her sister Anne, a young woman ruthless in her drive to become queen.

With her own destiny unknown, and the Boleyn enemies gathering, Mary must defy her family – and command her own fate.

With an exclusive afterword written and read by Philippa Gregory, exploring the inspiration behind Mary’s story.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory - Exclusive Extract 1

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory - Exclusive Extract 2

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory - Exclusive Extract 3

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Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets, By Burkhard Bilger, Read by Burkhard Bilger

HarperCollins Publishers

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