Hotel on Shadow Lake

Daniela Tully

Description

'A fascinating tale of what it felt like to be a woman under the Third Reich and of one family’s long hidden secrets,' Elisabeth Gifford

When Maya was a girl, her grandmother was everything to her: teller of magical fairy tales, surrogate mother, best friend. Then her grandmother disappeared without a trace, leaving Maya with only questions to fill the void. Twenty-seven years later, her grandmother’s body is found in a place she had no connection to.

Desperate for answers, Maya begins to unravel secrets that go back decades, from 1910s New York to 1930s Germany and beyond. But when she begins to find herself spinning her own lies to uncover what happened, she must decide whether her life, and a chance at love, are worth risking for the truth.

Tully beautifully sculpts a mystery that plays with past and present, traversing war in Nazi Germany, to 1910’s New York, to the present day. This part-historical part-literary novel allows us a personal look into the Third Reich through a letter from a lost twin and the reminiscences of a grandmother whose memories remain trapped in an old regime. 

What Reviewers and Readers Say:

‘Had one of those opening chapters which is very memorable. I defy anyone to read it and not want to know more ... a well written, thought-provoking book’ Portobello Book Blog

‘A human tale of standing up for beliefs, overcoming obstacles and persisting in the search for truth’ Nudge Book

‘Compelling ... The secrets unfold thick and fast, taking the reader on a veritable rollercoaster ride, I certainly found myself turning the pages faster as Tully unveiled yet another revelation ... a beautiful story of love and war, of family and forgiveness’ My Bookish Blogspot

‘Walk through the past where love, treason and jealousy will be mixed in this beautiful story’ Varietats Blogspot

‘Nazi Germany provides the malevolent oxygen to a story of unrequited love, and lives tarnished by greed and loathing’ Rich Reviews

‘A beautifully poignant read that is steeped in history … a historical read with a mystery twist’ Dash Fan Book Reviews

‘I loved Martha’s heartbreaking story ... I felt an incredible connection to her ... A five star read, a book with an emotional punch and real heart’ Love Books Group

‘An intricate read-it-in-one-sitting mystery–cum–family saga ... this is a story about murder, greed, love (won then lost), and, above all, intrigue. Readers will be eager to see what Tully, who has worked in film and TV for many years, comes up with next’ Publishers Weekly

‘Believable, multi-layered characters ... The final denouement .. was very satisfying and perfectly finished off the emotional roller-coaster ride that the novel takes you on’ Madhouse Family Reviews

'An engaging and beautifully told story of love and the strength of family ties which will captivate and entrance all readers' Claire Allan

Martha1990 

Martha Wiesberg was a woman of strict routine: Sunday, church; Monday, lunch with her neighbour; Tuesday, book club; Wednesday, laundry press; Thursday, aerobics—all at exactly the same time each week. Even a slight deviation was destructive to people like Martha. She needed routine like air to breathe. Only those who knew her very well—and they were far and few—knew why: it was her way of numbing her mind, of silencing the past and calming the voices that would remind her that life could have been so different, if only...

   It was four thirty in the afternoon. The sunlight was fading slowly, the way it does when the cold of early autumn starts to creep in. Martha had just fixed herself her daily afternoon cup of coffee (decaf), sat down with her daily crossword puzzle, and put on the television to watch her daily show. But her show wasn't on. Instead, a special program in honor of Germany's recently created Tag der Deutschen Einheit, "German Unity Day," was airing. Martha immediately switched off the TV.

  The silence in the room engulfed her like a dark blanket, allowing the voices in her head to become louder. This time it wasn't simply the interruption of routine that got to her; it was the most recent milestone in Germany's history: the reunification. Most of the population seemed happy about it, chatting about it in interviews on the TV, about what had caused the separation in the first place: the war, a dark chapter. For her part, Martha had moved on, or so she liked to think. But of course, there were the memories. Her mind was just about to dive deeper into that muddy lake of painful remembrances when the doorbell rang and jolted her from her thoughts.

Sujets

• E book
• LOVE
• Best sellers
• New york
• Alice in Wonderland
• Chick Lit
• Libro electrónico
• Nazismo
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Rosie Millard
• Classic book
• Effects of war
• Thrilling
• Russian Empire
• IDEAL
• Nazism
• Disappearance
• SON
• Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony
• Book club
• Family secret
• Modern day
• Non Fiction (song)
• Bomani Armah
• Legend Press
• GoodBooks
• Talking Books
• Jojo Moyes
• Journey to the Past
• Emotional Rollercoaster
• Cheap
• Captivating (book)
• Books on Tape
• The Shadow of the Wind
• Book cover
• Bookselling
• List of best-selling books
• Big Book
• Audiobook
• Science book
• Online shopping
• Fantasy literature
• Grandparent
• Mothers
• Great Books
• Wartime
• The Generation Game
• Cookbook
• Card
• Paperback
• Family history
• Lists of books
• Hitler Youth
• World Book Encyclopedia
• Mystery fiction
• Pre-war
• Family saga
• Childhood
• Picture book
• Children's literature
• Mother's Day
• Historical fiction
• 1910s
• 1930s
• World War II
• Non-fiction
• Nazi Germany
• Fascism
• Comic book
• Berlin Wall
• Author
• Mystery
• Mother
• The Visitors
• Nonfiction
• Cool
• Lit
• Livre électronique
• Grief
• Adolf Hitler
• Flowers
• Nazisme
• Poignant
• Contemporary
• Autobiography
• Unique
• History
• Secrets
• Bronte
• Ashes
• Emotional
• Classics
• Lies
• Romance
• Marian Keyes
• Black Books
• Novel
• Gothic
• Manipulation
• Anastasia
• Jane Eyre
• Death
• Fiction
• Munich
• Berlin
• 1910
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 7
• EAN13: 9781787198883
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Hotel On Shadow Lake
Daniela Tully


Legend Press Ltd, 107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB
[e-mail] | www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents © Daniela Tully 2018
First published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, Flatiron
Building, New York City, New York, United States
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library
Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Print ISBN 978-1-7871988-9-0
Ebook ISBN 978-1-7871988-8-3
Set in Times. Printed in Bulgaria by Multiprint
Cover design by Simon Levy www.simonlevyassociates.co.uk
All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other
than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance
is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.



Daniela Tully was born in Germany, but has lived all over the world, including
Mexico, New York and Dubai. As a film-maker she has been involved in projects
such as the critically-acclaimed Fair Game, box-office hits Contagion and The
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, as well as the Oscar-winning The Help.
Hotel On Shadow Lake is her first novel and the rights have already been sold in
North America, Denmark, France, Italy and Serbia.



To my parents,
my husband,
and my newest love, my daughter MaeP r o l o g u e
The fall of the wall in Germany freed people, minds—and also long-lost secrets.
Secrets that otherwise would have remained buried. One came in the form of a
letter that arrived only a couple of weeks after sixteen-year-old Maya Wiesberg
had departed on her year abroad. The year Maya’s and her grandmother’s life
would change forever. “Do for me what I couldn’t,” Maya’s grandmother had
whispered in her ear when they parted ways at Munich Airport in 1990.
Maya never saw her grandmother again.M a r t h a
1 9 9 0
Martha Wiesberg was a woman of strict routine: Sunday, church; Monday, lunch
with her neighbor; Tuesday, book club; Wednesday, laundry press; Thursday,
aerobics—all at exactly the same time each week. Even a slight deviation was
destructive to people like Martha. She needed routine like air to breathe. Only
those who knew her very well—and they were far and few—knew why: it was her
way of numbing her mind, of silencing the past and calming the voices that would
remind her that life could have been so different, if only...
It was four thirty in the afternoon. The sunlight was fading slowly, the way it
does when the cold of early autumn starts to creep in. Martha had just fixed
herself her daily afternoon cup of coffee (decaf), sat down with her daily crossword
puzzle, and put on the television to watch her daily show. But her show wasn’t on.
Instead, a special program in honor of Germany’s recently created Tag der
Deutschen Einheit, “German Unity Day,” was airing. Martha immediately switched
off the TV.
The silence in the room engulfed her like a dark blanket, allowing the voices in
her head to become louder. This time it wasn’t simply the interruption of routine
that got to her; it was the most recent milestone in Germany’s history: the
reunification. Most of the population seemed happy about it, chatting about it in
interviews on the TV, about what had caused the separation in the first place: the
war, a dark chapter. For her part, Martha had moved on, or so she liked to think.
But of course, there were the memories. Her mind was just about to dive deeper
into that muddy lake of painful remembrances when the doorbell rang and jolted
her from her thoughts.
Martha opened the door and stared into the face of her postman, who had
been delivering the mail to her for over ten years. The setting sun was breaking
through the heavy clouds one last time, providing a backlight that gave him an
almost ethereal appearance.
“Grüß Gott, Frau Wiesberg,” he said with a nervous smile. Martha had never
liked that salutation. Greet God? Okay! She sang to herself, I will when I see him!
She had always felt a bit out of place in Munich. She was a Zugereiste, after all,
an “outsider” not born there.
“This is for you,” the postman said with outstretched arms. Martha had never
been too fond of him, partly because she suspected that he was reading her mail,
as letters would often arrive torn open on the side. His curiosity, too, had become
a staple in her diet of routine.
Martha took the letter, wondering why the man had bothered to ring the
doorbell rather than simply leave the letter in her mailbox. She was about to close
the door when he gently tugged her back.
“Yes?”
“Well, in the name of the German Federal Postal Services, we would like to
apologize very much for the delay.”
Confused, Martha studied the envelope, which had been—or appeared to have
been—ripped open by the transport, the letter sticking out one side. Adolf’s face in
the upper right corner looked out at her sternly. She brought the envelope closer
to her eyes. The postmark read December 27, 1944.“Are you joking?” she asked, and looked up at him.
“No, Frau Wiesberg, believe me, you are not the only one. There are a couple
of others who have also been affected.”
She gazed down again at the envelope, chills running up her arms. “Affected
by what?”
“The wall?” he said, surprised. “This letter was held up, and,” he started to
explain, “now that the wall has come down, it finally found its way to you.”
Martha was still staring at the letter when it slowly began to dawn on her.
“The German Post will of course not charge you any delivery fee.” He giggled,
and Martha glared at him.
“I mean the German Post stopped charging so little postage a long time ago,”
he went on.
“I understood that the first time. I just don’t find it at all funny,” she told him.
The grin on his face died suddenly, and he shuffled his feet nervously. “Is there
anything else I can do for you?” Martha asked impatiently.
“No, no. Have a great day.”
He was about to turn around when Martha heard him mumble something else.
“What now?” she barked.
“Who is Wolfgang Wiesberg?” Martha slammed the door.
Leaning against the inside of the door, she shut her eyes. She felt like a huge
wave was breaking over her. Memories were flowing back into her mind, making
her dizzy.
She stared at the handwriting on the envelope. Wolfgang Wiesberg. Her twin
brother. How she had suffered when she and Mother had been informed of his
death, when the war had ended. Yet she and Wolfgang hadn’t been close at the
end. In fact, she had probably wished his death at some point. What was there to
say, forty-six years later? Whatever was in that letter couldn’t turn back time,
couldn’t bring back the love that life had held in store for her only to have cruelly
snatched it away.
I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to remember,
she told herself over and over again, like a mantra. Martha started to tremble
uncontrollably. She had always known that the secrets were only sleeping. Now
they had finally woken up and come back to haunt her.1 9 3 8
Up and down, open and close, they were moving in unison in the summer heat.
“Martha, you are always a little too fast.” The rebuke came from the beautiful
long-legged Else, her blond hair done into two thick braids. She was sitting next to
Martha on the floor, performing the same leg movements. From above, the circle
of young women was supposed to resemble a flower that opened and closed as it
reacted to sunlight. A gymnastic practice.
“Sorry,” Martha mumbled, her skin itchy under the shorts that barely covered
her upper thighs, and the white shirt of her uniform.
Else shook her head. “What are you always thinking about?”
Before Martha could respond, Else got up and stopped the music, then waited
for the other girls to gather around her. “We still have the chance to be selected to
perform for our Führer at the Party Day in Nuremberg in September! Clementine
zu Castell herself will soon come and assess us!” Else’s words were met with
great enthusiasm. Clementine zu Castell was the new Führerin of the organization
Faith and Beauty, which Hitler had initiated in January for all working women
between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. Martha was the only one in the
group who didn’t join in on the cheers. Else’s eyes lingered on hers, just long
enough. But by the time Martha had forced herself to bring the palms of her hands
together, it was too late, and her clapping got lost in the midst of the departing
girls.
As she walked over to her bike, Else caught up with her. “I ask myself every
time why you keep coming to these meetings,” she hissed at Martha. “You know
you don’t have to.”
“I know,” Martha said to Else as she mounted her bike. “I’ll see you at
Traudl’s.”
She sensed Else’s eyes following her as she drove out of