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The good German : a novel / by Bock, Dennis,1964-author.;
In November 1939, a German anti-fascist named Georg Elser came as close to assassinating Adolf Hitler as anyone ever had. In this gripping novel of alternate history, he doesn't just come close--he succeeds. But he could never have imagined the terrible consequences that would follow from this act of heroism. Hermann Göring, masterful political strategist, assumes the Chancellery and quickly signs a non-aggression treaty with the isolationist president Joseph Kennedy that will keep America out of the war that is about to engulf Europe. Göring rushes the German scientific community into developing the atomic bomb, and in August 1944, this devastating new weapon is tested on the English capital. London lies in ruins. The war is over, fascism prevails in Europe, and Canada, the Commonwealth holdout in the Americas, suffers on as a client state of the Soviet Union. Georg Elser, blinded in the A-bombing of London, is shipped to Canada and quarantined in a hospice near Toronto called Mercy House. Here we meet William Teufel, a German-Canadian boy who in the summer of 1960 devises a plan that he hopes will distance himself from his German heritage and, unwittingly, brings him face to face with the man whose astonishing act of heroism twenty-one years earlier set the world on its terrifying new path. In this page-turning narrative, Bock has created an utterly compelling and original novel of historical speculation in the vein of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, John Wyndham's The Chrysalids and Philip K. Dick's cult classic The Man in the High Castle.
Subjects: Dystopian fiction.; Alternative histories (Fiction); Historical fiction.; Göring, Hermann, 1893-1946; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Strangers at the red door : a novel / by Bock, Dennis,1964-author.;
"At a train station in China, three people meet, only two of whom are actually alive. The first is Faron Jones, on his way to Hong Kong to interview an Iranian film director-cum-dissident holed up in the Japanese consulate. The second is Mildred Ha, a Hong Kong bookseller detained at the border crossing for attempting to deliver copies of the most dangerous novel in China over to the mainland. The third is the deceased author of that very novel, Jian Seung, now a wandering spirit trapped in the middle world between life and death. Soon after this encounter, and for no reason he can understand, Faron learns that he's suddenly acquired flawless Mandarin and Cantonese, languages only a day earlier he had no knowledge of. Slowly, the impossible truth that another man's soul has joined his own and now speaks in his voice becomes maddeningly undeniable. With this comes Jian Seung's extraordinary claim and his urgent request of Faron, and so the ghostwriter and the spirit of the dead novelist trapped within him set upon a search for the one person--the disappeared bookseller--who's able to deliver the Chinese novelist's spirit to his final resting place. Instantly propulsive, wholly original, and like a mirror for our current times, Strangers at the Red Door follows these characters and their quests for freedom, love, and reconciliation. It explores a world in which the boundaries of the physical and the spiritual blur; countries facing uncertain futures intersect; and the struggle of the artist against political oppression becomes an essential act of survival."--
Subjects: Magic realist fiction.; Novels.; Authors; Booksellers and bookselling; Spirits; Women booksellers;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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