Recommendations based on "Chronicler of the Winds"

A very well written biography that is a little sad. Kierkegaard was a "ghostly" figure that, while full of brilliant thought, could never manage to interface with life. My views on some of his wirings were affected by this work, and I am curious to go back and read them with the knowledge that Kierkegaard plays intricate thought experiments within the pages of his pseudonymous works. This book reads like a novel, is full of many interesting anecdotes (although many of them sad), and a good overview of SK's philosophical works.

“one of the most important plays of our time” --Howard Taubman, The New York TimesIn Vichy France in 1942, eight men and a boy are seized by the collaborationist authorities and made to wait in a building that may be a police station. Some of them are Jews. All of them have something to hide—if not from the Nazis, then from their fellow detainees and, inevitably, from themselves. For in this claustrophobic antechamber to the death camps, everyone is guilty. And perhaps none more so than those who can walk away alive.In Incident at Vichy, Arthur Miller re-creates Dante's hell inside the gaping pit that is our history and populates it with sinners whose crimes are all the more fearful because they are so recognizable.

In his own bestselling tradition of Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca, Ken Follett delivers a breathtaking novel of suspense set in the most dangerous days of World War II.D-Day is approaching. They don’t know where or when, but the Germans know it’ll be soon, and for Felicity “Flick” Clariet, the stakes have never been higher. A senior agent in the ranks of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) responsible for sabotage, Flick has survived to become one of Britain’s most effective operatives in Northern France. She knows that the Germans’ ability to thwart the Allied attack depends upon their lines of communications, and in the days before the invasion no target is of greater strategic importance than the largest telephone exchange in Europe.But when Flick and her Resistance-leader husband try a direct, head-on assault that goes horribly wrong, her world turns upside down. Her group destroyed, her husband missing, her superiors unsure of her, her own confidence badly shaken, she has one last chance at the target, but the challenge, once daunting, is now near impossible. The new plan requires an all-woman team, none of them professionals, to be assembled and trained within days. Code-named the Jackdaws, they will attempt to infiltrate the exchange under the noses of the Germans—but the Germans are waiting for them now and have plans of their own. There are secrets Flick does not know—secrets within the German ranks, secrets among her hastily recruited team, secrets among those she trusts the most. And as the hours tick down to the point of no return, most daunting of all, there are secrets within herself. . . .Filled with the powerful storytelling, unforgettable characters, and authentic detail that have become his hallmarks, Jackdaws is Ken Follett writing at the height of his powers.

A rediscovered classic, originally published in 1938 and now an international bestseller. When it first appeared in Story magazine in 1938, Address Unknown became an immediate social phenomenon and literary sensation. Published in book form a year later and banned in Nazi Germany, it garnered high praise in the United States and much of Europe.A series of fictional letters between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his former business partner, who has returned to Germany, Address Unknown is a haunting tale of enormous and enduring impact.

Escaping from his North Carolina home after his father murders their family and commits suicide, Trevor McGee returns to confront the past, and finds himself haunted by the same demons that drove his father to insanity.

"Wild Animal ticks with the precision of a well-crafted wristwatch."—Wall Street Journal From the devious mind of New York Times bestselling author Joël Dicker —master of the plot twist—comes this gripping domestic thriller that transforms into an ambitious heist mystery involving a famed Geneva jewelry boutique. On July 2, 2022, two criminals set out to rob a jewelry shop in Geneva. But even with a foolproof plan, their “perfect” heist will prove far from uneventful. . . . Twenty days earlier, on a luxurious estate along the shores of Lake Geneva, Sophie Braun prepares to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Her life seems perfect: she has a fairytale marriage, two perfect children, and lives in a stylish modern mansion surrounded by lush forest. But her idyllic world is about to crumble. Her husband is becoming embroiled in petty schemes. Her neighbor, a policeman with a spotless reputation, is obsessed with her and spies on the most intimate moments of her life. Then, on her birthday, she receives a gift from a mysterious prowler that endangers her life. It will take many journeys into the past, far from Geneva, to unravel the origins of this diabolical plot from which no one will emerge unscathed, including readers. Told at a breathtaking pace, filled with nerve-jangling suspense, Wild Animal demonstrates once again why Joël Dicker—since the publication of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Case—reigns supreme as one of the most beloved contemporary mystery writers in the world today. Translated from the French by Robert Bononno

Philip Kerr delivers a novel with the noir sensibility of Raymond Chandler, the realpolitik of vintage John le Carré, and the dark moral vision of Graham Greene. "Bernie Gunther is the most antiheroic of antiheroes in this gripping, offbeat thriller. It's the story of his struggle to preserve what's left of his humanity, and his life, in a world where the moral bandwidth is narrow, satanic evil at one end, cynical expediency at the other." -Philip Caputo, author of A Rumor of War "A thriller that will challenge preconceptions and stimulate the little grey cells." -The Times (London), selecting Field Gray as a Thriller of the Year "Part of the allure of these novels is that Bernie is such an interesting creation, a Chandleresque knight errant caught in insane historical surroundings. Bernie walks down streets so mean that nobody can stay alive and remain truly clean." -John Powers, Fresh Air (NPR) Bernie on Bernie: I didn't like Bernhard Gunther very much. He was cynical and world-weary and hardly had a good word to say about anyone, least of all himself. He'd had a pretty tough war . . . and done quite a few things of which he wasn't proud. . . . It had been no picnic for him since then either; it didn't seem to matter where he spread life's tartan rug, there was always a turd on the grass. Striding across Europe through the killing fields of three decades-from riot-torn Berlin in 1931 to Adenauer's Germany in 1954, awash in duplicitous "allies" busily undermining one another-Field Gray reveals a world based on expediency, where the ends justify the means and no one can be trusted. It brings us a hero who is sardonic, tough- talking, and cynical, but who does have a rough sense of humor and a rougher sense of right and wrong. He's Bernie Gunther. He drinks too much and smokes excessively and is somewhat overweight (but a Russian prisoner-of-war camp will take care of those bad habits). He's Bernie Gunther-a brave man, because when there is nothing left to lose, honor rules.

Jonathan Hemlock lives in a renovated Gothic church on Long Island. He is an art professor, a mountain climber, and a mercenary, performing assassinations (i.e., sanctions) for money to augment his black-market art collection. Now Hemlock is being tricked into a hazardous assignment that involves an attempt to scale one of the most treacherous mountain peaks in the Swiss Alps, the Eiger. In a breathtakingly suspenseful story that is part thriller and part satire, the author traces Hemlock’s spine-tingling adventures, introducing a cast of intriguing characters—villains, traitors, beautiful women—into the highly charged atmosphere of danger. The accumulating threads of suspicion, accusation, and evidence gradually knit themselves into a bizarre and death-defying climax in this exciting, entertaining novel that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the last absorbing page.

When his well-intentioned lie appears to have contributed to a man's suicide, Terpin's resolve to never again act or speak, except by the truth in his heart, has far-reaching consequences.

Once An Eagle is the story of one special man, a soldier named Sam Damon, and his adversary over a lifetime, fellow officer Courtney Massengale. Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington's corridors of power.Beginning in the French countryside during the Great War, the conflict between these adversaries solidifies in the isolated garrison life marking peacetime, intensifies in the deadly Pacific jungles of World War 11, and reaches its treacherous conclusion in the last major battleground of the Cold War -- Vietnam.A study in character and values, courage, nobility, honesty, and selflessness, here is an unforgettable story about a man who embdies the best in our nation -- and in us all.