Recommendations based on "In a German Pension (Hesperus Modern Voices)"

Fifteen stunning short stories from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, “a true master of the form” (Salman Rushdie).“How does one know when one is in the grip of art—of a major talent? . . . It is art that speaks from the pages of Alice Munro’s stories.”—The Wall Street JournalA young girl gets an unexpected glimpse into her father’s past when she realizes the sales call they’ve made one summer afternoon during the Great Depression is to his old sweetheart. A married woman, returning home after the death of her invalid mother, tries to release the sister who’d stayed behind as their mother’s caretaker. The audience at a children’s piano recital receives a surprising lesson in the power of art to transform when a not-quite-right student performs with unexpected musicality and a spirit of joy.In Dance of the Happy Shades, Alice Munro conjures ordinary lives with an extraordinary vision, displaying the remarkable talent for which she is now widely celebrated. Set on farms, by river marshes, in the lonely towns and new suburbs of western Ontario, these tales are luminous acts of attention to those vivid moments when revelation emerges from the layers of experience that lie behind even the most everyday events and lives.

The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to the Canadian writer Alice Munro in 2013 confirmed her position as a master of the short story form. This book explores Munro's work from a full range of critical perspectives, focussing on three of her most popular and important published collections: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001), Runaway (2004), and her final collection Dear Life (2012). With chapters written by the world's leading critics of Munro's work, the short story form and contemporary Canadian writing, this book explores such themes as love and marriage, sex, fate, gender and humor in her writings as well as her approaches to narrative form and autobiography. In these three late collections Munro sharply articulates, again and again, the mysteries of being itself.

This collection of short stories, some semi-autobiographical, by Marie Luise Kaschnitz (1901-74), the eminent German novelist and poet, reflects many of the themes to be found throughout her fiction, such as the dread of moral anarchy which leaves nothing in its wake, and the shaping of individual destinies by loneliness, insecurity and fear.Usually told from a woman's viewpoint, her works feature strong female characters whose inner strength enables them to overcome their fears and accept their fates with stoic determination. Kaschnitz's chief concern is the human condition, giving her work a continuing relevance; she confronts such universal issues as growing old, growing up and the loss of religious faith as well as those which have a more contemporary resonance, including the social problems of working parents and adoption.

These unfinished novels were intended to follow her widely acclaimed Malina in a Proustian cycle to be entitled Todesarten, or Ways of Dying. Through the tales of two women in postwar Austria, Bachmann explores the ways of dying inflicted on women by men, and upon the living by history, politics, religion, family, and the self.

The true story of a woman's incredible journey into the heart of the Third Reich to find the man she loves. When the Gestapo seize 20-year-old Olga Czepf's fiance she is determined to find him and sets off on an extraordinary 2,000-mile search across Nazi-occupied Europe risking betrayal, arrest and death. As the Second World War heads towards its bloody climax, she refuses to give up - even when her mission leads her to the gates of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps...Now 88 and living in London, Olga tells with remarkable clarity of the courage and determination that drove her across war-torn Europe, to find the man she loved. The greatest untold true love story of World War Two.

This is collection of the stories written by a distinguished German author who died in 1973. Reading these stories entails abandoning the terms of one's own comfort. The author's relentless vision demands that readers allows themselves to be hypnotised, taken over by her repetitive cadences and burning images of grief and loss. And yet, in the beauty of her images there is a tremendous affirmation of the world.

Bask in the sunshine of two heartwarming stories from best-selling author Janette Oke! In Nana’s Gift, a matriarch’s heirloom pearls serve to remind a young woman of what’s truly priceless. And in The Red Geranium, a loving child offers his great-grandmother something uniquely precious—and unforgettable. Two beautiful stories—gifts from the heart of immeasurable value.

In this superb new collection from one of our best and best-loved writers, nine stories draw us immediately into that special place known as Alice Munro territory--a place where an unexpected twist of events or a suddenly recaptured memory can trace the arc of an entire life. The fate of a strong-minded housekeeper with a "frizz of reddish hair,"just entering the dangerous country of old-maidhood, is unintentionally (and deliciously) reversed by a teenaged girlÕs practical joke. A college student, visiting her aunt for the first time, stumbles on a long-hidden secret and its meaning in her own life. An inveterate philanderer finds the tables turned when he puts his wife into an old-age home. A young cancer patient, stunned by good news, discovers a perfect bridge to her suddenly regained future. A woman, remembering an afternoon's wild lovemaking with a stranger, realizes how the memory of that encounter has both changed for her and sustained her through a lifetime. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage provides the deep pleasures and rewards that Alice Munro's large and ever-growing audience has come to expect.

At the age of thirteen, Anne Frank went into hiding with her family to escape from the Nazis. For two years, she couldn't go outside or run or shout or laugh too loudly. Instead, she poured her thoughts and feelings into her diary, which is now famous all over the world. This story of her life begins when she was still a carefree girl like any other.

Snowy escapades in stunning Switzerland!Alice-Miranda and her friends are off to Switzerland to ski, sightsee and experience the unique White Turf racing event. St Moritz is as glamourous as they expected and their hotel is beyond belief – as are its owners, the overly friendly Otto Fanger and his frosty wife, Delphine Doerflinger.Mid-holiday, the Baron, a close friend of Alice-Miranda’s family, reappears after being mysteriously uncontactable, and the group head across the country to stay at the Grand Hotel Von Zwicky. The resort town of Zermatt is full of charm, but underneath the picturesque exterior are glimpses of shady dealings and unsavoury characters. Can Alice-Miranda work out who is involved in time to save the Baron’s beloved hotel?