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  • The Book of Lost Names

  • Written by: Kristin Harmel
  • Narrated by: Madeleine Maby
  • Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (339 ratings)

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The Book of Lost Names

Written by: Kristin Harmel
Narrated by: Madeleine Maby
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Publisher's Summary

“A fascinating, heartrending page-turner that, like the real-life forgers who inspired the novel, should never be forgotten.” (Kristina McMorris, New York Times best-selling author of Sold on a Monday)

Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in this “sweeping and magnificent” (Fiona Davis, best-selling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue) historical novel from the number one international best-selling author of The Winemaker’s Wife.

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books when her eyes lock on a photograph in the New York Times. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in more than 60 years - a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II - an experience Eva remembers well - and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an 18th-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from - or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer, but does she have the strength to revisit old memories?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris and find refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, where she began forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.

©2020 Kristin Harmel Lietz (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

What listeners say about The Book of Lost Names

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Narrator sounds like a robot

Her voice was distracting at first, but the story lured me in. I thought maybe it was just me, but my daughter said the same thing! Beautiful story that kept me interested the whole time. You will love it too

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    5 out of 5 stars
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listen to it!

wonderful, sad and hard to stop listening too, well written and the narrator does a great job. I recommend it.

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Just, just... it’s breathtaking

What a powerful, moving, terrifying, hope filled book. I highly recommend it. This one will stick with me for a while.

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loved it!

Loved it. It was hard to stop listening. You knew some things would happen like she would be alive, but very well written.

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Memorable book !

Beatifull story, well written.
Great pace and nice twists
It is in my top ten of all books !

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic!

Instantly hooked. Amazing reader. Warning... If you have a heart at all, you'll likely cry like a baby.

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Very good

I got through this in only 2 days, I couldn't stop listening. Emotional and riveting.

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  • 2022-03-14

Another perspective

I have not read a book about WWII from the French resistance perspective and it was refreshing. My only complaint was for Eva's mother. Could she really have been that thoughtless and misunderstanding of her daughter? At least at the end, I felt she redeemed herself.

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Terrific

Hung on every word. Sorry when it ended. A very good book. Will read/listen again.

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wow

couldn't put it down. mesmerizing, real life emotion, brought me to Southern France during the war.

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