Showing results by author "Jamie Lee Searle (translator)" in All Categories

Paris, 1940, a city under German occupation. A young Jewish girl, Judith, meets a young man, Christian. But he is the son of a wealthy banker and Nazi sympathizer—his family will never approve of the girl he has fallen in love with. As the Germans impose more and more restrictions on Jewish Parisians, the couple secretly plan to flee the country. But before they can make their escape, Judith disappears.

Ever since discovering her lifelong best friend was sleeping with her (now ex) husband, Christine's trust in other women has been a little shaky. Sure, she has a few close friends, but she's also fiercely independent and shies away from sharing too much with them. When Ruth, one of her colleagues, hears Christine saying that she doesn't feel the need for a best friend, she wishes she could show her how enriching a good female friendship really can be. She embarks on a mission to find Christine’s girlfriends.

Forty-six-year-old divorcée Christine is finally happy - or so she thinks. She has an amazing boyfriend but she also has a drama-filled family she fears might scare him off. And when Christine spies her dependable Aunt Inge in the company of a man who is most certainly not her husband, it sends the family drama into overdrive - and delivers an unexpected wake-up call to Christine. Because after witnessing the newfound passion with which 60-something Inge is tackling each day, Christine becomes aware of the mounting frustrations in her supposedly fabulous life. Sick and tired of playing it safe, Christine finally decides the time has come to make some big changes.

Thirty years have passed since Christine and her father, Heinz, vacationed together. It was such a disaster - an exasperated Heinz left the moody teenager at a gas station to teach her a lesson - that Christine vowed never to travel with him again. But now her mother is insisting that Christine and her best friend, Dorothea, take Heinz along on what is supposed to be a relaxing girls’ trip to the beach. And she’s not taking no for an answer. Suddenly Christine and Dorothea have a chaperone, though high school is long since over.

When Christine’s husband calls her during a girls’ night in with her sister and asks for a divorce, she’s devastated. And bewildered. Admittedly, her marriage was in a rut, but at least she had someone, and an idea of how her future would be. Now, in the run-up to her 40th birthday, she has to start over. With the help of loyal girlfriends and her courageous decision to move to the city, she gradually starts to find her feet on the ground again - and begins to make a new life for herself.