City of Shadows
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Berlin, 1922: A city of fading beauty plagued by unemployment and rampant inflation becomes home to a growing number of refugees. Esther Solomonova survives by working as secretary to her fellow Russian émigré, "Prince" Nick, a scheming cabaret owner. Always on the prowl for a deal, Nick smells money when he hears of a woman in an asylum claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, daughter of the Russian Czar, the lone member of her family to escape assassination by the Bolsheviks. Enlisting a highly suspicious Esther, Nick plans to prepare the woman—known as Anna Anderson—to claim the Romanov fortune.
But Anna is being hunted. Or so she claims. At first Esther believes Anna’s fears to be just in her imagination—until innocent people around them begin to die. Together with a German police officer, a dogged inspector named Schmidt, Esther tries to discover who wants Anna dead—and why. Yet the deeper she and Schmidt dig, the more they realize that their own lives are at risk.
Deeply atmospheric, peopled with rich, complex characters, City of Shadows is an enthralling novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Franklin (the pseudonym of a veteran historical fiction writer) makes the most of an original premise in this engrossing thriller that opens in 1922 Berlin. The German government is in crisis, inflation is staggering, anti-Semitism is rife, citizens are starving and Hitler has begun his rise to power. Horribly scarred Esther Solonomova works as a secretary for fake Russian nobleman Prince Nick, the owner of several Berlin nightclubs (think Cabaret) catering to the rich, the foreign and the deviant. Nick finds an inmate in a local asylum who claims to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, sole survivor of the slaughter of Russia's royal family. Prince Nick renames the inmate Anna Anderson, installs her in an apartment with Esther and sets in motion plans to get his hands on the money and jewels that Anna will claim as the heir to the Russian throne. But a mysterious Nazi is trying to murder Anna, and those near her begin to die. Franklin deftly orchestrates her characters on and off the world's stage, building suspense to a dramatic, surprising finish.
