The Women of the Castle

Jessica Shattuck

May 2017 · Bolinda · Narrated by Joan Walker

Audiobook

11 hr 45 min

Unabridged

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About this audiobook

A resistance widow. A silent co-conspirator. The only one who survived. Bavaria, Germany. June, 1945. The Third Reich has crumbled. The Russians are coming. Can Marianne von Lingenfels and the women in her care survive and build their ravaged world anew? Marianne – widow of a resistor to the Nazi regime – returns to the grand, crumbling castle where she once played host to all of German high society. She assembles a makeshift family from the ruins of her husband's movement, rescuing her dearest friend's widow, Benita, from sexual slavery to the Russian army, and Ania from a work camp for political prisoners. She is certain their shared past will bind them together. But as Benita begins a clandestine relationship and Ania struggles to conceal her role in the Nazi regime, Marianne learns that her clear-cut, highly principled world view has no place in these new, frightening and emotionally charged days. All three women must grapple with the realities they now face, and the consequences of decisions each made in the darkest of times ... Deeply moving and compelling, The Women of the Castle is a heart-wrenching and hopeful tale of secrets and survival, a reckoning and the astonishing power of forgiveness.

About the author

Jessica Shattuck is the author of the novels The Women in the Castle, a New York Times Bestseller and winner of The New England Book Award; Perfect Life; and The Hazards of Good Breeding, which was a New York Times Notable Book, a Boston Globe best book of the year, and a finalist for the 2003 PEN/Winship Award. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Glamour, Open City, and The Tampa Review among other publications.

Joan has 30 years of experience as an actress, enjoying all aspects of work including audiobooks, commercials, radio drama, TV, theatre and film. Recent theatre work includes a world tour of Mamma Mia! playing the man-eating Tanya; Lady Fancyfull, the ditzy schemer in The Provok'd Wife at Greenwich Theatre; and Ingrid in The Tide at the Soho Theatre. Favourite roles for BBC Radio Drama include Dorothy Parker in Regret is No Part of My Plan for Radio 4, Madame Beck in Villette for Radio 4 and the Voice of God in The Piper Alpha Disaster for Radio 3.

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