The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany

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They trusted each other, put the other ahead of themselves. “That was a very powerful experience for them.” A] narrative of unfathomable courage... Ms. Strauss does her readers—and her subjects—a worthy service by returning to this appalling history of the courage of women caught up in a time of rapacity and war." — Wall Street Journal A compelling, beautifully written story of resilience, friendship and survival. The story of Women’s resistance during World War II needs to be told and The Nine accomplishes this in spades.” ―Heather Morris, author of Cilka’s Journey My favourite part of this book was the way it told the story of the lives of the women in the days and years after the war ended. It added an extra dimension to the tale which I haven’t read in other books. However, at times I found the story a little difficult to follow, mainly because it often jumped around quite a lot. But I loved the addition of the photographs, it helped make the story come to life. A compelling, beautifully written story of resilience, friendship and survival. The story of Women’s resistance during World War II needs to be told and The Nine accomplishes this in spades."—Heather Morris, New York Times bestselling author of Cilka's Journey

Family and Filipino culture--especially the sumptuous fusion food--are front and center in a madcap mystery populated with a strong supporting cast. This includes Lila's commanding grandmother Lola Flor, and the "Calendar Crew," Lila's meddling godmothers, April, Mae and June. This trio of outspoken women, all in their 50s, were friends of Lila's late mother. There's also Lila's best friend, Pakistani Muslim barista Adeena Awan, and her swoon-worthy, older brother, Amir, a lawyer. The Hiding Game (2017). Illustrated by Herb Leonard. A middle-grade reader; Pelican Publishing, 2017. [8] Andy Weir ( The Martian; Artemis) has created a propulsive space adventure in Project Hail Mary. The story centers on Dr. Ryland Grace, a middle-school biology teacher, whose obscure paper about alien races comes to the attention of some important individuals when the sun starts rapidly fading. More than half of humanity is predicted to die, and the earth's ecology will be in shambles if scientists can't figure out why the sun has suddenly started losing heat. Like an army unit, they had a band of brothers feel about them. They were from different social classes, different countries, but somehow they became a unit.”

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Mémoire des Hommes, Base "Titres, homologations et services pour faits de résistance" Jeannine Hélène Suzanne PODLIASKY I really liked this book, I won't say I "enjoyed" reading it, because how does one enjoy reading about dying children and tortured women? But I did learn from these women and their story as I have learned from all the books I have read about WWII. Strauss does a great job bringing the facts to life so that we feel, right along with Helene, Zinka and all the other women. I liked that the facts weren't just listed in some long, dry, litany, but divulged in such a manner as to evoke emotion in the reader. To me this defines the difference of being a good writer, to being a great writer. I'd tell my younger self this: "Your sensitivity is a gift. It's a strength, not a weakness. You're strong because of it, not in spite of it. And it's your sensitivity that will lead you to your dreams."

Some of the most impactful people in my life have been other authors. In 2016, I was fortunate enough to get into a mentorship program called Pitch Wars, where an established author (the incredible Heather Ezell) chose me and my manuscript to mentor through a revision for three months. That book didn't end up getting published, but the experience changed my life. Pitch Wars made me believe--it suddenly surrounded me with people who took me and my writing seriously--and it was that shift that led to my dreams coming true. The overall tone of the book was a bit confusing. Certain parts felt like a novel, other parts a historical textbook, and still other parts seemed semi-autobiographical. The author’s great aunt was one of the Nine, so it made sense that she would want to bring in a personal aspect to the story. I just felt like her inconsistent use of first person was jarring and disrupted the flow of the book.

What Clara also needs is "to be seen by another person," and that person is Sang. Over the course of Clara's training, Clara and Sang's relationship develops into a beautiful and imperfect amalgam of gentle intimacy, raw emotion and love. The relationship develops organically and doesn't feel rushed, and the way Griffin describes their moments together is poetic and tangible. Clara is Sang's "magnificently disruptive force," while he is her sun. At Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia Strauss was an Adjunct Professor in 2002, teaching english composition, and a Design Press Editor from 2002 to 2005. What the administration doesn't know is that Clara has no intention of making any kind of difference. In fact, in 11 months, when the rest of the witches flee from the forthcoming total solar eclipse, she plans to stand in the shadow of the moon and cut off her connection to the sun, which will strip her of her magic. While Clara's teachers believe her magic might be able to "single-handedly restore stability in the atmosphere," Clara knows it comes with "a death sentence." Her magic is too big for her to control--"it builds and builds and builds, and when the pressure is too great, it searches for another means of escape," targeting those with whom she has an emotional connection. More than once, her magic has killed people she loves--first her parents, then her best friend, Nikki. Clara despises and fears her magic.

p> 3. Six­ty years lat­er, Nicole wrote, ​ “Once again, Iam con­vinced of the strength of the ties unit­ing us and of our shared force.” What was their shared force? After the war Hélène’s best friend in the camps, Zaza, defied that trend: Rather than keeping silent, she wrote her account of their escape—though she left out the full identities of the other women, perhaps to protect them. It would be first published 60 years later. She wrote bitterly that French prisoners of war and local Germans assumed that they were voluntary prostitutes who had seen an opportunity to “service” the SS and the “free” workers in the camps. The idea that they risked their lives transporting arms, passing messages or sheltering their comrades in the Resistance was not considered possible, much less the horrors they had been subjected to upon their arrest and deportation. Because they were young pretty girls, in their 20s, they were not taken seriously. The nine women were all under thirty when they joined the resistance. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked escape routes to Spain and hid Jewish children in scattered apartments. They were arrested by French police, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo. They were subjected to a series of French prisons and deported to Germany. The Nine by Gwen Strauss tells the historical account of nine female political prisoners who escape their Nazi guards while on a death march during the last days of WWII. These nine women were imprisoned for participating in the French Resistance. This book chronicles: Strauss] gets her facts right... A breathless story of almost superhuman heroism and suffering with a (mostly) happy ending." —Kirkus

‘Ready To Go’ - What is it?

This haunting account provides yet more evidence not only of the power of female friendship but that the often unrecorded courage and resilience of ordinary women must be honored and celebrated. It's a most inspiring read...Utterly gripping." ?Anne Sebba, author of Les Parisiennes But Podliasky’s first account of the story was unreliable. She’d described the other women as prostitutes and said there were only five of them. It was only when she read Zaza’s own recollections – written just after the war but only published 60 years later – that she revised her own. Strauss believes the errors in Podliasky’s initial story were because she’d not talked about it for so long and her memory had uploaded the Nazi propaganda instead. In the absence of canonical versions, Strauss feels it’s reasonable for her to imagine some of the dialogue that might have taken place. “I needed to make their stories as alive as possible to honour them.”

After spending her youth caring for her grandmother and then establishing herself as a nurse in London, Susannah marries a rich, handsome younger surgeon. It's more than the spinster had ever hoped for, but not long after they return from their honeymoon, he begins to become distant. With no support from her husband and with the domineering housekeeper uninterested in letting her take any role in the running of their home, Susannah distracts herself with the newspapers, especially once the first lurid account of a woman murdered in Whitechapel is published. Then she realizes that her husband has been out late or failed to come home every time a new victim was found, sometimes even coming home bloodied. Is her husband the murderer? And is there anyone to whom Susannah can turn with her suspicions? From 2005 to 2007 Strauss was Director of the Lacoste Campus ( Lacoste, France) of the Savannah College of Art and Design ( SCAD). The inhumane treatment these people experienced in the camps was beyond the average person’s imagination. When allied soldiers liberated the camps, what they found shook them to the core. There was even a misunderstanding amongst POWs fighting for allied forces, who were held by the Nazis. The POWs did not know what was going on in the concentration and work camps. While reading the story of these nine women, I kept thinking about how much WWII changed- everything. It changed Europe most drastically, where you could see the devastation of towns bombed flat, and millions of people dead. But it also changed the world’s understanding of the horrors humans are capable of. A new word, GENOCIDE, was invented to describe what the Nazis did in their concentration and death camps. Not only were entire families wiped off the earth, but the survivors carried with them guilt and trauma that have carried on through generations. In Mergers and Acquisitions, Cate Doty's first book, she gives readers a compelling, often irreverent insider's tour of her years writing wedding announcements for the New York Times. Along the way, she muses on the social and political implications of the weddings she covered, shares a few juicy anecdotes (without naming names), and reflects on her journey from hapless girlfriend to contented singleton to (eventually) a woman who suspects she might have found lifelong love. I do! I was born on the vernal equinox, so I would be a spring witch. Spring is a hopeful season, and it's comfortable sitting with the hardships of the past while looking forward to all the wonderful things that are on the horizon. This juxtaposition of being able to sit with all my feelings while remaining hopeful and optimistic is very true to me as a person.

The Nine

But now they were in the middle of Saxony, facing frightened and hostile German villagers, angry fleeing officers of Germany’s Schutzstaffel (SS), the Russian army, and Allied bombers overhead. The Americans were somewhere nearby, they hoped. They had to find the Americans or die trying. p> 14. The legal sta­tus of women in France changed after the war. For exam­ple, they got the right to vote large­ly because of the role women played in the Résis­tance. How do you feel these women changed theworld? I liked the way that the book focused on each one of the Nine, giving details of their life before the war, their work with the resistance, imprisonment, and flight to freedom. Each woman’s unique personality was well highlighted and it was interesting to read a book that focused on political prisoners during WWII. Though each woman’s individual experiences are important, it is the bond of friendship that makes this a powerful story. Nicole said: ‘We were young, we were strong and we wanted to live,’” says Strauss. “That’s the reason they survived. I would think they had a kind of friendship and solidarity, an esprit de corps that helped them.