The Daughter's Tale

 Fiction by Armando Lucas Correa

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book begins in 2015 with Elise Duval, an eighty-year-old woman who gets a shock from reading an old letter written in German, a language she didn't remember she actually knew. It seems she had repressed some memories from her childhood in France during World War Two, and had somehow forgotten that she had originally been German. Then the story goes back to the early 1930's in Berlin and a Jewish woman called Amanda Sternberg, who gives birth to two daughters and then has to figure out how to save them from the Nazis.

This was a good story, but it seemed to skip some details and leave things unresolved. According to the book jacket, it's "based on true events," so that may be the reason for the dearth of information.

3,096 Days in Captivity

 Nonfiction by Natascha Kampusch

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Natascha was ten years old in 1998 when she was abducted near her home in Austria, and it was more than eight years before she was finally able to escape her captor. This is her true story.

The Girl With the Golden Scissors

 Fiction by Julia Drosten

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is a historical fiction story originally written in German and set in Austria/Hungary. It follows a girl called Fanny who is given away at birth to the foundling home in Vienna and grows up there.

This was a decent story but not as absorbing as I'd have liked. Maybe it was the translation? Also I didn't love the narrator, which makes a big difference in an audiobook. I think if you are someone who really enjoys a straight romance you would like it.

Dear Child

 Fiction by Romy Haussmann 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/

At the beginning of this book, there is a girl injured in a hit and run accident and brought to the hospital with her young daughter. The child says her mother is called Lena; and there is a missing woman by that name the police have been seeking for years. But is this the same person? And who is the child?

This story, set in Germany and originally written on German, is billed on the back cover as "Room meets Gone Girl." That's a pretty accurate description, and it's quite as good a thriller as those two books.

The Reader

Fiction by Bernhard Schlink.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

Often I am wary of translated literary works, because sometimes the book loses its essence when it is translated away from its original language. This novel was originally written in German, but I did not know that when I purchased the audiobook. Now I'd like to know who the translator was, because he or she did a great job! No one is credited with the translation anywhere on the edition I downloaded or in the book's publicity listing. This is sad. I don't think translators get enough credit in general.

This book was very good. It is narrated by a boy who becomes a man over the course of the story, but at its center is Hanna Schmitz, a female character whom many would call pure evil. But of course no human being is really pure evil, are they? We are so much more complicated than that.

All in all, it's a very thought-provoking book, as well as being an interesting story.