Cheryl's Book Nook

Annie Kendall is a historian. She specializes in the Renaissance England time period, specially the Tudor era. This is why when Annie receives the offer from the Shalom Foundation to come and research some ancient artifacts from the Hold Land she jumps at the opportunity. Annie will be staying at Bristol House, which is only a four minute walk from the British Museum. Unfortunately Annie is not alone in the house. Her guest is a monk. Who just happens to be dead. As if this is not enough for Annie to digest. She meets Geoff Harris. Geoff bares a very similar remembrance to the dead monk. What is their relation to each other? Try as I might, I just could not fully commit to this book. I was originally excited to read this book. I thought the premise of it was intriguing and I like reading about the Tudor era. However, this book never really picked up speed for me. I tried to stick with it but eventually had to stop. I was sad as I wanted to like this book a lot. The only parts tha...

In BRISTOL HOUSE a character called Maggie Harris is modeled on the mother of an old friend who was brought to England from Germany as part of a WWII program known as the Kindertransport. This is the story of that remarkable program. In 1934, as Adolph Hitler began his second year as the democratically elected chancellor, there were some 500,000 Jews in all of Germany. Less than 1% of the population, they were nonetheless highly visible because most lived in Berlin. Hitler and his chief propagandist, Josef Goebbels, knew that nothing unites a people like a common enemy. They systematically began blaming German Jews (along with German Gypsies, an even smaller percentage of the population) for all the country's post WWI economic woes. One after another the rights of German Jews were stripped away. They were forbidden to work in the Civil Service and then in a variety of other professions. They were denied the right to vote. They were forbidden to marry non-Jews. Soon ...