The Berlin Letters
A Cold War Novel
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Narrated by:
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Saskia Maarleveld
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Ann Marie Gideon
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P. J. Ochlan
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By:
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Katherine Reay
About this listen
"Fans of codebreakers, spies, and Cold War dramas will be entrapped by Reay's tale of courage, love, and honor set against the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall." - Booklist Starred Review
Bestselling author Katherine Reay returns with an unforgettable tale of the Cold War and a CIA code breaker who risks everything to free her father from an East German prison.
From the time she was a young girl, Luisa Voekler has loved solving puzzles and cracking codes. Brilliant and logical, she's expected to quickly climb the career ladder at the CIA. But while her coworkers have moved on to thrilling Cold War assignments--especially in the exhilarating era of the late 1980s--Luisa's work remains stuck in the past decoding messages from World War II.
Journalist Haris Voekler grew up a proud East Berliner. But as his eyes open to the realities of postwar East Germany, he realizes that the Soviet promises of a better future are not coming to fruition. After the Berlin Wall goes up, Haris finds himself separated from his young daughter and all alone after his wife dies. There's only one way to reach his family--by sending coded letters to his father-in-law who lives on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
When Luisa Voekler discovers a secret cache of letters written by the father she has long presumed dead, she learns the truth about her grandfather's work, her father's identity, and why she has never progressed in her career. With little more than a rudimentary plan and hope, she journeys to Berlin and risks everything to free her father and get him out of East Berlin alive.
As Luisa and Haris take turns telling their stories, events speed toward one of the twentieth century's most dramatic moments--the fall of the Berlin Wall and that night's promise of freedom, truth, and reconciliation for those who lived, for twenty-eight years, behind the bleak shadow of the Iron Curtain's most iconic symbol.
- A Cold War novel that takes readers to the heart of Berlin to witness both the early and final days of the Berlin Wall
- Stand-alone novel
- Book length: approximately 107,000 words
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Story
Florrie Butterfield—eighty-seven, one-legged, and of cheerful disposition—believes there can't be any more adventures or surprises in life to experience. Yet one midsummer’s evening, there’s an accident at Babbington Hall—the adult residence where she lives—so shocking and strange that Florrie is suspicious; is this really an accident?
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Lovely contemplation of life
- By Domenica Rafferty on 09-04-24
By: Susan Fletcher
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The Brontë Plot
- By: Katherine Reay
- Narrated by: Laura Kirman
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Lucy Alling makes a living selling rare books, often taking suspicious liberties to reach her goals. When her unorthodox methods are discovered, Lucy’s secret ruins her relationship with her boss and her boyfriend, James - leaving Lucy in a heap of hurt and trouble. Something has to change; she has to change. In a sudden turn of events, James’s wealthy grandmother, Helen, hires Lucy as a consultant for a London literary and antiques excursion. Lucy reluctantly agrees and soon discovers Helen holds secrets of her own.
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Well worth a credit!
- By Beverly on 06-20-19
By: Katherine Reay
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Holy City
- By: Henry Wise
- Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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After a decade of exile precipitated by the tragic death of his mother, Will Seems returns home from Richmond to rural Southside Virginia, taking a job as deputy sheriff in a landscape given way to crime and defeat. Impoverished and abandoned, this remote land of tobacco plantations, razed forests, and boarded up homes seems stuck in the past in a state that is trying to forget its complex history and move on.
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Henry Wise Delivers
- By Jeff Circle on 06-11-24
By: Henry Wise
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The Lost Book of Bonn
- A Novel
- By: Brianna Labuskes
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Germany, 1946: Emmy Clarke is a librarian not a soldier. But that doesn’t stop the Library of Congress from sending her overseas to Germany to help the Monuments Men retrieve and catalog precious literature that was plundered by the Nazis. The Offenbach Archival Depot and its work may get less attention than returning art to its rightful owners, but for Emmy, who sees the personalized messages on the inside of the books and the notes in margins of pages, it feels just as important.
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Brilliant!
- By Amazon Customer on 07-21-24
By: Brianna Labuskes
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The Beach at Summerly
- A Novel
- By: Beatriz Williams
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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June 1946. As the residents of Winthrop Island prepare for the first summer season after the sacrifice of war, a glamorous new figure moves into the guest cottage at Summerly, the idyllic seaside estate of the wealthy Peabody family. To Emilia Winthrop, daughter of Summerly’s year-round caretaker and a descendant of the island’s settlers, Olive Rainsford opens a window into a world of shining possibility. While Emilia spent the war years caring for her incapacitated mother, Olive traveled the world, married fascinating men, and involved herself in political causes.
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An easy listen with some great twists
- By internetgenius on 03-05-24
By: Beatriz Williams
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Our Kind of Game
- A Novel
- By: Johanna Copeland
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing, Leslie Howard, Nicol Zanzarella
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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A gifted new suspense writer makes her sizzling debut with this serpentine tale exploring all the ways in which men enact violence on women, how women try to reclaim their own sense of self, and the lingering effects on their children’s lives. Filled with shocking twists and turns, this is a book that both asks what it means for a woman to be in control of her life while also highlighting the impact of small daily violences upon women, and the connection between physical and psychological harm.
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Plodding, preachy and implausible
- By Rachie on 07-25-24
By: Johanna Copeland
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Watch It Burn
- By: Kristen Bird
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing, Hillary Huber, Jennifer Sun Bell, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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After elementary school teacher Nichole Miller discovers the woman's body, she makes two phone calls: first to the police, who call Beverly's death a slip and fall, and second to her best friend, journalist Jenny Martin. Jenny is attempting to revive her flailing marriage and her all-but-DOA career, and she knows foul play when she sees it. The two women enlist the help of Beverly’s daughter-in-law, Robin, who’s eager to expose the truth.
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Predictable
- By Charlie on 08-15-24
By: Kristen Bird
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The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby
- A Novel
- By: Ellery Lloyd
- Narrated by: Nneka Okoye, Joshua Akehurst, Eleanor Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Everybody knows that in 1938, runaway heiress artist Juliette Willoughby perished in an accidental studio fire in Paris, alongside her masterpiece Self Portrait As Sphinx. Fifty years later, two Cambridge art history students are confounded when they stumble across proof that the fire was no accident but something more sinister. What they uncover threatens the very foundation of Juliette’s aristocratic family and revives rumors of the infamous curse that has haunted the Willoughbys for generations. But what does their discovery mean? And how is it connected to a murder in present-day Dubai?
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Twists and turns
- By Abigail on 10-09-24
By: Ellery Lloyd
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The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West
- By: Sara Ackerman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Robideau
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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1927. Olivia "Livy" West is a fearless young pilot with a love of adventure. She yearns to cross oceans and travel the skies. When she learns of the Dole Air Race—a high-stakes contest to be the first to make the 2,400 mile Pacific crossing from the West Coast to Hawai'i—she sets her sights on qualifying. But it soon becomes clear that only men will make the cut. In a last-ditch effort to take part, Livy manages to be picked as a navigator for one of the pilots, before setting out on a harrowing journey that some will not survive.
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Error in summary
- By Kim on 02-12-24
By: Sara Ackerman
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Chenneville
- A Novel of Murder, Loss, and Vengeance
- By: Paulette Jiles
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John’s beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered. Their killer goes by many names. He fought for the North in the late unpleasantness, and wore a badge in the name of the law. But the man John knows as A. J. Dodd is little more than a rabid animal, slaughtering without reason or remorse, needing to be put down.
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Good story bad narration
- By Taryn on 02-19-24
By: Paulette Jiles
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The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Ryan
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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After renowned fashion designer Cressida Westcott loses both her home and her design house in the London Blitz, she has nowhere to go but the family manor house she fled decades ago. Praying that her niece and nephew will be more hospitable than her brother had been, she arrives with nothing but the clothes she stands in, at a loss as to how to rebuild her business while staying in a quaint country village.
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Delightful historical fiction
- By Kindle Customer on 01-01-23
By: Jennifer Ryan
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The Girls with No Names
- By: Serena Burdick
- Narrated by: Emily Lawrence, Nancy Peterson, Amy McFadden
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in New York City in the 1910s, Luella and Effie Tildon realize that even as wealthy young women, their freedoms come with limits. But when the sisters discover a shocking secret about their father, Luella, the brazen elder sister, becomes emboldened to do as she pleases. Her rebellion comes with consequences, and one morning Luella is mysteriously gone.
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Consumed this in a few days.....
- By Sarah on 04-20-20
By: Serena Burdick
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Phantom Orbit
- A Thriller
- By: David Ignatius
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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David Ignatius is known for his uncanny ability, in novel after novel, to predict the next great national security headline. In Phantom Orbit, he presents a story both searing and topical, with stakes as far-reaching as outer space. It follows Ivan Volkov, a Russian student in Beijing, who discovers an unsolved puzzle in the writings of the seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler. He takes the puzzle to a senior scientist in the Chinese space program and declares his intention to solve it.
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Too much story, not enough payoff
- By WtW on 06-26-24
By: David Ignatius
What listeners say about The Berlin Letters
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-12-25
the believable story as it was so much based on fact
it was true from the description of what East Berlin was like at the time compared to West when I saw it in 1970
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- Jessica Clark
- 11-23-24
Amazing
This was a fabulous book. The author did such a great job with the research and turning it into a story while fiction could be real. I highly recommend this book.
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- Valerie Moon
- 01-14-25
An enjoyable way to learn history
This book captured my attention from the first chapter. I knew so little about this period of history. It was fascinating.
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- Bea
- 05-22-24
Courage in the face of hopelessness
A well researched and written book. so much sacrifice, so much suffering and mistrust. Reay did an excellent job presenting the facts in a fictional setting.
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- MMG
- 03-16-24
The immense fear and suffering
I really enjoyed this audiobook. It gave us a glimpse of the betrayal, sorrow and fear brought on by the separation of families and abuses, experienced by those living under an oppressive regime. After witnessing the fall of the Berlin wall over the news many years ago, I enjoyed the perspective from those living trapped by it. I really enjoyed the narrations using different voices and accents. It made it seem more real and easy to follow.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Syd Young
- 03-10-24
A Fresh Peek
Loved this audiobook! Especially the back and forth detail, the West/ East view, the idea that one should t have to leave home in order to live free. Really resonates right now. I was in Europe the summer the wall came down, and so this brought back so many memories and feelings. But we are still learning what it was like to live in East Berlin, and even the views of West Berlin are eye-opening. I really loved the father-daughter aspect as well, including a father who faces the fact that he was wrong but also was willing to give all for change. I wouldn’t have thought that an epistolary novel would have felt so tense, well done to the author for keeping that feeling so prescient, leaping off the pages. The narrators were good/ had their work cut out for them with these accents.
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- Stacy
- 07-09-24
Great historical story
I enjoyed this book and the audio version of the Cold War. It’s a place in history I’ve not had much knowledge about. Katherine Raey is one of my favorites and so I knew I wanted to read it but the audio was a great resource to go along with the ebook.
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- V. Temple
- 03-13-24
Thoroughly enjoyed this book
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and now am motivated to read a lot more about the Berlin Wall, its inception and collapse. Highly recommend.
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- Rey
- 10-13-24
Clean Entertainment for History Buffs
So much history is presented here! I really appreciate the accuracy of the setting and events. The tale is throughly entertaining, although somewhat predictable. It definitely held my attention throughout.
Also notable is the fact that this story is told in a clean, inoffensive manner. It certainly is not for children, but it is family friendly enough to hand to a teenager. I highly recommend!
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- golfer
- 03-15-24
Excellent book for listening!
This book takes place during of a piece of history which is too easily forgotten- The Cold War and the division between Western Democratic Europe and in Soviet controlled Eastern Europe. Through the very human characters we are put in touch with with the gnarly postwar divided Berlin situation which is endured for many years by many brave people. The compelling characters are made so because of the great readers with excellent acting skills. . It is not a book with the same narrator throughout. Each character has their own voice and as a listener you look forward to each character's account. It is like listening to a live play. Very thought-provoking and enjoyable.
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2 people found this helpful