Susan Fromberg Schaeffer Knihy

"During all those years when everyone wanted me to tell them...how I came to fire that shot, I never wanted to talk. Now I think I do..." Agnes Dempster - young, beautiful, and accused of murder. Vermont, 1890. After an unhappy childhood, Agnes Dempster turns her back on her family and escapes to the city to begin a new life. There she meets Frank Holt, a local stonecutter, a man who captures her imagination and opens her eyes to an entirely different world. They begin a relationship, but over time Agnes becomes more dependent on Frank and this soon becomes an obsession - a dangerous one. And when she discovers her beloved is not as perfect as the image she had created of him, the cracks in her already fragile psyche begin to deepen. He is a betrayer, a man who will never make her happy. And as her life spirals out of control Agnes is propelled into a state of barely-controlled madness; a madness that leads to a chaotic and destructive resolution which will affect her and those around her for the rest of their lives…

Anya Karinsky's beautiful life seemed like one long and perfect dream that would spin on forever.But her wonderful world of dances, travel, medical school, and her beloved family ended one day late in the summer of 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland. The bombs that leveled her Warsaw home that day marked the beginning of her soul-stirring odyssey of endurance and escape, through years of horror and Holocaust. Strong when others grew weak, selfless in pursuit of freedom, Anya, once the beautiful, pampered daughter of privilege, turned herself into a survivor whom nothing and no one could destroy."A triumph of realism in art." —The New York Times Book Review"Anya is a myth, an epic, the creation of darkness and of laughter stopped forever…A vision, set down by a fearless, patient poet…A writer of remarkable power." —The Washington Post