Bookshelf Review

The Berlin Series reaches its conclusion. Secret Hotel Berlin follows Adam, a man who has spent years trying to distance himself from his East German childhood. But when a chance discovery uncovers a forgotten family story, he begins a journey through Berlin's divided past that slowly reshapes the way he sees his history — and himself. This isn't a book about dramatic twists or high-stak...

The Berlin Series continues. Berlin Sisters takes us deeper into wartime Berlin — inside a family living a double life while the regime sits at their dinner table. A father who reached his moral turning point before the book begins. A eldest daughter who knew. And a youngest daughter, Ava, who did not. Until one night. A sound from the loft. And four strangers staring back at her in the dark. This...

France is done. The Berlin Series begins. Berlin Wife by Marion Kummerow takes us to Germany between 1922 and 1936 — the years of Hitler's ascendancy. The years in which everything that would come was already being built, law by law, small concession by small concession. Two couples. Two Jewish men carrying their faith in completely different ways. Two women watching in real time as the count...

The France Trilogy ends where history began. Pas a pas, se va luenh. Step by step, one goes far. An ancient Occitan proverb. Eight centuries old. Spoken in Kate Mosse's Labyrinth by two women who never meet — and yet walk the same path, face the same danger and carry the same secret. Carcassonne. 1209 and today. Two timelines. One city that has been holding its secrets for eight hundred years...

Today we stay in France. But this is a very different France from last time. No barges. No lavender fields. No slow journey south. This is Occupied Dijon. 1940s. And the tension is underneath everything. The French Affair by Theresa Howes is the second episode of the France Trilogy — and it asks a question that will stay with you long after you finish listening. What would you do if someone you lo...

Welcome to Bookshelf Reviews. I'm Shane — and this is where book lovers come to talk books. In this pilot episode I open up a quote that stopped me in my tracks: "To read a book is to take a journey, to travel into a vast unknown, to hear the voices of angels both living and dead." When you read — where do you go? Whose voice do you hear? I share what reading means to me, why histor...

Today we head to France. Specifically to a bookshop — not on a high street, not in a mall — on a barge, moored quietly along the Seine in the heart of Paris. The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George is part love story, part road trip, part soul searching — wrapped in the most beautiful French landscapes you'll ever read about. Jean Perdu runs a floating literary apothecary. He can read exactl...