Showing results by author "David Colmer" in All Categories

Eddy de Wind, a Dutch doctor and psychiatrist, was shipped to Auschwitz with his wife, Friedel, whom he had met and married at the Westerbork labour camp in the Netherlands. At Auschwitz, they made it through the brutal selection process and were put to work. Each day, each hour became a battle for survival. For Eddy, this meant negotiating with the volatile guards in the medical barracks. For Friedel, it meant avoiding the Nazis’ barbaric medical experiments.

On a sunny Friday morning in August 1945, a handful of tired people raised a homemade cotton flag and on behalf of 68 million compatriots announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first colonised country to declare its independence after the Second World War.

Tiddo and his wife, Isa, have drifted apart. They don’t make love anymore. Tiddo even finds their 13-year-old son, Jonathan, a stranger – quiet, distant and forever drawing monstrous creatures in his sketchbook. Desperate to keep his family together, Tiddo plans a holiday to Iceland, travelling the tourist circuit in a rented campervan. On their trip, they pick up a hitchhiker named Svein, who is tall and handsome, and covered in tattoos of ancient runes. When Svein offers to guide them off the beaten track, Tiddo is conflicted. Does Svein pose a threat or offer salvation?

"Long, long ago, it was incredibly busy. No one had time to stop for a moment. Everything and everyone had to be higher, faster, further, bigger, prettier, more!" Thus begins Grandpa Hedgehog's story of the Rush Era. A time not so different from our own, where everyone was constantly on the move and no one had time to stop for a moment, even to care for the forest. Everyone except for a tiny hero named Quill. Can this gentle soul teach the rushing world to stop and smell the flowers before it's too late?

Mr. Coats is freezing cold. No matter how many heaters he turns on, how many blankets he sleeps under at night, or how many layers he wears, he can simply never get warm. Being this cold all the time is lonely. And loneliness is a chilly feeling. Mr. Coats thinks he'll be alone in the cold forever, but he's wrong. There's someone out there just like him.