The Dark Room

A debut novel that retells the history of twentieth-century Germany through the experiences of three ordinary Germans. Helmut: A boy born with a physical deformity finds work as a photographer’s assistant during the 1930s and captures on film the changing temper of Berlin, the city he loves. But his acute photographic eye never provides him with the power to understand the significance of what he sees through his camera. . . . Lore: In the weeks following Germany’s surrender, a teenage girl whose parents are both in Allied captivity takes her younger siblings on a terrifying, illegal journey through the four zones of occupation in search of her grandmother. . . . Micha: Many years after the war, a young man trying to discover why the Russians imprisoned his grandfather for nine years after the war meets resistance at every turn; the only person who agrees, reluctantly, to help him is compromised by his own past. The Dark Room evokes the experiences of the individual with astonishing emotional depth and psychological authenticity. With dazzling originality and to profound effect, Rachel Seiffert has re-envisioned and illuminated signal moments of the twentieth century in all their drama and complexity.

Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award, The Dark Room is the psychological thriller from crime queen Minette Walters. Something else had happened . . . Something so terrible that she was too frightened to search her memory for it . . . The newspapers reported the case with relish. Jane (Jinx) Kingsley, fashion photographer and heiress, tries to kill herself after being unceremoniously jilted by her fiancé, who has since disappeared – together with Jinx's best friend Meg Harris . . . But when Jinx wakes from her coma, she can remember nothing about her alleged suicide attempt. With the help of Dr Alan Protheroe of the Nightingale Clinic, she slowly begins to piece together the fragments of the last few weeks. Then the memories begin to surface . . . memories of utter desperation and absolute terror.

All's fair in love and revenge in this taut thriller from bestselling author Lisa Gray. Ex-crime reporter Leonard Blaylock spends his days on an unusual hobby, developing strangers' forgotten and discarded rolls of film. He loves the small mysteries the photographs reveal to him. Then Leonard finds something no one would ever expect, or want, to see captured on film--the murder of a young woman. But that's impossible, because the woman is already dead. Leonard was there when it happened five years earlier. He has never been able to shake his guilt from that terrible night. It cost Leonard everything: his career, his fiancée, his future. But if the woman didn't really die, then what actually happened?

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash, comes In the Darkroom, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father and the larger riddle of identity consuming our age. “In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things—obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness.” So begins Susan Faludi’s extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and in her own haunted family saga. When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father—long estranged and living in Hungary—had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as “a complete woman now” connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known, the photographer who’d built his career on the alteration of images? Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father’s many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. When the author travels to Hungary to reunite with her father, she drops into a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics in a country hell-bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful—and virulent—nationhood. The search for identity that has transfixed our century was proving as treacherous for nations as for individuals. Faludi’s struggle to come to grips with her father’s metamorphosis takes her across borders—historical, political, religious, sexual--to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you “choose,” or is it the very thing you can’t escape?

In The Dark Room, the experiences of three people are evoked with stunning emotional depth and psychological authenticity. A boy born with a physical deformity finds work as a photographer's assistant during the 1930s and captures on film the changing temper of Berlin, the city he loves. But his acute photographic eye never provides him with the power to understand the significance of what he sees through his camera. In the weeks following Germany's surrender, a teenage girl whose parents are both in Allied captivity takes her younger siblings on a terrifying, illegal journey through the four zones of occupation in search of her grandmother. Many years after the event, a young man trying to discover why the Russians imprisoned his grandfather for nine years after the war meets resistance at every turn; the only person who agrees, reluctantly, to help him has his own tainted past to contend with. With dazzling originality and to profound effect, Rachel Seiffert has recreated one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century.

In the latest chiller from million-copy-seller K.R. Alexander, author of THE COLLECTOR and THE FEAR ZONE, an app that allows you to see ghosts can only lead you to horrifying sights... Do you think an app that allows you to see ghosts would be cool? Well, prepare to be haunted... even when your phone is off.

R. K. Narayan (1906—2001) witnessed nearly a century of change in his native India and captured it in fiction of uncommon warmth and vibrancy. In The Dark Room, Narayan’s portrait of aggrieved domesticity, the docile and obedient Savitri, like many Malgudi women, is torn between submitting to her husband’s humiliations and trying to escape them. Written during British rule, this novel brings colonial India into intimate focus through the narrative gifts of this master of literary realism.

DILLON/IN THE DARK ROOM