the book of lost names  <p><b>“a fascinating, heartrending page-turner that, like the real-life forgers who inspired the novel, should never be forgotten.” (kristina mcmorris, </b><b><i>new york times</i></b><b> best-selling author of </b><b><i>sold on a monday</i></b><b>)</b></p> <p><b>inspired by an astonishing true story from world war ii, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of jewish children flee the nazis in this “sweeping and magnificent” (fiona davis, best-selling author of </b><b><i>the lions of fifth avenue</i></b><b>) historical novel from the number one international best-selling author of </b><b><i>the winemaker’s wife</i></b><b>.</b></p> <p>eva traube abrams, a semi-retired librarian in florida, is shelving books when her eyes lock on a photograph in the <i>new york times</i>. she freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in more than 60 years - a book she recognizes as <i>the book of lost names</i>.</p> <p>the accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the nazis across europe during world war ii - an experience eva remembers well - and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. the book in the photograph, an 18th-century religious text thought to have been taken from france in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. now housed in berlin’s zentral- und landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from - or what the code means. only eva holds the answer, but does she have the strength to revisit old memories?</p> <p>as a graduate student in 1942, eva was forced to flee paris and find refuge in a small mountain town in the free zone, where she began forging identity documents for jewish children fleeing to neutral switzerland. but erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named rémy, eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. the records they keep in <i>the book of lost names</i> will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and rémy disappears.</p> <p>an engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of <i>the lost girls of paris</i> and <i>the alice network</i>, <i>the book of lost names </i>is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil. </p>