True love and scandals in nineteenth-century Munich…
EINE FAST PERFEKTE DEBÜTANTIN
[An Almost Perfect Debutante]
The Lily Palace Saga, vol. 1
by Hannah Conrad
Heyne/Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, November 2022
Munich, 1827. Johanna von Seybach has moved from Königsberg to the magnificent Lily Palace, her uncle’s family seat – where an exciting season awaits her! Even before her official debut, it looks like a proposal from the eligible bachelor Friedrich Veidt is all but certain. But then Johanna has an unguarded moment of passion, and her reputation is suddenly in tatters. Friedrich drops her, and she’s left broken-hearted. Will anyone want to marry her, after such a scandal? Then she meets Alexander von Reuss at a glittering masked ball. That same evening, they grow closer than they should, experiencing a sensuous moment of surrender. But Johanna’s scandalous past is making such waves that even true love may not be enough to save her.
Hannah Conrad has already published many popular novels across various genres. She studied German and cultural journalism, and has won several awards, including the DeLiA Book Prize, the Selfpublisher prize and a short-story prize. She uses her extensive travels to research her novels, and is at home in several German cities.
Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene’s recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret―but it’s not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they’ve needed to keep others out. And now they’re worried they’re keeping a murderer in. Irene’s widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept―his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand.
Les droits d’adaptation tv du roman ISLAND QUEEN de Vanessa Riley ont été vendus à Longboat Pictures, société de production fondée par la britannique Julie Anne Robinson, qui a réalisé le pilote de la série 
How he wished to paint it. The razed city. The human drama. He saw the old forms broken, shaped in new alignments, the destructible world abstracted in splendid innovations…Already he understood the power of derangement, and how a single window might contain an entire fate.
Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she sent her and her baby brother, Oskar, out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. For Oskar, though, their new family is the only one he remembers. When a woman from a Jewish resettlement organization seizes them, claiming to have their best interest at heart, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves. Roger grows up in a monastery in France, inventing stories and trading riddles with his best friend in a life of quiet concealment. When a Jewish aunt seeks to reclaim him, the Church steals him across the Pyrenees before relinquishing him to family in Jerusalem. Renata, a graduate student in archaeology, has spent her life unearthing secrets from the past—except for her own. After her mother’s death, Renata’s grief is entwined with all the questions her mother left unanswered, including why they fled Germany so quickly when Renata was a little girl. Two decades after the war, these characters are each building lives for themselves in Israel, trying to move on from the trauma and loss that haunts them. But as their stories converge in unexpected ways, they must ask where they truly belong. Beautifully evocative and tender, filled with both luminosity and anguish, ONCE WE WERE HOME illuminates a little-known history. Based on the true stories of children stolen during wartime, this heart-wrenching novel raises questions of complicity and responsibility, good intentions and unforeseen consequences, as it confronts what it really means to find home.