Alexis Landau has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is Those Who Are Saved.
Those Who Are Saved
Summary
In the spirit of We Were the Lucky Ones and We Must Be Brave, a heartbreaking World War II novel of one mother's impossible choice and her search for her daughter against the odds. As a Russian Jewish émigré to France, Vera's wealth cannot protect her or her four-year-old-daughter, Lucie, once the Nazis occupy the country. After receiving notice that all foreigners must report to an internment camp, Vera has just a few hours to make an impossible choice: Does she subject Lucie to the horrid conditions of the camp, or does she put her into hiding with her beloved and trusted governess, safe until Vera can retrieve her? Believing the war will end soon, Vera chooses to leave Lucie in safety. She cannot know that she and her husband will have an opportunity to escape, to flee to America. She cannot know that Lucie's governess will have fled with Lucie to family in rural France, too far to reach in time. And so begins a heartbreaking journey and separation, a war and a continent apart. Vera's marriage will falter under the surreal sun of California. Her ability to write - once her passion - will disappear. But Vera's love for Lucie, her faith that her daughter lives, will only grow. As Vera's determination to return to France and find Lucie crystalizes, she meets Sasha, a man on his own search for meaning. She is stronger with Sasha than she is alone. Together they will journey to Lucie. They will find her fate.
©2021 Alexis Landau (P)2021 Penguin Audio
The Empire of the Senses
Summary
A sweeping, gorgeously written debut novel of duty to family and country, passion, and blood ties unraveling in the charged political climate of Berlin between the wars.
"Empire of the Senses is lush, smart, sexy, affecting, interesting, beautifully researched and well made. Spending time in the world of this novel is an absolute pleasure" (Aimee Bender).
Lev Perlmutter, an assimilated, cultured German Jew, enlists to fight in World War I, leaving behind his gentile wife, Josephine, and their children, Franz and Vicki. Moving between Lev's and Josephine's viewpoints, part one of the novel focuses on Lev's experiences on the Eastern Front - both in war and in love - which render his life at home a pale aftermath by comparison. Part two picks up in Berlin in 1927-1928: the Perlmutter children, now young adults, grapple with their own questions - Franz drawn into the brown shirt movement, struggling with his unexpressed homosexuality; Vicki seduced by jazz, bobbed hair, and falling in love with a young man who wants to take her to Palestine.
Unlike most historical novels of this kind, The Empire of the Senses is not about the Holocaust but rather about the brew that led to it and about why it was unimaginable to ordinary people like Lev and his wife. Plotted with meticulous precision and populated by characters who feel and dream to the fullest, it holds us rapt as the tides of cultural loss and ethnic hatred come to coexist with those of love, passion, and the power of the human spirit.
©2014 Alexis Landau (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.