Schindler’s List – BooksPlease

Who are some new authors that you want to read from in 2025

Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and it is now being hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads. For details of all of the latest prompts for January to March, see Meeghan’s post here.

Today the topic is 5 authors I want to try in 2025. Who are some new authors that you want to read from in 2025? These books are from my TBRs.

Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally

I was really excited to read Schindler’s List when I bought it as I’d recently watched the film, Schindler’s List for a second time and was very moved by it – it had me in tears. It was first published as Schindler’s Ark. It recreates the story of Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. He rescued more than a thousand Jews from the death camps.

The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone is a book I’ve been longing to read for years. I’ve had it since 2007. It’s a biographical novel about Michelangelo. The copy I had was impossible to read as it was falling apart so I bought a new copy – but it’s still sitting waiting to be read. Why? Well because I have so many other books I really want to read.

Another book I’ve had since 2007, still waiting to be read for the same reason is 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro. 1599 was the year the Globe Theatre was built and that Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar, Henry V, As You Like It and Hamlet. it’s full of detail, not just about Shakespeare, his plays and the theatre, but also about the events of his life and times!

The Water Horse by Julia Gregson, a book I’ve had since 2009. It’s historical fiction based on the true story of a young Welsh woman, Jane Evans, a Welsh woman who in 1853 ran off with Welsh cattle drovers and volunteered as a nurse with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea. Catherine Carreg has grown up a tomboy, spending her days racing her ponies with Deio, the drover’s son, in a small Welsh village. But Catherine is consumed by a longing to escape the monotony of village life and, with Deio’s help, runs away to London.

Alone in the unfamiliar bustle of the city, Catherine finds a position in a rest home for sick governesses in Harley Street, run by Miss Florence Nightingale. Then, as the nation is gripped by reports of the war in the Crimea, Catherine volunteers as a nurse – and her life changes beyond all recognition.

Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories by Thomas Grant – I bought this in February 2020 after watching the BBC series,The Trial of Christine Keeler, the story of the Profumo affair in 1962 as seen from her perspective. Hutchinson was Keeler’s defence barrister.

Born in 1915 into the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group, Jeremy Hutchinson went on to become the greatest criminal barrister of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. The cases of that period changed society for ever and Hutchinson’s role in them was second to none. In Case Histories, Jeremy Hutchinson’s most remarkable trials are examined, each one providing a fascinating look into Britain’s post-war social, political and cultural history.

I was really pleased to find these two books on recent visits to local bookshops.

First is Lilian Nattel’s The River Midnight. I’ve been reading Lilian’s blogs A Writer Reads and A Novelist’s Mind for a while and was interested in reading her books. Lilian also has a website with details of more of her books. Amazon UK has some copies of her first novel, The River Midnight for sale, the new ones at prices from £13.98 up to £40, with secondhand copies too, more reasonably priced (which you can see via my link to the book) and I was thinking about sending off for one. But I was thrilled to find a good paperback copy in The Border Reader Bookshop one of the local secondhand bookshops I visit, so I snapped it up. I love the cover.

It’s set in the tiny, fictional village of Blaska in Russian-occupied Poland at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Pogroms are a recent memory for the Jewish community, yet life in Blaska is rich and the bonds of friendship unbreakable. It’s a place where anything – even magic can happen (taken from the back cover).

The second book I was excited to find was from Barter Books, another favourite secondhand bookshop. I’d recently watched the film, Schindler’s List for a second time and was very moved by it – it had me in tears. So I wanted to find the book on which Steven Spielberg had based his film. It was there at the top of a very high bookcase in the main body of Barter Books and D got up the step-ladders to retrieve it for me.

Thomas Keneally’s 1982 Booker Prize winning book was first published as Schindler’s Ark. It recreates the story of Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. He rescued more than a thousand Jews from the death camps.

Both books are based on real historical events, both set in Poland and about Polish Jews. Both have used contemporary sources and are based on historical research. Lilian has included a selection of the sources she used and Thomas Keneally used a mass of Schindler material including testimonies of survivors, photographs of the period, documents, some of them produced by Oskar himself, copies of SS telegrams, and the famous list of Swangsarbeitslager Brinnlitz, Oskar’s second camp. I think these two books go together and I’m planning to read them consecutively as soon as I can.