Free (nook/Kindle/Kobo UK) Secrets of the Notebook [Cold War Royal Descendant Memoir]

[ATDrake]

The Secrets of the Notebook: A royal love affair and a woman's quest to uncover her incredible family secret by Eve Haas is a travelogue/memoir of the author's journey through 70s Cold War-era East Germany and other locales on the trail of her ancestral history as recorded in the diary of her late grandmother, who had been killed as a WWII Holocaust victim, free courtesy of publisher HarperCollins' HarperTrue imprint.

I had a quick skim over several chapters of this and I'll have to say that sensational lineage notwithstanding, the actually most interesting portions of this are the bits about traveling behind the Iron Curtain under Cold War restrictions as a non-influential Western civilian with no particular leverage available to apply.

Frankly, I don't really care about the half-suppressed amours of some minor Prussian princeling who didn't even seem to get anywhere near the main line of succession even before his unapproved morganatic marriage.

Instead, tell me more about having your passports held hostage and being stealth-pressured to spy on the US by stealing secret intelligence documents from the Space Center in exchange for records of your probable-ancestors and accidentally driving into armed Russian soldiers while looking for the Potsdam archive building…

Currently free @ B&N UK, Amazon UK, & Kobo (most likely only available to the UK).

Unlikely to go free in other countries, as previous UK freebies from this HarperCollins imprint have not.

And this has been the selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

Enjoy!

Description
The incredible true story revealed by a family notebook, telling of four daughters across two centuries of turbulent history, of a passionate and ill-fated royal love affair, ending in a tragic and cruel death.

'The beautiful owner of this book is dearer to me than my life.
August, your protector.'

Eve Haas was irresistibly drawn to the family 'notebook', which had been passed down the generations. Her father had shown her the inscription inside when she was young, with warnings of dire happenings if the secret behind the diary was pursued.

Years later, Eve decided to follow the trail of the notebook, it would take her to the old kingdom of Prussia, to a forbidden royal marriage that was wiped from all official records, and a royal princess given away to ensure her protection.

Forty years earlier in 1942, Eve's grandmother, Anna, had died on her way to Auschwitz after being seized by the SS. They believed she was just an old Jewish woman. The secret of her royal heritage lay in that notebook, but it couldn't save her.

[ATDrake]

Newly free @ iTunes UK and a repeat freebie @ Amazon UK & Kobo UK.