Fables & Lies: A WWII Novel Based on a True Storyook
Under a brutal regime, what price must be paid to preserve truth, treasure and love in a world built on lies?
WWII Berlin. Freyja Bremer, a patriotic museum assistant, marries Kaspar Voigt, an ambitious SS scholar, to protect her father. Yet she is unaware her husband is instrumental in Himmler’s twisted quest for Aryan supremacy.
As she strives to safeguard the priceless Priam’s Treasure from air raids, Freyja falls in love with Darien Lessing, an archaeologist who exposes the moral decay beneath the Regime’s myths. Her awakening drives her into perilous resistance – aiding a Jewish doctor and his wife, Darien’s sister – while uncovering Kaspar’s role in the SS’s darkest programs, which subvert history to justify invasion, abduction and murder.
As Berlin collapses into chaos and bloodshed, Freyja, caught between duty, deception and desire, must risk everything to preserve truth in a world built on lies.
A heartbreaking yet triumphant love story, Fables & Lies shines light on lesser-known aspects of the Nazi Regime. It gives voice to the complex moral struggles of German women, the forgotten resistance of Gentiles married to Jews, the dangers of contested history, the evils of Himmler’s racial studies program and the unsung bravery of German museum curators who saved their nation’s treasures.
(Page count 549; available in ebook, print, and audio editions)
Reviews of Fables and Lies
“A harrowing story of a young woman caught in the machinations of the Third Reich and in the web of a regime-compliant family. Fables & Lies is meticulously researched and emotionally resonant, sure to delight readers who love a hearty feast of history in their fiction.”
Olivia Hawker, bestselling author of The Ragged Edge Of Night
“Storrs has written an engaging and monumentally important novel for our time with the pairing of the mysterious fate of Priam’s Treasure with one woman’s journey as she overcomes the political manipulations of fascism and takes action.”
Judith Starkston, author of Achilles’s Wife
“A powerful and heartbreaking story set in war-torn Berlin, Fables & Lies charts the slow dawning horror of a young woman as she realises all she has been taught about Hitler and the Third Reich is a lie.”
Kate Forsyth, bestselling author of Bitter Greens
“Emotionally involving and morally complex, Fables & Lies is.. a gripping deep dive into Freyja’s viewpoint as she gradually penetrates the fog of propaganda instilled into Germans for years by the cruel Nazi regime and awakens to a new and courageous purpose, one that involves considerable risk… I haven’t read another WWII novel like it.”
Sarah Johnson, Reviews Editor for the Historical Novels Review