Straight Chatting from the Library: The Riesa Series by LD Towers

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READ AN INTERVIEW WITH GALIENA VON STEINBERG

What are you reading right now?

I’m presently reading that big hit from last year, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I’m absolutely entranced by the American Civil War and I do think that Rhett Butler is very romantic. I found an English copy at the Kaufhaus des Westens when I was there a few months ago. I heard that they are going to turn it into a movie, and I wonder what big American film star will play Rhett!

Least favorite book you've read this year?

I could not stand that F. Scott Fitzgerald book, The Great Gatsby. I am very aware by how terrible some people are, but I just could not connect with the characters at all. They just felt like such terrible, vapid people. I admit that many people are not very nice, but I believe everyone has some spark of divinity within which brings redemption. I was glad it was short. I don’t like to stop reading books.

Dog-ear or bookmark?

Bookmark. I have a lovely set of painted bookmarks of my cousin’s home in Scotland. He painted them himself on leather; scenes of the lochs and ruins on his lands. I always use them. My grandfather, the Pfalzgraf von Steinberg, does not view dog earring very kindly.

One book at a time or multiples?

One book at a time always. I like to immerse myself in a story when I have time to read. I’m very busy now that I’m taking a more active, administrative roll in the family business so I don’t have that much time.

I am studying for the next level of my pilot’s license so I do have to read a lot of technical manuals. Soon I will be able to fly at night! Does that count as reading a second book?

What would make you not finish a book?

It’s very rare that I don’t finish a book. It has to be very terrible because usually my curiosity gets the better of me. I have to know how it ends. I’ve probably only not finished about six books in my lifetime.

Keep books or give them away?

I have a very large library, as does my guardian, Hermann Göring. I keep all my books. I might want to read them again! I also like to look at them on the shelves. Books are such things of beauty.

Re-reader or not?

I am a huge re-reader! I have probably read Little House on the Prairie ten times. I know it’s silly. It’s a girl’s book and I’m grown up, but when I feel sick, it makes me feel so much better. I like to think about what it must have been like to live such a different life than mine. The general manager at our New York offices is under orders to send me the next one as soon as it is published.

Strangely, I read novels mostly in English. I suppose with the bulk of my school holidays being spent in Scotland, I tend to gravitate more to English books. Most of the German literature of the last few years is so heavy. I prefer to be entertained when I read.

What is the favorite book you remember as a child?

My Grandfather read me Simplicius Simplicissimus by von Grimmelshausen. He would read it to me at nights when I came home from boarding school. It was his favourite book as a child as well. I think he wanted to share with me something that he really loved. It’s also on my list of books that I always reread.

Thank you so much!

READ THE BLURB OF NEW AUSTRIAN ORDER

1938. Germany is moving faster than Standartenführer Hagen Kohl thought possible. Sent down to Vienna to investigate a potential threat to Hitler’s plans for Austria, Hagen is drawn in to an aristocratic world he’s never encountered before. Without Hauptsturmführer Eugen Friesler at his side, Hagen is in more danger than he could have imagined as he hunts for a shadowy organization called the New Austrian Order. Back in Germany, Galiena von Steinberg returns to Riesa and the von Steinberg Gesellschaft, but taking over the reins of her Grandfather’s empire comes with many challenges. Can she protect her family holdings while keeping true to the new sense of self she has worked so hard to find?
  READ THE BLURB OF TEUFEL

Against the politically charged background of Nazi Germany's police state, Standartenführer Doctor Hagen Kohl is trying to carve out a profession for himself in the SS. A middle class intellectual with a doctorate in Literature, Hagen is a an investigator who hunts criminals within the party apparatus itself. Hagen justifies everything by his personal code and patriotism, unable to see the flaws of the regime he serves. When he is ordered to investigate members of the army, he discovers patriotism is entirely a matter of perspective. His eyes are further opened by exposure to Galiena von Steinberg; an aristocrat whose own experiences bring him into the entanglements and intrigues at the highest levels of Third Reich society.

READ AN EXCERPT FROM NEW AUSTRIAN ORDER

The parade ground was large, and all about there were people. The SS men, in their black uniforms, and the camp guards in their grey seemed drab on the sunny square. There were so many, trailing behind Himmler like a flock of crows. Galiena hated that analogy, but it seemed so appropriate. Here and there she saw people she assumed to be prisoners, in their black and white horizontal striped suits, and grotesquely shaved heads. They almost reminded her of larvae, their scalps so pale in the light. One man turned and stared at her, the bright splash of colour that she was, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then his face dropped back to his toiling in the black earth of the flowerbeds near the Administration building. The place was so dour. So grey. In her scarlet, echoed only in the swastika flag on the flag pole, she must look like a drop of blood on a piece of slate.

Himmler moved to intercept her, his eyes shining with something she couldn’t define. In this place he was a thousand feet tall, and his knowledge of his power emanated from him in waves. The men trailing after him followed his every movement and gesture. When he smiled, so did they, when he laughed, they echoed, and the moment he stopped, there was silence behind him. Galiena had never seen this Himmler. This was the Reichsführer-SS, and his power was consuming. His eyes met hers, as he clicked his heels and bowed his head before her. When the peak of his hat came up again, he was smiling; warmly and broadly. More the man of her acquaintance, but the look in his eyes seemed to mock her. This Himmler was a predator and he was in his lair with all his sycophants around to admire his magnificence.

MEET THE AUTHOR

LD Towers travels the world like a rootless vagabond! A military historian, she searches out places of conflict to find a deeper insight to the things she writes about. Presently enjoying the warm weather and azure seas of Central America, she has lived all over Western Europe, including 5.5 years in the incomparable Berlin.

Primarily working in Historical and Military Fiction, LD sometimes sneaks in the odd Dystopian or Modern Thriller piece. Also look for a series of novellas about the despicable yet intriguing Meinrad von Steinberg from the Riesa Series, coming in fall 2015.

Website: http://www.ldtowers.net
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/L_D_Towers
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LDTowerswalks
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/LD-Towers/e/B00ZMFTJTQ

Buy New Austrian Order at Amazon. Buy Teufel at Amazon.
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