Catherine Raynes: Camino Island and Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War

Camino Island by John Grisham 

A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars. 

Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts. 
 
Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets. 
 
But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it. 

 

Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War by Jonathan Dimbleby 

June 1944: In Operation Bagration, more than two million Red Army soldiers, facing 500,000 German soldiers, finally avenged their defeat in Operation Barbarossa in 1941. The same month saw the Allies triumph on the beaches of Normandy, but, despite the myths that remain, it was the events on the Eastern Front that sealed Hitler's fate and destroyed Nazism.  
In his new book, bestselling historian Jonathan Dimbleby describes and analyses this momentous year, covering the military, political and diplomatic story in his evocative style. Drawing on previously untranslated German, Russian and Polish sources, we see how sophisticated new forms of deception and ruthless Partisan warfare shifted the Soviets’ fortunes, how their triumphs effectively gave Stalin authority to occupy Eastern Europe and how it was the events of 1944 that enabled Stalin to dictate the terms of the post-war settlement, laying the foundations for the Cold War . . . 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
B Katherine Raines has two books to recommend to us
this weekend. Hey Catherine, Morning Jack. Let's begin with the
latest from John Grisham tell us about Camino Island.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
So this centers on three characters, author mercer Man and
Bruce Cable, who's the owner of Bay Books, and Murser
is looking for inspiration for her third novel and Bruce
suggests to her the story of Dark Eye, which is
this uninhabited island between Florida and Georgia that was once
a home to a community of runaway slaves. And the
third character is a living descendant of the Dark Isle,

(00:44):
miss Lovely Jackson, who's now in her eighties and lives
on Comino Island, having left the Dark Island nineteen fifty
five when she was fifteen with her mother, who was
a slave, and she's published a book about the island
in his History and things like that. And now this
deserted island has caught the attention of property developers in
this large corporation, and they've got political backing and money

(01:05):
and plans, and they want to build a casino on
this island and lovely plans to prove her ownership of
the Dark Isle and thought their plans and protect the
land where her ancestors are buried. So you get this
captivating and heartbreaking tale of this rich historical perspective and
the law of the island, and the chapters are interspersed
through the novel and the history of the British and

(01:26):
Spanish owned colonies and slavery, and you get her account
of the realities of the slave trade and that her
mother escaped against this greed of corporations and the questionable
practices of politicians and complete disregard for the environment and
the sprawl of this business. And it's a great you know,
John Grisham's a master storyteller, and it's a great story.
And the way all the characters MESSI mald together and yeah,

(01:48):
it's just it's well told and you get very engrossed
in what's going on in the island and lovely story
and it's so good.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Great, excellent. Okay, that's Camino Island by John Grisham. You've
also read Endgame nineteen forty four House Stalin Won the
War by Jonathan Dimbleby.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
So this looks at how the Soviet victories actually enabled
Stalin to dictate the terms of the post war settlement
and laid the foundations for the Cold War. And the
focus of Dimballi's book is on Operation Baggeration, and it
starts in nineteen forty four, and it's the Soviet on
slought during the Second World War. And they have this
offensive on five fronts for Soviet armies in one Polish

(02:27):
and it's partially there and driven by the humiliation of
the German evasion in nineteen forty one of the USSR,
when the German armony were on the outskirts of Moscow.
And so these well over a million men set out
across a line stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
And it began in June forty four and at the
same time as the Normandy landings in the first week

(02:48):
of that month, and by August they were on the
outskirts of Warsaw. So they advanced in some cases as
much as six hundred kilometers and the you know, the
Nazi armies were out of the Baltic and batteries in
eastern Poland and across the border regions, and you know,
both armies suffered horrific casualties in the five months, and

(03:08):
thousands of German and Soviet mens killed and wounded and captured,
you know, and the devastating losses of German armor and equipment.
And you know, he Demultigue brings into his military story,
you know, extracts from Russian and German diaries and private letters,
so you get this real personal telling of the story
as well. What was really interesting, actually Germany's worst enemy

(03:29):
was actually probably Adolf Hitler, because again and again he
would say that towns were strongholds and he wouldn't let
anyone retreat, and then divisions and armies would find themselves surrounded,
and it's a pattern to keep it occurring. But by contrast,
Start and let his field commanders and kept in contact
with him, but he seldom interfered with their decisions. And

(03:49):
so you get this Russian offensive alongside Allied conferences and
strandederities and this very stormy relationship between Roosevelt, Starden and
Churchill as they try to agree on Europe's post war future.
And it's a fascinating narrative and a very different kind
of look in some ways that you know, how everything
came together really how the Cold War started.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, it is amazing, right, Like I think, you know,
just because of the way we all kind of tell
our own stories and history and stuff, that Russia's role
is often overlooked, at least, you know, through some Western
lenses when it comes to you know, the incredible sacrifices
and if it's made in World War Two, and you know,
remarkable to think about how that story has now been

(04:28):
twisted in Russia by Vladimir Putin and is being used
once again for you know, what some would say is
you know, completely you know, antithetical to democracy. Yeah, it's
quite remarkable. Thank you so much, Catherine. Sounds really interesting.
So that's nineteen forty four End Game nineteen forty four
How Stalin Won the War by Jonathan Dimbleby and Catherine's

(04:50):
first book, The John Grisham One is called Camino Ireland.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
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