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    Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook: A Novel
    Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook: A Novel
    Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook: A Novel
    Audiobook18 hours

    Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook: A Novel

    Written by Celia Rees

    Narrated by Stephanie Racine

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    ""A perfect summer read; gripping, original, well-drawn and compassionate""--Joanne Harris

     

    ""Celia Rees is a superb writer, and this novel has one of the most irresistible and unique story hooks I've ever come across. This book deserves to be huge!""--Sophie Hannah

    A striking historical novel about an ordinary young British woman sent to uncover a network of spies and war criminals in post-war Germany that will appeal to fans of The Huntress and Transcription.

    World War II has just ended, and Britain has established the Control Commission for Germany, which oversees their zone of occupation. The Control Commission hires British civilians to work in Germany, rebuild the shattered nation and prosecute war crimes. Somewhat aimless, bored with her job as a provincial schoolteacher, and unwilling to live with her overbearing mother any longer, thirtysomething Edith Graham applies for a job with the Commission—but she is also recruited by her cousin, Leo, who is in the Secret Service. To them, Edith is perfect spy material...single, ordinary-looking, with a college degree in German. Cousin Leo went to Oxford with one of their most hunted war criminals, Count Kurt von Stavenow, who Edith remembers all too well from before the war. He wants her to find him.

    Intrigued by the challenge, Edith heads to Germany armed with a convincing cover story: she's an unassuming Education Officer sent to help resurrect German schools. To send information back to her Secret Service handlers in London, Edith has crafted the perfect alter ego, cookbook author Stella Snelling, who writes a popular magazine cookery column. She embeds crucial intelligence within the recipes she collects. But occupied Germany is awash with other spies, collaborators, and opportunists, and as she's pulled into their world, Edith soon discovers that no one is what they seem to be. The closer she gets to uncovering von Stavenow's whereabouts--and the network of German civilians who still support him--the greater the danger. 

    With a unique, compelling premise, Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook is a beautifully crafted and gripping novel about daring, betrayal, and female friendship.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 7, 2020
    ISBN9780063017016
    Author

    Celia Rees

    Celia Rees is an award-winning YA novelist who is one of Britain's foremost writers for teenagers.  Her novel Witch Child has been published in 28 languages and is required reading in secondary schools in the UK.  Rees’s books are published in the US by Candlewick and Scholastic. Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook is her first adult novel. A native of the West Midlands of England, she lives with her family in Leamington Spa. 

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    Reviews for Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook

    4/5

    58 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Loved the concept. Promptly after the war very interesting take. Hard to keep up with the characters and flow in the audio format, plus strong English accent reader. The middle of this book was awesome! End and beginning a little rough.
    • 3/5
      Interesting history, a bit hard to follow as a listener, did not like the ending
    • 2/5
      I was intrigued with the idea of a historical fiction book set during the Cold War but unfortunately this book didn’t live up to its potential. The twists and turns of spy novels were there but it was often tedious, and I was not able to build empathy for the characters leaving the plot to fall flat. I received this book as an advanced review copy from Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion.
    • 5/5
      There are tons of books set in World War II but not many set in the immediate period after the war. Yes, as this book shows, it is just as ripe a period for literature as the war years. Edith Graham is a single school teacher who lived in Coventry during World War II. As the unmarried sister she was expected to continue to live with her mother and take care of her. The family was most upset when they discovered that she had taken a posting in Germany with the British Control Commission helping to get the education system restarted in Germany. At least that was her cover story; she was also recruited by her cousin Leo who was with MI6 to learn as much as she could about Nazis who were in hiding. Leo was particularly interested in their mutual friend Kurt von Stabenow who had gone to Oxford before the war and become friendly with Leo and more than friendly with Edith. Kurt had trained as a doctor and so was an asset to the Nazi extermination and experimentation process. Edith had been devastated when she went to visit him before the war and learned that Kurt was engaged to a Prussian countess. On a later trip she met Kurt's wife, Elizabeth, and to her surprise rather liked her. Leo thought that if Edith could find Elizabeth then she would lead them to Kurt. Dori, another friend of Edith's who had been a spy during the war, also wanted to find von Stabenow because she thought he was responsible for the deaths of a number of women spies who were caught during the war. Dori wants Kurt brought to justice but Leo on behalf of the British government wants to recruit him to work in research. So everyone is using Edith for their own ends and she has mixed feelings about that. Nevertheless she is more successful than an amateur could be expected to be which draws her into danger. The ending caught me completely by surprise.The recipes and menus that introduce each chapter really bring this book to another level. They are included because Edith uses recipes to send coded messages to Dori based upon an old cookbook. The author found just such a cookbook in her aunt's home while cleaning after her death. Her aunt had, like Edith, worked in Germany after the war and inside the cookbook there were numerous handwritten recipes which was all that remained of correspondence from that time. Such is the genesis of an intriguing book.
    • 2/5
      After the end of WWII, Edith has applied and been accepted for a job with the Control Commission for Germany. The Commission oversees the occupation zone. Edith is recruited by several different groups to spy and report back. In particular, she is tasked with finding Count Kurt von Stavenow, a former lover. This book was extremely slow moving and tedious. At times it felt like a sequel, and that important information was missing, or not dealt with sufficiently. The ending was surprising, but otherwise this book was a bust.
    • 4/5
      Spies and Nazis abound in this novel about a woman sent to post-war Germany to manage schools and help locate a former Nazi officer. She uses a cookbook to code messages and communicate with a fellow spy back in London. With plenty of danger and false revelations, this novel makes for good reading. I found a few of the characters tiresome at certain points, but the story was good enough to keep me reading right to an unexpected and thrilling end.
    • 4/5
      With the end of WWII, London modern languages teacher Edith Graham is recruited to join the British Control Commission in Germany as the country begins to rebuild. As an Education Officer she will work to reestablish schools in Lubeck, but Edith has also been secretly tasked with passing on information to both the British Government, particularly if she is able to renew her acquaintance with ex-lover Kurt von Stavenow, and to her friend, Dori, who is searching for lost friends. It’s a risky proposition in a country beset with war criminals in hiding, conspirators, spies, and opportunists and Edith will have to learn quickly who to trust if she is to complete her mission.Rees has created a complex and interesting plot, exploring post war activities in Germany I’ve come across only rarely. The story offers action and tension, though I did feel it was slow to start, as Edith navigates a path strewn with suspicion, prejudice, deception, and danger, knowing a misstep could place her own life could at risk. She quickly detects traitors within her own lodgings, but it is Kurt, whom the British believe led the Aktion T4, a Nazi program that resulted in the extermination of the disabled, the infirm, the mentally ill, the young and elderly alike, who they really want. More than once Edith considers giving up, but she perseveres, determined to see justice done. There are several twists in the plot, but I was particularly stunned by the final chapters.The detail in the novel shows that the author engaged in meticulous historical research, Rees skilfully creates an authentic sense of time and place, illustrating the devastation of post war Germany and the resulting hardships for its people. It’s not only the experience of the British and German that Rees explores, there are characters who are displaced persons/refugees from countries such as Poland, Hungry, and Russia, plus serviceman and spies representing a number of nations, including America. Edith is an appealing character, amiable and earnest but quite naive when she takes up her post. Still, she soon finds her experience working under a pseudonym in England as Stella Snelling, a cookery columnist, of benefit, devising a code using recipes and the ‘Radiation Cookery Book’ to communicate with Dori, and discovering recipe collecting helps ease her way. Foodies will appreciate that many of these recipes are included in the book. Dori has an interesting backstory and plays a significant role in the story which becomes especially clear in the final chapters. Photojournalist Adeline, whom Edith befriended before the war, also appears regularly. There is a touch of romance for Edith with Harry Hirsch, a member of the Jewish Brigade smuggling Holocaust survivors into Mandatory Palestine. Other significant characters include Luka, an orphaned Polish boy Edith rescues from the streets, her driver Jack, who is also a soldier and a spy, and Edith’s cousin Leo, who pulls strings from the Home Office.Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook is a well crafted, absorbing and thrilling tale of post war espionage.
    • 5/5
      I loved this historical fiction book. Taking the cookbook of her aunt, the niece pulls together the incredible story of Miss Graham, her aunt, who became an OSS espionage agent in Germany during the Cold War. To get information back to England, Edith has created the perfect foil. She is also the author of a popular magazine cooking column and sends information via her cookery musings. This unique book is sure to please historical fiction lovers who have read their share of WWII stories and are ready to move on.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant! I haven't been so absorbed in a post WW2 novel for ages!Not you're usual post 1945 European reconstruction story. This is set mainly in Germany after the surrender.Edith Graham decides that now is the time to do her bit and she applies to work for the British government Control Commission for Germany, concerned with rebuilding that nation and searching for war criminals. Before she leaves London for Germany she is briefed by Vera Atkins about possibly discovering the fate of four British women agents dropped behind enemy lines who disappeared. Two other women will form part of this coterie, her friend Dorie and journalist Adeline Parnell.Edith hits on the idea of using recipes as a coding method for sending messages between them.Coupled with that is a request from her cousin Leo who's in the Secret Service asking her to make contact with an old flame, Count Kurt von Stavenow. It seems Kurt is a wanted war criminal, a Doctor involved in the most despicable of experiments.Berlin is a hotbed of swirling competitive government agencies from the US, to Russia and Britain, all trying to gain information. Then there's Harry Hirsch, a member of the Jewish Brigade, acting as a pipeline for people moving to Israel and involved in tracking down high ranking Nazis and their sympathizers hidden amongst the European communities.The lives of the ordinary people who have fled to places like Hamburg are stories of deprivation, starvation, inadequate shelter, and a lack of fundamental needs. Edith is involved in education. Black marketing is rife, as is the existence of the Nazi hierarchy, driven underground yet existing in relative comfort.Riveting and compelling I was fully onboard and fully absorbed by the charged plot. The various characters introduced were real and present.Simply put--a fabulous read!A HarperCollins ARC via NetGalley
    • 3/5
      The premise of this book is what drew me to it. The idea of transmitting classified information through recipes seemed original and intriguing. Hence, I appreciated that each chapter began with a recipe. The descriptions of the food were fun. It might have been nice to understand the code a bit more, though.Edith was sweet, and the way she cared so much about helping others made her easy to root for. I found her work with the school system interesting, though there wasn't a lot of it that made it into the story.Probably the best thing about the book is the way the author captured time and place. I really felt transported to post-war Europe.There were a couple things I wasn't especially fond of. Edith's understanding of the word 'secret', for one. She tells her friends she can't talk about her assignment because she signed the Official Secrets Act, and they scoff at her hesitancy to speak stating that everyone has signed that. Their dismissiveness combined with the thought that they'll just keep pressing her is enough to get her to talk. Later she tries to think of ways to share information about her work with her reporter friend. I was scratching my head about that.Another thing that didn't sit quite right with me was that she got only a vague description of her assignment from Leo and no training or anything. Still, he and the contact she was given seemed to expect a lot from her.There were some things near the end that didn't make sense to me, why certain things were done, why other things were allowed. It soured the last part for me. Ultimately, I did not feel fulfilled when I finished this. Still, it was an interesting concept, and many looking for a book connected to WWII but told from a different angle will probably enjoy it.Thank you to NetGalley and The Book Club Girls for this early read.