I wanted to recommend The Witch's Trinity by Erika Mailman.

The books takes place in 1507 during a famine in a medieval German village. The main character is Gude Muller, an old woman who lives with her son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. A priest comes to the village and tells the residents that a witch is probably responsible for the famine. This leads to suspicion and accusations, including Gude's resentful daughter-in-law accusing Gude herself.

The book is not perfect. It is written in Gude's voice and I don't always believe that the narration is by an elderly woman. Also, Gude's mind is failing and it is hard to tell whether some of the action is real or not. Perhaps a little too ambitious of a project for the writer at this stage of her career.

HOWEVER...wow, this book lingers with me. I devoured it. She did a remarkable job in presenting a situation in which the old and outcast are vulnerable to fear and hate. She shows how good people are capable of horrible things. The second half of the book especially rang so true that I felt like I was truly seeing the way things may have happened during the witch hunts. It's a sobering book and a must for any student of this awful time.

Just a note, the main character does survive. You need to know this in order to get through the book, but it doesn't give anything away.

Here's another book I really enjoyed.....City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin (2006). It takes place in 1920s and 1930s Berlin and the author does an amazing job of evoking a sense of place and time. I really learned a lot about the conditions of Weimar Germany that gave rise to the Nazi party.

It's a murder mystery that revolves around the real-life character of Anna Anderson who claimed to be Anastasia Romanov. There is a sexy love story and I don't mean the characters sleeping around all the time. I mean that there is a real chemistry between the couple and really appealing dialogue. I really cared about both characters deeply.

What was most amazing was this....the mystery is about a vicious killer, but he actually falls into the background when she describes the emerging Nazi movement. Amazing job of making me question who the real monsters were in the book.

This is a very unusual book with all the characters being either Russian or German. The ending stretched believability a little, but that's a small price to pay.