Fables & Lies #author Elisabeth Storrs

Fables & Lies
A WWII Novel Based on a True Story
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 programmes, 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 programme and the unsung bravery of German museum curators who saved their nation's treasures.

To connect with Elisabeth ...
https://elisabethstorrs.com/
https://elisabethstorrs.com/buy-books/
https://www.instagram.com/elisabethstorrsauthor/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-elisabeth-storrs1/ 

Transcript

Copy

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's good morning, Elizabeth Stores. Welcome to Yellow Shelf. Thank you for having me. Oh, delighted to have you, Elizabeth. I have a copy of your book, Fables and Lies. Congratulations. Tell us all about your book.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Well, it's um it's a book about the amazing German museum curators uh in Berlin in World War II who protected their um antiquities, uh, in particular a fabulous um golden treasure from the ancient city of Troy, which we all know about now from the Odyssey. Um, and it's it's also entwined that story, is about uh Himmler's uh research institute and how his archaeologists and ethnologists use the Aryan myth to justify um conquering the world, basically, and um and also um committing genocide. So it's got those two strands in it. Uh it uh to tell that story, and it's based on it, it's very much based on the true story. Um I've taken uh Freya Bremer, a young German woman who works as an assistant in the Museum of Pre and Early History, which you'll see behind me. It's in Berlin. It's a fabulous building, and um she is tasked to protect um Prime's treasure, uh, and she works for um the director Wilhelm Umbesacht, um, who is actually a true character, but it I created a fiction around him. And um she falls in love with an archaeologist who's Cambridge educated, uh, he's German but Cambridge educated, and um, she's a child of the Reich, she believes all the dogma, yeah, and um he opens her eyes to the rot between you know beneath the regime, and um, but at the same time, she um gets trapped in marriage to an SS officer who works for Himmler and uh and uh he sees her as the perfect Aryan wife, um and she gets trapped because she is protecting her father who is involved in resistance acts. So she, in effect, in order to avoid uh executioners herself, because she has to be shown as political politically reliable, um, she is entrapped in this marriage and she starts uncovering um what her husband Kaspar is doing with his research.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

And Elizabeth, a lot of this is about moral courage, you know. Uh what what is an ordinary German woman um you know, doing her duties as far as the workplace, I guess, and then yeah, getting the moral courage. There's also that idea of forbidden love in the book. There's there's lots of wonders, wonderful aspects to the book.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Oh, thanks. Yes, well, it's different. It's it's it's not your usual World War II. Um, it's set from the German civilian uh viewpoint, and uh it's it's very much about survival and resistance by small, quiet acts of courage. Um, it's from within the fragile walls of daily life, it's not big uh um battles, it's not it's not big resistance, you know, stories. It really is um about ethical uh choices. You're the these curators, including Freya, uh they're placed into this crucible of physical danger from air raids, but also ethical choices. And uh because basically everyone that lived under that regime um ultimately had to make it what I call the foul bargain, actually, the deal with the devil. And so they have to choose how much they're prepared to compromise themselves. Um, I love it's actually a German saying, give your finger to the devil and he might take your whole hand. And uh I I I thought that was so apt. So that that's what every character um is is facing, and a lot of them were quite happy to give their hand to the devil. Um, but there are varying degrees. So I created this family, um, it's a fractured family of four people: the father, the mother, um, Freya, and her sister. And uh through them I kind of show the pull, uh the pull, the attraction, uh, but also the others with the horror of Nazi ideology. Yeah, it's a it's a deep dive into that psyche, but it's all it's also a love story, and it's also about um this incredible world of the um museums being madly trying to protect all of their national treasures.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah. And Elizabeth, do you want to tell us a little bit about you as an author? I know you've written a trilogy series previously. Um, interesting to read. You you were a corporate lawyer, you've had this really interesting career, and you co also co-founded the historical fiction um society.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Historical novel, yeah, historical novel society Australasia.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Yeah, tell us a bit about you and then you know the inspiration to be an author and write.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Well, I've um I've always loved writing, so right from a child creative writing, um, but it uh uh it didn't kind of come to fruition fruition until I actually had my two kids.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Um I I was a uh a corporate lawyer um and um don't hold that against me. Um and um I was I was writing, I actually wrote this genesis of this novel. It was a contemporary murder mystery because I um got fascinated by Heinrich Schliemann, who was the archaeologist that found the Trojan Trojan Gold. So um I started to look into the mystery of the fact it disappeared for 50 years after World War II. So that was my first um kind of inspiration to write a book, but unfortunately, when I was writing it, the Russians finally just they disclosed that they had the goal. So my mystery, which had it turning up in Australia, I might add, um that went into the bottom drawer. Um so I then started um looking at um ancient Rome. I I um as am a nerd, and so I studied ancient history and Latin and Greek, and so I was always interested in that. Um so I started writing the trilogy, which ended up being The Wedding Shroud and uh the Golden Dice and called the Juno. That took me um like 10 years actually to read, sorry, to write and get the wedding shroud published through an Australian publisher. And um unfortunately that publisher then closed its imprint and um as these things happened, so I self-published The Wedding Shroud, I finished the golden dice in 18 months. I got much better at writing, and um and that that did really well um as an and as an indie book, and I got picked up by Lake Union Publishing, which is the big Amazon publishing imprint. Uh, and that just took uh that took that trilogy really to great heights um for me, I say for me, um uh in this in the US basically, because I it's Australia has such a small uh reading population. Um, and then here I was able to reach you know millions of not that I sold millions, but um yeah, it's um it that was really good. And uh uh and it then got picked up by an Italian publisher. And uh yeah, so but it started off with me just writing. I I was I was in the sandwich generation, I was writing, you know, uh looking after elderly parents, yeah, raising young kids, working, and I I used to just set aside a time every week in my diary um and write.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Elizabeth, I love when authors share their journey stories because I think it's that's one of the most fascinating things, you know, about you know your your your work because you the the persistence and the setbacks and then the success and then the Elizabeth, are you gonna keep writing after this one? Like I just am curious what's your plans.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Yeah, I'm I'm already writing the next one.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Oh, that's so good. Well, I'd love to have you back with any future work. Elizabeth, if anyone's watching anywhere in the world and they're curious about the book, and they're curious about you, uh, I know you've got a website, you're an Instagram, point us in the direction, and I'll put some links in the show notes to make it easy for anyone to connect with you and the book.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Okay, so my name is spelt with an S. So it's E-L-I-S-A-B-E-T-H, and my surname is Stores, um S T O R S. So having got that out of the way, you can uh go to my website, um www.elisabethstores.com, and you will find all the links to all the different uh bookstores that you can um uh obtain the book. It's in digital paperback and audio. Um for Australian readers, um the paperback um is best found, best price at um Booktopia and Amazon Australia, but uh just you know it's available everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

And um you can find me on sorry, find me on Instagram and you can find me on Facebook. Yeah. Oh fabulous. Well, look, I'm gonna put those links in the show notes. Excited to hear you're gonna continue to write. Um please come back. But it's been a delight to hear about you and the book. So well done. Oh, well, thank you. It's been lovely. Thanks for the opportunity. My pleasure. Cheers. Okay, bye bye.