The Shattered Tree Lib/E: A Bess Crawford Mystery

Product Description
World War I battlefield nurse Bess Crawford goes to dangerous lengths to investigate a wounded soldier's background--and uncover his true loyalties--in this thrilling and atmospheric entry in the bestselling "vivid period mystery series" (New York Times Book Review).
At the foot of a tree shattered by shelling and gunfire, stretcher-bearers find an exhausted officer, shivering with cold and a loss of blood from several wounds. The soldier is brought to battlefield nurse Bess Crawford's aid station, where she stabilizes him and treats his injuries before he is sent to a rear hospital. The odd thing is, the officer isn't British--he's French. But in a moment of anger and stress, he shouts at Bess in German.
When Bess reports the incident to Matron, her superior offers a ready explanation. The soldier is from Alsace-Lorraine, a province in the west where the tenuous border between France and Germany has continually shifted through history, most recently in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, won by the Germans. But is the wounded man Alsatian? And if he is, on which side of the war do his sympathies really lie?
Of course, Matron could be right, but Bess remains uneasy--and unconvinced. If he was a French soldier, what was he doing so far from his own lines . . . and so close to where the Germans are putting up a fierce, last-ditch fight?
When the French officer disappears in Paris, it's up to Bess--a soldier's daughter as well as a nurse--to find out why, even at the risk of her own life.
Review
A true spellbinder. From spies to the brutal facts of war to Bess's unwavering determination to uncover the truth, author Charles Todd has penned yet another fantastic thriller.-- "Suspense Magazine"


[A] riveting mystery...It is almost as if the Great War has become a secondary character.-- "Military Press"


An enjoyable and quick read well worth the time.-- "New York Journal of Books"


As always in this immensely satisfying series, Todd heightens the mystery by setting it within a war-shattered world of battered villages, barren farms, and broken people.-- "New York Times Book Review"


Not even a life-threatening bullet wound can stop Bess Crawford in bestseller Todd's compelling eighth whodunit.-- "Publishers Weekly"


Rosalyn Landor's skillful narration takes listeners to battlefield hospitals, to gritty Paris, and to villages in the French countryside...Landor nimbly shifts from Crawford's British tones to French, German, and subtle American accents, each perfectly paired with the various individual characters. Listeners will be totally engaged as Crawford works to uncover the truth about a soldier who may have murder in his past.-- "AudioFile"
About the Author
Charles Todd is the New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries and the Bess Crawford mysteries. A mother-and-son writing team, they live on the East Coast.


Rosalyn Landor is an English-born television, theater, and multiple-award-winning audiobook narrator. Her television credits include Love in a Cold Climate, Rumpole of the Bailey, Sherlock Holmes, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. She has won numerous Audie awards and AudioFile magazine Earphones awards.