The Amber Heart (ePub)

The Amber Heart is a big, compelling family saga with a powerful love story at its heart. The setting is the Polish region of Galicia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the middle years of the 19th century. Loosely based on extraordinary episodes from the author's own family history, this epic novel follows the fortunes of an array of characters whose lives are disrupted by the turmoil of the times. 

The novel is a passionate, moving and at times explicit tale of a lifelong attraction. Maryanna is a Polish landowner's pampered daughter, born and brought up in the beautiful 'pancake yellow' house of Lisko, while Piotro is a poor Ukrainian estate worker. The lives of these two people from vastly different backgrounds are, against all the odds, destined to become hopelessly and tragically entwined from the fatal moment of their first meeting.

'Stefan took a pouch from his jacket and scattered coins as though scattering grain, watching them spread out and dive, hunting among grasses, squabbling volubly, fighting for what they could find, like so many starlings. But one of them didn't move. He was the tallest and the oldest, a boy of perhaps eleven, his hair black and matted, his face sallow under the grime, his eyes an unexpectedly bright cornflower blue. He stood still, hands hanging by his sides, fists clenched, and he stared up at Maryanna, unsmiling, unmoving. She shifted uneasily. For perhaps the first time in her life, she saw a gaze of pure resentment directed straight at herself. She turned her head into her father's jacket.
"Daddy, tell the boy not to look at me," she whispered.'

'An excellent holiday read or for any other time you want to lose yourself in a good book' - Indie Bookworm.

Catherine Czerkawska is an award winning and best selling writer of historical and contemporary novels, short stories and more than 100 plays for the stage, for television and for BBC Radio 4.